Alaskan Nights (3 page)

She pushed up and reached for his thin black leather belt. “All right, outta those clothes, big guy.”

A knife and a cell phone sheath were at his right side. The knife was a standard folding Buck. Three-and-a-half-inch blade. She opened it. Nicely honed, lethally sharp. Well used. The scratched and worn handle had seen better days. The lake had obviously destroyed the cell phone. She shook it, and water sloshed around inside. Not that it would have done them much good way out here, anyway.

Setting aside the knife and phone, she unbuckled the belt and then opened the button and zipper of his jeans. “Hope you don’t mind. I don’t normally go around undressing unconscious men.” She snorted at her attempt at humor. “Been a hell of a long time since I undressed a conscious one, for that matter.”

She decided to get him closer to the couch before she took his pants off. The last thing she needed was to have to pull splinters out of this guy’s butt because she’d dragged him across the wooden floor.

She shoved open the door to the cabin, grabbed him under the arms, and dragged him inside, staggering under his weight and sheer exhaustion. The adrenaline of earlier had ebbed to nothing. The fire in the barrel stove had gone out, and she wondered just how long it’d been since she’d been sitting on the porch, minding her own businesses, before Studly here fell out of the sky.

He did kind of look like a stud. Alaskan stud, anyway, not some magazine model. The whiskers, the muscles, the wild, untamed hair and square jaw. She wasn’t sure about the earring, though. She hadn’t really imagined any wild mountain men wearing quarter-carat diamond studs. She found it...amusing. When she burst out laughing again, she worried her grip on sanity was beginning to slip.

She laid him down next to the aged and worn olive green sofa. The only other furnishings in the twelve-by-fourteen-foot cabin were a small, scarred wooden table, two rickety chairs, and the ancient, creosote-encrusted barrel stove made from an old fifty-five gallon oil drum. There was a minuscule kitchen with a two-burner propane stove, and a tiny pantry area at the back end of the cabin. Over the kitchen a small loft made up the sleeping area, which held two queen-sized mattresses side by side.

Isabella reached for Studly’s pants again and wondered why her stomach fluttered in something close to anticipation. She’d seen plenty of naked men, having lived almost exclusively with men for the past ten years. Her uncle and whatever guides they’d needed to get to wherever they’d needed to go, to get the stories that Cameron Jones had been known to write, were almost always men. Some of them rather good looking. None of them with even an ounce of appeal that this half-dead guy had.

“Jeez, you’d think you were the first man I’d laid eyes on in the past ten years.” She yanked down his jeans and underwear in one motion. Oh, he was a man all right. A very well formed one, she thought, admiring him as a shiver of pure feminine awareness slithered down her spine, warming her from the inside out. She tried not to let her gaze wander where it shouldn’t but couldn’t seem to help herself. Michelangelo’s David had nothing on this wild Alaskan.

She extricated him from his pants then pushed him up again and tugged off the flannel shirt and then the T-shirt. Soft, dark brown hair covered his chest, swirled around his pecs, and then thinned out as it traveled down his taut stomach, around his navel then widened out again, making a soft, curly padding upon which his sex rested.

Oh, my. She wouldn’t mind waking up next to this guy every morning.

A slight pink discoloration marred his right side from shoulder to waist. A burn scar, though not a deep one, first or second-degree maybe. No puckering, just discoloration. Fairly recent, in her estimation, maybe even still a bit tender. She frowned, wondering how a guy could get burned over that much of his body.

Expelling a heavy sigh, Isabella climbed the short ladder to the loft to pull down the spare sleeping bag, the one she’d brought in case it got really cold. Her friend back in San Francisco who’d given her the name of the outfit that owned this cabin had told her that August weather could be unpredictable. Sometimes hot and sunny. Sometimes rainy and cold. Sometimes beautiful and mild. So far, it had been the latter, until the rain had started last night.

She loved the rain, though. And the mingled scents of wet spruce needles and moss were so sweet it made her want to bottle it and take it everywhere she went. Maybe she’d settle here. Not here per se, but in Alaska. Fairbanks seemed like a nice little city. Not too many people, but not exactly a town either. They had a Home Depot, Walmart, and a multi-plex movie theater. Or there was Anchorage. It was much larger, a city by anyone’s standard, and she’d probably have better luck getting a job there.

A job. What kind of job could she get? What did an ex... She didn’t even know how to title the job she’d held for her uncle. Assistant? Yeah, she had been that. His assistant. His secretary, accountant, pack mule, photographer, co-author, his...right hand
and
right leg. There weren’t many people for whom she’d work that hard. In fact, she couldn’t think of one. Moreover, she’d be damned if she ever set foot in another jungle
ever
.

Isabella realized she was still standing on the ladder, clutching the sleeping bag to her chest. Pulling herself back to the present and her silent companion, she spread the sleeping bag open over the sofa cushions and back. With more grunting and groaning, tugging and pulling, she heaved the man onto the sofa. Thank goodness the green monstrosity sat so low to the floor or she’d never have managed. Her strength was giving out at an alarming rate, the muscles in her arms and shoulders burning, and her legs had turned the consistency of wet noodles.

His right arm flopped down, palm up, on the edge of the couch.

Her breath caught in her throat. A cold shiver spiked through her.
Ice cold
. And it had nothing to do with the chilly cabin or the wet clothing that clung to her body.

Tattooed on the inside of his forearm was a skull with a viper slithering through the empty eye sockets. The words “silent” and “deadly” were over and under the design. It was a Special Forces insignia. The men who’d eventually rescued her and the other captives from that Central American hell had all sported the same ink. The highly lethal Viper Team.

“Pull yourself together, Hammond,” she whispered. Coincidence. Pure, simple coincidence. There must be thousands of men in the Special Forces.

She shivered again.

Gently, she lifted his arm and laid it over his chest then pulled the soft, quilted inside of the bag over him. “That should do it.” Brushing his thick hair off his forehead, she examined the knot above his right eye. It had grown to the size of a lemon and turned a disgusting shade of blackish-purple. If—when—he woke up, he was going to be in some serious pain.

After changing into dry clothing, Isabella set about hanging all the wet clothes on the line running kitty-corner over the barrel stove. When she lifted the man’s pants, a wallet plopped to the floor from the back pocket. Good. Maybe she’d be able to find out his name. After hanging up the clothes, she sat at the table and opened the well-worn, water-saturated black leather.

“Brandon Eugene Wilks,” Isabella said as she looked at the Michigan driver’s license with a Detroit address. He was thirty-nine years old, six-foot-three inches tall, and two hundred fifteen pounds. She doubted that. She’d guess he was about one-eighty. Brown hair, brown eyes, and an organ donor.

She pulled the rest of the items out of the wallet. He had eighty-nine dollars in cash, a Visa card, a punch card that entitled him to a free six-inch sub sandwich, a coffee card from Le Café for a free Grande Latté, a pilot’s license, a health insurance card—a lot of good that’s doing him now—a small stack of business cards from various businesses around both Fairbanks and the Detroit area, and two pictures. One picture was of a family. A big blond man, a small, dark woman, and a pretty baby. The other picture was of an older woman. Both had been laminated as if prepared for today’s swim.

She went back to the sofa and stared at him. Maybe this was her way of paying back those that had rescued her when she desperately needed help. Maybe this was a test to see if she’d deserved to be saved from death by the elite Viper Team.

~*~*~

Three strikes, you’re out.

A bullet, an explosion, a plane crash. Was he out? Was he dead?

Brandon groaned.

Nope. Can’t be dead. Too much pain
.

His head had been split in two, he was sure. It throbbed, ached. He tried reaching up to touch his forehead, but the searing pain that shot through his left shoulder stopped him, and he groaned again.

“Shh, Brandon. You’re all right. Try not to move too much.”

Soft, feminine voice. Gentle. Soothing. Slightly husky. Almost silky. He tried to relax. Maybe he was still in the hospital. Maybe these past two months had been a dream.

“I’ve got some aspirin for you. I hope you don’t have an allergy to it or anything. I don’t have any other pain killers here.”

A soft, warm cocoon surrounded his body. The scent of wood smoke and woman closed around him, teased him. Gentle, cool fingers touched his cheek. He turned his face just a bit to press against that wonderful hand. It seemed to lessen a bit of the pinpoint flaming pain scorching his skull.

“Brandon.” His name had never sounded sexier. He smiled. “If you can sit up just a bit, I’ll help you with the pills. I’m sure you need something for the pain.”

That enticing little hand smoothed over his cheek, down his neck to his chest. Another hand, equally cool and gentle as the first, slipped under his bare shoulders. With a slight pressure, she tried lifting him.

He forced his eyes open.

The room was lit by the soft glow of a Coleman lantern hanging on the wall. The woman with the cool hands had the eyes of an angel and the hair...of a madwoman. A wild riot of dark curls surrounded her tremendously feminine, extraordinarily beautiful face.

“Your driver’s license was right, they’re brown,” the woman said softly with a gentle smile that made her look even more angelic. “Nice to have you back among the living.”

“Where...” He cleared his throat, which caused an explosion within his skull. Squeezing his eyes shut, he fought the dizzying pain. “Where am I?”

“In a cabin on Ice Worm Lake, about two hundred miles northwest of Fairbanks. You crashed your plane in my front yard.”

Brandon groaned again as memories started to surface. He’d been thinking about going back to work tomorrow. Something hit the windshield, busting it. A bird. A flock of geese, that was what it was. He’d tried to find the nearest lake to set down on, but it was too close, and he’d been going too fast when he hit the water.

“I think you’re going to be all right now that you’re awake. Your shoulder’s going to hurt for a couple days, and you have a nice bump on your forehead.”

“Who are you?” he croaked. Her hands were still on him. One under his shoulders, the other on his chest. She felt nice, soft, comfortable. She smelled like heaven—sweet and slightly musky.

“Isabella Hammond.”

“You live here?” Through a pain-induced haze, he desperately tried to focus his eyes on her.

She shook her head at him. “No, I’m on vacation.”

“Who else is here?”

“Just us. You and me.”

Brandon shut his eyes again. An angel on holiday. Didn’t know they allowed that kind of thing in Heaven.

“Can you sit up? I have aspirin and some water for you.”

Brandon let her help him up. He had no choice; he was as weak as a newborn.
Again
. He’d just barely regained his strength after that long, agonizing month in the Burn Center.

She put the pills on his tongue and then held the plastic cup of ice cold water to his lips. “There you go, Brandon,” she said as she gently lowered him back down. “Try to get more sleep. It’s the middle of the night.”

He was going to nod, but pain shot up from the base of his scull, blasting inside his head.

Those enchanting hands pulled the covers up over him. Smoothed his hair back. Brushed against his cheek. She moved away. The sound of metal scraping. A thumping. He recognized the sounds of adding wood to the fire from his childhood. The hiss of the kerosene lantern extinguished. Creaking wood. Rustling nylon of a sleeping bag.

Brandon drifted back to sleep feeling safe.

Each heartbeat sent a ten-inch spike through Brandon’s skull. Even with his eyes closed, he sensed daylight. Lying perfectly still, he listened. Birds twittered and squirrels chattered, wood shifted with a soft thud in the stove. A pan scraped across a burner. The slight, not-unpleasant odor of propane mingled with the soft, sweet breeze floating over him.

Forcing his eyelids open, he saw rough-hewn log walls and an open door. Turning his head, which hurt as if the very devil himself had set up residence in it, he glanced around the one-room cabin not unlike so many others common to Alaska’s wilderness. A barrel stove in one corner, his clothes draped across a rope strung over it. One multi-pane window above an aged wood table where the sunshine streamed in. Turning a bit farther, he found his angel.

Standing in front of a two-burner stove, which looked older than the hills themselves, she was a tiny shape under exceptionally baggy, faded blue jeans and flannel shirt in colors of light blue, pink and white. Hair the color of cherry wood, curly and wild, fell to her shoulders. She flipped a pancake from the blackened cast-iron pan. A stack of flapjacks sat on a plate on the other burner.