Northern Fascination (6 page)

He looked around. “Where?”

The moon cast a sliver of light across the lake. She swam into the lit swath. “Here.”

“You’re in the water? Are you okay?”

She laughed at the mix of concern and incredulity in his normally even cadence. “Yes, I’m in the water and I’m fine. It’s lovely to be in the warm water on a cold night.”

His quiet laugh echoed through the stillness as he crunched through the snow toward her. “Yeah, well what about when you get out?”

“It’s a little brisk. But I have a tent and I dry off and get dressed in there.”

It was really kind of weird to be in the water, naked, carrying on a conversation with him but she was simply glad they were talking. “What brings you out here?”

“Answers. I needed to think. This seemed like a good place to do it.” He glanced away from her, toward the moon, throwing his handsome features into relief. Her heart beat faster.

“It is a good place to think.” A boldness she’d never before possessed coursed through her. “And out here is even better.” She moved her arms through the water, setting ripples flowing across the calm surface. “Come on in. The water’s fine.”

“Y
OU CAN PUT YOUR CLOTHES
in the tent next to mine, if you’d like. I’ll look the other way until you’re in.”

“Are you naked?” Nelson realized how stupid that sounded. He didn’t see any swimsuit straps where the moonlight kissed her shoulders and he dealt with patients in various forms of undress all day long. Then again, he wasn’t standing on the edge of a steaming lake talking to them.

“Of course. It’s the only way to swim when it’s this cold.” She dutifully turned her back and Nelson was struck by the way her hair flowed into the water’s surface, giving the illusion she was one with the lake.

Her dog, Chugach, regarded Nelson as he removed the leather strip holding his own hair in place. Unzipping the tent flap, he crawled in, rezipped and quickly undressed. The air settled cold against his skin.

Fast-forwarding his senses and mind to the water’s warmth, he stepped out onto the snow-covered ground. A mere three steps later, he was in the water, the fluid warmth embracing him as he waded deeper.

“It drops off sharply at about four feet in.”

“I’m there now,” he said, as the water rose to his chest. “You can turn around.” He slid all the way into the water, totally submerging himself and then resurfaced.

It was a remarkably sensuous experience.

“Doesn’t it feel wonderful?” Ellie said. It was as if she’d read his mind.

“It does.” The warm water was invigorating with the cold air. His breath’s steam mingled with that rising from the lake’s surface. He didn’t think he’d ever been as aware of a woman as he was of Ellie now, cloaked in the intimacy of the steaming water, the night and the lake’s isolation. “So, do you come here often?”

Wow, that sounded like a cheesy line out of a B-grade movie.

Her soft laughter seemed to flow across the water. “Often enough. There’s never been anyone else here though, when I’ve come on a fall evening. I find I can think when I’m in the water. It harmonizes my spirit. When I leave, I am both energized and at peace.”

“I can understand that. There is something about this place. Clint found the answers he needed here.” God, he was wired to say all the wrong things tonight. Clint’s message had been to dump Ellie for the woman he’d wound up marrying, Tessa. “Um, sorry about that. That was thoughtless of me.”

Once again, her soft laugh rippled between them. “It’s fine. Clint and I never belonged together.”

Her response startled Nelson. All this time he’d assumed she was nursing a broken heart. “I’m surprised.”

“My pride was perhaps a little wounded, but my heart wasn’t even bruised.”

Two things struck him. First, once again she seemed to have tapped into his thinking. Second, he believed her. There was no anger in her assertion that Clint had not left her with a wounded heart.

“That’s good. Pride recovers much more quickly and easily than a heart.”

“You speak as if you’ve had yours broken.”

“Perhaps bruised, but not broken.”

Unlike most women he knew, Ellie didn’t pry. Instead, she silently treaded water, giving him room to bring his troubled energy and questions to the lake.

He realized he had one answer right before him. Hadn’t he needed someone to talk to, someone who would understand his dilemma, his position? Ellie floated near him like some water gift from the spirits.

“Do you ever feel trapped?” he said, breaking the encompassing quiet.

There was no hesitation, no contemplation. She responded with a simple “Yes” in her quiet voice that flowed over him with the same soothing warmth as the water.

“How so?” he said.

“By tradition. Expectation. By the very culture that makes me who and what I am.”

Nelson nodded. It was as if she’d reached into his core and felt the same things he felt.

“You feel trapped as well?” Ellie said. “Is it by the rules that come with being the next shaman?”

“Yes.” He bowed his head in a mixture of guilt and shame. He had never spoken the words aloud or had them spoken to him. Instead they had beat inside him like a trapped bird, wearing out his inner spirit.

He started at the soft touch against his shoulder. Ellie rested her fingers against his skin, her touch soothing. “Nelson, it’s okay. Do you want to talk about it?”

“I want to go to medical school.” The words seemed to hang on the cold autumn air. It was the first time he’d given voice to them. “I’m good at what I do.” He had trained a couple of years ago as a medical technician, preparing him to marry his people’s traditions with that of the white man’s medicine. But it left no room for him to pursue the white man’s medicine in the role of a doctor, and that was very much what he wanted.

There was no need to explain any of his dilemma to Ellie. She understood all the implications. He either forsook his culture and his people or his dreams.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He reached up and wrapped his fingers around hers where they still rested on his shoulder. He still had no answers but he felt immeasurably better. “And what of you, Ellie Lightfoot? How do you feel trapped? What is it you want that you cannot have?”

She lowered her eyes. “I can’t talk about it now.”

He reached out and tilted her chin up with his finger. “That’s all right. When you are ready, I am here to listen.”

Over the ridge a wolf howled. Within seconds there was an answering call. The wolf he’d heard earlier was no longer alone.

J
ENNA COULD BARELY MOVE
. Luckily, crowds didn’t freak her out because there’d been a constant flow of people around their table all evening. And it hadn’t helped when Logan had ordered a round of drinks for the house, on him. Well, no doubt it was his expense account.

He could buy drinks all night but it didn’t mean the town was going to sell out. Across the table, Clint Sisnuket, one of the best native guides in the state and Nelson’s cousin, was discussing cross-country ski trails with Logan.

Speaking of Nelson, well, thinking of Nelson rather, she hadn’t seen him all evening. Jenna glanced around the crowded room. Nope, he wasn’t here, which was kind of unusual. Since Nelson worked for Skye Shanahan, Skye might know where he was. Jenna was about to ask Skye, who was sitting across the table between Clint and her husband, Dalton, when Clyde Weaver walked up.

“I wanted to get a look at the feller that did the rest of us in,” Clyde said, his thumbs hooked into the suspenders holding up his jeans. Standing as wide as he was tall, Clyde always reminded Jenna of a garden gnome.

“He’s here to buy the town,” Jenna said. Maybe she’d just make a flashcard to hold up. God knows, she’d uttered that phrase at least one hundred times within a two-hour period.

“So he says. Everybody knows Good Riddance isn’t for sale.” Clyde eyed Logan the same way Jenna checked out cuticles. He nodded. “He’s the reason the rest of us haven’t stood a chance with you. Granted, some of us are a little long in the tooth—” Clyde was probably pushing his late fifties “—but you haven’t even gone for any of the young fellas. Now we know why.”

It was like beating her head against a brick wall. Everyone was going to think what they wanted to anyway. “Now you know why.”

And actually, she realized, there wasn’t a man in Good Riddance, or anywhere else for that matter, that interested her as much as Logan did. It was as if whatever she’d felt for him at seventeen had been tucked away inside her, only to return now, bigger and more intense. She felt something for him, something she’d never felt before for any man.

Clyde looked over to the back corner of the room, caught Rooster’s eye and held up four fingers. Rooster had opted out of pool in order to take wagers. He’d been busy all night in the back corner. Jenna had seen the flash of cash. A part of her was curious as to the exact nature of the bets but really, ignorance was bliss. However, Clyde had just wagered forty bucks.

“Say, what’s with the broad in the green sweater playing poker?” Clyde said.

Broad in the green sweater? It took Jenna a second to realize he was referring to Norris, two tables over playing five card draw with Sven and his crew. She almost always beat the pants off of them. Jenna gave Clyde the rundown on Norris.

“You don’t say? Well, where have I been?” Clyde said, smoothing his hand over the top of his hair, as if that would make a difference. It didn’t but Jenna supposed he got credit for trying. “I might try my luck there,” he said. “I like a woman with a little seasoning to her. Plus I’ve been working on some poems. Maybe she could give them a read and tell me what she thinks.”

Clyde was a poet? Clyde and Norris together? Who knew? Maybe. Love came in all shapes and sizes.

“Good luck.”

Clyde, intent evident in his eyes, started in the direction of the card game. “Uh, Clyde,” Jenna said.

“Yeah?”

“I wouldn’t interrupt her during the game.”

“I suppose you’re right. Good point. Maybe I’ll go hang out at the bar and compose an ode to her on a napkin.”

“I think that’s a better plan.”

She smiled. Then just as it had been all night, her gaze was drawn to Logan. He’d been sitting across from her and he’d been swamped with people all evening, but time and again she’d glanced at him only to find him looking at her. And more than once, when she’d been talking to someone else, she’d felt his eyes on her.

She liked everyone in Good Riddance but suddenly, the noise and crowd were too much. It had been a long day and Jenna realized she was about five minutes away from being in the same state as a perm gone wrong—overprocessed. She needed to go home to her quiet cabin and have some time alone, just her and Tama.

“I’ll see everyone tomorrow. I’m heading out,” she said to the table in general.

Logan immediately spoke up, interrupting his conversation with Clint. “Give me a second and I’ll walk you home.”

What? She’d managed to look after herself very well up to this point. Now Logan shows up and turns her world topsy-turvy and she’s supposed to wait? She didn’t think so. He hadn’t come all this way to find her and she certainly hadn’t just been sitting around waiting on him to show up. She had a full, complete life right here. And she’d done as she’d promised—she’d introduced him around.

“You don’t have to walk me home.” Their table grew quiet. “I’m perfectly capable of getting there by myself.” Come to think of it, the entire room had grown quiet. She didn’t care. Her gaze didn’t falter. Neither did his. “In fact, I do that on a regular basis. This is Good Riddance. It’s perfectly safe here.”

“Jenna, I know I don’t
have
to walk you home. I
want
to walk you home. And I’m going to, one way or the other. You escorted me here, I’m escorting you home.”

“If you do that then everyone’s really going to think there’s something between us.”

“Apparently they’re going to think that regardless.”

She simply couldn’t help herself. “I told you so.”

“Yes, you did, didn’t you?” He looked cool as a cucumber sitting across the table, the entire restaurant watching them like spectators watching a tennis match. “So, may I walk you home or do I have to follow five paces behind like a stalker?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. If he thought he was going to throw her off course any more than he already had, he could think again. “I think I might like that.”

“Walking with you or following five paces behind?”

“I suppose you might as walk with me. People are going to talk.”

“They will regardless.” He pushed his chair back, standing. “And now if you’ll excuse us,” he said to the room at large, “as you all just heard, the lady is ready to go home.”

The room erupted, Rooster’s back corner in particular. Logan and Jenna didn’t exchange a word to each other as they made their way to the door. Logan held Jenna’s coat for her and her whole body hummed at his mere nearness. This was precisely why she needed to be alone. She’d been in hyper-awareness mode from the second he’d been outside her door. He shrugged into his loaner jacket.

“See,” said a woman at the table near the door. “That’s what a gentleman’s supposed to do for a lady.”

Jenna and Logan stepped out into the star-sprinkled night, the sickle of a moon hanging as if suspended by a thread. Jenna welcomed the refreshing chill.

In silence, they walked along the sidewalk, the only sounds the crunch of snow underfoot and the faint sigh of the wind through the trees.

Caught up in her overwhelming awareness of him, she wasn’t as careful of her footing as she usually was. She hit an icy patch on the sidewalk and slipped.

His reflexes quick, Logan caught her, steadying her, righting her against him. Her words of thanks faltered, buried by the avalanche of want that had been with her all day—the need to know his kiss, just once.

She leaned up, he leaned down and finally… At first his lips, like hers, were stiff with cold but within seconds they grew warm. Very warm. With a muffled groan, he pulled her closer, kissing her harder, deeper. It was sweet and hot and he tasted faintly of whiskey.

Jenna sighed and leaned into him, returning his kiss with all the passion that had been bottled inside her, simply waiting for the right man to release. She felt as if fireworks were going off in her.

They broke apart, the sound of their breathing seemed to fill the night. Wordlessly, they resumed walking. Logan, however, kept one arm wrapped around her waist. Jenna liked the weight of it, the steadiness it offered.

They had just passed Bull’s hardware store when Logan broke the silence. “Why did you ask me to escort you to Homecoming all those years ago?”

The question seemed random but it really didn’t surprise her. In the scheme of surprises, it was nothing compared to the fact that he’d actually turned up here today. And she’d gotten her comment in about his rejection earlier. Obviously neither of them had forgotten that incident twelve years ago.

But what did he mean, why had she asked him? That was crazy. “Why does anyone ask another person out? Because I wanted to go with you.”

“You really wanted me to take you?” He turned his head to look at her, even though the night was fairly dark.