Two Cabins, One Lake: An Alaskan Romance (2 page)

So
that’s
the Devil’s name.
 
Gary
.  I
turned it over in my mind, villainizing it.

“No,” I said, drawing out the word, “it was on
my
property.  See that tree over there?  The one with the orange tape on it?  That’s
the edge of
Gary’s
property.  So I’d appreciate it if you’d leave
my
canoe, which you found on
my
property, alone.”

They looked a little stunned by my vehemence.  Or maybe it
was the alcohol—one lifted a fifth of whiskey and took a long chug as I
watched.  A hundred dollars said that bottle would either be left in my canoe,
or at the bottom of the lake.  Or—

I winced as it slipped from the blonde idiot’s grasp and
shattered on the rocky shore.  “Whoops,” he said with a chuckle.

“All right, no need to get upset,” the darker one said. 
“You wanna come party with us, pretty girl?”

What I wanted was to beat the hell out of the blonde for
littering on my beach, and then smite the brunette for calling me ‘girl’, when
he looked barely old enough to drink.  “No,” I gritted, “I really don’t.  Now
unhand my canoe, and get off my beach.  And tell
Gary
to turn it down.” 
I was proud of all the spots in those sentences I’d managed to omit the F-bomb.

They laughed—which didn’t sound like consent—but then turned
their sloppy-drunk selves around to wander back in the direction of my evil
neighbor’s cabin.  They shot glances back at me as they walked and laughed, leaving
me with an almost-launched canoe and a beach full of broken glass.

I grimaced as I felt my emotions tip toward
self-consciousness.  I cleaned up okay, but as a general rule, I wore whatever
I wanted when I was at my cabin, the more comfortable the better.  Today I was wearing
a baggy, tie-dyed T-shirt without a bra, and fleece pajama pants dotted with
purple hearts, the ragged hems of which gathered over my mud-stained leather
boots.  I wasn’t a fashionista by any means, but I was aware enough to know my
clothing couldn’t have been less in style, or clashed harder, if I’d been
trying.

As for the rest of me:  My long blonde hair—undyed, un-highlighted,
and most recently trimmed by yours truly—was up in a messy ponytail, and I had
no makeup or jewelry on, not that I usually wore any.  My nails were short, un-manicured,
and unpainted, on fingers that no one would call graceful; damaged by water,
burned by fishing lines, and ripped by hooks.

Of course, in the Alaskan bush, style didn’t matter.  The
goal was simple functionality.  Keep it covered, keep it warm, keep it dry. 
The old folks next door—even my neighbors downriver—hadn’t made me feel
self-conscious a day in my life.  They understood the score.  But these young
dicks?  They had no clue.

Cussing them for making me feel awkward, I pushed the canoe
the rest of the way out into the water, and then pulled it along the shore toward
my cabin.  There, I walked out onto my little dock and looped the bow line
around a mooring cleat.

When I straightened to cast one last glance at the
neighbor’s partying cabin—every light in the house was on, and judging by the
off-key howling, I suspected someone had hooked up a karaoke machine—I saw the
would-be canoe thieves talking to someone on the lawn.  They turned and pointed
at me.

I returned their regard across the couple hundred feet of
water separating them from my ire.  I couldn’t see much in the way of detail,
but everything female in me acknowledged that the third man was beautifully
shaped.  Besides being terminally drunk and stupid, the first two hadn’t been
bad-looking, but this one…

He was tall, with broad shoulders and an athletic, narrow
waist perfectly complemented by jeans and a green T-shirt.  He had black hair
that ate the light, and a wide stance that said ‘I own this land’.

My girly parts stood up and took notice.  But every other
part of me—and they definitely had the majority—really, really wanted to slap
him.

That Devil personified had to be the infamous Gary, and if
that was the case, I may as well go drown myself in the tub now.  I turned
around before my lady bits got any more excited, and climbed back up to my
cabin.

I didn’t want a hot fucking neighbor.  Or a fucking hot
neighbor, or fucking a hot neighbor.  I didn’t want it any which way.  I didn’t
want or need a distraction, particularly in the form of a
man
.

What I
wanted
was a sweet old couple who called more
than they visited, and were quiet as church mice when they did appear.  What I
needed
was to write. 

It was already past my bedtime, and I had to get up early in
the morning.  Luckily, I had earplugs.  I’d just sleep with them in.  They
couldn’t possibly keep this up more than a night or two.

Clinging to that thought, I let my dog, Mocha, in for the
night and brushed my teeth.  I climbed up into the loft, flopped down onto the
queen-sized mattress lying on my unfinished plywood floor, and drifted into a
fitful sleep.

I don’t know how long I slept before I was awoken by a
boom
heard even through my ear plugs.  I shot upright, blinking in the darkness as a
loud crackling was followed by another explosive
boom
.

Were they
shooting
?

Groggily, I dragged myself out of bed.  I stumbled down the
ladder and burst out onto the deck.

This being the Land of the Midnight Sun, the sky was a dim blue
even in the dead of night.  Every light was on next door, rippling and
reflecting across the surface of the dark water.  Most of the drunken revelers
were on the lawn looking up, while a couple hunkered down.

There was a high-pitched whistle, and then ker
blam
! 
The firework exploded overhead, sending a shower of golden sparks over the
lake.

For a moment, just the barest moment as all those little
golden lights reflected off the lake, I didn’t mind having been woken up.  For
that tiny, perfect sliver of time, as I watched all those little lights sparkle
and begin to fall to earth, I didn’t even mind that I had a neighbor.  As long
as he brought sparkly things.

Then the next one went off in the trees halfway between our
two cabins.

And a tiny flame licked to life.

My whole chest clenched with sudden terror.  Fires were a
huge problem in Alaska in the summer.  They caught in dry grasses and leaves
and brush and ate hundreds of thousands of acres of forest every year. 
Lightning was the number one culprit, followed by campfires and
fireworks
. 
I’d loved the cool shadows of the old, gnarled trees around my cabin, so I had
made a conscious decision not to cut a firebreak around it.

And now, there was a flame in my side yard, growing into a
small fire.

“Fire!” I yelled across the lake.  Shouts rang out across
the water as I dashed back through my sliding door.  I stomped into my
shitkickers and hurtled the three steps to the ground.  From my generator
shack, I grabbed two shovels and a stack of five-gallon buckets.  Then I
vaulted down to the shore, and ran along it as fast as my legs would take me.

Distantly I acknowledged my polar fleece pants weren’t the
best to wear into this kind of work—synthetics tended to melt onto the skin. 
But at the moment, I was weighing my cabin against my hide… and my cabin was
winning.

A group of people met me along the lake shore, not far from
the broken glass.  Without a word, the green-shirted bastard took one of my
shovels, and handed the buckets off to his friends.  Then he was off through
the woods, taking the slope up from the lake as though it were nothing.  I was
right on his heels, headed grimly toward the brightening glow, grateful for his
help but absolutely determined that this would not be a bonding experience.

Not no, but hell no
, I thought, realizing the spot
he’d set on fire was my blueberry patch.  Now, to someone from the Lower 48, this
might not sound like much.  Someone from the Lower 48 might even be thinking,
‘what’s the big deal, just grow some more’.  But that wasn’t an option.

These were wild Alaskan blueberries, blueberries so wild and
so Alaskan, some of them weren’t even technically blueberries.  They were
better, darker, more flavorful, and yet more elusive, defying every attempt to
cultivate and farm them.  They’d been growing in that spot when I bought the
land, and over the years, I’d managed to encourage their growth.  Every year my
beloved blueberry patch grew just a bit larger, and every fall, I enjoyed rich,
tart blueberry pies and muffins.

And now?  They were on fire.  My neighbor had set my
blueberries on fire.

Thank God the fire was still relatively small—less than a
dozen feet across.  I ducked low to avoid the billowing smoke as I beat at the
flaming forest floor with the flat of my shovel.  I cringed with each delicate
blueberry branch I stomped on, each blackened, charred stem that caught at my
pants.  My eyes teared up, and my throat grew tight, and I knew it was from more
than just the smoke.

One of the Devil’s minions splashed water on the fire ahead
of me, and I jumped over the plume of steam to attack the other side.  I
continued slapping out the flames, vaguely seeing the shape of my nemesis
beating and stomping on the other side of my blueberry patch.  My lips curled
into a snarl, and again, I was grateful—but at the same time, I wanted to kick
his ass. 

Trying to steal my canoe?  Littering on my beach?  Small
potatoes compared to burning down my blueberries.

To keep from flinging myself across my dead bushes to show
him the broad side of my shovel, I focused on my work.  My arms ached, and I
felt sweat running down my spine from the heat and terror and exercise.  I
coughed as another couple buckets of water sprayed out across the blackened
patch.

We were winning.  I didn’t realize it, though, until a green
shirt materialized directly ahead of me, breaking me out of my blueberry-bereft
daze.  He was hard to see in the smoke and the dark, but my stupid girl-senses
seemed able to recognize him even when blinded by darkness and tears.  Unwilling
even to look at him, I veered aside to make sure the fire was entirely out.

A few minutes later, after splashing a last couple buckets
onto the charred and steaming ground myself, I stumbled back out of the woods.

I’d been self-conscious earlier.  Now, picture me in the
same clothes, but covered with dirt and soot and reeking of smoke.  My hair had
come mostly down, and I’d singed a couple pretty good-sized hanks of it.  I had
a bucket in one hand, and a shovel in the other, and my eyes were full of
crazy.

My furious gaze found my neighbor.  I threw the shovel
down—the temptation to hit him with it was too great—and made a beeline for the
bastard in the green shirt.

“Gary?” I demanded.

He turned toward me.  He had thick black hair, rugged good
looks, and a nose that looked like it’d been punched one too many times—but not
nearly enough.  The low light worshiped the strong planes of his face,
particularly that stupid, pussy-liquefying dent in his chin. 
Damn him.

“Yeah?” the Devil said.

I slammed the bucket against his chest, making him stumble
back a step.  “What the
fuck
?”

He grabbed the bucket, preventing me from repeating the
move.  “It was an accident,” he said.

“It was
carelessness
and
stupidity
,” I spat. 
“I’ve been living here four years, and do you know how many times I’ve set the
woods on fire?”  I slapped the bucket from between us, making it bounce across
the rocks with a satisfying clatter, and I stabbed my finger into his chest.  Which
was very firm, I was very irritated to notice.  But nothing could stop me from
my tirade.  Not even his gorgeous green eyes, which I spent a moment too long
noticing were very, very green.  Beer bottle green.

Deep breath. 
Back on track.

“Zero.  None.  That fire could have spread and taken both
our cabins.  Hell, it would have probably killed me in my sleep if I hadn’t
woken up when I did.  I would have been
burned
alive
.”  I glared
up at him, panting with wrath.

“It’s the Fourth of July,” he said.  “We had fireworks. 
That’s what
normal
people do,” he said, running a judging gaze from my
wild, knotted hair down my stained, shapeless T-shirt to my ridiculous night
pants and my scarred, muddy boots, “on the Fourth of July.”

I bet he’d just be
shocked
if I showed him my
granny panties.  Not.  Stupid man.

“‘Normal people’ aren’t the most annoying bastards I’ve ever
met,” I said.  “‘Normal people’ don’t buzz a person’s cabin two dozen times in
one day, or play music loud enough to be heard miles away in the middle of the
fucking night, or let their drunk, stupid friends try to steal someone else’s canoe,
and then leave broken glass all over the beach.  I wonder—when you leave in a
couple days, how many beer cans will I find on the bottom of the lake?”

He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and rocked back on
his heels, looking way too unfazed by my yelling.  “Actually,” he said, “I’ll
be here all summer.”  He said it with a lazy grin that made me want to slap him
all over again.  I could practically feel that dark stubble burning my palm. 
And why did that thought bring a stab of lust along with it?

But pure, unadulterated horror quickly followed, and I
groaned.  All summer?  I had a couple
months
of this to look forward to? 
I had a half-dozen more deadlines, which had seemed barely manageable with
full-time fish guiding and then my brothers’ visit here in a couple weeks.  But
with a human noisemaker right next door, constantly interrupting my train of
thought? 

Impossible.
  I started to hyperventilate.

“Your name’s Helly, right?” he said.  “The previous owners
told me about you.  I was wondering how someone got a name like Helly, but,” he
looked me up and down, “I think I’ve figured it out.”