Two Cabins, One Lake: An Alaskan Romance (4 page)

I took another couple steps back.

The bear chuffed, and advanced, moving a little faster. 
He’d been about thirty feet away.  Now it was twenty-five.

I finally decided to try shouting.  I made some noise,
waving my rod- and tackle box-laden hands above my head.

He kept on coming.

I stumbled backward, shouting louder, barely aware that I
was now competing with the thundering approach of an aircraft.

The bear paused.  Cocked its head.

A helicopter
roared
by directly overhead, low above
the treetops.  The sound was enormous, the blast of air snapping off dead
branches high up in the trees.

The bear turned to its right, and scooted into the woods.

Now I know I said don’t run, but this was my chance.  That
bear could have turned around at any moment and come back for me, and I didn’t
want to be anywhere nearby when he did.

I sprinted along the trail, my neck prickling, sure at any
moment I’d feel his claws in my back.  After a harrowing couple-minute run, I
broke out of the woods.  I dropped my fishing gear as I crossed my little
drive.  I flew up my three steps, smashed through the door, and then slammed it
behind me.

Safe
.  My breath heaved as I leaned back against the
cool metal door.  That had been one of my closest calls yet, and of course it had
happened during one of the very, very few times I was caught without my gun.

My gun, which was on a broken-down four-wheeler, along with
a bunch of expensive fishing equipment, next to a tourist-infested river.  I
had a story deadline, but I also had
stuff
.  And that
stuff
allowed me to make a decent living as a fishing guide, so I really needed to
rescue it, and soon.  My choices were:  I could play pack-mule again, or I
could get the four-wheeler running.

I’m capable of lots of things—I can fish, and drive a boat,
and shoot a gun—but I am not the least bit mechanically inclined.  My
four-wheeler might as well run on magic, propelled by fairy wings, for all I
know.  Although, I do feed it gas every once in a while, and I am pretty sure
that fumy clear fluid has something to do with its propulsion.  I know for damn
sure the thing won’t move without it.

But anyway, I’d checked.  The tank had been full.  It wasn’t
the gas, and thus it was beyond me.

My brothers were coming to visit in a little over two weeks,
and I knew they’d probably be able to trouble-shoot it (if they didn’t somehow
actually
shoot it, blow it up, or sink it in the process) but two weeks was too long.  I
still had work; I had to make that commute from cabin to boat several more
mornings before their visit, and the four-wheeler was the best way to transport
my fishing gear.

Though I really, really didn’t want to do it, I knew exactly
who I had to call.

“Hello?” said a cheerful tenor on the second ring.

“Ed, hi,” I said.  “How are you?”  I wasn’t usually much for
small talk, except when trying to disguise that I was calling to ask for a
favor.

“Helly!  I haven’t heard from you in weeks!  Good, I’m
good.  How are you?”

I could hear him smiling on the other end, and I winced.  Ed
was a nice guy, definitely not the grungiest-looking bush rat I’d ever seen,
and he’d had a thing for me for years.  Problem was, I felt absolutely nothing
for him, and I suspected his ‘thing’ originated from the fact that I was one of
only two females under the age of 45 that resided on the river year-round.

We did the verbal dance, and I finally got to it:  “Ed, I
was wondering…well, my four-wheeler died, and I was wondering if you could
possibly come by and take a look at it.”

“Sure!  I’d love to,” he said.  “When?  I’m free right now.”

See, now I just felt bad.  This sweet guy was willing to
jump on any excuse to spend time with me, and I just wanted to use him for his
mechanical skills.  Was there a special place in hell for me?  Or was this why
women eventually married—so they could have that shit on tap?

“That’d be great,” I said.  “The four-wheeler died down at
my boat.  Meet you there in 15 minutes?”  Hopefully the fix would be quick, and
then I could get back to my cabin, and meet my deadline.

“Sounds great!”

I signed off, and picked up the shotgun propped next to my front
door.  There was still a bear out there.  And yes, I owned more than one gun. 
More than a few, even.  At last count, a dozen.

It is Alaska, after all.  Gotta have your guns.

I rescued my gear from the dirt drive, treating it with a
little more care as I hung the rods on their rack, and set the tackle box
beneath.

Shotgun in hand, I started warily back down the trail.  The
birds were singing and flitting about in the shadows under the canopy as if a
bear hadn’t almost ‘popped’ me and painted the forest with my blood.  As I
walked, I noticed the echoing
tat-tat-tat
of a woodpecker becomes
something eerie when you’re freaked out.

I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye.  I
jumped and swung my gun around—it was a squirrel.  

To my relief, the bear didn’t make another appearance, and I
arrived at the river unscathed except by mosquitos.  When Ed pulled up, I was sitting
side-saddle on my four-wheeler, and I saw him glance at the shotgun resting in
my lap.

“I had a close call with a bear,” I said by way of
explanation.

He’d climbed ashore, and he paused in tossing out his
anchor.  “Just now?”

“On the way to my cabin, maybe twenty minutes ago.”

He gave me his serious, concerned look.  “I’ve got my
rifle.  You want me to see if—”

Crap
.  I didn’t want his concern.  “No, it’s fine.  I
got caught without my gun, but it won’t happen again.  Just know that there’s a
brown bear in the area, and he doesn’t seem to be afraid of people.”

“Are you sure?  It’d be no problem…”

I shook my head.  I didn’t want to fill the role of Ed’s
damsel in distress.  I could take care of myself.  Really, I just wanted him to
fix my four-wheeler.

We made awkward conversation as he unfastened the grill and
peeled a couple pieces of red plastic off the front end.  It was awkward
because I wanted to be nice to him, but I didn’t want to lead him on.  I was
trying to strike a balance, but that was hard to do when you were as socially
inept as I was.  I tried to stay on safe topics, asking him how his Fourth of
July went, whether he’d been fishing lately, what he thought of the weather.

Despite my best efforts, he managed to slip in an indirect date
invite.  “Are you going to the Hindmans’ anniversary barbecue?” he asked.  He
looked up at me, hazel eyes earnest in the gap between his dark brown hair and
beard.  The man had so much facial hair, that if I hadn’t heard him speak, I
wouldn’t have been sure he owned a mouth—but that wasn’t unusual around these
parts.

“I…” had been planning on it, because I liked the old
couple, and there was free food, and Suzy’d be there, but I didn’t want it to
be a
date
.

“I’m going,” he said, wrenching on something, blissfully
unaware of the thoughts screaming through my head.  “And I’d love to see you
there.”

His eyes squinched up, telling me he was smiling, and I actually
wondered for all of three seconds why I couldn’t be attracted to a guy like
him.  He was nice-looking, hardworking and honest, and he was obviously
compatible with the lifestyle.  So why wasn’t I attracted to him?

Then I came to my senses and realized it didn’t matter why.  I
just wasn’t.

“Um,” I said noncommittally.

He didn’t seem to notice.  “There,” he said.  “That should
do it.”

Thank God.

He straightened up and wiped some grease from his hands, and
then walked around and started the four-wheeler.  He smiled as the engine
roared to life.  He let it rumble for a few moments, and then shut it down.

Then he spoke.  Here’s what I heard:  “It was the—”
something,
something
“—which had disconnected from the—”
something, something
“—and
you were low on—”
something, something
“—oh, and your battery—”
something,
something
.  Yeah, that last part had sounded kinda important.  Oh well.

I nodded as if I’d understood, and thanked him.  He put the
front of my four-wheeler back together, packed up his tools, and then looked at
me.  I stood by during that awkward pause while he tried to think up some last
thing to say, some brilliant thing that he probably hoped would inspire me to
show him gratitude the old-fashioned way.

“Well,” he finally said, “I might see you at the barbecue.”

I nodded again.

He got in his boat.

I got on my four-wheeler, and headed back to my cabin.  I
felt Ed’s longing like a physical presence as he watched me drive away.  I
really, really needed to stop letting him help me.

Back at my cabin, I was shucking off my damp, fishy clothes,
when I heard it again,
whomp whomp whomp
, and felt the vibration that
made my pots rattle.  I finished dressing, and then went downstairs to glare
out my window.

I watched the helicopter collect three people and take off
again. 
Good
.  It looked like my evil neighbor was taxiing his hungover
friends back to whatever hole they’d crawled out of, rather than keeping them
till Monday.  I hoped that would bring the decibel level down a bit, and let me
actually get some sleep tonight.  Knowing it was for a good cause made me feel
a little more inclined to tolerate the noise. 

I started up the generator—I needed to run it a couple hours
each day if I wanted the lights and running water—and threw a quick casserole
into the oven for dinner.

Then I went back up my ladder, fetched my ear plugs, and sat
down to finish my story.  I could still hear the helicopter in the background,
but it was faint.  An hour in, I switched over to my own music, turning it up
loud to drown out everything else.

I don’t know if it was just that I was in a slightly better
mood today, or if the writing gods were smiling on me, but I managed to finish
my story.  I got it edited, and then emailed—yes, courtesy of satellite, I even
had internet in my little corner of the woods—by my deadline.

It was 8 p.m., and I’d eaten, and now that my story was done,
it felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.  I went out on my deck
with a beer and the binoculars, determined to relax by watching the silly antics
of stick-legged sandpipers.

Just a few minutes later, the Devil flew overhead again.  The
wind of his passing made my hair fly everywhere, and scared the birds I’d been
watching.  I lowered the binoculars to watch him pick up what looked like the
last of his guests.

Having cooled off a bit from last night, I was starting to
wonder what his deal was.  Most cabin owners in these parts showed up
occasionally on weekends, or for whatever week or two they could get off.  My
new neighbor had said he was staying the summer, which seemed an odd amount of
time, unless he was a schoolteacher.  Somehow, I didn’t think he was a
schoolteacher.

So what did he do for a living that let him afford the cabin,
and the helicopter, and huge parties, but at the same time, let him hide out in
bumfuck for a couple months? 
Was
he running from something?  That
seemed like it was often the case around these parts; people who lived out here
were trying to avoid the law, or grow pot (see avoid the law), or just be
alone.  With Gary’s party last night, he’d proven he wasn’t a loner.  And he
didn’t look like a stoner.  Which left trouble with the law.

I mulled that over a bit, and finally decided I didn’t know,
and I wasn’t going to ask.  I wasn’t going to talk to my neighbor at all, if I
could help it.  He was way too hot to have a normal relationship with
any-which-way, and I was going to do my level best to avoid him.

Chapt
er Three

“I
’m
gonna kill him,” I growled into the phone.  It had been five days since my
neighbor moved in, and he hadn’t failed to disturb my peace on a single damn
one of them.

“Who’re you gonna kill?” my friend Suzy asked.   “Brett?”

“No, not Brett.  My new neighbor!”  I was pacing around, and
the glares I cast through my big picture window should have set something on
fire.

“Oh, so he moved in then?”

“You knew about this?”  My voice was rising.

“Well, sure, he’s the son of one of my dad’s old friends. 
Dad actually was the one to pass along that the place was for sale.”  I could
hear her smile through the phone.  “Why do you want to kill him?”

I didn’t even know where to begin, but the biggest thing: 
“He is
loud
.  He’s got a helicopter, and he’s doing some construction
over there, and Manny’s drilling him a well.  There’s pounding going on day and
night.  He actually woke me up yesterday
and today
with his sawing and
hammering.  He comes and goes with his helicopter, he’s decided the airspace
above my cabin is an acceptable flight path, and he’s had Rob with the flight
service make several trips in carrying building materials, and it’s just been
non-stop
noise
.”

Suzy was making all the right sympathetic sounds, so I
continued.

“The day he moved in, that very first day, he made a dozen
trips with the helicopter, he had a huge party that went well into the wee
hours of the morning, blaring their speakers and
littering on my beach
. 
And a couple of his friends tried to steal my canoe, and then they woke me up
with fireworks, and, Suzy…he set my blueberry patch on fire.”

“What?!  On fire?” 
See?  I
knew
she’d understand.

“One of his damn fireworks landed in my blueberry patch, and
the woods were burning, and we barely got it out.  He could have burned my
cabin.”  Next door, the repetitive
thump thump thump
of the well-drilling
made me want to tear out my hair.  “So I was out until two a.m. putting out the
fire, and then I had to be up by 4:30 to go to work, and Suzy, he burnt my blueberries.” 
I actually felt like crying even now.

“Aww, Hel, I’m sorry.  We’ll find you some more blueberries,
it’ll be okay.”

“It’s not okay!  How am I supposed to write with all this
racket?”

She was starting to make some more soothing noises, but I
continued:  “You know what else he did?  I went to bed early that second night,
trying to catch up on my sleep after he finished carting all his buddies back
to town, and do you know what woke me up at 11 o’clock that night?”

“No…”

“Loud fucking sex.  And it went on for
hours
.”  Okay,
that might have been a
slight
exaggeration.  The sounds that I’d
originally thought came from a dying baby moose reached an earth-shaking climax
of yodeling cries ten minutes till midnight.  I’d lain there in the dark, torn
between rage and a growing lust, wondering what the hell my new neighbor had to
be doing to a woman for her to make sounds like that. 
I’d
sure never
made sounds like that.

“Reaaally?” Suzy said, and by the way she drew out the word,
I knew she was getting ideas.  Which made me want to kick something.

I growled into the phone.  “And that’s when he’s not
muddying the water with his fucking jet ski.”  Day three of the Gary Invasion,
I’d come home and there’d been a brand new jet ski bobbing at his dock.  “I
mean, who owns a jet ski?”  In these parts?  No one.  “And where does he think
he’s going with it?  It’s just this little lake.  You’d think he could find
something more entertaining to do.” 

She laughed.  “Well, Helly hon, the noise will die down
after a bit.  That well’s only a couple-day operation, and I’m sure after he’s
got everything he needs, he won’t need to make many more trips.”

“He starts hammering and sawing at six a.m.!” I cried.  “Which
isn’t a big deal on the days I work, but I really like to sleep a bit past
six
on my days off!”

I was practically panting with wrath.  The same day the jet
ski appeared, I’d come back to find a brand new boat—his, I could only imagine,
because it was expensive, shiny, new, and damned annoying—parked in my spot. 
He was invading my quiet, peaceful life, and I didn’t like it.  Not at all.

“Deep breaths, Hel.  Deep breaths.  Okay, you’re not gonna
kill him.”

I started to argue, but she cut me off.

“What you
are
gonna do is go over there and ask him
to
please
hold off on the noise until—what time would be good for you?”

“Nine,” I growled.  How could she sound so calm, so
reasonable?  She wasn’t here, that’s how.  She wasn’t here, where it sounded
like they were throwing around metal roofing.  I rubbed between my eyes, where
that damn groove was making another appearance.

“And ask him nicely, Hel.  You can’t just go over and start
shooting people.”

I can’t?
  I eyed the shotgun propped next to the
door.  I’d been fondling it a lot lately.

“You can’t,” she said firmly, as though she’d heard my
thought.

I was starting to calm down a little bit—a
little
bit, mind you—but I wasn’t quite done being mad.  “I can’t write like this,” I
said.

“Do you have noise-cancelling headphones?”

“No.”

“Damn.  Well…play your own music?”

I grumbled a bit, and she laughed.

“You could come visit me.  I haven’t seen you in a couple
weeks.”

I groaned.  “I can’t.  I have another deadline coming up. 
And the reason you haven’t seen me is I’ve been working upriver, for the
Bransons.”  Suzy lived downstream from me, in a cabin on the river, about ten
minutes away by boat.  When I was working downriver, I often stopped by on my
way home.  We’d sit out on her little deck gossiping and eating burgers as we
soaked in the evening sunshine and listened to the fine hiss of silt as the
river rolled by.  She was the only other female resident even close to my
age—two years younger, in fact—and the only other woman on the river who’d
chosen to live by herself in the Alaskan bush.

“Well… are you coming to the Hindmans’ barbecue?”

“Maybe…”  There was still the Ed issue.  On the other hand,
it was an opportunity to escape my neighbor’s noise, and see my friend.  “Yeah,
I’ll be at the barbecue,” I said.

“You seem really bothered by your new neighbor,” she said. 
“What’s his name again?”

I hadn’t told her it in the first place, and I didn’t want
to soil my tongue with the Devil’s name, but I finally manned up and spat,
“Gary.”

“And Gary has a helicopter, hmmm?”

“Yeah,” I said.  Lots of people had small planes, and that
was cool; everybody loved a pilot.  But owning a helicopter?  Instant god-like
status.  “But he’s a dick.”

“A rich dick, then.  And a good-looking one.”

“How do you know that?”

Suzy cackled.  “I didn’t.  You just told me.  So he’s hot? 
Young?  Tall?  Gimme.”

I groaned.

“Helly…” she warned, sounding like she was gonna crawl
through the phone and rip the info outta me if I didn’t dish.

“He’s a real prick,” I said, prefacing what I was about to
let pass through my lips.  “But yeah.  Six-footish, maybe a couple years older,
black hair, green eyes, built.”

“Green eyes?”  She moaned.  “And he’s living there, not just
for the weekend?”

This line of questioning was getting old.  I didn’t wanna
talk to my neighbor, and I certainly didn’t wanna talk about him.  “For the
summer, is what he said.”

“God, I would give anything to be in your place, right next
door.  Do you have any idea how lucky you are?”

“He’s.  An.  Ass,” I stressed.  A loud-ass.

Suzy seemed to mull that over for a moment.  “Your brothers
are coming to visit, right?”

Ugh
.  “Yeah.”  In exactly thirteen days, I’d be
overrun by three crazy blondes who never had the decency to grow up.

“Maybe they’ll kill each other,” Suzy said.  “Them and the
neighbor.”

Maybe they would.  “Maybe they will.”  I began to smile.  My
brothers weren’t actually bad people.  They were just rowdy as hell, and I
kinda doubted they could be killed short of being staked, having their heads
cut off, and their bodies burnt to ash.  So, really, I was just hoping they’d
kill the neighbor.

“You got a plan for hiding the booze?” she asked.

“I was thinking I’d bury it this time.”  In previous years,
I’d sunken my stash in the lake, and hidden it in a tree almost a mile away. 
My brothers had found it both times.  And both times, they’d cleaned me out.

She laughed, and then sighed.  “Actually, even though
they’ll be drinking you out of house and home, I’m glad they’ll be there with you. 
I’ve been hearing about some break-ins downriver.”

I spun away from the window.  “Break-ins?”

“It’s just summer cabins, not a big deal.  Just vandals,”
she said.  “You know we get ‘em every summer.  Probably just some idiot out
from town for the weekend.”

I didn’t say anything, but I was worried about her.  I was
thinking maybe she should go stay with her parents at their lodge.

I must have been thinking it pretty hard.  She laughed, and then
said, “I’ve got a gun.  A really big one.”  She did.  It was a .50-cal.
revolver, and it looked ridiculous in her tiny hands.  She had one of those
builds that made it look like she’d blow away in the wind.  But somehow, she
made that five pound revolver her bitch.  I wasn’t into girls, but even I could
admit it was hot as hell to watch her blow holes in things with it.  “They try
and vandalize my place, I’ll let them know what I think about that,” she
continued.

“I’ll come visit you sometime when I’m off,” I said.  Maybe
even when my brothers were here; it would be an excellent excuse to escape
them.  Plus I wanted to catch up on neighborhood gossip—she always had the best
stuff, it was almost like she had eyes in the trees—but I also figured if I was
there, that’d be two guns and upward of a dozen bullets the vandals would have
to go through.  Maybe we could even do some target shooting.  Nothing like the
sound of gunshots to discourage trespassers.

“Good, you do that.  Leave your brothers home,” she said. 
“But your neighbor…”

“The only way he’d be safe to bring into the house is if he
was muzzled and leashed, and you spread some newspaper around beforehand.”

“Okaaaay, kinky, but I think I could get into it.  Could he
talk through this muzzle?”

“No.”

“Excellent.”  I could practically hear her rubbing her hands
together.

I wasn’t going to be visiting her with my neighbor, though. 
That’d be a cold day in hell.

But Suzy was right.  This noise couldn’t go on forever.

I just needed to keep my cool, and curb my tendency to get
even, at least for now.  And in the meantime, if I got the opportunity, I’d ask
him—nicely—to quiet the hell down.

I
worked another three days, writing as best I could in the evenings, and then I got
another day off.  The day so far had been relatively quiet.  I’d woken up
naturally, and hadn’t yet heard hide nor hair of my neighbor.  His helicopter
sat quiet on his chewed-up lawn.  Maybe he was taking the day off, too.

I was sitting at my laptop, once more in front of my big
picture window, working on a sex scene. 
Shower sex.  Mmm, everybody likes
shower sex.
 The wet slide of skin on skin, the bubbles sluicing over
sinuous curves and bulging muscle, the cool, slick tile pressing against an
overheated back.  I’d actually never done it, but I’d read about it, and I had
one hell of an imagination.

The face and body in my fantasy belonged to my neighbor, but
I didn’t let that disturb me too much.  He was freaking hot, and I knew,
probably better than most, that fantasy was a far cry from reality.  Just
because I could practically feel his big, strong hand sliding up my thigh
didn’t mean I would actually do anything with him.  Ever.

My fingers tapped over the keyboard, detailing the way his
naked chest would feel pressed against me.  The firm bar of his erection.  His
teeth on my ear, his deep groan as I wrapped my hand around him.  The way the
hot water beat down on us both, reddening our skin.  The mounting urgency
dragging our breaths in faster…

I pressed my thighs together as I dove into the steamy
scene.

Crack!

I jumped, glancing out the window.  The lake was still, and
I saw no motion next door.  I didn’t know what that sound had been—it had
sounded like a gunshot, a sound common enough in these parts—but I wasn’t going
to let it distract me.  Firming my resolve, I focused back on my screen.

My hero had my heroine pinned to the shower wall, and I
quickly made the bathroom handicap-accessible so she had something to rest her
ass on.  He crowded between her thighs, and she gripped him, dragging him
closer.  They were staring into each other’s eyes, poised on the precipice of
penetration—

Crack!

Holy
fuck
.  I slammed my wrist-splinted fists down on
the desk in frustration, glaring out the window past my computer screen.  It
was gorgeous out, the sun high in the sky dappling everything in light and
shadow, a slight breeze giving the scene movement.  A loon sat lonely on the
lake, gliding quietly across the rippling surface.

Across the way, there was still no movement at the Devil’s
hidey-hole.

Crack!
  Yet another gunshot split the silence, the
sound ricocheting off the water.  It sounded small-bore, but it was still,
unmistakably, a gunshot.

What—the holy hell—was my neighbor up to now?

Another shot.