Two Cabins, One Lake: An Alaskan Romance (5 page)

Knowing I couldn’t write with all that racket, I decided to
take care of chores until he quieted the fuck down.  I changed the oil on the
generator—one of the only mechanical tasks I was capable of, and that only
because I’d been shown how about five times—and then started it up for the
daily charge.  I split some wood, washed some dishes, and even did my laundry
and hung my clothes out to dry.

I had grilled cheese for lunch, and as I ate, I tried not to
wonder what my neighbor was shooting at.  I doubted it was a target; the shots
were too sporadic for that.  No, I was guessing he was shooting squirrels.

Or, more likely, I thought, gritting my teeth, spruce hens. 
The chicken-sized birds were game fowl, and they were dumb as rocks.  They’d
let a person approach to within just a few feet before they scattered.  And
when they flew away, it was low and slow, and then usually into a nearby tree.

It felt like taking advantage to go out and shoot them. 
Their meat was gamey and flavored heavily with spruce needles, so I honestly
didn’t see the point anyway.  And in the spring, their little chicks were so
damn cute…

So yeah, the Law of Asshole Behavior said he was probably
out shooting my baby spruce hens.  The bastard.

Fast forward to dinner time.

The Rich Bastard had been shooting off and on all day.  I’d
gone back to my laptop mid-afternoon, but the noise kept jerking me out of my
headspace, and when I did manage to claw my way back inside, I found out my
heroine wanted to rip the hero’s dick off, rather than ride it.

I tried going with it for a few hundred words, having them
wrestle around the bathroom with some angry, increasingly violent sex.  When
the hero lay dead, his back broken over the lip of the tub, blood dribbling
from his mouth, I was finally clued in that I needed to step away for a bit.

I was pissed off by this point, and no amount of lavender
bubble bath was going to calm me down.

Just a little after the light had gone out of my hero’s
green eyes, I realized my dog was missing.  This wasn’t like the Lower 48,
where dogs are confined to fenced yards or kept on leashes every moment of
every day.  No, here we just kick the dog out the door, and it comes back when
it wants to eat.

Don’t get me wrong, though.  I love my dog.  And I don’t
actually kick her.  I keep pretty good tabs on her, and I feed her well.  I buy
her good dog food and supplement her diet frequently with actual wild salmon—believe
me, in Alaska, it overflows our damn freezers.

Mocha loves to spend her days outside, and has been known to
disappear for hours on end.  Occasionally I hear reports from miles up or down
the river—sometimes even across it—that she went visiting.

That said, I hadn’t seen her since sometime before lunch.  I’d
been out in the yard for fifteen minutes, calling her name.

Coming around to the back of the cabin, still calling my
missing mutt, I noticed the clothes were dry.  Worried about my dog, but trying
not to worry, I started pulling my clothes off the line.

That’s when I noticed the hole in my underwear.

Now, I’m familiar with holes, especially the holes that
develop at the seams and along the waistband when you’ve worn a pair of underwear
for longer than you probably should have (over the life of the garment, not all
in one sitting).  This wasn’t like those holes.

“What the…”  I reached up, fingering the little hole in the
coral-colored cotton.  It was about pencil eraser-sized, and for all of three
seconds I wondered if spruce beetles could or would put holes in cloth.  But
the hole penetrated both sides…

And then, realization came.

My neighbor had shot a hole in my underwear.  Let me just
say that again.  My neighbor.  Shot a hole.  In my underwear.  In my
coral-colored boy shorts.  My favorite pair, actually.

And even more horrifying:  My neighbor had been shooting all
day.  My dog was missing.  And she looked a bit like a wolf.

“Oh no.  Oh no.”  I dropped the basket of clothes I’d had
propped on my hip, not caring when the clothes tumbled to the ground, and spun
to look out toward my neighbor’s cabin.

Had he shot my dog?

Now, Mocha and I didn’t have the most traditional dog/owner
relationship, but I loved that dog.  And somewhere deep in her tiny brain, I
think she was maybe fond of me too.

With no real memory of my feet moving, I was already halfway
down the bank, moving toward his cabin.  The beach passed in a flash.  I
barreled up his lawn, stomped up the steps to his front porch, glanced in
through the screen door—and froze.

He was seated on a big leather couch, presenting me with his
profile as Fast and Furious revved across the big flat screen on my right.  Just
beyond him, along the far wall, I spotted the saws that had been plaguing me
for the last few days.

And lying next to him on his leather couch?  My dog, Mocha,
the traitor.  She looked supremely comfortable, her head in his lap, her feet
dangling off the cushions.  Which was all sorts of crazy because she was
skittish as hell, she hated men, and she
never
cuddled. 
And
, she
wasn’t allowed on the furniture.

As I stood there, trying to process this new development, Gary
the blueberry murderer ate a potato chip, and then fed her one.  He fed my
healthy dog a potato chip.

But none of that was what
really
got my attention. 
No, what really got my attention was the bare expanse of his shoulders and the
side view of his beautiful, naked chest.  He was slouched on the sofa—
slouched
!—and
his muscles were bulging.  He had a Daniel Craig body, all broad-shouldered and
ripped and tanned.  His fantastic chest was decorated with the perfect amount
of dark hair sprinkled down the center and trailing into the waistband of a
pair of lounge pants.  I say ‘sprinkled’ because he looked downright edible.  He
was a loud-ass, but I was having the crazy urge to run my tongue down his happy
trail. 

The thought came as I stood gawking in his doorway: 
All
I’d have to do is put a bag over his head and a gag in his mouth, and I could
really enjoy that body.

“Enjoying the show?” Gary asked.

I looked up into his smirk.  He wasn’t talking about the
movie, I realized.  He’d caught me ogling.

“I thought you shot my dog,” I said.

He frowned at me is if
I
were the evil one.  “Why
would I do that?” he asked, feeding the dog in question another potato chip.

She took it with pathetic gratitude, licking his hand,
making it seem like I starved her.  The sight put my teeth on edge.

“She’s on a diet.  And you put a bullet hole in my panties,”
I said.

He frowned at me again, obviously irritated I kept
interrupting the longest car chase I’d ever seen.  “Every diet includes potato
chips.  And—did you just say I put a hole in your panties?”

“A
bullet
hole,” I stressed.

“In your panties.”

“They were hanging on the line.”

He gave me this masculine smirk that made me either want to
smack him or fuck him.  “How do you know it was me?” he asked.

Another potato chip.  The future flashed before my eyes, a
future in which my dog gained fifty pounds and never came when she was called, because
she was always over at the neighbor’s, being fed Barbecue Lays.

“You were out bumbling through the woods all day, randomly
shooting at poor, defenseless animals.  Of course it was you.”

He squinted at me, probably trying to decide if I was a
tree-hugger.  My jeans and flannel button-down over a T-shirt said not.  But I
liked my neck of the woods just exactly as it was. 
Not
pocked with
bullet holes and divest of adorable feathered woodland creatures.

“I do not ‘bumble’.  And how do you know the hole wasn’t
already there?” he asked.  “Or made some other way; holes can be made lots of
ways.”

I was trying to hold my temper.  I really, really was.  And
for some reason I wasn’t going to examine, my pussy was really, really wet. 
But that was neither here nor there.

What
was
there was him, looking like a human
lollipop, having terrorized me with his decibels all frickin’
week
,
stolen my muse, and beaten my sex scene literally to death.  The mosquitos in
the shade of his porch were starting to eat me alive—
of course
he had
particularly ravenous mosquitos—and now he wanted to discuss the origin of The
Panty Hole.

“
You
made a hole.  In my panties.  With a tiny bullet
from your puny gun,” I added for good measure.  The hole had looked and the
report had sounded like a .22, and no man liked to be accused of having a small
gun.  Which is, of course, why I went there.

He stood up.  “My gun is not puny,” he said, crossing his
arms and glaring through the screen at me.  “And if I had made a hole in your
panties, it wouldn’t be tiny.”

My eyes flicked to his package.  I couldn’t help myself. 
“That’s not what it looks like from here,” I said coolly, even though it was
quite the frickin’ opposite of what it looked like from where I was standing.

He started toward me, those delicious muscles flexing in a
way that made me forget the mosquitos drilling my exposed flesh.  Oooo, he
looked kinda angry.  Why did that turn me on?

My breath caught, and I felt my pussy clenching, the rush of
heat and moisture. 
Shit.  Shit, shit
.  Why was I so sick and twisted?  Why
couldn’t I get this hot for someone who volunteered at a soup kitchen, someone
who helped old ladies across the street?  Or fixed my four-wheeler?

This man, coming toward me with that look in his eyes?  I
got the feeling he did none of those things.

My heart thumped faster.  There was still the screen between
us, but I honestly didn’t know what I’d do if and when he got to me.  Punch him
in the mouth, or kiss it just as hard?

I really wanted to touch that chest…

Now is my chance!
  “I want you to stop waking me up
in the mornings,” I blurted.

He paused.  “What?”

“Your sawing and hammering and flying, you start at six in
the morning.  You keep waking me up.  I’d appreciate it if you stopped.” 
There, that had actually been pretty polite.  Especially compared to the stream
of profanities I could have unleashed.

Maybe getting the full-frontal of his chest, all that smooth
flesh wrapped around those delicious muscles, was mellowing me out.  Even now,
I was having trouble holding eye contact.  There was just so damn much of him
that wanted—no,
needed
—my attention.

He frowned.  “You’re outta here in the mornings before I
ever start hammering anything.”

I felt a blush crawling up my cheeks from the
double-entendre, but said, “On the days that I work, that’s true.  But I don’t
work every day, and on the days that I don’t, I like to sleep in.”

He crossed his arms, and one of his brows climbed upward. 
“Till?”

“Nine.”  And I immediately wanted to kick myself after I
said it, because it sounded like a damn question.  Apparently my decisive voice
had gone out the same window my libido had come in.

He got a look like he was gonna argue or maybe laugh in my
face, but then a half-naked blonde emerged from the back hall.  “Ga-ry,” she
sing-songed in a way that made
me
want to spank her, unknowingly
interrupting whatever it was that was going on between me and my hot neighbor.  She
looked gorgeous and rumpled in nothing but a forest green button-down, and it
shamed me to admit it, but in that moment, I wondered if he preferred blondes.

I didn’t like my neighbor, but I was starting to realize I
wanted to fuck him.

He half turned toward her, then flicked another look at me. 
It was a ‘you just wait’ look.  “Take your dog,” he said.

I hurriedly opened the screen, and was relieved when Mocha
listened despite my lack of potato chips.  We started down the porch, and
behind me I heard, “Who was that, babe?”

“No one, gorgeous.  Did I tell you you could get out of
bed?”

“No…”  Nauseating giggle, then a squeal.  Five dollars said
I’d be hearing dying-baby-animal sounds tonight.

No one… 
Fuck me.  Here I was, hard-up with nothing
but my imagination and a battery operated boyfriend, while my neighbor imported
gorgeous model-types for each day of the week. 

And he’d had the nerve to shoot a hole in my Wednesday
underwear.  Life wasn’t fair.

Chapter
Four

T
he
very next morning
, the sawing started at 0600 sharp.  I knew, because I
was off.  And home.  And trying to sleep.

I was livid.  I lay in bed grinding my teeth, listening to
him constructing things when I should have been catching up on my beauty rest.

That
man
had been in my life less than two weeks, and
he’d shot my peace and quiet all to hell.  He was the loudest individual I’d
ever encountered, bar none.

And right then and there, I decided I wasn’t going to take
it lying down.  Not anymore.

Suzy had advised using my words, communicating, and I’d
tried that.  Obviously, it wasn’t working.

I was going to start doing things my way.  I couldn’t make
him stop, short of duct-taping him to a wall, but I sure as hell could give as
good as I got.

The next morning, I had to work, but I pried my sad-sack
self out of bed a half hour earlier than I usually did, right at the barest
butt crack of dawn.  I got dressed in my usual duds, making sure my shirt was
long-sleeved because the mosquitos were worst at this time of day. 

Then I went and got my chainsaw.

But it wasn’t what you’re thinking.  I wasn’t gonna bust in
wearing a ski mask, chainsaw roaring.  I didn’t have any meat hooks and Visqueen
in my generator shack.

No, I just wanted to make some noise, as loudly and as
closely as possible, and wake
his
ass up for a change.

It just so happened there was a fallen tree right on our
property line that I’d been eyeballing for a couple months.  It had cracked
from the cold and been blown over in a high wind, so it wasn’t rotten.  And I
could definitely use some more firewood before winter.

So this morning, despite my jaw-cracking yawn and my
bone-deep desire to crawl back into bed for another thirty minutes, I was
murdering two birds with one really loud stone.  I was gonna get me some
firewood… and annoy me a neighbor.

Everything was silent as I crept over to the line dividing
our property.  It wasn’t a line, really.  Just a couple pieces of faded neon orange
tape tied to the branches to mark it out.

With an evil laugh, I fired up the chainsaw.  I revved it
good, getting it nice and warm while I glared daggers at Gary’s front door. 
Again, not what you’re thinking.  I may have an anger problem, but I’m not a
murderer.

Of people.

Yet.

Ignoring the way the mosquitos tried to crawl into my brain
through my ears, I started on the log, cutting it into nice, even chunks.  I’d
even brought my axe, so once I was done with this, I could make some more racket
splitting it.  I had a whole half hour to work with, and I planned on making
the biggest damn ruckus I possibly could in the allotted time.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Gary’s door opening,
and an angry, bare-chested individual spilled forth.  I think he was yelling
something, but I couldn’t hear him.  And I didn’t care to.  With a scoff, I
continued cutting, the buzzing roar of the chainsaw drowning out everything
else.

I figured I’d let the mosquitos do my work for me.  The
mosquitos around these parts are bad.  Like other blood-suckers, they avoid
bright sunshine like the plague, lurk in the shadows, and hunt and feed
voraciously from sundown to sunrise.  So right now, an hour before dawn?  They
were absolutely nasty.  They were also insidious, finding every crack in your
clothes, every unprotected inch.

Gary, with that bare chest of his, had a lot of unprotected
inches.

He wasn’t even all the way to me when he was driven,
cursing, back into the house.  As I waited for him to reappear, I toyed with
the notion of staking him out for the mosquitos to eat.  Was there any way I
could manage it without being charged with a crime?  Did I care?  I thought the
more pertinent question was, how could I get him to hold still long enough to
stake him out?  He was a big guy, and I knew he wouldn’t go willingly.  Maybe I
could lure him out, just put a beer in a bear trap. 
Ha.
  Sadly, it
probably would have worked on my brothers.

Gary was back out, decently clad, in less than five
minutes.  He stormed back over to me, and I ignored him.  He was yelling, but I
hit the gas on the saw again, and kept cutting.  He finally crowded so close, I
either had to ease off the trigger or risk cutting through his leg.  The man
had balls, I’d give him that.

I looked up at him, not even pretending I hadn’t known he
was there.  “Yes?” I asked.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.  He was breathing hard,
his eyes flashing, and his hair was sticking up in a way that made me want to
run my fingers through it.  Even though I was furious with him. 
Dammit.

“I’m making firewood, neighbor.  What are
you
doing?”

“At 4:15 in the morning?” he demanded.

“Well, you’ve been working
loudly
at six in the
morning, so I just figured—”

He crossed his arms.  “
That’s
what this is about?  Me
waking you up?”  He had a
tone
, one that said I was a lazy-ass that
didn’t work for a living, because I’d been asleep at six in the morning.

My jaw clenched.  I revved the saw, and made another cut
down through the birch.

I moved to make the next, about 18 inches further along, but
I found his foot in the way.  I thought about it.  Then I looked up at him.

“This is
my
log,” he said.  “Sweet of you to cut it
up for me, but if you could just come back later…”

“Your log?”

“My log,” he agreed, pointing at the colorful bits of tape. 
“It’s more than halfway on my property.”

“This log came from a tree growing on my land,” I pointed
out.  “Thus, my tree.”

“It might have been, before it fell on my land,” he said. 
“But it crossed the line, sweet cheeks.  Therefore, it’s mine.”

I propped my chainsaw on my hip, looking at him
incredulously.  “What do you need with a log?  Can’t you just burn bricks of
cash if it comes right down to it?”

“It doesn’t matter what I’m going to do with my log,” he
said.  “Frankly, it’s none of your business what I do with my log,
or
my
bricks of cash.”

“It’s only halfway on your land,” I pointed out.  Why the
hell was I having this argument with him?  Was it because it was four in the
morning?

He stepped over the log, put his heel to it, and rolled what
was left the rest of the way onto his land.  “There.  Does that solve this? 
Can I go back to sleep now?”

“No,” I said.  “That doesn’t remotely solve this.  And by
that logic, you’re standing on my land, and you are now mine.”

He looked at me.  And then he did something I will never
forget.

He unzipped, he pulled himself out, and he pissed on the
ground.  Right there in front of me, his morning wood in his hand, his yellow
stream splashing onto my land.  A couple drops even hit my boot.

I jumped back, absolutely aghast.  The man.  Was pissing. 
Right in front of me.

“There,” he said.  “Now it’s mine.”

The uncouth
bastard
.

I looked up into that smug face, and I revved my chainsaw.

He tucked himself away.  “I don’t think you can be trusted
with that,” he said.  “Give it here.”  He took a step toward me, reaching for
my saw.

I swear to God, the man had a death wish.  But as much as I
wanted to give as good as I got, I didn’t want to splatter blood all over my
woods, or have to explain his death.  I just wanted him to be quiet in the
mornings until a decent hour.  Was that so much to ask?

I stepped away again, still clutching the chainsaw.  He’d
have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

He lunged in, and yanked it out of my hands.  Then he turned
it off.

I bolted.  Except I didn’t bolt toward my cabin.  I bolted
toward his.

“Helly!” he yelled behind me.

I vaulted his steps, sprang across his porch, and yanked his
screen open so hard it crashed against the wall.  Then I was inside, and I
slammed the deadbolt home behind me.  I leaned against the door, my heart
pounding, my breaths coming fast.

I’d done it.  I was in his cabin.

I quickly searched the dim interior.  A couple changes had
happened in the last two days.  All of the furniture was pushed and stacked in
one corner of the main living area.  He’d ripped out the sheetrock and
insulation of the right-hand wall until only the exterior siding remained.  The
carpet, too, was gone, and the chop saw and table saw I’d noticed the other day
sat in the middle of the plywood floor.  Over next to the half-demolished wall,
I spotted his hammer.

“Helly!” he yelled again.  I heard him try the knob, and
then he began to bang on the door.  “Open this door!”

I darted across to the back door and made sure that was
locked, too.  Then I picked up his hammer.  I glanced at his wood stove, and
then over at his chop saw.  I smiled.

I laid the haft of the hammer across the saw’s platform, and
I sawed the damn thing in half.

“What the hell are you
doing
?” his muffled voice
demanded.

After a bit of fiddling, I got the blade out of the chop
saw.  Then I studied the table saw.  I had some experience with saws, but
disabling this one was beyond me.  So I unplugged it, took a pair of heavy-duty
clippers lying on top of his toolbox, and cut the cord.

Mission complete.

He was still banging away at the front door, so I ran down
to the end of the hall, pushed a window up, and slid out onto the grass.  I
kept the building between us as I crossed over into the woods.  Then his
banging and cussing concealed most of my noise as I skirted around his yard,
saw blade still clutched to my chest.

I made it back to my cabin, and heard my chainsaw fire up. 
I smiled, imagining him cutting his way back into his house at 4:30 in the
morning.

Then I grabbed my stuff, let my dog out, and went to work.

That evening, even before I got back home and turned off my
four-wheeler, I heard Gary’s response.  He had set up his speakers and was
playing music loud enough to rattle my windows from across the lake.

I found my chainsaw sitting on my front step, but the chain was
missing.

And when I stepped out onto my deck, I spotted Mocha over at
his place, hanging out on his lawn.  As I watched, he fed her the rest of his
hot dog.

T
he
next day, I was off.  Gary didn’t wake me up until 8 a.m., so I was glad for
small favors.  I lazed around, had a late breakfast, and then decided I was
going to get some sun.

We have record amounts of sunshine in Alaska in the summer,
but the truth of the matter is, there are only a couple months of good, soak-able
rays.  And only a couple days where it’s warm enough to lie outside nearly
naked.

This was one of those days.  It dawned sunny, and as the day
proceeded into afternoon, it just got warmer, and sunnier.  The birds were
singing, the bees were pollinating.  I could practically smell the heat; the
scent of warm dirt and green things made me long to be outside.

The scene I was working on could wait.  I was going
sunbathing.

And so it was that I put on a blue bikini and carted a towel
and water bottle—and my shotgun, after the incident with the bear—down to my
dock.  The dock was a basic thing, no more than a few boards strapped together over
a large block of foam, just wide and long enough for me and my beach towel.

The problem with sunning somewhere more private was that my
yard was almost entirely shaded by those trees I love.  And with the shade came
clouds of bloodthirsty mosquitos.  The little biting beasties didn’t venture so
much onto the water, so I only came away with a couple bites each time I
sunbathed.  Reasonable collateral damage, the way I figured it.

Anyway, so there I was, pale, less-than-svelte self in a
less-than-stylish bikini, soaking in some rays, actually getting damn close to
falling asleep…

When my gods-be-damned neighbor made his presence known.

I heard—something.  It was a whirring buzz I couldn’t
identify.  It got louder and louder, sounding like it was coming at me from
across the lake.

I finally sat up to look, and came pretty much face-to-face
with—something.  It was white, about a foot across, and had four propellers
causing a surprisingly strong breeze to chill my skin as it hovered in place. 
I’d never seen one in person before, but I’d seen pictures.

It was a drone.  And the little dark eye of its camera was pointed
at me.

I stared at it for a few seconds, completely floored.  My
neighbor was
spying
on me?

Without hesitation, I hefted my shotgun to my shoulder, and
I shot the thing down.  It whirred and spun, and landed in the lake with a
satisfying splash.

Then I looked over at the neighbor’s.  When he didn’t come
out and start jumping up and down on his lawn like an enraged monkey, I set
down my gun, and I lay back on my towel.

What might have been a half hour later, I heard the
distinctive roar of his jet ski firing up—shattering the peaceful quiet yet
again.

Calm.  I am calm
.  I’d just lay over here and tune
out his noise, and he’d get bored soon and go away.  The lake was only so big. 
That’s what I told myself as he moved back, and forth, back, and forth.  Soon
the little waves of his passing began to lap at the dock, making the wood shift
and creak.

I turned over onto my stomach.  Any minute now, he’d get
bored.

That roar was moving closer.  Yeah, he’d probably seen the
flash of my white ass from across the lake.  My skin prickled as if under his
stare.

Closer.

What was the fucker gonna do, run me over?  I had started to
lift up, to turn my head to look, when it happened.