Wild Heat (Northern Fire) (3 page)

Soft feminine tones he would never forget still echoed in whispers as he woke from the kinds of dreams men were supposed to stop having once they’d left their teen years.

Kitty Grant was here.

Miss Elspeth had to have known Kitty was coming in today, but she hadn’t said so. She’d told him her niece was coming home, but Tack had thought that meant at some point in the future. Not today.

Not right this minute when he wasn’t prepared for or expecting it.

Nik’s words made more sense now too. The other man knew about Tack’s history with Kitty, so his words had been a warning, but damned if Tack hadn’t gotten it.

He considered turning around and leaving, but his feet just kept moving forward as the sound of her voice grew more and more discernable and had its typical impact on his libido. It had been years, but hearing her voice still turned him on faster than a woman’s friendly hand on his thigh when he was in the mood to scratch that itch.

His heart beating as fast as if he’d jogged a seven-mile trail uphill, he stopped in the open doorway to the parlor and got his first view of Kitty Grant.

All the air expelled from his lungs and he couldn’t seem to suck any back in.

He’d expected Kitty to look emaciated; after the research he’d done, he’d rehearsed in his mind how he wouldn’t react outwardly to her appearance when he finally saw her. He hadn’t prepared himself for the woman who stood before him. No, she didn’t have the same curvaceous allure she had six years ago, but even from the back, Kitty was still breath-stealing.

She was thin, but her limbs didn’t have the fragile skeletal appearance from the previous winter that had so concerned Miss Elspeth, and her clothes fit over obvious feminine curves. Gratitude that he hadn’t had to come face-to-face with signs of her illness gave him the wherewithal to finally take in another breath.

He didn’t ever have to admit it to anyone else (or acknowledge it to himself again if he could help it), but it would have destroyed something inside Tack to see her as sick as Miss Elspeth said Kitty had been.

The female form he had always considered perfect was encased in a pastel pink suit that highlighted her understated curves. No doubt by some big-name designer, the jacket had a ruffle thing around her hips that accented the gentle slope of her ass. He liked it. The skirt hugged her hips, its hem a few inches above her knees, giving him a view of her toned legs.

Her heels had to be at least three inches high. They looked neither comfortable nor suitable for life in Cailkirn, Alaska. But hell if they didn’t make her calves look delicious and spark his imagination about what she’d look like from the back walking in them.

Undeniable arousal hit him hard and without provocation. Worse than the sound of her voice, the sight of her had him craving things he knew damn well no good could come from wanting. Renewed sexual attraction to the woman who’d decimated his heart was not in Tack’s list of approved scenarios.

He once again considered turning around and leaving before anyone noticed him. What were the chances Miss Elspeth would remember inviting him to dinner?

Who was he kidding? That woman remembered everything. Including how many times she’d changed Tack’s diaper when he was a baby.

Besides, his feet weren’t listening to his brain. He’d kept moving and now he stood right behind Kitty, her subtle floral perfume mixing with her natural scent and reaching out to tug at his senses.

The urge to touch her nearly overwhelmed him. He had to squelch it, and fast.

“I would have expected you to arrive in a limo, Miss Barston.” His words acted like an anvil on the feminine chatter.

Kitty’s back went rigid, her head jerking, like the sound of his voice had shocked her even worse than hearing hers had shocked him moments ago. There went his chance of leaving undetected. Shit. Why hadn’t he kept his mouth shut?

All three of the older women turned to face him with varying expressions. Miss Elspeth glowed with delight. Miz Moya’s eyes were suspiciously moist, her smile a little wobbly. Miz Alma’s usual dour expression was lightened enough for an almost smile to curve her precisely painted lips.

Kitty turned too. Slowly, as if cautious about what she was going to find. Her eyes locked with Tack’s, their blue depths filled with a hell of a lot of emotion. None of which he could, or wanted to, interpret.

And you keep telling yourself that, boyo
. Ignoring the sarcastic inner voice, he drank in the sight of Kitty full-on.

Her wild red curls, longer than they had been the last time he’d seen her, were mostly tamed with a clip behind her head. Though one curl had slipped forward to lay in a ringlet over her ear. Her cheeks were not as full or rosy as he remembered, but she looked nothing like the pictures of dangerously underweight anorexic women he’d looked up online after leaving the Knit & Pearl earlier that day.

Her breasts were still rounded, the mint-green top she wore under her suit jacket cut low enough to hint at cleavage that fed the desire he was doing his best to ignore.

And she was still more beautiful than any other woman he’d ever known.

Her blue eyes were just as vivid as they’d always been, but the sparkle of laughter, of perpetual mischief…of
life
that was such a part of the Kitty Grant he’d grown up with was missing.

Even without it, or maybe because of that single difference, he couldn’t look away.

He stood, trapped in her gaze, memories he thought buried bombarding him. Feelings he would never acknowledge crashed through him. A man had his pride, though.

Tack’s wouldn’t allow any of that to show on his face, but he wouldn’t look away.

Kitty didn’t seem any more capable of breaking eye contact. Her own lovely features were smooth, devoid of the maelstrom swirling in her blue depths.

A mere foot separated them, but it might as well have been the width of Bristol Bay.

But their gazes held.

I
t’s Grant,” she said after a prolonged silence no one else seemed ready to break, her soft voice going straight to his dick. “I asked for my name back from the courts as part of the divorce.”

“Erasing Barston from your life?” Like she’d erased Tack so completely, though he’d no doubt the other man deserved it.

He deserved a hell of a lot more, but if Tack got to thinking on that, things could get dicey. He didn’t lose his temper often, but when he did, it was ugly.

And he couldn’t afford to hop a plane for California to hunt down Kitty’s ex-husband to give him a well-earned beatdown he would never forget and might not walk away from.

“If I could cleanse him from my memories, I would.” Kitty’s expression defied him to judge her for that.

Like he would. Still, the bitterness lacing her tone was new. Kitty had never been bitter. Not even about her parents’ untimely deaths.

Fury at the absent man bubbled under Tack’s fixed expression, his temper stirring dangerously again. “He must have been a piss-poor husband for you to feel that way.”

Kitty flinched a little, as if Tack’s anger bothered her, but then her eyes narrowed, and for just a second he saw a reflection of the inner fire that used to fascinate him. “He was.”

“He was a monster,” Miss Elspeth said with conviction.

“Clearly damaged in the head to treat our Kitty the way he did,” Miz Alma opined. As the eldest, she expected her opinion to be taken as gospel too.

Tack wasn’t going to disagree, though. He thought the sisters’ assessment of Barston was damn accurate.

“Oh, Kitty,” Miz Moya said in a tear-filled voice.

If he didn’t do something fast, the older women were going to drown Kitty in pity, and from the expression on her face, he didn’t think that was going to be beneficial for anyone concerned.

“I thought dinner was at seven?” he asked with as much innocence as a twenty-eight-year-old man could muster.

Miz Moya’s hands flew to her pink, round cheeks. “Oh my. With Kitty’s arrival, I forgot the roast.”

She rushed off to the kitchen, Miss Elspeth following, saying she still needed to set the table, her hands all aflutter.

It was early May and the first cruise ship hadn’t hit the harbor yet. There was only one guest room occupied, as Tack had been told that morning while he worked on the step. However, the fact that they only had two guests instead of eight wouldn’t diminish the sisters’ mortification at serving dinner late.

The older couple might well be in the dining room, but they were conspicuous in their absence from the front parlor.

Miz Alma gave Kitty and Tack a measuring look. “I had best make sure Elspeth doesn’t drop Grandmother Grant’s china in her dither. I’m stunned she was able to keep your upcoming arrival a secret, Kitty.”

Everyone knew Miss Elspeth was not good at keeping secrets. Tack had to wonder why she’d been so committed to keeping this one.

“She likes knowing something you don’t,” Kitty offered with a shrug that bothered Tack more than it should.

Back in the day, she would have said the same thing with a sly smile and a wink. The lack of animation was not acceptable, but he wasn’t exactly sure what to do about it.

Do something he would, though.

It wasn’t in Tack’s nature to leave something broken that needed fixing. Not even people.

“Yes, well…we’ll have dinner on the table in about five minutes.” With that, Miz Alma left the room.

Tack didn’t bother to hide his continued perusal of Kitty. He would never admit to anyone else how hungry he was for the sight of the one woman he was determined never to give another chance at his heart.

Color climbed her cheeks and she turned away, her hand reaching for one of the many photos on the fireplace mantel. It was of her and Tack before they left for USC, their arms around each other.

She stared at it for several long seconds. “I know I look different.”

“I’m glad you grew your hair out again.” He’d always loved how it tumbled wildly around her head.

She spun back to him, like his words surprised her. “That’s all you see?”

He grinned. “You’ve stopped wearing all that black goop around your eyes too.”

She laughed. It was barely a puff of sound, but it seemed to startle her. “That’s the second time today.”

“What?”

“That I’ve laughed. I don’t laugh anymore. I guess coming home is going to be good for me after all.”

Stunned at her words, he stared at her. Kitty Grant not laughing? He couldn’t imagine it. “You belong here.”

“I didn’t used to think so.”

She would probably decide she didn’t again, but it wasn’t his place to remark on it. She’d been wrong back then and she’d be wrong when she left again, but one thing he was sure of. Kitty would leave.

Her parents had left a legacy of more than money to their only daughter. They’d left how much they despised living in the wild north to her as well.

“It’s good to see you,” Kitty said when the silence had stretched a little.

“Is it?”

“Yes. I missed you.” Deeper emotion than he would ever allow himself to trust from her seemed to infuse those four little words.

“There was no place for me in your life.”

“No. Not when I was with Nevin.”

Because back then there’d been no room for someone who happened to be both her best friend and a man who loved her. He’d become an awkward problem she didn’t want to deal with anymore.

He didn’t love her now, that was for damn sure, but desire was making itself known in the swollen flesh pressing against the button fly of his jeans.

“No place for the little people when you were married to LA elite.” The words might be bitter, but his tone wasn’t.

He’d been hurt back then at her rejection, but he wasn’t naïve to the ways of the world. Even if he was from a small Alaskan town.

He hadn’t fit in with the Los Angeles glitterati, even when he’d been a student at USC.

Her perfect bow-shaped lips twisted in a grimace. “You won’t understand, but Nevin handpicked the people in my life, from my yoga instructor to the woman who called herself my best friend. He saw you as a threat, though I didn’t realize it until much later, so…”

“I got kicked to the curb.”

Her head dipped, as if that shamed her. “Yes.”

She was partially right about him not understanding. He couldn’t imagine allowing anyone to have that kind of power in his life; however, there had been a time he’d left behind the life he loved because that was what this woman wanted.

“You must have loved him very much.”

“I don’t know.” Kitty’s blue eyes clouded with confusion and pain he didn’t want to see. “Maybe I loved him once.”

She’d given up her education, her family…She’d given up Tack for Nevin Barston. Of course she’d loved him. And Tack didn’t like dwelling on that truth any more today than he had eight years ago.

She shrugged, a move he was quickly learning to dislike. It was way too noncommittal for the Kitty Grant he’d known. No way he could be sure when Kitty had started changing, but change she had. When they’d been friends, she would have argued her point of view, even in the face of irrefutable evidence.

The woman standing in front of him wasn’t about to do that.

The truth of the difference between Kitty then and Kitty now hit him hard and right between the eyes. Shit. Piss. Damn.

That urge to take a little trip south and beat the ever-loving shit out Nevin Barston washed over Tack again.

“It’s complicated, Tack.” Kitty made an aborted move with her hand. “And I’ve had a really long day.”

Oh, he believed it was complicated all right. However, Tack knew the flames of her nature might be doused, but he refused to accept that an ember didn’t still burn somewhere deep inside her.

“Kitty, I know you’ve been through hell—”

Kitty interrupted before he could go any further. “I go by Caitlin now.”

“Well, maybe you need to find Kitty again.”

“And you think I’m going to just because you use that name?” She might not realize it, but there was a tinge of the old Kitty snark in that tone.

He grinned. “I don’t know, but I’m not calling you Caitlin.”

“
You
haven’t changed.”

“You’re wrong about that too.”

“Too? What else am I wrong about?”

“You’re stronger than you think.”

“Because I finally divorced the monster who claimed to love me?” She laughed, the sound hollow, no amusement in it at all. “That was an act of desperation, not some grand stand.”

“You still did it.”

“He was out of the country. If he hadn’t been, I would never have had the courage to take the first step and walk out.”

At first Tack didn’t know how to respond to that. Kitty so afraid of her husband she wouldn’t have left him while he was near enough to do something about it? The idea boggled Tack’s mind, but it pissed him off even more. His hands curled into tight fists, but he did his best to keep his anger from his face after Kitty’s earlier reaction.

Nevin Barston was one lucky son of a bitch that he was in LA right now.

“Why didn’t you call?” She’d needed help; she had to know Tack would have been there.

“Would you have answered?” she asked, with an apparently genuine desire to know the answer.

Because she didn’t already.

Had she forgotten everything they were to each other?

“How could you doubt it? Even if you hadn’t been my best friend for most of my life, you were from Cailkirn. Anyone in this town would have helped you.” But him most of all.

“You were the last real friend I had and I treated you like crap.” Remorse infused her words and her self-disgust was clear.

He couldn’t argue with her, though, even if he felt like he should. She was just so damn fragile right now.

Thankfully Miz Alma called them to the table, her tone impatient, before Tack found himself saying things he shouldn’t.

Careful to separate the roast, potatoes, and vegetables evenly, Caitlin pushed half of the food her aunt had put on her plate to one side. She was concentrating so hard it took her a moment to realize her aunts had bowed their heads for a blessing. His head bowed but his eyes open, Tack stared at her, whether in reproach or confusion at Caitlin’s eating ritual she couldn’t tell.

Heat shooting into her cheeks, she quickly dropped her hands into her lap and dipped her head.

The simple phrases Aunt Alma spoke washed over Caitlin with the comfort of forgotten familiarity. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d engaged in something so homey as blessing her food.

There had been a time when such activities had embarrassed her; then she’d come to long for them, and now she engaged with a gratitude few would understand.

Just as with her food rituals, there was safety in these comfortable customs that had been passed from one generation to the next.

“It is so good to have our girl home, isn’t it, Tack?” Aunt Elspeth asked after they’d begun eating.

He smiled at her aunt, the expression lending warmth to the hard angles of his face. He’d had the features of a boy the last time she’d seen him, but now he was a man. A very good-looking man, who wore confidence like the new sexy.

Not looking at Caitlin to include her in the warm expression, he said, “Sure.”

Her aunt was appeased, but Caitlin knew his single-word answer had hardly been a ringing endorsement. She didn’t blame him. In fact, Caitlin was kind of glad he didn’t look at her just then.

She was finding it unexpectedly difficult to control her reaction to him. Getting the best of the genes from both sides of his family, the Scots and the Inuits, Tack had always been attractive. However, now he was hotter than anything LA had to offer. His chocolate-brown eyes were set under a raven’s brow, and his nose was perfectly proportioned for a man’s face above his square jaw.

He’d been muscular before, but now his six-and-a-half-foot frame was as solid as a rock.

She’d never seen Tack as being sexy in the past.

No, that wasn’t true, and Caitlin’s healing required self-honesty now. She hadn’t
allowed herself
to be attracted to her best friend. Falling in love with Taqukaq MacKinnon would have meant staying in Cailkirn, and that was something Kitty Grant had been determined not to do. Funny the difference eight years could make. Because nowadays, Caitlin looked at Cailkirn as the one place of safety in the whole wide world. The only home her heart would ever long for.

Even so, she didn’t welcome her reaction to Tack’s twenty-eight-year-old self. And she didn’t think he would either.

The biggest surprise
wasn’t
that Tack was the object of her fluttering sexual desire; it was the fact that she was feeling that kind of craving at all. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt desire. But her body was reacting to Tack like he’d been bathed in aphrodisiacs. She wanted to touch him, taste his salty skin, and inhale his scent. It was such an unfamiliar sensation that Caitlin struggled with following through on her food ritual.

She had to eat the portion of food she’d assigned herself. Her head knew that. The rest of her did not want to cooperate.

Forcing herself to take a bite, Caitlin let the conversation go on around her.

But her reaction to Tack didn’t get any more comprehensible or easy to handle, and every bite was an effort in a way eating hadn’t been for a while.

It took all of her self-possession to stay at the table when what she really wanted was to get up and leave. As happy as she was to be with her family again, she felt them watching her, gauging her mood and her health. Their concern was a balm, but it overwhelmed her, too, pressing in on her, making her feel the need to keep repeating that she was all right. That they didn’t need to worry about her anymore.

Even if she wasn’t entirely sure that was true.

She couldn’t help but feel nauseated just looking at the plate of food in front of her. The half she’d portioned to eat looked like a mountain of meat and vegetables now.

That combined with Caitlin’s unexpected sexual reaction to Tack and the desire to find her old room and hide behind a closed door just got bigger.