“What about your mom? Is she still living?”
“Yes. She lives in Juneau, now, actually. Her health isn’t great, so when I moved down here, I moved her down with me. She lives at an assisted-living facility there. I’d have moved her in with me, but I’m not home enough to give her the care she needs.”
Lana wrinkled her nose. “I’m sorry to hear she’s poorly. It sucks watching our parents age. My dad had a heart attack a few months back. It was scary.”
It was. Watching my dad decline so rapidly and now seeing my mom’s mind slip away more and more all the time were two of the hardest things I’d ever done.
Needing to move to shake off the heaviness that had settled around me, I pushed to my feet. “I’m going to chop up those poles you brought back.”
Lana got up. “I can do that. You should rest.”
“I’m fine.” The dark look I aimed at her should have sent her straight back to her butt, but she just propped her hands on her hips and glared back, one blonde eyebrow rising.
I turned away, ignoring her and how the fight in her made something burn in my chest that I hadn’t felt in years.
Thankfully, she let it go and let me whack at the logs in peace. I needed to burn off the energy.
With our firewood situation sorted for the rest of the day, we ate lunch, then broke out the cards, playing several more rounds of rummy and a game of war—which she won.
As the day wore on, the snow falling through the trees slowed until just flurries drifted down. By the time we made dinner, it had stopped and the sun was attempting to peek through the tree canopy above.
My belly full and my emotions in check again after our conversation earlier, I wandered to the edge of the alcove to stare out at the forest.
Nothing moved. Even the birds were hunkered down. I expected that to change in another hour or two, when evening feeding time hit and they realized the weather had cleared.
But for now, the forest was quiet.
Lana came to stand beside me. “Hey, the sun’s trying to shine.”
“It is. Looks like we might get out of here soon after all.” I glanced down at her, my gaze catching on the scrape on her forehead beside the one she got retrieving my pack. One of the saplings earlier had sprung up and clipped her when we were tying them down.
“How’s your head?” Raising a hand, I skimmed the spot before it registered what I was doing. The warmth of her skin zipped through my fingertips, lighting that burn in my chest again.
She looked up. “Fine. It stopped stinging hours ago.” Something shimmered in her gray-green eyes, an awareness. Of my touch. Of me.
Caught in her gaze, my touch lingered on her face, my fingers trailing down her temple to skim her cheek.
What are you doing, McCrae? You swore off romantic entanglements, and if there wasevera woman who screamed entanglement, it was this one.
But despite my inner voice yelling at me to back away, I couldn’t. She called to me in a way I thought I’d never feel again. Truthfully, I didn’t want to feel it, because it only led to pain when it was ripped away. I’d be damned if I could break her stare, though.
Finally, she did it for me.
“We should, um… we should clean up. Get ready for bed.” Color tinged her cheeks.
My body tightened. I knew what she meant, but my mind couldn’t stay away from the idea of zipping our sleeping bags together and seeing where that took us.
Walker better find a place to land tomorrow and get us the hell out of Dodge. This woman was dangerous to my psyche.
Why now, all of a sudden, did I find her irresistible? Why not yesterday? Or the day before?
You liked her then, too, dummy. How do you think you ended up out here?
I turned away and scowled, limping back to the fire.
Did I?
She’d certainly intrigued me when she showed up at my cabin. It took guts to drive out to a strange man’s cabin in the Alaskan bush and ask for help. It took even more to agree to join him on the search and rescue mission you sent him on. I liked that sort of fire in a woman.
