“Pleased to meet you, Aiden Shaughnessy of Michigan. What brought you to Alaska?” Aiden. Shaughnessy. Michigan. Carpenter. Builder. Tall. Auburn hair a little on the shaggy side. By summer’s end he’d probably have a ponytail. Only a barely-there beard as of yet, but that was only a matter of time. Many men in Talkeetna didn’t worry themselves overmuch about things like big city grooming. Most women in town considered themselves lucky if their man showered every other day.
Aiden. The name was a good place to start. And his scent. Clean. No sticky soap smell. Just fresh. A hint of musk, like a man who’d been working in the sun, not overly sweaty, just…honest. Maybe with a hint of sawdust and yeast and hops from the beer in his hand.
“Two of my brothers brought me up here, after the sister-in-law talked me into it.” His lips quirked up on the side and humor twinkled back at me.
“Here, Zettie.” Karl appeared at my side with a plastic cup only half-filled with a golden liquid supporting a thin layer of foam.
My heart sank a little. “Only half?” Treating me like a toddler.
“Prove to me you can handle it, and next time you’ll get more. Don’t guzzle it.” He reached past me and introduced himself and Maddie to Aiden.
I tried to listen, but Bill turned back from the grill and handed me a plate with a sizzling burger on a bun.
“Moose, squirt. Totally organic.” He winked in his teasing way and I laughed. “See me after you fix your bun. I have a few tomatoes hidden over here from my greenhouse. Once your folks told me they were going organic, I decided to experiment and set me up a special addition to grow vegetables through the winter. Got some good stuff in the greenhouse you should look at some time.”
“Hey, great.” Not wanting to miss the fresh veggies, I hurried to the table and checked out the selections. I definitely wanted the tomatoes, which were welcome so early in the season. On the table I found lettuce and pickles, but the onion looked like it’d been sitting out too long. As I built my burger and looked over the remains of the sides, I said hello to a few other grazers. Some looked vaguely familiar. Probably people I’d known long ago. Many of those milling about were a good six to ten years younger than me and were probably summer imports, there to work the season, then drift on to the next adventure.
Never gregarious to begin with, I smiled, said hello, but kept my nose to the selection of food. Eventually I selected some kettle chips and a handful of cucumber slices. When it came to condiments, I debated for a long minute, reading the labels of each bottle. Not one of them said organic, therefore were suspect.
“Just squeeze it out the top.”
The deep voice at my side broke my concentration as I tried to decide if one teaspoon of processed tomatoes would cause injury if ingested just this once. Tomatoes were notorious for being overly treated with pesticides. Did this national brand take care to thoroughly wash it all off? Could they really get it all? How much ended up in the finished product? Hadn’t anyone in this town heard of organic condiments? I was tired of only eating mustard on my burgers when organic ketchup and mayonnaise weren’t available. It seemed like I hadn’t had a decent meat burger in years, although I had grown to like veggie burgers and the little buffalo I’d had was okay. The elk burger someone had given my folks hadn’t been my thing.
I looked up at the man I’d just met. “Chemicals. I’m trying to figure out how bad the bad ones are in these small doses.”
With a lifted brow, he took the ketchup bottle from my hand and squeezed a large amount on his own bun. “I doubt there’s enough there to poison a mosquito, much less a healthy human. Granted, if you drank the entire bottle you might get an upset stomach, but probably from the acid in the tomato rather than the maltodextrin. That, or the high salt content.” He shrugged and held the bottle out to me.
“You’re right. A tablespoon won’t hurt.” There was such a thing as being fanatical. I squeezed a dollop onto my bun.
Karl and Maddie appeared at the condiments table and I found myself herded over to a picnic table where some old timers made room for us. I wanted to talk with Aiden–good strong Irish name–some more, but Karl and Bill flanked me and edged him to the side. He sat across the table, and down a couple spaces, next to one of the gift shop owners, whose face looked a little familiar. I took out my phone and on the pretense of looking up something, started taking pictures. Karl could give me names later. After the first couple of shots, people figured it out and it became a game. Pictures and names.
Mrs. Sorenson, my fourth grade teacher. Of course, now I recognized her. She invited me to stop by the gift shop she’d taken to running for her retirement.
Once I had everyone at the table, the conversation moved on. I took an extra of the builder just for fun.
Although people looked at me with questions, their eyes straying to the scarf around my head, probably wondering where I’d been injured, they didn’t ask. Instead they concentrated on Aiden, the newcomer from Outside, and the upcoming summer season.
Bill told of his plans to double the size of the inn he’d bought twenty years earlier and had turned into something of a local favorite.
Karl nodded to the flight crew renting two of his eight rooms for the summer. Two pilots and two mechanics, they all found seats nearby. I hadn’t had much time to do more than try to memorize which face went with which name. Which I couldn’t remember, so I took their photos, too.
Bill insisted I fill in his contact information with phone, website, address and every other detail he could think of. Including his birthday.
“I expect a present this year. You’ve forgotten all about me these past eleven years. You’ve got some making up to do.”
“Yeah, sure, just as soon as you cough up eleven years of birthday presents for me,” I teased right back. “Let me eat first, then I’ll get to the gory details.”
The juicy moose burger distracted me from the conversation around me. God, it was so good! Lean and minimally processed with just the right seasonings, it was meat I could eat without worrying. Now, if only I could get free-range chickens and turkey without making a huge process out of it.
Unwilling to give up the least bit of flavor, I licked my fingers clean of the juices and sighed with pleasure.
“Done?” Karl stuffed a napkin into my hand. The odd note in his voice made me look over to see his mixed grin. A bit amused, a lot dismayed, somewhat confused. “Be kind to the local males, please. Save that orgasmic look for inside four walls, would you?”
I blinked back at him. “Huh?” What was he talking about?
“Never mind, just wipe your face, okay?”
I rolled my eyes and wiped my face and fingers. Thirsty, I reached for the nearest plastic cup in front of me. Logic said it was mine, but it was empty. I nudged Karl with my elbow. “Thought you were getting me a beer? What’d you do with it?”
The look he gave me was one part wary caution, another part exasperation. “You drank it. I told you not to guzzle it.”
I concentrated on the flavors in my mouth. Meat, ketchup, pickle, mustard…but no beer. “I didn’t drink it.”
Karl rolled his eyes but poured a few ounces from his cup into mine. “That’s all the more you get. If you can’t remember what you’ve been drinking, then you shouldn’t be drinking alcohol at all.”
Although he had a point, I didn’t want to let it go. However, for now, with an audience, I shrugged him off. Later, we’d talk.
My gaze caught that of the Irishman across the table. Eyes as clear as lab grown diamonds with rare-earth ions inside the crystal structure–something like praseodymium would give