He returned the kibble tub to the ramshackle shed that held all his tools and equipment, but as soon as his hands were free again back they went…into his pockets. Only, this time, he caught the direction of her gaze.
‘Curious?’ he asked, a half-smile on his lips.
Yes… But she was no more entitled to be curious about what was below Will Margrave’s pockets now than she was five years ago.
He reached in and drew out a tiny, dark handful of fuzz.
‘Oh, my gosh!’
‘Starsky’s,’ he murmured. ‘One of three.’
‘How old is it?’ she asked, staring at the tiny pup. Two slits in its squished little face peered around. Beneath, she got a momentary flash of electric-blue eyes.
Sled-dog eyes.
‘Born day before yesterday.’
Two days! ‘Should it be away from its mother this soon?’
‘Won’t be for long,’ he murmured. ‘Helps to forge a bond with the pup from the get-go. Reinforces dominance and trust with the mother.’
Trust. Yes—that he could just take a newborn pup from its mother even for a few minutes… That she would let him…
‘It can’t see or hear yet but it has all its other senses,’ he said, stroking it gently with his work-roughened thumb. It curled towards him in response. ‘And emotional awareness. It will come to know my smell, my voice. The beat of my heart. Knows it’s safe with me from its earliest days.’
He did have that kind of voice. All rumbly and reassuring. And that kind of smell. She took a step back against the urge to take in another lungful like last night.
Will returned the pup to its mother’s kennel and buried it in under her alongside its two littermates—another black one, and one that was white as the snow all around them with subtle grey mottling.
‘So no departing flight this morning, I take it?’ she asked as he straightened.
He turned and faced her. ‘Let me explain something about bear season…’
‘I know, I know… They come for the ice—’
‘Not just them,’ he interrupted. ‘Tourists. Hundreds of them arriving and leaving every day. For eight weeks we’re overrun and then we go back to being the sleepy little outpost we usually are. You should be prepared for this to go on for days. Maybe longer.’
Days? Days of this careful eggshells? Of not talking about Marcella or the quakes? Of not mentioning what happened between them five years ago?
‘I’ll look for somewhere else to stay, then.’
He slashed her that look of his. The one she remembered, the one that used to give her pulse a kick. The aware one. As if he saw right through her. And suddenly she regretted the extra layer of thermals. Heat billowed up from nowhere.
‘If there was nothing available last night there’ll be nothing today. No one else can leave either.’
‘Unless someone got eaten by a bear,’ she joked.
He didn’t dignify that with a comment. But his glare spoke volumes.
Kitty scanned the dog yard carved in amongst the thick Boreal forest and the chains tethering each animal to their cosy little doghouse. That would stop the dogs running wild but it would also stop them running for their lives if a bear happened along.
‘How often are dogs attacked by bears?’
The glare redoubled.
‘Bears don’t kill dogs,’ he said irritably. ‘Dogs kill dogs.’
She glanced at his pack, so carefully tethered out of reach of each other. But then she remembered how they’d all piled in together last night quite happily.
‘The Boreal wolves are much more likely to attack for territorial reasons. We have a few around here.’
And wolves were mostly nocturnal.
Understanding flooded in. ‘That’s why you brought them all into the house last night.’
‘Most dogs up here live, grow old and die tethered up outside unless they’re working. But I lost a young male to a wolf a few weeks back.’ He dropped his eyes away from hers. ‘He did a good job defending the pack—’
Better than me, she thought she heard him say under his breath as he turned partly away to coil up a length of rope.
‘—but his injuries were too severe.’
‘The wolf killed him?’
‘I killed him,’ Will said, his movements sharp. ‘The wolf just started it.’
Kitty blinked. He’d had to put his dog down by his own hand?
‘I’m sorry, Will. That’s rough.’
He shrugged, but it wasn’t anywhere near as careless as he probably wanted her to believe. ‘The vet flies up from Winnipeg once a month. In between, we have to DIY.’
‘Still. You’re more about saving lives than taking them.’ He’d been rescuing people in need since he was a boy. It was in his blood. He’d been raised by a second-generation search-and-rescue man.
She thought she saw him wince, but he masked it in the turn of his body back towards the cabin.
‘Breakfast?’ he said, as brightly as his gruff manner allowed.
‘You haven’t eaten?’
‘I don’t generally eat before noon,’ he said. ‘But the fridge is stocked up. Help yourself.’
‘Really? You were all about the big breakfast in Nepal,’ she murmured, turning to follow him. Then it hit her… Could he not bring himself to have that without his wife?
‘Breakfast was Marcella’s thing,’ he said. ‘It meant something to her. Family starting the day together.’
And he’d loved her enough to indulge it.
Sorrow soaked through her. And something else, something closer to…envy. Which pretty much made her the worst person alive. Still hankering for another woman’s man, even though that woman was dead.
‘Will, I’m so sorry about—’
‘Stay as long as you need to,’ he said brusquely, gathering up his tools. His words couldn’t have been colder if she’d found them lying scattered in the snow. ‘You have a fire and food and the best Internet in town.’
‘I don’t want to be an inconvenience.’
‘I’m not planning on being your entertainment,’ Will said, gruffly. ‘I have work to get on with. There’s no inconvenience.’
‘No,’ she muttered as he turned to wander off. She felt about as welcome as that time in Nepal. ‘Of course.’
But as she went to follow him inside, her foot hit a patch of ice and she scrabbled out for the most stable thing she could find.
Will.
He twisted and caught her under one elbow and one armpit—all terribly graceful—and steadied her back onto her feet. The last time he’d been this close she’d stumbled, too. Down some steps in Nepal. That time when Will had caught her hard up against his body, she’d clung to him just as she clung now, and her pulse had rioted in exactly the same way. He’d set her back on her feet, turned and simply walked away, but not before his jaw had clamped in a way that had made her think he’d felt the zing too.
Now, he dropped his hands away from her the moment she was back in charge of her legs, but his eyes fell to her lips and were the last part of him to turn away.
Five