“Hey, Anya.”
A chorus of hellos rose up to greet her as she breezed into the fellowship hall, a former gymnasium the church now used for casual events such as youth group meetings and potluck suppers. And knitting, of course. She waved at the half-dozen women gathered around the long, rectangular table situated in the center of the room and found a seat between Clementine and Sue Chase. Like Clementine, Sue was a musher’s wife. The two of them were long-time Christians. Not babies in the faith, as Anya sometimes thought of herself. They were very involved in organizing ways to help the community. In fact, the knitting group had been Sue’s idea.
“Good evening, ladies,” Sue said, and the clickety-clack of knitting needles came to a stop.
Anya pulled her own needles and ball of yarn out of her tote bag as she listened.
“Next week, Gus is taking a couple of volunteer doctors out to the Bush to treat people in some of the more impoverished villages.” Sue absently wound a length of red yarn around her fingers.
Gus was the manager of Aurora’s one and only grocery store. He was also a pilot who made regular runs out to the Bush, the area of Alaska that was off the road network and inaccessible by car.
“I’d love it if we could get together at least two dozen hats to send along. So far we have twenty.” Sue’s gaze flitted around the table. “Do you all think we could get together four more before next week?”
“I’m almost finished with mine.” Clementine held up a nearly complete hat, crafted of pink yarn sprinkled with sequins.
Anya couldn’t help but laugh. It was classic Clementine.
“What’s so funny?” Clementine whispered.
“Nothing.” Anya shrugged. “I hope the underprivileged like sparkle, that’s all.”
Clementine looked down at her hat. “Of course they do. Doesn’t everyone?”
Anya’s hat was a bit simpler, crafted of a fuzzy plum-colored yarn. She was a baby knitter, in addition to being a baby Christian. Finishing her hat by next week would be a challenge, but she really liked the idea of keeping someone warm in a cold Alaskan winter. Since discovering God, Anya was trying to make her life count for something. Something bigger than herself. Saving Dolce was only the start.
She’d need to start knitting at home to get caught up. She bit her lip and went to work wrapping the yarn around her needles.
“Oh.” Clementine’s hands stopped moving. “I almost forgot to ask. Did you make it out to Brock Parker’s house today?”
Anya frowned. “I sure did.” She hadn’t meant to inject an edge to her voice, but there it was.
Clementine’s knitting dropped to her lap. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“That row you just purled is so tight, it’s about to snap in two. Something’s most definitely wrong.”
Ugh, she was right. The row was way too snug. Anya unraveled it. “Nothing’s wrong. Brock Parker is a crazy man, that’s all.”
“Crazy?” Clementine tilted her head. “Are you sure? He’s kind of a big deal, you know.”
“A big deal? How?” Unless she meant big as in tall and rather strapping—ahem—Anya wasn’t sure what she was talking about.
“He’s pretty famous. He goes all over the world setting up special canine rescue teams for areas prone to avalanches. And Ben says he’s found dozens of people who got caught in slides. You should Google him.”
Anya raised her brows. “Does Google mention that he enjoys dressing as a bear?”
“What?”
“You heard me. He was wearing a grizzly bear suit when I got there.”
“That does sound odd.” Clementine paused. “But did he say he’d help you with Dolce?”
“Yes. I had my first lesson today.” Anya used air quotes to emphasize the word lesson.
“Oh, great!” Clementine beamed. “What was it like?”
“He had me read the entire newspaper aloud to his two puppies.”
“The whole front page?” The smile on Clementine’s face dimmed, replaced with a look of confusion.
Join the club, Anya thought. “Every section, not just the front page. The whole paper. I almost lost my voice.”
“Hmm. What was he doing while you read the paper?”
“He was whittling. Whittling.” Anya shook her head. The entire episode sounded completely unbelievable, even to her own ears. And she’d actually been there. “Who does that?”
Beside her, Clementine’s shoulders shook with laughter. “I hear that guy from Nome who always drives around with a reindeer in the bed of his pickup truck likes to carve things out of sheep horns.”
“My point exactly,” Anya huffed.
It wasn’t the whittling. It wasn’t the mysterious, unexplained reading-to-the-dogs assignment. It wasn’t even the bear suit. It was all of it put together.
Brock Parker was one unusual package.
So why did her heart seem to kick into overdrive at the mere thought of him?
Clementine narrowed her gaze at her, as if trying to see inside her head. “What does he look like?”
Anya’s fingers slipped, and she dropped a stitch in the hat she was knitting.
Oops.
“Um,” she started, as her face flushed with warmth.
“I see.” Sue laughed. “He looks that good, huh?”
Anya hadn’t even realized Sue had been paying attention to their conversation. She wanted to crawl under the table and hide. Clearly that wasn’t an option, seeing as Sue and Clementine were watching her with great interest. Her fingers fumbled once more, and she dropped another stitch. Darn it. She’d never finish the hat at this rate.
She decided to go ahead and fess up. They’d find out eventually.
“He’s blond, blue-eyed and Nordic looking.” She cleared her throat. “Not that it matters.”
“Nordic looking?” Clementine lifted an inquisitive brow.
“You know, like a Viking or something.” Anya ignored the flush still simmering in her cheeks and focused intently on her knitting. “Like I said, it doesn’t make a bit of difference.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” Sue said, tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Anya looked up from her tangle of yarn and sighed. “Seriously, you two. Other than what he can do for my dog, I have no interest in Brock Parker.”
In fact, things would probably be easier if he wasn’t so flawlessly handsome. Because in the end—no matter what they looked like—all men did the same thing. At least the ones Anya had known. They left.
“Seriously,” she repeated for emphasis. “You both know I don’t date.”
Clementine’s fingers stilled, and her yarn stopped moving. “Wait. We do?”
“Of course you do,” Anya said.
Clementine hadn’t yet moved to Aurora when Anya was dumped on national television, but Anya was certain she’d mentioned it to her during the course of their friendship.
“No, I don’t.” Clementine shook her head. “You don’t date? What on Earth does that mean?”
Okay, so maybe she hadn’t mentioned it. Although it was a pivotal moment in her life to be