Manhunt

  A tear trickled down her cheek. She really did love him, but sometimes love wasn’t enough, she realized. All the warning signs had been there, and she’d ignored them. Now what?

  She took a shower and went home to her little cabin. Then she went back to her stupid store and waited for the guy with brown hair.

  Alex felt her eyes glaze over as she peered into the compartmentalized drawer housing several hundred hooks with feathers attached. The man in front of her was angular and lean with the regulation Alaskan beard and thermal underwear showing under the collar of his flannel shirt. He was somewhere in his fifties and was paying for Andy’s expertise.

  “Okay,” he said, sighing in resignation, “I’ll take a yellow humpy, a bass duster, and a Dave’s red squirrel. I need some leader, forty-pound test.” He looked over at Andy and grimaced. “Hell, this’ll never come to enough money.”

  “You know what you need, Dave?” Andy called to him. “You need a new tackle vest. You need one of them dandy rip stop jobs we just got in.”

  Dave scowled at him. “You didn’t just get them in. You got them in last spring, and nobody’d buy ’em.”

  “Yeah, well maybe so,” Andy said, “but you need one of them now.”

  “Guess I do,” Dave agreed, reaching for his wallet.

  “Do you still want the yellow duster and the bass humper?” Alex asked.

  Dave stared at her blank face for a moment before looking around at Andy. “Bass humper?”

  Andy shook his head and rolled his eyes. “She ain’t never fished. She just knows about New York stuff.”

  Dave took a cookie from the cookie jar. “She makes good cookies.”

  “Hell, she buys ’em,” Andy said.

  Dave took his vest and change and smiled at Alex. “Well, she buys good cookies,” he said on the way out.

  Alex slumped against the counter. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. She couldn’t contribute anything to the store but cookies, and they weren’t even homemade. They weren’t homemade because she couldn’t figure out how to work her woodstove. She could make smoke, but she was damned if she could make heat. Casey probably could show her, but she was reluctant to ask. He’d come home late last night after a week’s absence and hadn’t stopped by to say hello.

  Andy made a disgusted sound. “So, you don’t know a bass duster when you see one. You can’t help it if you’re a dumb New York female. Hell, you aren’t going to cry, are you?”

  “You know much about Casey?”

  “As much as anyone, I guess.”

  “You know where he was last week?”

  Andy shrugged. “Outta the state.”

  “Where out of the state?”

  “Butch Miller says he went to see his boy.”

  Alex stood up a little straighter. “His boy?”

  “Yeah, you know. His son.”

  Her heart felt as if it had stopped. He’d never told her he had a son. He’d never even indicated he’d been married.

  “Oh, jeez,” Andy said, looking at her white face. “He never told you.” Andy shook his head. “It’s not something he likes to talk about, I suppose. The kid was just a year old when Ellen packed up and left. People tell me she went to Florida.”

  “Florida? That’s so far away.”

  “Yup. I guess that’s why she picked it. The farther, the better. Made it hard on Casey.”

  Alex ran her hand over the smooth glass countertop. How could you know so much about a person and still know so little? “I think I’ll go home early today.”

  Andy nodded. “Drive careful.”

  Casey was on his deck when she drove up. He was sitting on the edge with his feet dangling, staring at the Alaska Range far in the distance. Alex parked and walked to the deck.

  “They look like clouds,” Casey said. “Pristine, unapproachable.”

  “I’d like to see them up close someday.”

  “The Range is massive. It begins slowly, not with foothills, but with a steady grade. You’ll be driving down the highway, and all of a sudden you’ll realize you’re above the tree line. Nothing on either side of you but gravel and moss and some rock where the highway’s been carved. It’s a harsh landscape that doesn’t always appeal to tourists.”

  “As opposed to Florida…”

  Casey’s eyebrows rose slightly in surprise.

  Alex sat beside him on the edge of the deck. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t know what to say. I fathered a kid who calls someone else Dad. I send money. I send presents. Twice a year I take a week off to visit him, but he doesn’t know me. He’s ten years old. He doesn’t know what it all means.”

  “Your wife remarried?”

  “Yup.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  Casey lay back on the deck and laced his hands behind his head. His voice sounded tired. “No. That stopped a long time ago. I’m not sure I ever loved her. I thought I did, but…” He closed his eyes.

  “We were students at Berkeley. She was a golden bronzed California girl, and I was the rugged macho Alaskan. I quit school, said good-bye to Ellen McInerney, and returned to Alaska to make my fortune. She found out she was pregnant. We got married.”

  He waved his hand in a gesture of resignation. “It just was never right. She hated Alaska. I hated everywhere else. She stuck it out for one year after the baby was born, then left. It wasn’t nice.”

  “You’re judging me by her.”

  “I’m trying to learn by my mistakes. Divorce doesn’t bother me. Divorce is something that happens between two consenting adults, but having an absentee son is wrong. I walked that kid through colic, teething, and DPT shots, then one day he was gone. I’m not going to bring another absentee son into this world.”

  “We’re not even married, and already you’re planning our divorce.”

  “Damn, Alex. Look at you! You’ve got on a suede skirt and heels. You’ve never been fishing, never been hunting, never been hiking. You think bears are cuddly. What the hell are you going to do in Alaska for the rest of your life? Maybe if you were in Anchorage…” He shook his head. “No, not even in Anchorage. You’re a New York executive; you’re not going to be happy hanging around here.”

  “I admit I like wearing pretty clothes. I also like Alaska. I don’t see where the two are incompatible. You must think I’m pretty shallow.”

  “Not at all. I think you’re gutsy and intelligent and aggressive.”

  Casey stood and paced the deck. “This is an adventure right now, but by the end of the winter the adventure will have turned into tedium. I don’t think Alaska holds the kind of stimulation you need, and I don’t want to find out the hard way, at some innocent kid’s expense. I never intended for it to go this far. I’m sorry. It won’t work out between us. We’re too different.”

  “Maybe I’ll turn out to like fishing.”

  “You’ll hate it. It’ll ruin your nails.”

  Alex jumped up beside him and poked a perfectly manicured finger at his chest.

  “That does it. Now I’m really steamed. You’re nothing but a sexist bigot. Who gave you the right to decide whether or not I’ll like fishing?” She poked him again. “You don’t deserve me. I’d be better off with the sign painter.”

  “He’ll be drooling and eating gruel after two weeks with you.”

  “I’m leaving. And I’m not coming back.” She started toward her car, then pivoted on her heel. “Oh yeah, one last thing, would you show me how to work my woodstove?”

  “Do you have any wood?”

  “Would you show me how to chop wood?”

  Casey grimaced. “Go change your clothes, and I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

  Hours later Alex extinguished her kerosene lamp and stiffly climbed up to her loft bed. She’d had some success with the stove, but the wood chopping… She groaned. She’d emulated Casey’s every move, but just couldn’t get the hang of it.

  She slid under the quilt and closed her eyes. Good t
hing he wasn’t around when she chopped off part of the toe to her hiking boot. Tomorrow would be a better day, she told herself. The chopping would get easier.

  She stared at the moonlight spilling through her window and admitted it wasn’t the chopping that bothered her. She wasn’t bothered by the lack of stimulation that Casey worried about either. She was bothered by the lack of interesting men. She’d imagined them flocking into her hardware store like lemmings making their final, fatal migration. Well, it wasn’t like that. Mostly old men came to her store, and the young men were… wrong. What was wrong with them?

  They weren’t Casey. She was in love with him and didn’t want anyone else. And she didn’t ever want to leave Alaska. She loved the size of the land, the feeling of timelessness, and the power of the elements. She pressed her palms against her eyelids. She was tired. Things would look better in the morning.

  The little red car hummed along the highway and turned onto the gravel road. Alex looked at the wood stacked on the seat next to her and grinned. What she lacked in hardiness, she more than made up for in sneakiness and resourcefulness. She intended to learn how to chop wood someday. In the meantime, she’d buy it and lie through her teeth. Anyone as bigoted and stubborn as Casey deserved to be hornswoggled. He also deserved to be happily married; that’s what she’d decided when she woke up this morning. And she was going to help him reach that blissful state. She was going to convince him he needed to marry her.

  She parked next to the chopping block, said hello to Bruno, and unloaded the wood. Not exactly a winter’s supply, she thought, but it should serve her present purposes.

  A lavender haze was settling over the hillside, and the air seemed unusually sharp, causing Alex to shiver in her wool suit, sheer stockings, and low-heeled pumps. Fall was fast approaching. When she’d left this morning she’d noticed the birch leaves had turned yellow. She stood very still and listened to an odd sifting sound that seemed to surround her. It was the sound of leaves dropping to the ground, she realized. Fall had lasted exactly one day.

  She lit the kerosene lantern and quickly changed her clothes, reverting back to the braless look that gave Casey a glazed cast to his eyes. She pulled on a pair of tight faded jeans and buttoned herself into a blue shirt. She looked at her reflection in the small oval mirror and wrinkled her nose. Not exactly right. She shrugged out of the shirt and tugged a forest green turtleneck over her head. Better, she decided, tucking it in at the waist. More revealing, less accessible. It would look great with a few flour smudges. Homey and sexy. Manhunting clothes, she thought smugly.

  After all, this was war. She made biscuit batter, humming happily, and slid the cut dough onto a brand-new cookie sheet. She prepared chicken breast filets for frying. Now she had to make it look as if she’d tried to start the woodstove. She purposely used too much paper, not enough kindling, and almost completely closed the damper. Acrid smoke billowed into the cabin, bringing tears to her eyes before she had a chance to douse the fire.

  “Perfect,” she said to Bruno. She strategically placed a flour smudge on her nose and left breast, slipped into her ski parka, and set off for Casey’s house.

  She met him halfway along the wooded trail. “Where are you going?”

  Casey scowled at her. “I’m going to your cabin. What the hell are you doing down there, barbecuing your loft?”

  Alex blinked at him. “Have you been spying on me?”

  “I saw the smoke from my living room window.” Through the binoculars he was using to spy on her, he thought. No reason to go into detail. He couldn’t see much through the trees anyway.

  “If the smoke had been coming from your chimney, it would have risen differently.”

  “Hmmm. Well, I’ve been making biscuits, but I couldn’t figure out the woodstove. I did everything you told me to do, but all I get is smoke. And how do you know if it’s the right temperature for biscuits?”

  “After you burn a couple hundred you get the hang of it.”

  Casey wiped the flour smudge off Alex’s nose and followed her back to the cabin. He paused for a moment to look at the neat pile of split logs. A surprised expression flickered in his eyes and was instantly masked.

  The mask remained on his face while he looked around the lamplit room. A deep purple African violet plant sat beside the lamp on the round table. Alex had added books to the collection of foodstuffs on the wall shelves, and a multicolored rag rug had been positioned in front of the small chest of drawers.

  The loft reminded him of a dark, cozy nest. She was laying down roots, he thought grimly. This wasn’t the house of a woman who intended to leave. This was a home. How long it would be home remained to be seen. It was still warm by Alaskan standards, and the living was relatively easy.

  He squatted in front of the stove and rearranged the wood. “Too much paper, not enough kindling, and your damper was set wrong,” he told Alex.

  She removed her jacket, knelt, and leaned against him to get a better look. “Hmmm,” she said, pressing her breast into his arm ever so slightly. She felt him go rigid and tried not to smile. “I see what I was doing wrong.” She jiggled a flue, which caused her breasts to bounce lightly.

  He gave her a questioning look, and she immediately stood, biting her lip in embarrassed innocence. “Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking.” She took a bottle of burgundy from the shelf and poured him a glass of wine. “Payment for fixing my stove. Thank you.”

  Casey sipped the wine and stared at her. “Don’t you ever wear a bra?”

  “I’m saving on laundry.”

  His gaze dropped to her jeans, and she knew he was wondering just how far her frugality went.

  “Forget it,” she said, smiling. “I’m not telling you.” She took a black iron skillet from a hook on the wall and set it on the top of the stove. “How about giving me a cooking lesson? I want to fry this chicken.”

  “Give the fire a couple minutes. You want to do the chicken and the biscuits when it’s at its hottest.”

  Alex poured a glass of wine for herself. “I’ve decided you were right about us. We aren’t suited to each other at all.”

  Casey slouched in a ladder-back chair. “No?”

  She dipped the chicken in an egg, milk, and dijon mustard mixture, and rolled it in spiced bread crumbs.

  “No. We have different interests and different lifestyles.”

  She took a sip of wine, put a dollop of margarine and an equal amount of oil into the frying pan, and watched it sizzle. “You were smart to realize that.”

  She slid the tray of biscuits into the oven and transferred the chicken to the hot oil. “I think it’s important for people to be honest with themselves and not pretend something is what it isn’t. What I mean is, it isn’t as if we were in love. It was just a little fling, right? Now that it’s over we can be good friends. After all, we’re neighbors.”

  “A little fling?”

  “Probably we aren’t even that well matched in bed.”

  A frown drew Casey’s brows together. “I thought we were pretty well matched.”

  Alex kept her face averted and carefully turned the pieces of chicken. “I thought so, too, at the time, but I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve been worrying that it might have just seemed good to me because I’m so inexperienced. Probably I should get to know a lot more men before I make a decision like that.”

  She leaned over the table to set a plate for herself and felt her breasts sway under the jersey material. She let him watch for a moment before turning back to the stove.

  “A lot more men? How many men is a lot more?”

  Alex shrugged. “I don’t know. You can’t set a number on those things. I suppose you just know when you’ve had enough.” She set a tub of butter and the bottle of wine on the table. “How many women have you had?”

  Casey colored under the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow. “Enough.”

  She put a tossed salad on the table, added a grind of fresh pepper, and looked at
Casey, as if a thought had just occurred to her. “Would you like to stay for supper?”

  “No. Thank you for asking, but I think I’d better be getting home.”

  Alex opened the oven door and took out the tray of golden brown biscuits, flooding the small room with their freshly baked aroma. She dumped them in a breadbasket lined with a white linen napkin and set them steaming on the table.

  “That’s not fair,” Casey said, looking at the tempting biscuits. “You’re playing dirty.”

  “For goodness sakes, Casey, they’re only biscuits.” She pierced the chicken filets and, deciding they were done, drained them briefly and arranged them on a plate garnished with fresh parsley.

  Casey looked as if he might swoon from fried chicken and homemade biscuit fumes. He sat back down in his chair. “Maybe I could stay a little longer.”

  Alex smiled and set a plate for him. “Good. I have lots of things to ask you, now that we’re friends.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Originally I came here looking for a husband,” Alex said, savoring a bite of chicken while she buttered a biscuit. “I’m still on the lookout for the right man, but you know there are all kinds of alternative lifestyles for the modern woman now. I don’t necessarily have to do it in the traditional order of love, marriage, family. Since the right man hasn’t come along, I could reverse the order and have a baby first. I could be artificially inseminated. Then I wouldn’t feel so rushed to find a husband. What do you think?”

  Casey felt his biscuit lodge in the middle of his throat. Was she serious? She looked serious. “I think… I think you’re nuts. It’s going to be hard enough for you to get through a winter on this mountain without being pregnant.”

  What he meant was it was going to be hard enough for him to get through the winter with her on his mountain. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since she arrived. How would he ever manage to stay sane if she were pregnant?

  She waved her fork at him. “You know your problem? You underestimate women.”

  “Dammit, I don’t underestimate women. You underestimate Alaska. Living alone in an unimproved cabin is dangerous, even for a veteran Alaskan. You’re a walking time bomb, a disaster waiting to happen.”