Manhunt

  He’d expected to come back and find her despondent. Her cheerfulness grated on him. “What the hell are you so happy about? You damn near killed yourself.”

  She dropped the towel and stepped into a pair of lavender lace panties. “Damn near doesn’t count.”

  Casey felt his stomach tighten at the sight of her. A wave of disgust washed over him at his inability to control his reaction to her. He pressed his lips together and turned on his heel, long angry strides carrying him to the front door.

  Alex followed him, buttoning an oversized blue cotton shirt. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m spending the night in your cabin. And you’re to stay here. If you so much as take a step outdoors on those freshly thawed feet, I swear I’ll…”

  Alex looked at him expectantly.

  He shook his head. Didn’t anything intimidate this woman? He took his parka and slammed the door behind him.

  Alex stared at the kegs of rusty nails and bolts and decided they were going to go. She’d never seen anyone so much as look at them, much less buy any, and she could use the floor space for the new line of cross-country ski equipment.

  She was feeling guardedly optimistic about the store. This week she’d actually been able to contribute something intelligent to a discussion about hunting bears. She didn’t have any experience, but she’d studied the catalogues and knew all the latest hype and statistics on largegauge guns. The men were beginning to include her in their conversations, and yesterday a woman had come in to buy a birthday present for her husband. Alex considered it a milestone.

  Unfortunately, the positive feelings she held about the store were partially dampened by the fact that her personal life was a shambles. Casey was doggedly ignoring her again; he hadn’t said more than five words to her since that night almost a week ago when she’d burned down her outhouse. She decided she was going to have to be patient and wear him down with her persistence. She’d just hang in there, and in twenty-five or thirty years he’d come around.

  Her eyes flew open when a vaguely familiar figure entered the store.

  “Holy cow, will ya look at this,” Harry Kowalski said, his wheezy voice laced with disgust. “Lord, girl, what have you done to the place? It used to be so homey.”

  He looked at Alex more closely. “And you done something odd to your hair. Looks like one of them spiky styles you see on those New Jersey weirdos. Especially the part where it gets orange at the frizzy tips.”

  The old man squinted at the freshly painted walls and new light fixtures and shook his head. “I suppose you got Andy all gussied up wearing a suit.”

  “She ain’t got Andy wearing nothin’,” Andy said from the doorway of the back room. “What are you doing here, you old coot?”

  “Hell, I couldn’t stand New Jersey. Too many people. Too many cars. I couldn’t figure out how to work half the gadgets in the kitchen. Everything was electric. Nothing smelled like woodsmoke. And when you set on the can and open the door you don’t see nothing but carpet.” He turned to Alex. “You swindled me. You took advantage of an old man.”

  She felt her mouth drop open. “I took advantage of you? You neglected to mention the fact that your driveway had trees growing in it. And you conveniently forgot to tell me that your cabin lacked water, plumbing, heat, and electricity.”

  “Well, of course it don’t have none of those things. That’s why you call it a cabin in the woods. Now if I told you I had a fancy condo, it would have been something else.”

  Alex crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes.

  “Anyway, the deal’s off,” Harry said. “I want my house back. I don’t like New Jersey.”

  “Too bad,” Alex told him. “I don’t like New Jersey either.”

  “But you aren’t an old man. It’ll be easy for you to find someplace else to live. That there cabin’s my home, and I’m homesick. I’ll give you the deed back to your condo if you’ll give me my cabin back.”

  “No way. Those monthly payments were killing me.”

  Harry hung his head and wiped his nose with a big cloth handkerchief. “I been on that mountain for more years than I can remember. But I guess you’re right. I made the mistake, and now I got to live with it. It’s just that sometimes you don’t know how much you love something until you don’t have it. I never had a wife or family. All I had was that cabin.”

  “I thought you moved to New Jersey to live with your daughter?”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot. Well, she don’t want me around.”

  Alex held her hand up. “Stop. Enough.” She bowed her head and sighed. “I know when I’m licked. Man, I’m such a sucker for a sob story. You can live in the cabin, and I’ll sell the condo.”

  “Hope you haven’t ruined the cabin too,” Harry said.

  “Afraid so. I’ve gotten rid of all the mice and mold. You’ll just have to tough it out for a while.”

  It wasn’t really such a loss, Alex thought. Casey had been right; it was impractical for her to live on the mountain in the winter. Her little car couldn’t navigate the steep, winding driveway in the snow. If she got a sturdier one, she would still be faced with the problem of the cold. Twice this week she’d needed a jump start from Casey. She now knew the value of the wire and plug that dangled from the hood of Alaskan cars. The wire was attached to an engine heater. When the weather turned cold, cars had to be plugged into outdoor receptacles before they could be driven. Since she had no electricity she was left with the homesteaders’ solution to the problem… remove the battery from the car and take it into the cabin each night. Not something she looked forward to doing.

  Harry took an oatmeal cookie from the cookie jar. “How soon do you suppose I could move in? I ain’t got no place to stay, you know.”

  “You can stay with Andy.”

  “No way,” Andy said. “Not enough room for two people. I can hardly turn around in there myself.”

  It was true, Alex thought, the room was small. A smile spread across her mouth. She had the solution to the problem.

  “Andy, you can move into the cabin with Harry, and I’ll live here. It would be easy to build a bunk under the loft bed for you.”

  Andy crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m used to living alone. I got all my things here.”

  The authoritative executive surfaced under the punk haircut. “We’ll move your things. Take it or leave it,” Alex told him, her tone leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind that she was serious.

  Several hours later, Alex stuffed the last of her clothes and other possessions into packing boxes, which she tied to her car as best she could. She carefully maneuvered up the treacherous drive to Casey’s house to leave him a note of explanation and collect Bruno.

  Casey was out, but the door was unlocked as usual. Inside, Alex stepped out of her snowy boots, and prowled the kitchen in search of paper and pencil, noting that Casey’s housekeeping habits had taken a turn for the worse. Fast-food boxes were everywhere. A Tupper-ware container had melted on the toaster. A saucepan, its bottom black and scorched, had stuck onto one of the electrical coils on the stove top. Half-filled coffee cups sat on end tables, windowsills, bookshelves, and countertops. A stack of mail was spread across the butcher-block work island.

  Alex rifled through the opened envelopes and loose correspondence, hoping to find something she could write on. A bill from a travel agency caught her eye. It was for airfare from New Jersey to Fairbanks. It required little insight to add up the facts. Casey had bought Harry’s ticket.

  The knowledge rushed through her cold and hard. She couldn’t move. She could barely breathe. The silence in the house felt crushing. It had never occurred to her that Casey would go this far to get rid of her.

  She stood there for a long while, absorbing the information, trying to come to terms with the hurt it caused. Casey had good reason to want her off the mountain, she decided. She was a menace. She’d torched her outhouse. That was the least of it. In Casey’s eyes she represented a high-risk
marriage. If she were in his shoes, she might be acting the same way. It must be terrible to have your child taken away from you.

  She reviewed her life and realized she’d never experienced a loss of that magnitude. She was born and raised in a small town in New Jersey. Her parents still lived there. Her life had held no traumatic illnesses, no tragic deaths, few crushing disappointments. She’d been engaged for a short time but the breakup had been relatively painless. The demise of her relationship with Casey wouldn’t be nearly so bland. The thought of living without him left her hollow inside. The thought of living with him made her furious. He’d dragged an old man five thousand miles to get her out of her cabin.

  She started to smile. Casey should pay for this. With his life. With matrimony. No way was she giving up now. She’d make him a terrific wife—whether he wanted one or not. The smile glinted fiendishly in her eyes as she swung the patio door open and began taking her boxes into Casey’s house.

  Casey pulled into his driveway and saw Alex’s car loaded with the packing boxes. It had worked. She was leaving. No, wait a minute, she wasn’t leaving, she was moving in! He bolted from his truck and caught Alex unpacking a box of lingerie.

  “What are you doing?”

  Alex put on her most innocent face. “You’ll never guess what happened. Harry came back today.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. The poor thing was homesick. He was so pitiful, Casey. He really doesn’t want much from life. All he wants is to be able to live out his old age in that sad little cabin.”

  “And?”

  “Well, of course I had to give it back to him. How could I possibly refuse?”

  “And?”

  “At first I was going to make Andy move in with Harry, so I could live in Andy’s room behind the store.” She shook out a filmy black lace camisole and refolded it. “But that wouldn’t be fair to Andy. He feels the same way about that grungy room as Harry feels about the cabin. So I decided I would look for a small apartment in town.”

  Casey felt panic as he watched the pile of sexy garments grow. “Are you going to put those in my bedroom?”

  “Harry was determined to move right into his cabin, which leaves me with no roof over my head for a while. It takes time to find the perfect apartment. I mean, I can’t just move into the first thing that comes along.”

  “About your undies…”

  “I noticed you have some room left over in your sock drawer.”

  “You’re putting that black lacy thing in my sock drawer?” His voice had grown unusually shrill.

  “Just until I find the perfect apartment. You see, I had this terrific idea while I was moving out of my cabin. I thought since you and Harry were such good friends, and since this happened so suddenly”—and since you probably feel guilty about doing this, she silently added—“I thought you wouldn’t mind if I bunked here for a while.”

  Casey was dumbfounded. He hadn’t considered the possibility of this happening. When he’d persuaded Harry to con Alex out of the cabin, he’d been sure it would get her off the mountain. Instead, it had gotten her into his house! “Hell.”

  “Pardon?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t think this is such a good idea.”

  Alex went out and retrieved another carton from her car. “It’s only temporary. I have it all figured out. I’ll take care of your house, cooking and cleaning, in exchange for room and board.”

  She dumped the contents of the box on the living room floor and began sorting out blue-and-orange tent struts.

  “Going camping?”

  “Yup. This is terrific idea number two. I’ll set my tent up in the corner behind the fireplace, and it will make a cozy bedroom for me. You won’t even know I’m here. This is going to work out just fine. Don’t worry about a thing. Oh, and by the way, I have a date tonight, so don’t be concerned if I come home kind of late.”

  “You have a date tonight?”

  Alex’s nerves tightened at the quietly incredulous tone of the question. “Not exactly a date. I promised Bubba Johanssen I’d show him how to wax his new cross-country skis.”

  “That should take about ten minutes.”

  Alex agreed. “But then he’s going to take me out with his sled team. He’s going to show me how to be a musher!”

  Casey tried to remember what sort of butt Bubba Johanssen had been blessed with, but the image eluded him. It wasn’t the sort of thing he ordinarily noticed.

  Chapter Nine

  Bubba was tall and broad and blond. His features were common, not good-looking, not bad-looking, simply ordinary. In fact, everything about him was pleasantly ordinary. He was several years younger than Alex, and if she had to describe her relationship with Bubba, she would say it was comfortably platonic.

  He guided his Jeep up the twisting drive to Casey’s house with casual expertise, all the while explaining the intricacies of raising a dog team. “You have to give the dogs more oil and protein in the winter,” he said. “I like to mix a lot of fish and some eggs into my dog food. I dip net salmon in the summer, then I slice off a few steaks for myself and use the rest for the dogs.”

  Drowsy, Alex listened to him. The sled ride had been exhilarating, with the cold air biting at her face and the dogs yipping in front of her. The snow had shone eerily white as a full moon rose in the indigo sky, and Alex skimmed along the packed powder of Bubba’s route, riding the runners, shouting “hike” like a seasoned musher. She’d been dumped twice when she’d attempted to apply the brake, and the snow she’d acquired on the ruff of her hood and woolen mittens was melting in the heat of the car. She nodded politely, only partially following Bubba’s conversation, caught in the lethargy that came after playing hard in the snow.

  Casey didn’t turn from the television when she came in, but he listened to her footsteps. She went to the bathroom, to his bedroom— what the devil was she doing in his bedroom? Then she sauntered into the kitchen to pour a glass of juice. From the corner of his eyes he could see that she’d changed from heavy sweater and ski pants to a lightweight flannel shirt and jeans.

  “Casey,” she called, “you want anything from the kitchen?”

  “No.”

  She flopped onto the other end of the couch and looked at the TV with unseeing eyes.

  Casey drummed his fingers on the arm of the couch. In his opinion Alexandra Scott looked altogether too pleased, like the cat that swallowed the canary. She was supposed to have gone out to wax skis, for crying out loud. Waxing skis had never been such a rewarding, exhausting experience for him. Finally, he turned and stared at her. “Why are you smiling like that?”

  Alex hadn’t been aware of the smile, but she was aware of feeling very happy. She was living with Casey, and she’d discovered an Alaskan activity that she genuinely liked— mushing. The fire crackled and hissed in the fireplace, the TV droned on, and the refrigerator hummed. Everything around her felt very much like home.

  “Am I smiling? Hmmm.” She yawned and stretched. “I’m pooped. I’m going to bed.” She kissed him on the tip of his nose, patted him on the top of the head, and walked to her tent.

  It’s a nightmare, Casey thought. This isn’t really happening. I’m going to be very calm, and I’m going to go to bed. Maybe I’ll have a drink first. Maybe I’ll have lots of drinks. Maybe I’ll take the bottle into the bedroom with me. He slouched a little lower, wondering if she’d been kissed, wondering if she was still on her insane husband hunt… or worse, trying to get pregnant.

  Casey was awake, but he couldn’t open his eyes. Something was stomping around inside his head, and his eyes felt like fried eggs. He knew if he opened them in bright daylight, they’d explode. He had a vague memory of drinking a lot of Scotch and of not being able to remove his jeans. He felt around and verified the fact. Yup, he still had them on. The thought occurred to him that he probably could have taken them off last night if he had removed his hiking boots first.

  His heart skipped a beat at the sound of the shower run
ning. He lived alone. Who was in the shower? He opened one eye in time to see a woman clad in a small towel rifling through his sock drawer. Oh God, it was Alex. How could he have forgotten?

  “Morning,” she said cheerfully.

  “Mmmf.”

  She twirled a scrap of red lace around her finger and waltzed out of the room. “Breakfast in fifteen minutes.”

  Was she kidding? He’d die if he smelled breakfast. He was still contemplating dying when Alex brought him a cup of coffee.

  “Anybody home?” Alex said, tapping Casey on the forehead with her index finger.

  Casey gave her a black look and slowly moved to a sitting position. He took a sip of coffee and let it roll around in his mouth.

  “Had a nightcap, huh?”

  “It’s you,” Casey said. “You’re driving me to drink.”

  “Oh, yeah, well, next time I’ll drive you someplace else. You look like hell.”

  Casey made an unintelligible sound deep in his throat.

  “I’d like to stay and exchange grunts with you, but I have to get to work. There’s a full pot of coffee in the kitchen and some stick-to-your-ribs oatmeal.”

  Casey clapped his hand over his mouth, and Alex saw beads of sweat pop out on his forehead.

  “Not ready for oatmeal, huh? I’ll cover it, and you can nuke it later when your stomach is up to it.”

  When Casey got home at six o’clock, Alex was busy in the kitchen. She removed a lamb casserole from the oven and set it steaming and fragrant on the dining room table. She handed Casey a large bowl of salad and slid a loaf of hot French bread onto a breadboard. “Hungry?” she asked.

  Casey shrugged. He was starving! He hadn’t had anything to eat all day, and the smells from the casserole were making him drool, but he had to be cool. He didn’t want her to feel too appreciated. He didn’t want her to get the wrong idea and think he was enjoying this cohabitation stuff.

  Actually, he was enjoying it just a little, he admitted, but he also hated it. It was unnatural to have a woman sleeping in a tent in your living room. Especially when you wanted her to be sleeping in your bed. And every time he reached into his drawer for a pair of socks, he was confronted with her panties.