Manhunt

  He closed his eyes and strained toward her, wrapping her in his arms, burying his face in her dark hair. He wanted to share his passion with her, tell her about the erotic dreams she’d inspired, seduce her with the exotic, sensual images flooding his brain.

  He spun her around and kissed her. No woman should have such power over a man, he thought somberly.

  A yearning had swept over Alex so quickly and so completely that she hadn’t even attempted to fight it, acknowledging that they were already mentally and emotionally joined. The physical joining seemed so inevitable, she couldn’t imagine its not happening.

  Alex pulled at his shirt until it was free of his jeans, and she could feel his heated skin beneath her hand. They looked into each other’s eyes, and a silent communication passed between them, a mutual affirmation that quickened Alex’s heartbeat and caused her grip to tighten on his waist. She watched as Casey parted her shirt, exposing her breasts.

  They moved to the bedroom and let passion guide them as they undressed each other in an act of sexual exploration. The sheets were cool and the room dusky when he moved over her, flesh against flesh. Alex watched Casey, knowing he wasn’t exactly what she’d wanted to find in a husband, but that he was everything she’d come to Alaska looking for. He was the missing piece in her life that money and power couldn’t buy, and she gave herself up to him completely.

  Casey shifted his weight but made no move to leave her. They lay together, bodies entwined, silently thinking private thoughts, contemplating what had just happened. When Alex shivered involuntarily, Casey pulled the quilt over them, carefully tucking it around her shoulders before drawing her back to him.

  Alex had known a few men, but she’d never experienced anything like this. In the quiet aftermath, she felt frightened by the intensity of their lovemaking. She’d given everything and taken everything and now she wasn’t sure what she had left. She wasn’t a woman who lied to herself, and she didn’t do so now. She was desperately in love with Casey despite her desire not to be.

  Casey held Alex close long after she had fallen asleep, deriding himself for letting this happen. He’d fallen in love with a woman who thought bears were cuddly, a New York career girl off on a lark to catch a husband. Exactly what he didn’t need. He should have had the sense to keep his hands to himself, but no, he had to give in to his urges. Now what? How do you walk away from something like this?

  Dammit, Casey, he thought, haven’t you made enough mistakes? Don’t you ever learn? He watched the digital clock change minutes to hours, not wanting to sleep away this time he had with Alex. There wouldn’t be many more nights like this. Tomorrow he was going to find her a husband, and it wasn’t going to be him.

  Alex heard the shower running and squinted into the darkness at the bedside clock. Five-thirty. Memories of the preceding night flooded through her, along with the fact that Casey had to fly this morning. She reluctantly crawled from the warm bed, slipped Casey’s shirt over her naked body, and languorously walked to the kitchen, enjoying the warmth of his modern house, thinking she’d never before fully appreciated central heating.

  She’d made coffee and slid a perfectly browned omelet onto a plate just as Casey appeared in the kitchen. She took a cinnamon roll from the microwave and placed it next to the omelet.

  Casey lounged against the counter, watching her assemble his breakfast. She was wearing his shirt again and had buttoned exactly three buttons. When she raised her arms to get a coffee mug from an overhead cabinet, a tantalizing sight showed beneath the tail of the shirt. He took the plate from her and choked back a wave of desire so strong it made his hand shake. He kept his gaze on the omelet, eating quickly. He had to get out of there fast, he thought, before he was back in bed, begging her to marry him.

  He poured his coffee into a spillproof mug and went in search of his keys and jacket. “I’m in a hurry,” he said gruffly. “I’ll take the coffee with me.” He gave her a perfunctory peck on the cheek and turned to leave. “I’ll send the carpenters to your cabin this morning. Make sure you’re waiting for them,” he called over his shoulder in a voice that sounded grimly strained.

  She was at her cabin by seven-thirty, and at nine a pickup rumbled and bounced along her driveway, coming to a stop just a few feet from her front door. A second truck appeared and parked beside the first. A mountain of a man with long brown hair and a closely cropped beard ambled over to Alex. “You the lady that needs an outhouse?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid I am.”

  “Casey sent us. He said he gave me and my brother the job cause we have brown hair. And he says to tell you we aren’t married. I don’t know what that means, but here we are.”

  The guileless statement took Alex by surprise. Casey was sending her prospective bridegrooms. A stab of pain sliced through her heart, immediately followed by black rage. He’d gotten what he’d wanted, and now he was dumping her, foisting her off on a carpenter. Michael Casey was fungus, pond slime. He thought he could buy her a toilet seat and make her fall in love with him, then get himself off the hook by sending her a brown-haired latrine builder.

  Alex pressed her lips together and made an effort at self-control. Maybe this was supposed to be a joke. Casey couldn’t be this insensitive, this cruel. She was getting upset over nothing. Where was her sense of humor? She gave the bewildered carpenter an embarrassed smile. “Do you know much about outhouses?” she asked him.

  “Everything there is to know.”

  “Good, because I don’t know anything about them. Put it wherever it’s supposed to go, and make it look like whatever it’s supposed to look like. And when you have the time, I’d like you to build me a counter next to the stove. I have to go into town. I don’t suppose you need me for anything?”

  “Don’t suppose we do. We’ll leave the bill tacked to your front door.”

  Alex got her purse, and she and Bruno plodded up the hill to Casey’s house. She’d have to take his truck because she couldn’t fit cleaning equipment in her car. She hefted the dog onto the seat and pressed her lips together at the churning in her stomach. It no longer felt comfortable to use Casey’s truck. She wanted to think the carpenter had been a joke, but she wasn’t sure. If it had been a joke, it was in bad taste. Either way, she wasn’t pleased with Casey.

  She was struggling with the heavy front door of the store when an electrician’s truck pulled into the rutted parking lot. The man was long-faced and lean, with brown hair pulled into a ponytail. He approached Alex and offered to help with the door. “You the lady who needs an electrician?” he added.

  She grimly looked at his hair and nodded.

  The man gave the door a yank and swung it open for Alex to pass. “Casey sent me,” he said with a wide smile. “He says you’re looking for an electrician and a husband, is that true?”

  “What else did Casey say?”

  The young man squinted at the overhead wiring. “He didn’t say much else. He said I should just come look you over and make up my own mind.”

  Alex picked up a three-pound Hudson Bay cruising ax that had been left lying on the counter and thought of its possible uses on men.

  “Make sure the wiring is safe and up-to-date. I want baseboard sockets and at least two more overhead fixtures. Unfortunately, I don’t have the fixtures yet.”

  “That’s okay. I can come back for that. You want to go to the movies tonight?”

  Alex gripped the ax a little tighter. “You want to live to see tomorrow?”

  “Honey, you’re never gonna get married with an attitude like that.” He shook his head. “No wonder Casey has to help you out.”

  Thumbscrews were too good for Michael Casey, Alex decided. She was going to make him pay for this. This was too much.

  Later in the afternoon as Alex drove to the cabin, she passed her little red car parked at the entrance to her driveway. She regarded it sadly. It had been such a source of pride and enjoyment in New Jersey, and now it sat in dusty rejection like some forsaken orphan. br />
  “That’s pitiful,” she said to Bruno. “Just look at that poor car, out there all by itself.”

  She continued up the driveway, holding tightly to the wheel as the truck bounced toward her cabin. “We need stones, about fourteen zillion tons of them. Then this will be a real road, and I can park my little car right next to my front door.” Bruno clenched his teeth and braced himself for the ruts made by the carpenters’ trucks.

  Her new outhouse stood downwind of the cabin, partially hidden by a copse of freshly transplanted spruce saplings. “Bruno, look at it! It’s my outhouse. My very own outhouse.” Alex ran to the small wooden structure. She laughed at the half-moon painted on the door. Who would believe it? Certainly no one back in Princeton.

  The wood had been stained and varnished to match the cabin, and a wet paint sign dangled from a shiny brass doorknob. Alex carefully peeked inside. It was roomier than she’d expected, with a small shelf built into one wall. She looked up at a bubbletop skylight. A gen-x outhouse if she ever saw one.

  Casey sauntered across the field. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, he thought to himself as he kept a cautious distance from Alex. “Nice outhouse,” he said.

  Alex turned slowly to face him. She felt the anger burning in her eyes, but she kept her expression calm. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of provoking her. Two could play this game. “Thanks to your brown-haired carpenters.”

  “Just trying to be helpful.”

  “Mmmm,” Alex murmured, walking back to her cabin. “It was very thoughtful of you, but they weren’t my type. Too big. And the electrician was very nice, but I’m not partial to ponytails.”

  Casey followed a few steps behind, suspicious of the affable tone of her voice. “Maybe it would help if you told me exactly what you were looking for.”

  “About six feet,” Alex said, moving toward the truck, “broad shoulders, flat stomach and a really great butt.” She took a box from the back of the pickup and flashed him an expressionless look. “You know, good breeding stock.”

  Casey breathed an audible sigh of relief to find he hadn’t been wrong in his assessment of the female mind. She was madder than hell. She just wasn’t going to demean herself by showing it. And she had a wicked sense of humor. He grabbed a box and a grocery bag and followed her into the house. “Looks like you’ve been shopping.”

  “I left the store early to stop by the post office and get some of the stuff I shipped from New Jersey. I think I’m missing only one carton. And I stopped at the supermarket and bought healthy food. No doughnuts. And I got some other needed stuff, too.”

  “How will Bruno survive without doughnuts?”

  “It’s going to be tough. We’ll probably both go into withdrawal.”

  Casey stacked cans of fruit and jars of juice on the new shelves next to the cookstove. He lined up boxes of cereal and noodles. He stepped back to admire the colorful arrangement.

  “That’s a work of art,” Alex told him. “You have a definite flair with cereal.”

  “This whole cabin is a work of art. I think I like it better than my house.”

  “Want to trade?”

  Casey grinned. “Can’t wait to get your hands on my plumbing, huh?”

  Alex bit her tongue at the double entendre. Mr. Love ’Em and Leave ’Em would blanch if he knew that she’d like to make sure he never plumbed again.

  She opened a large cardboard box and hastily transferred the silky contents to her chest of drawers. “Okay, that’s it,” she said. “Thanks for your help.” They walked outside, and she realized she’d have to drive his truck back to his house. “I’ll follow you in the truck.”

  Casey nodded and slid behind the wheel of the Bronco. He was doing it again, he thought grimly. He was flirting with her. And when he got her up to the house, he knew he’d try to seduce her. He was being honest with himself. His good intentions weren’t worth a damn when he got within touching range of Alexandra Scott. The woman was a menace.

  He drove the Bronco into the garage and went directly to the house, forcing her to bring the keys to him.

  Alex felt the anger rising in waves clear up to the roots of her hair when she realized what he was doing. She stood on the threshold of the patio door and dangled his keys from her fingertip.

  “You’re probably hungry,” Casey said. “Would you like to split a can of soup with me?”

  “No. I have to go home and get a good night’s sleep. You never know what tomorrow will bring. Maybe Prince Charming. Have you picked out my sign painter yet?”

  “I had someone in mind, but he doesn’t have a really great butt. I’ll have to go back through my little black book.”

  They stood for several seconds, sizing each other up, each smiling a tight smile that didn’t quite reach to their eyes. “Will you be up for breakfast?” Casey asked in a lazy drawl.

  “No.”

  “How about a shower?” He knew he was pushing it, but he couldn’t resist. She was fun to tease.

  She rolled her eyes and turned to leave.

  “Wait. You can’t go yet. I have your toilet seat.”

  “How could I have forgotten.”

  Casey retrieved a box from the closet and tucked it under Alex’s arm. “And you’ll need this.” A roll of toilet paper. “Okay, you can go now.”

  Alex gave an exasperated sigh and moved away from the door.

  “Hold it,” Casey said, snagging her by the elbow. “One more thing.”

  “Now what?”

  Strong, warm hands brushed gently along the planes of her face and tangled in her hair, cradling her head. His lips were soft and coaxing and withdrew reluctantly. “Good night.”

  Alex opened her mouth to speak, but she was so furious and so aroused that no words came out. She narrowed her eyes, turned on her heel, and strode across his lawn.

  Chapter Six

  Looking at the geometric patterns of sunlight on her freshly varnished floor, Alex was reluctant to leave the comfort of her big down quilt. Bruno sat by the door, waiting for her to get up and let him out, so she pushed the hair out of her eyes and crawled to the ladder.

  She sucked in her breath when her bare feet hit the frigid floor and cold air swirled up her loose-fitting nightgown. She quickly pulled on the bottoms to the long johns Casey had persuaded her to buy, and a pair of red woolen socks. Just for good measure, she laced up her brand-new, heavy-duty hiking boots. Snapping shut a blue-and-red ski parka over her pink, midcalf nightie, she flung the front door open, and said, “Okay, Bruno, go do whatever it is Alaskan dogs do.”

  She opened her eyes wide and gasped at the sight of Casey standing just inches from her, hand poised in midair, ready to knock on her door.

  “Morning,” he drawled.

  “You scared the daylights out of me!”

  Casey looked her over. “You’re pretty scary too. Is this a new approach to birth control?”

  “I’m freezing to death!”

  “Honey, it’s only the beginning of September. It’s thirty-five degrees. That’s balmy by Alaskan standards,” he said, making no move to step inside.

  Alex twitched her nose and sniffed the air. “I smell coffee.”

  A plastic laundry basket sat on the ground at Casey’s feet. He pointed to it. “I brought you a thermos.”

  Alex noticed it was leaning against a stack of clothes that had been freshly washed and neatly folded. “You did my laundry?”

  “Yeah. This is the first time I’ve ever had fun doing the laundry. I especially like the black lace panties with the little red bows.”

  “This is embarrassing.”

  “I’m on my way to work. Anything you’d like me to do for you, besides sending over a sign painter?”

  “I’d like to have a phone installed at the store.”

  Casey nodded. “How about your driveway? You want to have it done before the first snow falls and the ground gets too hard to level.”

  “Try to get me a low price.”
r />   Casey played with the tag on her jacket zipper. “Hey, those guys with the great butts don’t come cheap. You get what you pay for.”

  Alex nodded her head in mute agreement. She clutched her jacket to her throat and wondered if there really was a God. And did He have a bizarre sense of humor? Was He getting a chuckle out of pitting her against Michael Casey? She took the laundry basket, mumbled “thank you,” and hastily retreated back inside her cabin.

  In the past two weeks Alex had seen only three customers, and they hadn’t bought anything. She listened to rain drumming on the tin and tar paper roof and prowled the showroom like a caged animal. The store was now scrubbed and freshly painted. No thanks to Andy. Andy wasn’t a man who welcomed change. Andy was like an old hermit crab who only came out of his shell when food appeared. New overhead lighting had been installed and a coffeepot perked on a sideboard in an attempt to dispel the gloom pervading the coarse room.

  Andy poked his head out of his private den and ambled to the coffeepot. “Run out of things to do?” he inquired. “Don’t ya want to scrub something one more time?”

  Alex gave him a murderous look that warned him sarcasm wasn’t appreciated.

  “Women,” he mumbled, filling his cup and returning to the back room.

  The front door swung open and Casey came in dragging a carton behind him. He’d seen Alex only briefly since he’d done her laundry and taken her a thermos of coffee. The theory had been that since he couldn’t control himself when he was near her, he’d stay far away, but her very presence on his mountain ate away at him. Every evening he walked through the woods to the perimeter of her property to be sure she was safe. He would stand for a moment, staring at the golden light pouring from the cabin window and watch for the familiar feminine shadow to move into his line of vision. Every morning he would drive by the store to be sure her car was parked in the lot. For the past three days he’d been in San Francisco securing a new freight contract and had pacified his loneliness by shopping for presents.