Stranded With Her Rescuer

Dexter was stoked to be released from his tether and tasked with being her bodyguard. He galumphed alongside her into the trees, breaking out in wider and wider arcs, sniffing everything he found. Kitty trod carelessly at first but then Dexter’s obsession with the Boreal floor drew her eyes downward, too, and she realised what it was she was walking on with her spanking new boots.

Living creatures.

The ground was blanketed with lichens, waterlogged plantlets and mosses, all of it jewelled with icicles. Leaves the colour of bruises poked up from between a mossy groundcover so green it was almost yellow. Something white that looked as if it belonged on a reef rather than a forest floor. Some kind of pale parasitic plant, growing happily on anything that didn’t fight back, alongside earth-toned fungi piggybacking on a tree’s circulatory system. Such a perfect natural system working in balance; crowded and chaotic and tangled, but everything was getting exactly what it needed to survive. And all of them poking above last night’s snowfall. Now and again, a rare patch of actual ground, something hard underfoot. Not the ground that was made of dirt and went down and down until it hit bedrock—this ground sat on permafrost; a layer of ice, far below, that never managed to thaw, even in summer.

Which would explain the bone-numbing cold rising up through the forest floor into her boots.

She stepped out of the thicker copse of trees to the edge of a clearing and stared into the distance. Orangey brown as far as the eye could see, everything frosted with ice, punctuated by the one-sided Tamarack trees that reached for the sky, and dotted with little swamps of frigid surface water. Really this was just one big, thriving wetland. All of it in soft focus, courtesy of the gentle fog.

She filled her lungs with the cleanest air she’d ever tasted and eased it back out again just as slowly.

It took her a moment to realise that Dexter was growling.

It started low in his long throat and then burbled up and out of his barely parted lips, his tail stiffening and vibrating minutely. He’d turned his stare straight back into the forest, the direction she would have to go to get the short distance back to the house.

Thoughts of all the things out here that could be bigger than her flashed through her mind. Bears, wolves, even caribou could do some damage if they were in the right mood. Or the wrong one. Her eyes darted around for anything with which to defend herself, then she gave up and peered deep into the empty stand of trees she’d just left, breath suspended.

Out of nowhere, a massive flash of grey bounded towards her out of the darkness. She hadn’t even seen it lurking! But before she could do more than suck in enough breath for a scream, Dexter’s tail lifted from its low, stiff position to a higher wave. Less like an accusing finger and more like a parade flag.

‘Jango!’ Will stepped out of the shadows behind his dog.

A sawn-off log made for a convenient place to slowly sink down in lieu of collapse. Jango sneezed and bounded off with Dexter to explore, leaving Kitty with only Will to defend her. Even without the firearm he’d slung over his shoulder, she trusted he could do just that. Probably with his bare hands.

He was just that kind of man.

Maybe that was why she’d fallen so hard for him back in Nepal.

‘Did I wander too far?’ she asked, immediately contrite.

‘I needed to give Jango a run to see how her leg is doing, thought I might as well come this way.’

Pfff... ‘Worried about the tourist getting lost in your forest?’

‘Just worried for my dog,’ he corrected carefully.

That brought her eyes around to the hound snuffling around a distant tree. ‘What happened to her?’

‘She lost a pad to frostbite,’ he said. ‘Standing guard over an injured hiker last winter.’

Concern stained her voice. ‘And she’s still healing?’

‘She wore a mediboot all summer. It’s just come off.’

Kitty couldn’t shake the feeling that it was an excuse. Maybe he didn’t trust her outside alone. Once a rescuer, always a rescuer.

‘It’s stunning out here,’ she breathed, turning back to the open stretch where Boreal eased out into more open wetlands. ‘Is it all like this?’

‘Where it’s not tundra,’ he grunted. ‘Or Hudson Bay.’

He extended his hand to help her to her feet. It took two deep breaths before she could bring herself to slide her fingers into his. But two layers of arctic gloves muted the old zing and she only had to contend with the gentle pressure of his strong hand around hers until he released her.

‘Listen, Will...’

His back tightened immediately and he turned away from what was coming. She caught his elbow before he could spin away fully.

‘I wanted to...’ Lord, how did you start a conversation like this one? Thank you for telling me your wife died. ‘When Marcella—’

‘Sorry it was such a group announcement,’ he interrupted.

It was part of what had first drawn her to him, Will’s ability to just know what she was thinking. ‘Don’t apologise. I was so grateful to have heard after everything we’d seen on the news feeds. The quakes... I messaged you. Twice.’

She’d tried to convince her network to let her go to Nepal, to report on the recovery—desperate to see Will still breathing with her own eyes—but in the end the vast numbers of media streaming into the city had only been putting more pressure on Kathmandu’s limited resources. Instead, she’d kept herself glued to the feeds coming into her network, looking for the slightest glimpse of Will working with his rescue dogs in the capital. Even as she’d reminded herself why she shouldn’t even care. It hadn’t occurred to her that either of them faced such risk staying to help out after the first quake.

He winced, but then his gaze lifted and locked onto hers. ‘I wasn’t really in a position to chat.’

No. He’d just buried his wife.

Metaphorically.

He tugged his arm free and turned to stride away from her along the squishy Boreal floor.

Will’s eventual message had shattered her and, as she’d quietly wept, she’d known a deep kind of shame that she was crying not just out of sadness that her friend had died, but also for relief that Will had not.

‘How are you doing now?’ she risked, catching up with him.

He shrugged, and she supposed it was meant to appear easy. ‘That was two years ago.’

‘You don’t set a watch on losing someone you love. Or on a traumatic event like that.’

He stomped on in silence but finally had no real choice but to answer. ‘I’m doing okay.’

‘Long way from Nepal,’ she prompted, stumbling over a particularly thick thatch of sod grass.

He slowed a little so that she didn’t have to scamper after him like an arctic hare. ‘I was a bit over mountains. So I looked for the widest, flattest, most open space I could find where I could also work rescue.’

She could well imagine his desire to come home to Canada, too. Back to what he knew. To regroup.

Kitty scanned the distant horizon and the miles and miles of squat flat Boreal stretching all the way to it. ‘You sure found flat.’

Dexter and Jango continued to frolic, dashing around and sticking their noses into any space big enough to accommodate one. Given they spent much of their day tethered to their kennels or to a sled, working, this kind of freedom was probably a rare luxury. And sneezing seemed to be Jango’s way of celebrating.

‘What happened to your dogs in Nepal?’ she risked.

His silence was almost answer enough, but then he finally spoke. ‘I had four dogs with me in Kathmandu when the second quake hit, so they survived. I left them behind with Roshan when I left. There was still a lot of recovery work for them to do there without me.’

Only four survivors...

She’d had the privilege of filming most of Will’s sixteen dogs out hunting for lost climbers on the Annapurna Mountains, or a pair of hikers caught down in the valleys, or just training out in the field. He’d probably never imagined the horrific circumstances they’d be working in just a few years later. Or that he would lose so many of them in a single event.

‘Hard, leaving the four behind...’ she probed.

In the silent forest, his voice had no trouble drifting back to her. And when it did it was raw and thick and honest—the Will she remembered from Nepal.

‘Harder staying.’

He had suffered immeasurably. Losing his wife, the place he called home, the dogs he trained and loved. Facing death and despair every single day for weeks.

And she was asking him to relive it now.

Heat rushed up from under the collar of her parka. ‘Sorry, Will. Blame my enquiring mind...’

It took her a moment to notice that he’d fallen behind her as she picked her way through the moss. She turned. Regret stained his ice-blue eyes, then changed into something more like dark grief.

‘No. I’m sorry, Kitty. Your questions are perfectly reasonable. Under the circumstances.’

For the first time since she’d arrived in Churchill he was normal with her. Human. The old Will. The man who had made her breathless with just one look. Faint with the accidental touch of his callused fingers. It was absolutely the right time to go deeper, to wiggle her way in under his protective barriers and hunt for more of the old Will.

Except that Old Will had as little place in New Kitty’s life as he did in his own.

The past belonged in the past.

‘So, how are you settling in in Churchill?’ she asked, to give him a break.

He sighed. ‘I keep to myself for the most part. That is reason enough to get noticed up here.’

‘I would have thought the north was full of people keeping to themselves.’

‘Turns out there are rules to being an outcast. Some social niceties that even hermits are expected to deliver on.’ He glanced at her expression. ‘I may not have made quite the effort that they were expecting.’

Kitty slid him a sideways glance. ‘You shock me.’

On anyone else, that slight twisting of his lips might have been a smile. On Will, it never paid to assume. But her heart flip-flopped regardless. ‘Still, the airport lady seemed to think well enough of you.’

‘I’m working on it. So what was in Zurich?’ he asked, artfully moving the conversation on. ‘A story or a man?’

There was nothing in the impassive question to give her pause, yet it did. Maybe it was the irony of this man asking her about other men. Will Margrave was precisely the reason she’d had no meaningful relationships since the last time she’d seen him. She’d thrown herself into her work for the twelve months after being so rudely ejected from Pokhara, and soon she’d been way too busy escalating her career to entertain more than the most casual of relationships. Too caught up globetrotting and network-hopping and hunting down the big stories.

She’d gone to Nepal in search of a powerful story, not a powerful attraction. Regardless, afterwards she’d struggled to find a man who could reach the very high bar Will had set.

Perhaps she should thank him for her successful career. He’d given her the shove she needed to be great. Greater.

‘I was in Zurich shooting a story about Switzerland’s textile industry. Tax haven meets innovation.’

‘Industry?’ He frowned. ‘Doesn’t seem like your kind of thing.’

He would say that. The woman he’d met five years ago was into human-interest stories and spectacular natural places, not commercial ventures and tax law.

She pressed her lips together. ‘We all change.’

Especially when you were as highly motivated as she had been. Focusing on your career to the exclusion of anything else. ‘I’m a foreign correspondent for a Chinese TV network now, CNTV. Their business programmes. Based in LA.’

If by ‘based’ you meant a postage stamp of an apartment that she rarely ever returned to because she was on the road so much. The world’s most expensive storage facility.

‘Foreign correspondent makes a little more sense, I guess.’

Was that a compliment or a criticism? It was impossible to tell from Will.

‘Nothing wrong with ambition,’ she huffed. ‘And I go where the stories are.’

Certainly, her career had gone where the promotions were. Hopping from network to network as opportunities presented themselves. The closest she came, these days, to the hobo-like habits of her past.

Lord how she missed the hobo days, sometimes. When her boss’s boss was hammering them for a particular angle or cutting a deadline by days it was hard not to long for the freedom she used to enjoy creating her own stories, following her nose, rolling with her instincts.

But she’d traded all that for a steady income and a bigger font on her credit.

‘Plenty of stories to be found up here,’ Will murmured. ‘Maybe you can knock off a few while you wait for your airlift out. Though you might struggle to find something to interest the business set.’

‘You don’t think cashed-up people want to see polar bears?’

‘I know they do. I’ve escorted some of them around the district. Though I am curious why you don’t seem to want to. Most people would have started nagging hours ago.’

Didn’t want to? Was that what he thought? The truth was so much more complicated. If she saw a polar bear, how would she stop wanting to see polar bears? Or eagles. Or manatees. Or deserts.

She’d gone for a clean break—and for corporate stories—for a reason.

‘I’d like to see a bear,’ she breathed on a puff of mist before hurriedly adding, ‘Though not out here.’

Again that tiny mouth twist. ‘So take a few days to look around.’

Easy for him to say. It wasn’t Will’s heart aching at the potential of this place. It wasn’t his soul trilling to be standing here, knee-deep in lichens and moss. It wasn’t his lungs aching with so much more than the coldness of the air around them.

Will wasn’t the one who had to leave Churchill the moment her number came up.

She’d already felt what it was like to be banished from somewhere that had rapidly started feeling like her soul home. Why would she set herself up for that again?

‘I’m on deadline for the Zurich piece. If I’m not back in the studio within a few days, this story is going to get cut and aired without me.’

And then who knew what angle it would take? There was no shortage of producers who would love to steal the feature slot she’d fought for. A slot that was scheduled just eight days from now.

Will frowned. ‘There’s every chance you won’t be, Kitty. You need to be prepared for that.’

She chewed her lip. ‘Maybe I can cut a rough from here on my laptop, and file that as a starter...’

‘I have the best comms outside of the Port because of my rescue work,’ Will went on. ‘There’s a satellite set up out back of the cabin. If you need to be talking to your network in China or sending them rough cuts this is the place to do it from. Mi data es su data.’

The man certainly knew how to appeal to a woman’s sense of duty... But it didn’t stop her chewing her lip.

‘Or shoot something entirely else.’

‘I’m not sure the business types at CNTV will be queuing up for an exposé on the hidden delights of the fifty-eighth parallel.’

‘So don’t do it for them, do it for you. Call it research if you truly can’t bring yourself to just relax and enjoy a few days of downtime.’

Relax? No, not while Will was around. She wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

Old Kitty would have chased whatever story excited her and would have told it in whatever way she wanted and then sold it to whoever had the most sympathetic vision. And if no one wanted to buy it she would have whacked it online, free, for the world to enjoy. Because the story was king back then. Money came much further down the list. Back in her idealistic, self-determined, passionate freelance days. Back before she was employed by particular networks to tell particular kinds of stories with particular kinds of agendas for particular kinds of audiences...

Back before New Kitty was born.

But wasn’t there some saying about making hay while the sun shone? Or the snow fell, in Churchill’s case. She was in the sub-arctic, cut off from the rest of the world, forced to take some time off from her competitive, all-consuming career. If there was a better opportunity to take a few days out of being Action Kitty to just remember how it felt to be Hobo Kitty she really couldn’t imagine it.

And keeping busy...now that definitely held a heap of appeal. But she made a last-ditch effort to say no.

‘Your plane practically fell from the sky, Kit. As excuses go that one is both solid and on public record. You’re stuck here for days, and insurance is picking up the tab...’

Kit.

Time had done nothing to dispel the fluttering of her heart when he used the diminutive form of her name. A presumption he’d made five years ago and she’d never been inclined to correct. She’d come to like it. Wait for it, even.

The reality was she was stuck here until tomorrow, if not later. Given how much work she yet had to do on the footage still on her hard drive, she’d be spending most of it in her room, tinkering on her laptop. If she stayed another day—or, God forbid, days—she could fill the time with research for a future story. That would keep her busy and out of Will’s way.

‘I guess that does open up a certain opportunity.’

‘And accommodation is free,’ he added.

‘Not if I find somewhere else to stay.’ Which she would, because he wouldn’t want her here any more than he had in Nepal. Will was just doing what was expected when a jet liner fell out of the sky in your back yard.

He turned in front of her and stopped her progress. ‘You won’t find anywhere, not for a few days. Besides you don’t need to relocate. You’re welcome to stay in my spare room as long as you need it.’

She stiffened her spine and locked gazes. ‘I was “welcome” in your home once before, remember?’

And there it was—streaking up his jaw out from under his scrappy beard—a subtle flash of red. The first real evidence that he remembered how they’d parted all those years ago.

Which meant he’d probably be on the lookout for repeats. Which meant she’d be on eggshells for ever, trying to give him nothing.

Everything in her screamed caution not to set herself up for more hurt. A single night was one thing...

‘I really don’t want to be a bother.’

His lips twisted. ‘I’m sure we can give each other plenty of room in a forest this big.’

No, Kitty. You’re no bother.

It’s fine, Kitty. No trouble.

Relax, Kitty, it’s out of your control.

On the scale of denials, Will’s effort was non-existent. Still...maybe picking up after herself and keeping out of his way would be adequate repayment for his dubious hospitality. And her story would get filed. And she’d have some fun reliving the old hobo days.

Win-win.

‘Okay. I guess it wouldn’t hurt for me to see a few things while I’m here.’ She watched him, carefully. ‘You know...research.’

The look he gave her then was uncomfortable in the way only Will could make it. As if he saw right through her flimsy excuses. As if he knew exactly how he made her feel and how she would feel until she collapsed, emotionally wrung out, into a plane seat and flew far from here.

As if he knew her better than she knew herself.

Pfff. This was Nepal all over again.

CHAPTER THREE

A DAY LATER, Kitty clung desperately to the back of Will’s jacket as his quad bike flew them out to the local weir that dammed Churchill River. Will was the closest resident to it, which, apparently, made checking on activity at the weir his responsibility.

‘I go out dawn and dusk,’ he’d told her as he’d whipped the cover off the quad and hauled it out of the little shelter that kept it frost-free. ‘Put the flag up and then lower it again. Check on conditions. I take a different dog each time.’

This morning it was Bose’s turn. He’d seemed to know exactly what was happening and his excitement levels were off the chart waiting for them to get moving. Once they got under way, the golden retriever ran full tilt alongside the quad, breaking away to thunder through not quite frozen pools before veering back in to run hard up against Will’s left foot.

The quad bounced and slid along the snow-dusted track, crunching through the surface ice formed on puddles and practically flying over every dip and mound. Before long, gripping the back of Will’s jacket wasn’t enough to keep her firmly in her seat and the wind chill made her gloved fingers ache. So she slid her arms around his waist and dipped her head against the whipping snow and hoped to heaven that he didn’t mind the intimacy. Or wouldn’t read into it.

Warmer and more secure. And totally necessary.

Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.

The lie got harder to buy every time she breathed a lungful of him in.

As they came up over the final bend, Bose took off ahead of them and bolted down the long strait as fast as his legs could carry him, towards a watchtower overlooking the river.

‘Churchill Weir,’ Will called back. ‘Two hundred thousand cubic metres of rock piled up across the river to control water flow and create a reservoir for boating and fishing.’

Though obviously not so much in the frigid weeks leading up to winter. It was an impressive—but utterly vacant—facility about a mile up from where the Churchill River opened out into Hudson Bay. A mini-marina with boathouse, pontoon berths, first-aid facilities, fire pits, and the three-storey watchtower that served double duty as a lookout for tourists. The steel tower was fully caged in, in the event of a bear-related emergency, presumably. The massive structure could hold fifty people at a pinch.

Just two people and one dog was a pure luxury.

Kitty climbed to the top of the tower while Will checked over the marina and raised a wind-shredded Canadian flag for the day. Bose dived right into the icy river, splashing around like a kid in summer. He found a stick and chased it, tossing it up and letting it drift away on the current before crunching through the ice on the edge of the shore and diving back in after it.

Eventually, man and dog joined her at the bottom of the watchtower.

Around them, the river water churned and surged in the gusty, cold air. Icicles clung to the exposed leaves where it whipped up into a froth amongst the water sedge and polar grass. All around were banks of the rich red stick willow that grew so abundantly up here. Kitty pulled her woollen beanie down more firmly against the icy wind that buffeted her face with invisible needles. Even the gentle snowflakes felt like blades when they were tossed against her wind-whipped skin.

‘Bear!’

She gasped and crouched, pointing to the far side of the weir where a polar bear was in the process of hauling itself out of the river and up onto the bank. It did a full body shake that rippled its massive loose skin, then sauntered out into the middle of the parking area before pausing to think about the world.

It took barely a moment to find them with its beady black eyes once it had turned its nose to the air.

‘Inside,’ Will ordered, tugging her back into the towering metal lookout. The door closed behind the three of them with a reassuringly heavy clang. They were safe, as long as the bear didn’t decide to curl up out there for a nap. People had frozen in less time. Even with two layers of thermals and borrowed down jackets. And even in late autumn.

‘Can it smell us?’ she whispered.

‘No question,’ Will said. ‘But we won’t smell lardy enough to seriously interest it.’

She looked at him quizzically.

‘Bears hunt seals for their blubber, not their flesh,’ he explained.

‘And they can smell it?’

‘Two kilometres away, yep.’

‘And they don’t eat anything but seals?’

‘They can, but protein is not what they’re hungry for. People are way too stringy for them, as a rule.’