North Country Man

Alouette, Michigan. Located high on the Upper Peninsula.

Home to strong men, stalwart women and lots and lots of trees. If you come, bring your camera—you won’t believe the number of stars in our skies or the color of our sunsets.

And if you’re lucky, you might just meet a cute critter or two. But remember: The U.P. is not like anywhere else.

We even have our own language. Don’t worry, though.

It’s easy to learn. Here are a couple of pointers:

YOOPER: resident of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (aka the U.P.)

FOURTH OF JULY: Yooper summer.

HOLY WAH!: Yooper exclamation.

TROLL: resident of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula (below the Mackinac Bridge).

FINNISH TERMS:

MUMMU: grandmother

PIKKU: little (girl)

RIIESKA: half bread, half biscuit—all good

SISU: character, grit, spunk—Finnish-style

SAUNA: steam bath (aka Finnish religion)

VIHTA: switch made of birch branches

Dear Reader,

This book was a long time in coming. Ever since I began writing for Harlequin, I’ve intended to set a book in my hometown area, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. But it had to be the right story, the right setting and the right characters….

Noah and Claire are it—big and bold and brave. And Bay House is it, so real to me on the cliff overlooking Lake Superior that I just might try to check in. As for the town of Alouette and the supporting cast—well, they’re completely fictional, but also entirely familiar. I hope you recognize a little bit of your own hometown in them.

Please look for my forthcoming Superromance stories about the people of Alouette. If you’d like to know more, visit my new Web site at www.carriealexander.com, where you can get the inside scoop and secret family recipes for lumberjack cookies and riieska.

Forever a Yooper,

Carrie Alexander

North Country Man

Carrie Alexander

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To the gang at the RFF:

For the laughs, the names, the trouble,

the chats (pass the peanuts), the witty banter, the randy Viking, the tales of the TBR.

For everything—even the thwacker!

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

“YEAH, I WANTED to get away from it all,” Claire Levander said to herself as the rental car bumpety-bumped along the ridges of the lonely two-lane country road. The blacktop had buckled like cardboard left out in the rain. “But I didn’t expect to be sent to the ends of the earth.”

Suddenly a pickup truck with a gun rack in its rear window roared by on the left. Her lungs seized as she jerked the steering wheel to the right, then fought to control her instinctive need to get away. The truck was too close.

Claire didn’t draw a proper breath until the vehicle had swung into the proper lane. The eggbeater rattle of its engine was shockingly loud with no other traffic around. She was accustomed to the efficient hum of the airport shuttles that were her normal mode of transportation to a new job.

Truthfully, it was the entire situation that had shaken her. Although she’d practically begged Drake for an easy assignment, she’d been thinking deluxe accommodations, not unrelenting rusticity. For her, country meant friendly folks, humble cottages, open farmland and a freeway to the city.

Not this—this barely civilized wilderness.

The pickup sped away, blatting stinky blue smoke from its tailpipe. The rust-eaten muffler drooped dangerously low, hanging on by a few wires.

Claire imagined that these backwoods roads were constantly littered with mufflers, tailpipes and oil pans. The country was supposed to be safe, but the odds of her getting stranded with car trouble out here in the boondocks were probably worse than being mugged on a subway.

“Drat that Drake. This is not what I need right now.” Claire clenched her fingers on the wheel and slowly eased her rental car’s tires away from the crumbling edge of the blacktop. She did not want to wind up in the ditch.

A dense, tangled forest met in a canopy over the narrow road, screening all but the ambient light of the setting sun. The snatches of sky visible through the interlaced treetops looked bruised—purple and dusky blue, faintly tinged with yellow. If she’d known her journey to the hinterlands would end like this, she’d have forgone her habit of arriving the day before a meeting and booked a morning flight. Instead, efficient as ever, she’d chosen to be early. To get the lay of the land.

Never had the phrase been so appropriate. Thus far, it was a wild, rugged, alarmingly unpopulated land. She’d driven a half hour from the airport before she’d reached a town of any consequence, then realized that she still had farther to go. Since Marquette, signs of civilization had diminished. There were no roadside conveniences. Little traffic. No habitation, either, except for the occasional driveways—if such overgrown paths could be called driveways—that led off through the woods.

“To the ends of the earth,” Claire muttered, wishing she hadn’t been quite so open with Drake about her dilemma.

Upon hearing the dubious results of Claire’s annual physical, her boss had promised her a working vacation. “This one’s a slam dunk, Claire. You’ll love Upper Michigan,” Drake the Snake had said, speaking with the usual forked tongue. “One breath of the fresh air will clear your lungs of city pollution. One walk through the woods will soothe that incipient ulcer. You’ll have pure relaxation—no worries and no expectations. We’ve booked you directly into Bay House, so you’ll be on the premises with almost nothing to do. Set your own pace on this one, hon.” Drake had chuckled. “No, that’s not so wise, is it? I want you to take it easy this time out. You’ve earned a gimme assignment.”

Claire nodded. Why hadn’t Drake sent her to Key West or Carmel-by-the-Sea, where she could have relaxed in luxury? Because he was a slithering reptile, that’s why. For months now, he’d been raking in the accolades that were rightfully hers.

The sun had almost set. She frowned at the darkening road. Feeling vaguely like Livingstone hacking through the jungle, she switched the headlights to high beams and pressed on. It took more than a slimy boss and a little bit of wilderness to defeat Claire Levander.

Friends and acquaintances considered her job with the Bel Vista Hotel Corporation a paid vacation. They were dead wrong. She did advance acquisition work for the luxury bed-and-breakfast division, which meant she traveled around the U.S. and Canada and even the occasional foreign port, checking into tourist towns, checking out various charming inns and stately Victorians for potential profitability.

It had seemed like a plum assignment when she’d been awarded the position eighteen months ago. But the nomadic lifestyle, combined with the pressure of recommending acquisitions that could go from black ink to black hole with one unforeseen mechanical failure or plumbing disaster, had wreaked havoc with her nervous system. Even the company’s doctor had advised her to scale back, and he was notoriously more corporate than caring.

To Claire’s surprise, the prospect of slowing her climb to the top had been appealing, even when she tried to remember that it was traitorous to the goals she’d set for herself at sixteen. She’d been with Bel Vista since college, had worked her way up from the most junior of executive assistants. The long hours and hectic schedule had meant postponing her personal life, particularly the romantic side of it. Even her family obligations had suffered. She’d felt guilty about that, but she hadn’t stopped to think that the stress would eventually become physical as well as emotional.

She’d grown up in a small, old-fashioned town where it had sometimes seemed that hairdresser or housewife were the only options for a female. Claire had set her sights…further. Not higher, really, just further.

Early on, she’d realized that a good education and career were her best routes out of Florence, Nebraska. She hadn’t foreseen that she might grow to miss what she’d once been desperate to leave or that settling down did not always mean settling.

Unfortunately, settling down and Bel Vista executive were not synonymous expressions. She had four weeks of vacation coming, but Drake the Snake wasn’t about to clear the way for her to take it. Her present assignment—an unpromising bed-and-breakfast in the dinky backwater town of Alouette, Michigan—was about as generous as Drake Wylie got.

Not even he seemed to expect her to come up with a business plan to buy Bay House cheap and turn it into a thriving Bel Vista operation. Meaning she had an entire week to do her research and produce a complimentary but ultimately negative report that would satisfy the fat-cat executive who’d proposed the idea in the first place.

That also gave her a week to decide which path her life should take. Tough luck for her that she’d have to do it in such an unsettling, bewildering land.

Claire let out a wry chuckle as she peered out the window at the dense forest. She wanted to find her way—not lose all direction.

Just when she’d seriously begun to wonder if she was the last person on earth, a roadside convenience store appeared up ahead. She slowed to look it over as she passed.

The Buck Stop.

Frankly, the place was a dump. Asphalt shingles, worn board siding plastered with faded advertisements. A neon beer sign in the window and one bare lightbulb over the crooked screen door. A nondescript car idled in the small gravel parking lot. Bel Vista’s upscale clientele would sooner go without their frappuccinos than shop at such a shabby joint—and that included the ones who’d read too much Hemingway and fancied themselves backwoods adventurers.

Claire sniffed. So much for civilization!

A minute later, she squinted at the odometer. Before setting off from the airport, she’d studied her map, laid out her route and calculated the mileage. Alouette, with a population of approximately sixteen hundred forsaken souls, wasn’t far now. Electricity and hot water were probably the best she could hope for out of Bay House, but her spirits lifted anyway.

As she settled back in the car seat, a movement at the side of the road caught her eye.

Bear!

The large, furry shape shifted, blending into the shadows as she sped by, but there was no mistaking the small, gamboling creature at its heels. A cub. Fearfully glancing over her shoulder, Claire touched the brake. The underbrush, briefly lit by the car’s taillights, had swallowed the hirsute pair. Slim silvery trunks stood out against the shadowy forest primeval.

“Wild Kingdom,” she whispered, struck by her reaction to the raw nature of it all. Her heart was racing, and blood sang in her ears like a timpani.

Only a second or two had passed, but she returned her attention to the road just in time to glimpse a pair of amber eyes glowing at her directly ahead. She slammed on the brakes as a tawny shape—a deer, she realized—flew across the hood as though it had sprouted wings. A thud shook the car.

Claire wrenched the wheel. The vehicle shot off the road, its rear end slewing. She thought she screamed, although the screeching sound that filled the car might have been the brakes. She’d jammed the pedal to the floorboard.

The dense forest closed around the car. Branches and twigs cracked on all sides. Overhanging boughs whisked the windshield like a perverse rural car wash. The auto slammed into something solid and came to a sudden shuddering halt, front end canted at an awkward downward angle.

Claire pushed herself off the steering wheel and cut the ignition. Her panting filled the terrible silence. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, feeling her face with shaking fingertips. No blood or broken bones. She released the seat belt. “Fine and dandy.”

What about the deer? She remembered the awful thud. It might have been the sound of hooves on the hood. Then again, it might not. Her eyes burned; she squeezed them shut.

“Okay. First things first.” She took a deep breath, trying to ease the tight, panicky feeling in her chest. With so much foliage pressed against the windows, the interior of the car was dark and close, almost claustrophobic. She had to get out. Assess the damage. Look for the deer.

The deer. Oh, please.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” Claire said, falling back on the habit of talking through a difficult situation. It was a technique she’d used on her brother, Max, to get him to the dentist. And on her baby sister, Lyndsay, to distract her from window-rattling thunderstorms.

Once Claire was finally on her own, she’d found that the technique also worked on herself. She’d talked herself into leaving home for college and staying there even when times got tough. She’d talked herself through standing up for herself with Drake and demanding an overdue raise and promotion. Through the horrible night six months ago when word of her father’s death had come while she’d been stranded by a snowstorm in a Vermont inn. The sheer helplessness of not being there for her family had been devastating. The only comfort she’d had was her own voice, repeating into the dark silence of the guest room, “They’ll be okay, be okay, be okay….”

Claire was the oldest child in a family of eight, with one parent unreliable and the other consumed with earning a living. It had always been her job to make sure everything was okay. The house. Meals. Clothes. Appointments. School. And especially her siblings.

“But you’re okay alone,” she said firmly. She opened the door a crack, pushing experimentally at the smothering branches. They were flexible enough to bend out of the way. She poked a leg outside, followed by her head and shoulders. “The deer is okay, too. But I have to make sure.”

Her brave voice was swallowed by the overwhelming silence of a north woods night. She stood, inhaling the clear cold air. The forest was all around her. The scent was impossible to describe—nothing like the little pine-tree air freshener that hung from the rearview mirror. She could only define it as green. Earthy. Alive. But it wasn’t as quiet as she’d first thought. There were all sorts of sounds—rustling and chattering and an eerie creaking that accompanied each gust of the chilly breeze.

She swallowed nervously. “Nothing to be afraid of. Safe as houses.” With a hollow chuckle at the inappropriate expression, she crunched through the brush to check out the front of the car. The bumper was jammed into a huge fallen log. A jagged chunk had been torn out of the mossy bark, revealing a gash of fresh orangy-yellow wood so punky the splinters crumbled at her touch.

A long shallow dent creased the auto’s hood. She ran her hand along it and found a clump of hair caught in the grill. Coarse, reddish-brown hair, the silkier ends tipped in gold.

“But no blood,” she said, her stomach dropping all the same. She’d never forgive herself if—

“Don’t even think it. Just go and look.”

Claire returned to the open car door and reached inside to flick off the headlights, which weren’t illuminating much besides the fallen log. Still, the depth of the blackness increased by another degree. For a few moments, she was nearly blind. Then her eyes began to adjust. Eventually she realized that the moonlight was bright enough for her to readily see the way. Through the tangled underbrush, the road was visible—a black expanse reflecting the silvery moonlight.

She gathered the car keys, the heavy sweater she’d thrown on the passenger seat—it was mid-May, but colder than she’d expected—and her handbag. Her baggage and laptop computer were safely stowed in the trunk. She slammed the door shut and set the locks, briefly considering her cell phone. She could dial 911. But this probably didn’t qualify as an emergency. If she found the deer injured, she’d call. Or she could backtrack a mile to the Buck Stop, probably doing her version of “whistling past the graveyard” the entire way. Someone there would know the procedure.

It wasn’t until she’d hiked a short way along the narrow sand shoulder of the road that she remembered the mother bear and her cub. Dread filled her at the chance they could still be lurking nearby. She froze, fists jammed into the pockets of her sweater, wanting nothing so much as to cut and run. Lock herself inside the car. If it was stuck, she’d call AAA. If there was no AAA, she’d stay right there till morning light.

Logically, she knew that the bears were long gone. Wild animals didn’t stick around to investigate car crashes. And there weren’t grizzlies in Michigan. Even in the Rockies, where they did have them, the odds of a bear attacking a human were greatly exaggerated. On one of her first assignments after the promotion, she’d studied up on grizzlies for a thorough recommendation on a mountain ski lodge that was now a Bel Vista luxury inn frequented by the rich and famous. After all, having a celebrity eaten by a bear would be a publicity nightmare. As an employee, she was more expendable.

Claire tried to laugh. Didn’t work. “No bears,” she said out loud. She knew that the sound of a human voice should scare them away. “No bears,” she repeated, raising the volume.

She took several steps. The noise was minimal in the soft sand, so she moved onto the blacktop, stomping her feet. “Here I am, Mama Bear, heading your way.”

The road curved just ahead. She thought this was approximately where she saw the deer, though it was difficult to tell when the landscape was unrelenting forest. The evergreen trees all looked the same, thick and black-green. The deciduous trees were sparse, not yet fully leafed.

Claire spun in a circle, batting away an annoying bug, then shrugged. There was no obvious sign of the accident. No skid marks. Even the place where she’d crashed into the woods looked relatively undisturbed, as if the dense vegetation had swallowed the car whole. How could she possibly find an injured deer?

Talking all the while, she walked slowly through the long weeds that choked the roadside, using a piece of deadwood to poke at the underbrush. A small animal scurried away, too quick and sneaky for her to catch a glimpse.

She shuddered, wanting to believe that the deer had escaped unharmed. Wanting even more to be able to return to the rental car and reverse it onto the road. And what the heck, while she was at it, why not turn around and drive back to the airport and pretend this was all a bad dream? Her health and optimism would return if she could simply go home to her family—never mind that her stress levels would be quadrupled by their clingy neediness.

Claire peered into the woods. A stand of slender gray poplars stood out against the conifers, striking a chord. This was where she’d seen the big mama bear, silhouetted for an instant against the pale trunks. She’d walked far enough. The deer must have bounded away, uninjured.

“Time to turn around,” she murmured.

A funny feeling tickled her spine, creeping upward to prickle the hair at her nape. Apprehension.

Her eyes searched the forest. Was that a path?

She stepped closer. It was a path. Crowded by saplings and fresh young ferns, nearly overgrown except for a narrow trail that led deeper into the woods. An animal trail, she supposed. Deer and rabbits followed trails. Did bear?

“If they do, I surely won’t.” Claire swung around to leave, only to realize that something large and hulking was approaching through the woods. How she knew, she wasn’t sure. Animal instinct, perhaps. The beast didn’t make a lot of noise. Barely a rustling of leaves. But it was there. And it was between her and the car.

The bear.

Icy fear gripped her, rooting her feet in terror. She didn’t dare break for the road, where she’d be openly visible. And she could not make herself plunge into the deep, dark woods. Instead she raised the stick she’d picked up, praying it was true that bears rarely attacked humans but ready to defend herself all the same.

The shadowy creature halted, obscured by a thicket of yellow sumac. The air crackled with their mutual awareness. Through the leafy screen, she detected a slight glint. Eyes. Watching eyes.

A sniffling sound, low to the ground, made every hair on Claire’s body stand upright. Claws scraped across stone. The cub!

In a flash, she remembered her research. Mother bears were notoriously protective of their cubs. But running might provoke an attack. She should slowly back away. If she could get her feet to move.

The brush began to part.

Don’t run, don’t run, don’t run.

A bloodcurdling yell might scare the bear away.

Claire opened her mouth. Out came a peep so pitiful it wouldn’t frighten a rabbit.

Terrified, she dropped her handbag with a soft thud and put both hands on her measly weapon. One foot slid backward, then the other.

The bear lifted its furry head. God, it was huge. Nearly seven feet.

It made a chuffing sound.

Suddenly the cub burst from the bush and charged toward Claire, cavorting like a puppy. Claire yelped and fell, landing on her rump in the tall grass. Momentum sent her somersaulting backward, but she managed to regain her feet. The cub rolled with her, as if this were a game.

“Get away!” Claire turned and stumbled along the path, flailing her weapon from side to side. The cub was on her heels, making eager grunts and groans. It still wanted to play!

The night air seemed to shift, and she could feel the adult bear right behind her, large and hot and hulking. Oh, please, Sweet Mary, mother of God—

The bear reached past her shoulder and tugged at the flailing branch. Claire started to tug back out of sheer stubbornness, then realized how foolish, how futile—

For one instant, her mind blanked out. Then it clicked on again.

Bears didn’t reach. They swiped. And they probably didn’t tug. They snatched.

“Hey, Babe Ruth, want to turn over the weapon before you hit one out of the ballpark?” said a deep, resonant, masculine voice. Without a doubt, a human voice.

Claire let go of the branch. She turned, stiff and slow, her wobbly knee joints locked into place. “You’re not a bear.”

“Nope.”

“I thought you were a bear.” Her voice rasped like an old rusty hinge.

“Didn’t mean to scare you, lady.”

Lady? She was shaking in her shoes, fearing for her life, and this unkempt beast was calling her lady?

Even though the man wasn’t a bear, he was an astonishing sight. Not seven feet, but close to six and a half, maybe. He was huge and muscular, bearded, with thick, shaggy hair that was dark underneath but golden brown on top. No wonder she’d mistaken him for a bear. The man had never made acquaintance with a razor in his life!

“Hello, Grizzly Adams,” she said under her breath, not realizing she’d spoken until he tossed his head and laughed.

She took a step back.

His straightforward gaze swept her face. “You’re not the first to say so.”

Claire offered him a tentative smile, though she was not altogether comforted. He was a stranger, one who looked quite capable of tearing her from limb to limb. At five-eight and one hundred sixty pounds, she was no flyweight herself, but this man was huge all over, from his teeth to his immense chest and the broad hands gripped around the length of wood, right down to his gunboat feet, shod in a pair of tough leather boots with rawhide laces and thick lug soles.