North Country Man

Every instinct told her there was something not quite civilized about him. Perhaps it was his scent—wild and woodsy and musky, utterly foreign to her. Or perhaps it was his barbaric aura—as if he could wrestle a cougar and crunch bones between his teeth.

Claire shivered. She prided herself on her self-sufficiency and adaptability, but this encounter was too much even for her. The man was overwhelming.

Not to mention his sidekick, the bear cub. The little beast stood on its hind legs and batted at her thigh, snagging her trousers. She cried out, backing away. DKNY separates weren’t made for bear cub abuse. The lightweight wool would not hold up to even a playful clawing.

“Stop it, Scrap,” said the man. He threw Claire’s impromptu baseball bat into the brush, and the cub scrambled after it to investigate, grunting with pleasure as it worried at the undergrowth, rolling back and forth like a giddy toddler.

Claire scrubbed a hand over her face in disbelief. Nope, he was still there. Solid as a tree trunk. And watching her, his eyes predatory beneath a pair of thick brown brows. “What are you doing in the woods at night with a bear cub?” she asked, sounding accusatory rather than merely curious. Her nerves were on edge, and it showed.

“Out for a walk.” Almost self-consciously, he touched a brown paper package that lay flat against his right side, tucked inside his belt.

Claire’s insides went hollow. She thought of the paper-wrapped bottles her father and his cronies passed around the back room of the family gas station. Then she thought of the liquor signs in the window of the Buck Stop and drew herself up haughtily in defense. “I see.” Her hands shook, so she tucked them into fists inside the cuffs of her sweater.

Between the night and the man’s beard, she couldn’t tell for sure, but she thought he smiled. Briefly. “Fact is, you’re the one who’s out of place,” he said, his deep voice seeming as mild as he could make it. He squatted to pet the cub, who’d emerged from the brush dragging the stick.

Claire blinked. He’d crouched purposely, she thought. To minimize his size.

He knew she was afraid of him.

“You ran your car off the road?” he asked.

“Um, no…” She wasn’t sure she wanted him to know the full extent of the situation. Her position was too vulnerable.

“I heard the crash.” The cub tumbled head over heels, and he scratched its belly. It really was rather cute and cuddly, no bigger than an oversize teddy bear. “That’s why I backtracked.”

“I didn’t run it off the road,” she insisted. “It was your fault.”

The fleeting smile again. “Mine?”

“I saw you on the side of the road. I thought you were a bear. You distracted me.”

“That so?”

She swallowed thickly. “There was a deer—it might be injured.”

He stood, stepping closer so he loomed over her. “You hit it?”

Claire fought not to back away from his sudden aggression. Never show fear. Having faced down corporate connivers and street toughs alike, she was not a weakling. She would not cower.

“I don’t know for sure. It jumped—right over the car. But there was a thud. And it left a dent. That’s why I was looking. I thought— I mean, I had to know…”

He let out a breath and backed off to a less invasive distance. “If the deer jumped your car, it’s probably all right. There’s no sign of it?”

“N-no.”

“Was the thud hard enough to rock the car?”

“Not really. More of a glancing blow. The car went off the road because I lost control after I slammed on the brakes. I wasn’t going very fast in the first place.”

“Then the deer will probably survive.”

“Oh, thank heaven,” Claire gushed. “I’ve been having Bambi trauma flashbacks. I’d probably cry if—” She felt her cheeks coloring. Now, why had she said that? Female emotions were not valued in the cutthroat corporate world; they probably weren’t acceptable here, either.

She continued more briskly. “Tell me, is this sort of thing common in these parts? Do bear cubs substitute for domestic pets? Are the woods populated with Grizzly Adams look-alikes?” Her tone lightened. “Do deer fly?”

Do bearded, disreputable—yet strangely compelling—backwoods characters lurk in the bushes specifically to ambush spooked foreigners?

The man drew his eyebrows down, further screening his eyes. She had no clear idea of his face—it was obscured by the beard and the deep shadows. She almost wanted him to come closer again, just to see the shape of his lips. The color of his eyes.

Almost.

“Do wolves howl at the moon or the man in it?” he said, unexpectedly.

Her eyes widened. “Good question.” She hesitated, but her wry sense of humor had kicked in. “Do sharks swim at midnight?” she countered.

“Ah. Do the stars twinkle at noon?”

“If a cell phone rings in the forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

He laughed. A nice, rumbling laugh. “I sure hope not, eh?” Again, he sobered quickly. Obviously he hadn’t opened the liquor yet. “Did you bring one—a cell phone?” he asked. “Have you called Triple A?”

“So there is Triple A out here in the boonies?”

“Sure.” He shifted from foot to foot. Considering his size, the movement was on a par with the tremors of an avalanche. “Jimmy Jarvi at the Five-Star Oil station takes Triple A calls. Might take him a while to reach you, is all.”

“Yeah. Like what—a week?”

“I couldn’t say. Never signed up for Triple A myself.”

“Well, I’m not sure that I need the assistance. My car’s running—”

“Do cars ever run wild?” he cut in, musing out loud, then seemed sheepish that he had. “Sorry.”

A smile twitched the corners of Claire’s mouth, but she purposely returned to the matter at hand. “I crashed into the bushes. Hit a log. If I can get the car onto the road, it should run—” her lips curved “—just fine.”

“I’ll give you a push.”

She shoved her bangs out of her eyes and looked him up and down. His clothes—a faded chambray shirt and sturdy canvas pants—were worn but clean. Perhaps he wasn’t as disreputable as all that. And he certainly looked like he could push a semitrailer out of a swamp. One-handed.

“Thank you,” she said. Wings fluttered in her stomach. A disconcerting reaction, seeing as she’d decided he was safe despite the bottle tucked inside his belt. And her judgment was always sound. Always. “I would appreciate that.”

He stepped into the long grass to let her go first. She glanced from the disturbing stranger to the playful cub, her sense of the absurd expanding proportionally. None of this was what she’d expected, but for some reason she couldn’t wait to see what came next.

There were times in every woman’s life when all she could do was roll with the punches.

Or the cub, as the case may be.

WITH THE TOE of his boot, Noah Saari gave Scrap a boost off the rotting log. The orphaned bear cub grunted with surprise and sat down hard on its round rump, confused by its abrupt removal from the center of action.

Noah leaned over the hood of the woman’s sedan, keeping one eye on Scrap and the other on the spinning front wheels. “Goose it,” he hollered over the sound of the engine, applying his muscle to the task of getting her car on the road.

The stranded city woman nodded, clenching her jaw as she gripped the wheel and brought her foot down on the gas pedal. She looked deadly serious yet still a little pale and wide-eyed. Noah smiled, oddly tickled by her reaction to him. He put his head down and pushed harder, his shoulder muscles bunching with the effort.

The wheels spun, eating through a thick layer of humus and pine needles before the car gave a lurch and began to roll backward. Too speedily. Branches snapped beneath the wheels. Noah gave a shout. “Hold up!”

He stepped over the log, one hand shading his eyes from the harsh glare of the headlights slicing through the undergrowth. The woman eased the car backward out of the brush slowly, her head swiveling to check for clearance. So she wasn’t one of those completely self-centered clear-the-roads-I’m-coming-through city drivers.

Not even close.

Noah didn’t blame her for the deer, even if she had been naive enough to mistake him for a bear. Plenty of lifelong Yoopers who knew to be on the lookout could be surprised by a fleet deer bounding from the brush. The creatures seemed to have no sense when it came to traffic, crossing right when a car came along, running the wrong way, freezing in the lights.

Stopping so abruptly might not have been the woman’s initial intention, but he gave her credit for going back to look for an injured deer. Deluxe rental car, cell phone and high-heeled boots notwithstanding, she had more guts than your usual tourist. She’d even faced down a bear. That the bear had only been Scrap, who’d never met a stranger he wouldn’t slobber over, was not the point.

The car turned onto the shoulder of the road and rolled to a stop. For a moment it idled, lights cutting a swath in the dark night. Noah thought she was going to take off with only a wave of thanks for his trouble. Normally he’d be just as happy for their contact to be as brief as possible, but with this woman… Well, he couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but she had a way about her that had engaged his dormant interest.

It might have been the jut of her jaw and the tremble in her hands when she’d raised the club, ready to knock his block off. Maybe it was the perfectly smooth column of her throat and the strong pulse beating in the hollow at the base of it when she’d studied him with rounded eyes and a tilted chin. Or most likely it was the up-front femininity of her flagrantly curvy shape, undeniably sexy beneath the rich fabrics and tailored cut of her designer styles.

Then again, it could be a matter of simple deprivation. He’d been holed up in his cabin for so long the sight of a woman, especially one who smelled like lilacs in the spring, was a shock. Probably any woman—any but Wild Rose Robbin, the only female tough enough to take on the nighttime shift at the Buck Stop—would look as good to him.

The damsel in distress flicked off the headlights and stepped from the car. She didn’t look like a typical skinny, scaredy-cat city woman any more than she acted like one, although beneath the polished veneer of a stylish haircut and manicured nails, a certain wariness—and weariness—showed in her face. But he could also see that her legs were long, her body strong. And that her breasts were full and round beneath the thick cable-knit sweater she’d buttoned all the way to her neck.

She said, “I guess that does it,” as she walked toward him, leaving the engine running.

Running wild. Like Noah’s appetite.

Her kind of satisfaction he didn’t need. He’d been battling one of his cravings all evening, but only after he’d fed and watered and bandaged his menagerie had he finally given in and made the three-mile walk to the convenience store. Henry Jussila had been there, licking his chops over the liquor bottles. Wild Rose had watched the old lumberjack like a hawk, barely acknowledging Noah as he’d gotten what he needed and left her a couple of dollars. Wild Rose wasn’t like the rest of the local busybodies; she didn’t ask too many questions in the name of the small-town friendliness that had always felt more like gossip to Noah—even before he had something to hide.

“So…” The city woman crossed her arms over her chest like she was cold, though the weather was in the fifties. It had been a warm April, melting the snow by the first of May. You couldn’t ask for more than that. “Thank you for the push.”

Noah nodded. “No problem.” For the first time in a long while, he wanted to say more. But after so many months living alone with no one to talk to but wild critters, it seemed that he’d lost his knack for conversation.

“You live around here? May I—” she took a quick, nervous breath “—offer you a ride?”

“Scrap’s never ridden in a car.”

Incredibly, her eyes got larger. “Oh, right. The bear.”

“But if you’re game,” he said, only to tease her.

She swallowed. “Sure. Why not?” Scrap was in the bushes, sniffing at the rabbit trails. “I’ve never chauffeured a bear cub before. Should he misbehave, the car’s only a rental.”

Noah laughed, surprising himself with how good it felt to have something to laugh about. Strange that his amusement should come in such an unexpected package. “That’s okay. You couldn’t take a car like that where I’m going. I live in the woods, off the beaten path a ways.”

She glanced toward the trail that led into the forest. Her eyes widened as if the path were as fraught with danger as the Chisholm trail. When she looked at him, her stare was direct but not uncomfortable. Ever since he’d come back to Alouette, battered, busted and burned, he’d endured enough curious stares to last him a lifetime.

She doesn’t gape because she doesn’t know, he reminded himself, running a hand over the lower half of his face. The beard was an obvious attempt at camouflage. A mistaken one. Even in his isolation, he’d heard enough of the rumors to realize it had only upped his curiosity factor with the townsfolk.

“Then you’re an honest-to-goodness backwoods-man?” The twinkle of whimsy returned to her eyes. “Like the ones in Tall Tales of the North Country?” She shrugged. “I picked up a rather outlandish paperback at the airport.”

“I guess you could say that.”

“I’m in awe.” A wide smile transformed her somewhat plain face. She had character and smarts—he’d seen that right off—but her natural smile and the quirky sense of humor that accompanied it made her seem less serious and more attractive. Almost pretty. He thought she needed reason to smile more often.

Like he had any right to give advice on the subject.

“Don’t be. I’m not Paul Bunyan.” Noah dropped his hand to his belt. Tourists tended to consider the natives of Upper Michigan quaint in an uneducated, unsophisticated way. He wasn’t willing to be the source of their entertainment. All he wanted was to live his life as simply, decently and privately as possible.

Which didn’t allow for women with wide eyes, wide smiles and wide, curvy, made-for-a-man’s-hand hips.

Her eyes, having followed the direction of his lowered hand, became dark and serious again. “Then I’m off.” She spun on her heel and walked briskly to the car, all business. The way he’d thought he preferred it, right? “According to my map, I should be within a mile or two of Alouette. Is that right?”

“You’re on track,” he said, sorry for her departure all the same. It was only his loneliness, he decided. There were better cures. For one, he could pay his folks a long-overdue visit as soon as they got back to town. Maybe even drop in on old friend or two. It might be time.

“Well…” She paused beside the door for a moment, seeming to search for a suitable expression of gratitude. “Thank you,” she said, simple and sincere, a woman after his own heart. Which was strictly a manner of speaking, he reminded himself.

“Welcome.” He sounded suitably gruff, even though he wanted to ask her name or her destination. It was safer not to. This way, they’d never meet again.

For the sake of his peace of mind, that was best.

She slid behind the wheel and he closed the door after her, the soft thunk overriding the moment when she might have said something more. Behind the glass, she blinked at him, her lips slightly parted. Get going, he made himself think so she would read the sentiment on his face and take him for no more than a grouchy backwoods hermit, a role he’d filled well for the past two years.

Her glance dropped again to his belt, and she turned resolutely away, putting the car in gear with a sure thrust of her hand. She peered over the hood, tapping the horn for warning. Scrap was still snuffling at the underbrush, so Noah gave her a wave to send her on her way.

She went, not looking back except for one quick flash of her eyes in the side mirror. They were blue, he saw, deeply blue as a spring-fed lake on a sunny day. His body stirred with renewed interest, but he tamped it down, telling himself the pretty color of her eyes didn’t mean jack. Hell, he could look at the genuine thing fifty yards outside his cabin door. He sure didn’t need to get tangled up with a woman because her eyes were clear-lake blue. Nor because her smile was soft and her heart was courageous and her body was the generous sort that could keep a man warm at night.

CHAPTER TWO

“THESE DIRECTIONS are ridiculous.” Claire double-checked her notes before tossing them aside and edging the car toward what might—or might not—turn out to be Bayside Road. There were no road signs to speak of, but her instructions were to make a sharp right at the Berry Dairy ice-cream cone stand and continue up the hill till she came to the Neptune gateposts. “Whatever happened to street addresses?” she wondered, turning the wheel hand over hand.

Alouette was a nice little town, she’d give it that. Picture-postcard pretty in the daytime, she suspected, when spring sunshine would glance off the dancing waters to brighten the bayside business district of red-and cream-colored brick and stone buildings.

But for now the town was dark and silent. At the marina, black-as-midnight waves slapped at the hulls of boats that had been battened down with sails tightly furled. Even so, it was surprisingly easy for Claire to imagine herself there, sipping coffee in a café that overlooked the harbor. Idling away her time. Doing nothing.

She sighed.

The road to Bay House rose steeply through another thick pine forest. Interspersed with a few maples and birch, the trees densely carpeted the hillside, making the twining roadway seem insignificant in comparison. Claire was beginning to understand that this was a land where nature always overpowered humankind.

She was glad to see that paved driveways had been carved out of the wilderness. Lawns even—vast stretches of them, lit by old-fashioned globe streetlights. The handful of houses she glimpsed through the trees were more handsome and substantial than the humble frame bungalows she’d seen down below. She shifted behind the wheel. Given the upscale neighborhood, Bay House might yet turn out to be a prospect.

At the top of the hill she found the Neptune gateposts—matching sea-god statuary set atop red stone bases gone green with moss and twined with vines. The connecting wrought-iron fence was clogged with a tangle of shrubbery and trees that obscured her view of the house. The gate, an elaborate construction running to rust, stood open, one side pulled halfway off its hinges and dipping lopsided into unmown grass.

“Here I yam,” Claire announced as she always did, clicking to low beams as she drove through the gate. “All that I yam.”

It was a silly saying that had become habit, one she’d begun with her first assignment for Bel Vista. She’d been sent to a ritzy Cliffwalk mansion in Newport because the owners were going bankrupt and the property was available at a bargain-basement price, a “cheap” three mil or so. Coming from modest Midwestern beginnings as she had, she’d been awed and intimidated by the grandeur of how the other half—make that the upper two percent—lived. Although not all her subsequent assignments were as swank, reminding herself that she was worthy exactly as she was helped tame her butterflies.

At a glance she knew that Bay House, rising before her on a grassy knoll, was not so grand, though it was a mansion. The bed-and-breakfast was plentiful in size, made of red sandstone in the Victorian style with several wings, steep peaked dormers and even a turret, its witch-capped roof thrust high against the diamond-laden sky.

A pair of wrought-iron lampposts flanked the walkway, but they were not lighted. The only illumination provided for guests was the dull glow of a solitary fixture shining beside the front door. Saving on electricity?

Claire drove once around the circular driveway, then parked in a paved area alongside several other cars and a well-used pickup truck. She got out, making a mental note of the charming carriage house set back among the trees that bordered the neighboring property. Wondering about the commercial zoning ordinance, she peered through the branches, studying the house next door. A purring black sports car arrived, headlights briefly illuminating the home’s immense white facade. A well-dressed but rumpled man in his mid-thirties lurched out of the car. Claire lifted a hand to wave—never too soon to be friendly with neighbors who might object about Bel Vista moving in—but he threw her a sour, slit-eyed glare and disappeared inside.

“Okay for you,” she said, shrugging. She ducked inside the car to slip the keys from the ignition and reach for her purse.

Her palm landed flat on the passenger seat.

Where was her purse?

“Oh, no,” she moaned under her breath, shooting from the car to check the back seat and trunk. A futile effort. She remembered dropping the purse when that Grizzly Adams character had emerged from the underbrush. Between the shock and distraction and her somersault with Scrap, she’d forgotten all about it.

Good going. What now?

She stared at Bay House, exasperated with herself. The building remained dark and quiet—no sign of a welcome. Well, then. She’d try checking in, and if they wouldn’t take her at her word and demanded identification, she’d have to backtrack in search of the purse. In the meantime, it wasn’t likely anyone would stumble across it on such a little-used road in a sparsely populated area.

“Hoo.” Claire blew out a disgusted breath while hauling her baggage from the trunk. The prospect of facing the wilderness again was disheartening when all she wanted was civilization and its creature comforts.

No other creatures need apply, she silently added, thinking of her rescuer and his bear cub. She had plenty of decisions to make without a big, male, Sasquatch-like creature complicating matters. Even one who had rock-hard muscles and a whimsical sense of humor.

With a piece of luggage in each hand, her computer satchel slung over one shoulder and her carry-on over the other, Claire headed toward the house, automatically taking in its architectural details. Bay windows with leaded mullions, carved stone designs, copper gutters and drainpipes—all very impressive. The place was in dire need of upkeep, but the basic structure appeared sound. Heaven only knew what nasty surprises lurked within. She was experienced enough with reno budgets to know that hidden problems in an older building could double or triple the initial estimate.

A wide front porch stretched from the tower past a bay window. The front door had a knocker and a doorbell, but she tried the blackened brass knob and found it open.

The foyer was large, dim, stuffed with furniture. It looked more like a Victorian brothel than a hotel lobby, complete with swags and furbelows, fringed lamp shades, velvet settees and armchairs. Family pictures and dingy oil paintings crowded busy wallpaper. Claire blinked at the yellowed pattern. It was predominated by fairies and naked nymphs draped in gauze. Ugh.

“Hello?” She set down her suitcase and advanced through a jungle of ferns and other assorted foliage. “Hello?” she called again.

On her left, carved-wood double doors remained closed. On her right were glass doors that had been left open to a dining room. A wide, carpeted staircase loomed before her, but she continued past it to a row of closed doors in the narrowing hallway. She was about to knock on the one that bore a tarnished brass nameplate labeled Office when a long, wheezy snore came from the vicinity of the fern jungle.

Claire retraced her steps. Closer inspection revealed a pair of pajama-clad legs extending out of the greenery, the splayed feet clad in hand-knitted red socks riddled with holes. Poking from the largest was a fat pink toe.

Apparently this was Claire’s evening to roust men from bushes. She peeled away the crisscrossed straps of her bags and dropped them to the carpet with a jarring thud. No response from the sleeper except another snore.