That's Our Baby!

“I think my finger’s broken in the end segment. That’s where it hurts most. Hey, careful! Your hands are cold.”

“I’ll spare you the usual comeback.” His eyes now were surprisingly mischievous, a pale sparkling blue.

“‘Cold hands, warm heart?’ It’s not necessarily true.”

Sam ordinarily seemed to enjoy sparring with her, but now he was all business. “What’s true is that we’d better do something about this finger. Usually doctors don’t treat fractures in the end segment of the finger unless they involve the joint. Think the joint’s fractured?”

Against her better judgment, Kerry tried to wiggle her swollen finger. “It hurts so much that it’s hard to tell. I may have just jammed it. My hand took a blow when I broke my fall.”

“You’re lucky it’s your left hand.”

Kerry shook her head. “Not so lucky. I’m left-handed.”

“Well, what I’m going to do is tape your ring finger to the middle one. It won’t hurt so much if it’s immobilized.”

“Wouldn’t a splint be better?

“There are pros and cons. A splint decreases pain, but may increase joint stiffness after it’s healed. If we leave your finger as it is, the pain may last longer and chances are you’ll end up with a stiff joint anyway. Taping it to the adjoining finger is a good compromise.”

“How do you know so much about this?” she asked, watching him as he dug a first-aid kit out of his pack and withdrew a thick roll of gauze.

“I had a broken finger once from a sled accident. The doctor explained the alternative treatments to me.”

His touch was sure and gentle as he bound her ring and middle fingers together with gauze, and he stood so close that his face was only inches from hers. She inhaled the welcome warm male scent of him, a combination of leather, wood smoke, musk and something indefinably exciting. He smelled of the outdoors, of melted snow and a raw wind and, too, of the river.

What he was doing to her finger was painful, and she forced herself not to flinch. Instead she would trust, and that wasn’t easy. She had come to depend on no one but herself long before Doug died. Even as she was thinking how nice it might be to be comforted and cosseted, to have someone to take care of her, Sam’s eyes met hers.

She instantly felt a jolt. Not just a mental one, but a physical one, too, as if a current of electricity pulsed from one to the other. Where it originated, in her or in him, Kerry couldn’t have said, nor did she know if it was conducted from his hand to hers or over the brilliantly charged space between them. It unnerved her and made her want to yank her fingers away, and yet she couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop looking at him, into him, wondering if he too felt something. Felt—what? They had never much liked each other.

This reality check gave her the strength to look away. It was too intimate, that blistering brief moment of eye contact and this electrifying physical closeness. While she was contemplating her own embarrassment, Sam dropped the adhesive tape into her free hand.

“Here, hold this,” he said abruptly. He ripped a piece off the roll and wound it around her fingers. If he noticed anything amiss, he gave no sign.

“What medicine are you taking for the pain?” he asked.

“None,” she replied, striving to keep her tone even. “I didn’t bring any, and there weren’t any medical supplies here.” Did she sound normal? No. But maybe she sounded normal enough to fool him.

“I’ll see if I have something.” Sam rummaged in the first-aid kit and produced a small white envelope. “It’s not much, but it’ll have to do.” Sam shook out two acetaminophen. “Take them,” he said. “You’ll be more comfortable after it kicks in.”

Without comment, Kerry picked up the glass of water she’d set on the table next to the couch and swallowed the pills. She definitely did not feel like herself. The day had been a strain, and she’d been working hard for weeks with no respite. And here was Sam, and she didn’t know why he was here, and her finger hurt worse than anything she could imagine.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Sam was wrinkling his forehead at her. He really had such a noble forehead, so wide. And the way that one curly lock of hair fell across it was charming.

Charming? Sam Harbeck was anything but charming. I may have broken my finger, but falling off a ladder hasn’t made me lose my mind, she thought just as Sam grasped her around the shoulders. She struggled to push him away, but he said, “You look a little woozy. Here, let’s ease you down on the couch,” all the while holding her so close that she actually felt the muscles ripple across his chest.

“Now sit down and put your feet up,” he said close to her ear.

“I’m all right, leave me alone,” she replied weakly.

He snorted. “I’m not going to have you dropping in your tracks, at least not until I clean the water and feathers off the floor.”

“I’m all right,” she repeated, but he knelt beside her and studied her while his face kaleidoscoped into several Sams, all of them wearing the same expression of concern.

“I’m going to pull this blanket up over you, and you can lie back and watch me work.” Sam settled the striped wool blanket across her as Kerry allowed herself to sink back on the couch cushions.

“How do you feel?” he asked. Absently he reached over and plucked a feather from her hair; he sat looking at it thoughtfully.

“Lousy,” she mumbled. She wondered if Sam was aware of how endearing he was when he was being kind.

“Great. We should have that finger x rayed, you know. But the nearest x-ray machine is in Anchorage, over three hundred miles away.” He tucked the feather in his pocket.

“Believe me, the same thought has occurred to me. Go away, Sam. Let me suffer in peace.” This dramatic utterance brought a derisive hoot from Sam.

He stood up. “As long as you can talk, I know you’re fine,” he said dryly.

How could she have found his behavior endearing only moments ago? He was making fun of her. “Go on,” she said, pushing at his knee. His jeans were wet from being out in the snow.

After one last exasperated glance at her over his shoulder, Sam went to the supply closet and dug around amid the welter of old brooms, battered skis and bent buckets until he produced a mop.

“Too bad there’s no electricity in the cabin. A vacuum cleaner would come in handy for these feathers.”

“D’you know how to use that?” Kerry said thickly as he began to wield the mop.

Sam paused and indulged in an amused chuckle. “My first job at my Dad’s airport was janitor,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, but she couldn’t help recalling the time she and Doug had flown into that very airport and visited Sam in his plush office, where he was ensconced behind an enormous mahogany desk while he fielded telephone calls from all over the world. Afterward they’d glided in Sam’s Mercedes sedan to his elegant house in exclusive Turn Again by the Sea. The house was an architectural marvel overlooking an arm of Cook Inlet, where his houseman served them a gourmet’s dinner of grilled Alaskan King salmon and wild rice sauted with roasted pine nuts.

It was hard to reconcile that image of Sam with the slightly rakish and unshaven man who was so vigorously mopping the wide planks of the cabin floor and stirring up drying feathers. She watched him through half-closed eyes as he worked, admiring in spite of herself the swift power of his movements and his attention to the task. When he had finished mopping and stowed the mop in the closet, he said, “That’s about the best I can do, so now I’m going to shuck these wet clothes. Close your eyes.”

One thing about Sam Harbeck—he certainly knew how to get a girl’s attention. Kerry roused herself to object, pushing herself to a half-sitting position and regarding Sam with what she hoped would pass for outrage.

“You could step out to the shed to change,” she pointed out. “Or go up in the loft.” Those were the only two possibilities for privacy. The cabin consisted of only one twelve by eighteen-foot room with a loft built above the kitchen section.

“I’m not going anywhere. The shed is too cold and the loft ceiling is only five feet high and slanted, which would require that I change clothes in a crouch.”

“What’s wrong with changing clothes in a crouch?” Kerry said for the sake of getting an argument going.

“Since I’m over six feet tall, I’d end up with a crick in my neck or worse. It’s your choice. You can watch me as I expose my shivering male body to your eyes—or not. I’ll leave it up to you.” Sam was maddeningly arrogant, but that was nothing new.

The worst thing was that Kerry couldn’t think of anything at all to say in response. She caught only a glimpse of that devil-may-care grin of Sam’s as he turned and reached into his pack to withdraw neatly folded jeans. As if to underscore his own outrageousness, he tossed a pair of black male briefs to the floor where they lay in all their skimpy glory.

“I don’t want to see anything shivering or naked,” Kerry blurted with all the conviction she could muster at the moment, and Sam laughed when he saw where she was looking.

“I thought so. Don’t worry, I’ll sound the all clear when I’m decent.” He was already unbuttoning his shirt.

Kerry closed her eyes, tight. She heard the clomp of Sam’s boots as they fell to the floor followed by the whisper of sodden jeans against flesh and the dull muffled thud as they fell. Telltale sounds reported that Sam was pawing through his pack; he tossed some things onto the floor, humming to himself.

“I could have sworn I stuck a wool flannel shirt in here,” Sam mused. More digging. More humming. At last Kerry couldn’t stand it anymore and opened her eyes to a slit so that she could peer from beneath her eyelashes for a peek.

He stood in the middle of the cabin facing her, light from the kerosene lamp playing over his well-muscled body. She’d never considered Sam Harbeck good-looking; he was too rawboned and rugged for her taste. But it was all she could do not to gasp at the magnificence of his commanding physique.

His shoulders were broader than she’d remembered. Not that she ever had reason to think about them, but if she had, she’d have assumed that they’d be average. They weren’t. And their width emphasized a tapering torso thickly furred with springy black hair all the way down past his navel to a taut, rock-hard abdomen. And below that…

She closed her eyes again, and fast. Generally speaking, she wasn’t the least bit interested in men’s anatomies, and certainly not in Sam Harbeck’s. Yet the image of that stray lock of black hair falling over his forehead, the lamplight shading the hollows and curves of his utterly masculine body, seemed burned upon the inside of her eyelids. The shape of him, the details of him, wouldn’t go away.

Sam’s fresh clothes weren’t the only thing that was dry; her mouth might run a close second. She swallowed hard, but didn’t dare peek. Her memory of the way he’d looked was bad enough.

“Mission accomplished,” Sam said after what seemed like an eternity. “I’m ready to stand inspection.”

She didn’t look. She didn’t want to encounter those keen blue eyes, sharp as daggers. She didn’t want him to discover in her own eyes what she was afraid he’d detect. She’d never liked Sam, and she wouldn’t give him anything he could use against her.

“I’m really very tired,” she said, which was true.

“You might as well go ahead and relax. I’m going to pitch a couple more logs into the stove and nab some chow.”

“Mmm,” Kerry replied, hoping she sounded sleepy. She needed time to figure out Sam’s motive for being here, and yet she could hardly think. Not only was she still in pain, but she knew now that she shouldn’t have looked at him undressed. Doug had been dead for over a year, and she tried not to dwell on how much she missed the sexual aspect of marriage. Seeing Sam had made her think about it again, and life was hard enough without lingering on thoughts about all she didn’t have.

Sam, by this time, had discovered the pot of goulash and was stirring it on the stove. He seemed at home in a kitchen and found dishes, flatware and mugs without having to ask where they were. Of course he’d be comfortable here, she thought. Sam and Doug had come here many times together, usually for their ridiculous once-a-year, no-women-allowed male bonding experience.

Kerry had never figured out why, the whole time they’d been married, Doug had felt that he had to leave her behind while he disappeared into the wilderness every year to squander a whole week’s precious vacation. She’d always thought it was so he could grow a beard and refuse to take a bath for seven days but, even so, she still didn’t understand how beard stubble and the lack of bathing promoted male friendship.

She opened her eyes and saw that the pot on the stove was steaming alarmingly. “Careful, or you’ll burn that goulash,” she warned.

“Nah,” Sam said, not seeming to notice her waspish tone. He slid the pot from the burner and ladled the hot meat and noodles onto two plates.

“I didn’t say I want any,” she told him.

“Doesn’t matter. You’ve got to eat. If you don’t feel like sitting at the table, I’ll bring this over to the couch, and you can eat there.”

“With one hand mostly out of commission? No thanks. I’ll join you at the table—if you’ll remember that I’m a lefty and ignore my clumsy attempts to eat with my right hand. And don’t expect brilliant conversation. It’s been a long day.”

“I don’t expect conversation at all. Come to think of it, last time I sat down to dinner with you, you got up, flounced into the bedroom and slammed the door. It pretty much ended small talk.” He shot her a look out of the corners of his eyes.

She didn’t like that look, but countering it was far from her first priority. She stood up, gingerly shifted from one foot to the other to see if her knees worked, and when they did, she wobbled over to sit at the table. In the process she tried to make up her mind if Sam’s last accusation merited a response. Finally she said as coolly as she could, “The incident you’re referring to happened four years ago, and you had come to visit Doug and me in Seattle. And you took the money I’d been saving for a bang-up anniversary celebration weekend and wouldn’t give it back.”

Sam leaned over the table, his eyes dancing. “I won that money fair and square from you and Doug in a poker game after both of you insisted that you could beat me. A bet,” he said pointedly, “is a bet.” He went back to the stove and brought her a plate of goulash.

“A bet may be a bet, but because of it Doug and I had to stay home for our wedding anniversary, when I’d been counting on a lovely weekend in the Napa Valley complete with a room at a picturesque inn overlooking the vineyards, complementary wine and a heart-shaped Jacuzzi. Some friend you were, Sam.”

“You were the one who turned down the chance to play strip poker.” He yanked out his chair and sat, regarding her with uplifted brows.

This made her indignant. “We were joking about it, sure, but neither Doug nor I would have—”

“That’s why we played for money instead. I hate sore losers.” Sam shrugged and dug into the goulash. “Say, this is good.”

If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was Sam’s cockiness. He thought he was God’s gift to women. No, to the whole world. She forgot to concentrate on eating, and noodles slipped from her fork. Then she lost her grip and the fork fell to the floor with a clatter. Sam raised his eyebrows and went on eating.

She pushed away from the table and stood up. “I don’t think I’m hungry,” she said.

He stared at her blankly. “What is this, some kind of grandstanding for attention? I’ll pick up the fork. Also the noodles. So sit back down.” He got up and cleaned up the mess.

“Grandstanding? Is that what you think I’m like?”

“You don’t need to get all upset,” Sam said in a reasoning tone. “Come on, sit down, you’re making me uncomfortable looking down my throat while I eat. There’s nowhere to go anyway.” He sat down again.

In the past, Doug had acted as a buffer between Sam and Kerry. Suddenly Kerry missed Doug so much that tears welled in her eyes. She wanted nothing so much as to scramble up the ladder to the loft and curl up on the narrow cot there, preferably in the fetal position. But Sam would probably call such an exit grandstanding. She sat.

“There’s nowhere to go, all right. That’s nothing I didn’t already know,” she said heavily. Tears blurred her vision, and she blinked them away, but not before Sam skewered her with a keen but not unsympathetic look.

“Why don’t you go stay with your parents in La Jolla?”

“They offered to send me a ticket, but I had work to do here.”

He started to scoff at that, but she interrupted. She’d already lowered her guard. She saw no point in lying and, moreover, she thought Sam might as well know how things stood. “My lease on the Seattle house expired, and coming to Silverthorne gave me a place to stay over the summer. I’d already had the idea of opening the lodge to the public. I’m counting on this place to provide me with an income next year and I’m going to need every penny of it.”

After a long silence Sam cleared his throat and said slowly, “I advised Doug not to invest in that avocado farm near San Diego. He wouldn’t listen.”

Kerry managed a shrug. “Both of us trusted friends who painted a too-bright picture of how well it would pay off. By the time we pulled out of the venture, our money was gone.”

“I thought you’d managed to save some before he died.”

“We had other expenses,” Kerry said, thinking of the pricey fertility workup that she and Doug had undergone when she didn’t get pregnant on schedule as they had hoped and planned. All their remaining funds after the avocado-farm disaster had gone to pay the clinic.

She drew a deep breath. “Anyway, Doug and I thought we’d have time to rebuild a nest egg, but then he died. I paid off our debts with most of the insurance money, and there’s not much left over. Silverthorne Lodge is one of the few assets I have left. Either I make it pay or I sell it.”

“Opening it to tourists is another gamble,” Sam pointed out.

Kerry’s chin shot up. “I’ll make it work. I will!”

Sam grinned. “I’m not saying you won’t. But you can’t stay here now. It’s too late in the year to be up here in the wilderness.”

“I still have to strip the wax from the floors in the dining room, I wanted to put the finishing touches on the upstairs bedrooms so there won’t be anything to do but make the beds when I come back in June, and—”

“You’re leaving when I do. I thought I made it clear that you can’t count on Bert. How much work can you get done with a broken finger anyway?”

“A lot,” Kerry said hotly. As she spoke her finger began to throb again. “Anyway, I thought you said the Cessna’s not flyable.”

“I can fix it.”

“If you think I’m flying out of here in a plane that’s missing a strut and a float, you’ve got another think coming.”

“Is that so?” Sam leveled his fork at her. “Well, let me tell you this. I don’t want to be responsible for what happens to you if Bert doesn’t show up.”

“You could talk to him when you get to Anchorage, remind him to stop for me.”

“And what if the weather is so bad he can’t make it for weeks? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not any such thing!” Kerry shoved back from the table and winced when her finger hit the edge. She gripped her smarting finger and glared at him. “Why repair the plane at all? Someone’s got to come looking for you, don’t they? When you don’t show up back in Anchorage on time?”

Sam stood abruptly and stalked to the window. He stared out at the blackness beyond the pane; it rattled with the force of heavy gusts. Windblown snowdrifts furled around the tree trunks outside, and the view of the river was obscured by eddying snow.

“I didn’t file a flight plan, Kerry. Nobody knows that I left Vic’s camp and came here.”

Kerry froze. “And you think I do dumb things? Listen, Sam, everyone knows you’re supposed to file flight plans. Including you.” She paused as their situation sank in. “You’re telling me that no one is going to be looking for you. They’ll think you’re still at the camp.”

“For a while, at least. And the Cessna’s ELT isn’t working. Its battery is dead.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. “Aren’t ELTs supposed to be checked every so often to make sure they’re in operating condition?”

“Every two years. Vic keeps the plane at his camp and evidently hasn’t paid much attention to safety since he’s been going round and round with this illness of his. I didn’t know that when I agreed to fly the plane to Anchorage for him.”

“How about the radio?”

“It’s not much use with the mountains blocking transmission. I’ll try it again tomorrow.”

Kerry didn’t think Sam sounded too hopeful. “Well,” she said lamely, “maybe the radio’s signal will at least reach Athinopa. They could relay the message to the rescue people.”

Sam was silent. “Another thing we don’t know is what this weather will do,” he said after a time, his words carefully measured. “If the river freezes, no float plane will be able to get in or out of here until after the ice breaks up in the summer. The same thing goes for a boat.”

“The only way in and out of this place in the winter is by dogsled or helicopter, and those possibilities are closed to us until Search-and-Rescue gets on the case, right?”

“Right. As soon as the weather clears, I’ll start repairing the plane. It’s our best hope.”

“How much do you have to do to it?”

“I told you. Repair the strut, attach the float.”

“That sounds like more than you can do with two-inch duct tape.”

“Doug kept a good set of tools in the shed.”

“They’re still there, but repairing a strut and attaching a float sounds like a serious job.”

Sam turned back toward her, his gaze level. She thought she detected a glint of worry behind his eyes.

“The thing I’m most concerned about is the weather. There are ice crystals already forming along the riverbank. If the river freezes solid before we get airborne, we’re stuck here. Maybe for a long time.”

Kerry felt a sharp stab of foreboding. “How long does it usually take for the river to freeze?”

His short laugh was entirely without humor. He gestured with a curt nod at the blustery scene on the other side of the window, and his expression was grim.

“Depends. I’d say there’s a good possibility that within a day or so we’ll be able to stroll all the way to Anchorage right down the middle of the river, wouldn’t you?”

CHAPTER TWO

Sam hated the way Kerry’s face fell when he said that. She looked like a kid who’d just had her candy yanked away by a big, bad playground bully.

“Couldn’t you put skis on the plane? Take off from the river ice?”

“I don’t have skis for this plane. That was another of Vic’s oversights.”

“So what happens if we have to stay here?” She remained unruffled, but he sensed an underlying tension, as if she were hanging onto what he might say as a lifeline out of this situation. One part of him, the Sam he wanted to be, longed to touch her shoulder and tell her that everything was going to be all right. The other part of him, the Sam he was, knew that he didn’t dare touch her. And so he found a way to put space between them.

“Well now,” he said, moving away so that he could no longer see the silvery motes in her golden eyes, “I’d say we’d get to know each other a whole lot better than we do.” It was a statement meant to raise the barriers between them. And it worked.

“That,” she replied in a tone heavily infused with irony, “does not reassure me.”

She didn’t laugh, but he wished she had. He’d begun to sense that Kerry was different from the way she’d been in the past—more sober, more serious. Maybe it was because of her widowhood, maybe because of financial problems, maybe because of the pain from her broken finger. As for himself, he was worried about the plane and the river, more worried than he cared to let her know, but any thoughts he might have entertained about bringing a sense of lightheartedness to this situation evaporated. Kerry stood staring bleakly out the window, pale and tight-lipped.