Mountains Apart

Granted, it had only been a matter of hours since he’d left the hospital and he was tired and his brain was thoroughly scrambled. But sleep was out of the question—he could see that now—because Emily Hollings looked so much different than a puppy. But it wasn’t her partially clothed state that had him out of sorts, although he didn’t think he could ever get tired of looking at her....

There was a vulnerability about her that spoke to him. He was drawn in by it, and he couldn’t shake the sense that she needed help. What kind of help, he didn’t know, but for some inexplicable reason, he wanted to be the one to give it to her. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He obviously needed to get a grip. He needed a distraction, something to take his mind off her.

But what was a woman like her doing working for Cam-Field Oil & Mineral anyway? She certainly didn’t seem like the kind of executive they would send to do a job like this. She didn’t seem as if she could handle the kind of intense pressure such a job would entail.

Although, to be fair, he hadn’t really met her under the best of circumstances. And according to her assistant, she really hadn’t been herself. And now that he thought about it, Amanda had mentioned that several times over the past two days. Now Bering couldn’t help but speculate as to what she meant. What was Emily Hollings really like? And he knew, even as his good sense warned him it was a bad idea, that he was going to find out.

* * *

BERING STROLLED INTO the Cozy Caribou an hour later and spotted Tag already sprawled out in a booth at the back of the restaurant. The Cozy Caribou was more than a restaurant; it was a family-oriented establishment and an unofficial gathering spot for the community. There were booths running along both sides of the wide building with tables scattered between. The place was essentially two sections divided in the middle—one part restaurant one part bar. Huge chunks of a spruce tree—cut, sanded and polished smooth, then formed into a U-shape—served as the divide between the restaurant and the bar.

A wide doorway complete with a set of antique saloon-style swinging doors led into the back, where alcohol was served. Stools carved from the same spruce trees were set into the floor around the bar, one side for diners and the other for drinkers. It was Tess’s rule that drinkers could dine but diners couldn’t drink. She was very strict about this and didn’t even allow drinkers to use the same door as diners.

“So, you finally came up for air, huh?” Tag asked as Bering slid into the seat across from him.

“Mmm,” Bering answered vaguely. He took a sip of the water that was already waiting for him.

“How’s the patient doing?”

“She’s going to be fine. Or she will be if she starts taking care of herself. But after talking to her assistant, I have my doubts about whether that’s going to happen.”

“Man, she’s sweet, huh? No wonder you were holed up in that hospital all weekend.”

He scowled. “Yes, she’s beautiful, but it’s not that. Something’s not right. Emily is—”

Tag flashed his cousin a quick grin. “I was talking about her assistant. Amanda, right?”

Bering nodded absently. Funny, he couldn’t really even recall whether Amanda was good-looking or not. And then he remembered that he’d definitely thought so on Friday before he’d met Emily.

“Do you know if she’s married or anything?” Tag asked.

“No, Amanda said she was involved with someone fairly recently, though. I got the impression that was part of the reason she was here.”

The waitress appeared and delivered two heavy frost-covered mugs of root beer. They placed their orders.

“To see him?” Tag asked.

“No, to get away from someone or something...” He shook his head. “She wasn’t really clear on that. She seemed a little uncomfortable talking about it.”

“Do you think she’d go out with me?”

Bering choked on his swig of root beer. “What? Tag,” he sputtered, “I don’t think that’d be a very good idea. I don’t even know if she’s out of the hospital yet.”

“Amanda was in the hospital, too? What, was it something contagious?”

“Funny,” he said with a chuckle, finally realizing what his cousin was up to.

Tag let out a booming laugh.

“I don’t know, though, Tag. Something is wrong. I’m worried about her. She’s, um... I want her...”

Tag’s smile disappeared along with his teasing tone. “You want her?”

Bering looked annoyed. “I want her to get well, Tag, is what I’m saying. She needs help.”

“Well, you’re definitely not the one to give it to her, Bering. You know that, right?”

“I do. I know that, but I can tell she’s having a really difficult time here. If you’d have seen her, and Amanda said—”

Tag interrupted, “Bering, I did see her, remember? I was the paramedic who treated her. The woman was dehydrated. She was drugged and exhausted. But what does that have to do with you?”

Bering shrugged and tried to look nonchalant. “Nothing, except that if you’d seen her in the hospital... There’s just something about her that I...”

“Bering, snap out of it, man. Need I remind you that this woman works for Cam-Field Oil & Mineral? You remember Cam-Field, right? The ‘corporation of environmental corruption,’ I believe I’ve heard you call it on more than one occasion. The fact that this woman is sad is not your fault, is not your responsibility and has nothing whatsoever to do with you.”

“Uh-huh,” Bering said absently.

Tag shook his head and said slowly, “Oh. No.”

“What?”

“You are asking for trouble here, Bering. Mark my words. Stay away from this woman.”

“Trouble, Tag? Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?”

Tag was frowning. “No, Bering, I don’t. It’s not your job to help her. And under the circumstances, I don’t even think you should go near her.”

Bering took another drink of his root beer and then plopped his mug down on the table. “Don’t worry, Tag, I know exactly what I’m doing.”

CHAPTER THREE

THE NEXT MORNING Bering ignored the twinge of guilt. He decided it wasn’t taking advantage of an unfair situation to visit Emily under these circumstances—even though she had just been released from the hospital and she was certainly not 100 percent physically. She probably wasn’t even thinking clearly. He reminded himself that it didn’t matter. What was at stake was what mattered: his livelihood, the livelihood of his community, the integrity of the environment and that people were counting on him. He also ignored the nagging curiosity that had him wanting to see for himself that she was going to be okay.

And maybe a more informal meeting could serve a double purpose: checking on her and talking some sense into her—into Cam-Field. He knew the latter was unlikely, but at least maybe he could learn something about what he was facing. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer—wasn’t that how the old saying went? He’d never heard anyone specify as to exactly how close but he’d figure that out as he went along.

He took a quick shower and then dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. He bundled into his down jacket, pulled on his boots and hat, and stepped outside. He started his pickup and let it warm up while he called the Cozy Caribou. He ordered two breakfasts to go, along with two large coffees.

He drove the short distance to the restaurant, picked up his order, then made his way across town and parked in front of the duplex where Amanda had told him that she and Emily were staying. He knocked softly on the door.

A tired-looking Emily opened the door wearing only, from what he could see anyway, a very thin bathrobe. Memories of her scantily clad body swam before his eyes.

“I hope I didn’t wake you. I just thought I’d come by to see how you’re feeling.” He held up the bag he was carrying. “And I brought you some breakfast. The doctor said it’s important that you eat.”

Emily smiled warmly at him and Tag’s words of warning coalesced in his brain. But how could someone who smiled like that possibly be trouble? But as quickly as he wondered, an image of the Trojan horse flashed across his consciousness. Tag was right—he needed to remember that she might be a pretty face, but she was still the face of Cam-Field.

“And did the doctor also say that it was your responsibility to feed me?”

“No, but you said that the food here was terrible, so I thought I would see if I could prove you wrong.”

“You already have,” she said, “and I’m afraid I didn’t thank you properly the first time.”

Bering realized then that she was shivering from the cold, and it was no wonder what with that thin piece of silk that she was trying to pass off as a robe.

“If I could come in for a minute then I’d let you take a shot at that.”

* * *

EMILY HAD BEEN AFRAID he was going to say that, and she thought it was probably a bad idea. She took a few seconds to remind herself why it was a bad idea. First of all, the man had seen her naked (mostly naked, but still...) Secondly, he was clearly a part of the unswayable opposition in this town, and to socialize would only be a waste of time, not to mention the probable cause of further conflict and embarrassment. And third, he’d seen her mostly naked.

She felt herself blushing, and for the first time since she’d arrived in this stupid town she was grateful for the cold. Why was she waffling like this? She was never indecisive. She prided herself on always knowing what to do, but ever since she’d arrived in Rankins, everything seemed to be completely out of her control—including her emotions and, apparently, her ability to think rationally.

Her current predicament illustrated this point perfectly. Reading people had always been one of her strengths. It had served her very well in her tenure with Cam-Field. But right now she had no idea what was going on with this guy. What was he doing here? Probably trying to get information out of her, she told herself.

What other possible motivation could he have for being so nice to her? It was a little above and beyond professional courtesy.... It wasn’t as if he’d somehow caused her to pass out. In fact, if he hadn’t been there, she might have ended up even worse off than she had been. And why had he stayed so long at the hospital? More things that she should probably thank him for...and a reason to invite him in—that and the heavenly odors wafting out of the bag he was holding.

But she didn’t need to invite him in to thank him, did she? No, it was definitely not a good idea to invite him in. But it would be rude to refuse breakfast, wouldn’t it? Maybe she could take the opportunity to state her case—Cam-Field’s case. She had managed to win over some pretty tough rivals in the past. Shouldn’t she at least try to sway him, too? After all, that was her job. Now, that was a reason to invite him in. She ignored the niggle in her brain that suggested she may have tried overly hard to come up with a reason at all.

“Sure,” she said, standing back from the door to allow him in. “There are a couple things I’d like to talk to you about anyway.”

* * *

EMILY USED THE LAST bite of biscuit to sop up the last bit of the creamy sausage gravy. She stared at her plate and then looked up at him. “I can’t believe I ate all that. You were right, it was absolutely delicious. I had no idea there was food like this in this town.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“How did you manage to find something without fish in it anyway?”

“You don’t like fish?”

Emily crinkled up her nose. “I don’t like seafood.”

“You don’t like any seafood?” he asked skeptically.

“No, and this town of yours seems to be unduly obsessed with the consumption of sea creatures. I actually saw something called a razor clam on the menu at one of your restaurants. Now, tell me there’s not a warning in there somewhere?”

Bering laughed and handed her another biscuit, this one slathered with thick jelly. “Here, try this.”

“Oh, I don’t know if I can eat another bite...mmm,” Emily said with a moan as she took a taste of the fluffy bit of heaven. The jelly was tart and sweet and utterly divine. “Where did this come from?”

“The Cozy Caribou,” he answered and then took a sip of his coffee. “They make all their own jam,” he added proudly. “They also make their own root beer. They serve it cold on tap. It’s pretty popular.”

“Root beer, huh?”

“Yep. You should try it.”

“I might,” she said with an agreeable nod. “This is the establishment that is using copies of Cam-Field’s community-impact reports as dartboard targets?”

“So, your memory has returned, huh?”

“Somewhat,” she said, not quite able to meet his eyes. “Look, Mr. James, I really am sorry about all of this—”

“Bering,” he said. “Please, stop calling me Mr. James.”

“Okay,” Emily conceded. “Bering,” she said. It rolled off her tongue and she decided that in spite of her initial reaction to it, she liked it. Which was completely beside the point, but she found herself asking about it just the same.

“I was named after the Bering Sea,” he explained. “My father was a crab-boat captain. My mom was pregnant with me when he drowned there in a fishing accident.”

Emily stared, trying to take in the implications of such a life-shattering event. She had to ask, “Why in the world would she name you after such a tragedy?”

“She says it was the Bering Sea that brought her and my dad together in the first place. That’s where they met, that’s where they earned a living and that’s where they fell in love. She didn’t ever want to forget that.”

“What do you mean? How did they meet there?”

“She applied to work on his boat as a deckhand, which she did for quite a while—until they got married and she got pregnant with Janie. She claims she was the best deckhand he ever had. She didn’t want her memories of the Bering Sea to be filled with only sadness because it had brought her so much joy, too.”

He smiled at that, and even though it had been long ago, Emily thought she saw sorrow there, too. She smiled warmly in return, not wanting to be the cause of dredging up painful memories.

He looked away briefly before meeting her eyes again. “My entire life I could only imagine how difficult it was for my mom because I wasn’t even born yet. But I have a much better idea now because my sister, Janie, lost her husband six months ago—and she’s pregnant. With twins—that will make four for her.”

“Oh, my...but how will she manage—”

It was as if Emily’s words flipped a switch in him—from warm and open to solemn and stony in an instant.

“The same way our mom did—with the help of her family and friends. That’s how we do things around here, Emily. We stick together in good times, we offer support in bad and we’re there for all the challenges in between.”

The message was blatant, but he said it with such a tone of confidence that it almost made Emily envious. It must be nice to have that kind of support system, she thought bitterly—personally or professionally. She was suddenly aware of both his intense stare and the personal turn her thoughts had taken. What was wrong with her? She couldn’t let him play on her emotions and turn the tables like this.

“That must be really great,” she said. “But look, Bering, I invited you in because I feel like I should apologize for the circumstances of our first meeting and I really do want to thank you for...everything.”

He shrugged. “No problem.”

“Actually, it is kind of a problem.”

“How so?”

She smiled thinly. “I don’t think there’s any point in dancing around the issue of why you’re here or why we met in the first place, however unfortunate it turned out to be.”

“I don’t know that I’d call it unfortunate.” His voice was smooth, but his brown eyes danced with some kind of emotion that Emily felt it best to ignore.

“I would, because now I’m in the awkward position of being indebted to you while knowing that we’re at odds. And we both know that I’m here to change your town irrevocably. I plan to improve it, build on it, make it better, but I know very well that you don’t see it that way and that it’s your intention to try to stop me.”

“That it is,” he acknowledged quietly.

“But you can’t.”

“We’ll see about that.” His tone was almost careless as he picked up a biscuit and began to butter it methodically. He added a generous dollop of jam.

“We will indeed, and I’m afraid you’re not going to like the outcome. But if you would be willing to open your mind a little, you would find that Cam-Field is going to do some really good things here—”

“Not nearly enough to outweigh the bad.”

“But how do you know that? You haven’t even heard our plans—”

“I know,” he interrupted firmly.

“I understand that you’re scared—”

“Scared?” His brows danced up on his forehead.

“Yes, why else would you be here? You are here to try to get a feel for what I have in store for my, um...campaign so you can try to stop me in my tracks.”

His lips twitched but Emily couldn’t tell if it was from anger or amusement. She guessed it was the latter. She didn’t think he was taking her seriously quite yet. And who could blame him given their awkward introduction?

He took a bite of his biscuit and swallowed it. “Maybe I stopped by to see how you’re doing.”

She scoffed at that. “You’re not my mother—a simple phone call could have accomplished that.”

His grin made her uneasy. “That reminds me,” he said, “my mother is a schoolteacher. She decided she should stick to dry land after she had Janie, so she got her teaching degree.” He devoured half his biscuit in one bite.

“Oh? That’s nice. I’m sure it must be a very rewarding profession.” She smiled politely and took another healthy bite of her own biscuit.

“Not a ship captain.”

“Huh?” she said, even as the biscuit slowly turned to sand in her mouth.

Bering smirked. “Yeah, and just for the record, she has perfect twenty-twenty vision—in both eyes—and I’ve never heard her so much as mutter a curse word.”

Emily bent her head. “Oh. No. You heard that?”

“I did,” he said. “You have quite an imagination.”

“Of course you did—that stupid intercom. Nothing in that junk heap of an office works properly. Bering, I’m so, so sorry. I can’t believe I insulted your mother. That’s not... And I’m not... And she made those delicious scones...”

Bering chuckled. “I think you can be safely excused under the circumstances. But what do you mean nothing works properly?”

“Just one of the many problems we’ve had since we arrived in this town. We thought we were all set up with an office but when we got here nothing was like the property manager claimed. The place is a complete joke. The computers are ancient—seriously, they look like some kind of practical joke—the printer doesn’t work, the phones are outdated. And we really need the phones—our cell phones work only intermittently. Of course you know how spotty cell-phone service is, since you live here. Even the copy machine is a piece of junk. And to make matters worse, my laptop came down with a virus the first day we were here, so all my software and work files are inaccessible. I have to use that dinosaur to even get my email. And I can’t find anyone in town who can work on it or my laptop. We can’t find anyone to fix anything, actually. But it’s the heating system that’s killing us. There are exactly two settings—iced-over or sauna. And I really can’t tolerate iced-over, so...”

Bering rubbed a hand over his chin. “Hmm. Buster Bradbury owns that building, right?”

“That’s what we’ve been told. But we’ve never spoken with him. He is, apparently, somewhere in Florida this time of year. We’ve dealt with his property manager, a guy named Oden Franks. He’s based out of Anchorage, so there’s not much he can do, either, supposedly. He claims he’s been making calls and he can’t figure out what’s going on. The place was supposed to be state-of-the-art. He claims it is—that he personally had it set up for us. But obviously standards are a bit different here.”

Bering nodded, his face an unreadable mask.

“If I was a paranoid sort, I’d say we were victims of sabotage.”

“Hey, that’s my hometown you’re running down here, you know.”

“I do, and it’s unfortunate if you take it personally. But Rankins isn’t special....”

Emily saw the narrowing of his eyes, the subtle clench of his jaw, and was reminded once again of the irritable mountain man she’d encountered in her office a few days ago.

She rushed to explain, “I’m not saying that your little town isn’t special. I’m sure it is—to you and to others who live here. What I mean is that I’m no stranger to opposition like we’re facing here in Rankins. This is my job. This is what I do. So on the level that my behavior was unprofessional, I am sorry—especially for the intercom thing. In spite of the fact that it doesn’t work properly, I should never have said those things.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I am worried about it, because I would probably be fired on the spot if my...” Emily was always hesitant to voice her familial relationship with her stepfather boss. It wasn’t relevant, other than it colored people’s perceptions of her and her job. And nepotism had certainly never played a role in her position within the company. No, that was exclusively Jeremy’s department. “...boss knew that I had said that and...done that.”

She had volunteered for this assignment, and even though she hadn’t thought it through completely, or had the time to prepare as thoroughly as she normally did, she certainly wasn’t going to watch it all crumble down around her because of her own imprudent behavior. Her primary goal had been to get as far away from Jeremy as she could. And securing Cam-Field’s first holding in Alaska would serve the additional purpose of showing Franklin what an asset she was to the company.

So far she’d managed only the distance part, a feat that could have just as easily been accomplished by a vacation to the South of France. But now that she was here and finally feeling better, she was determined to succeed. Not that Franklin would ever fire her, probably, but it certainly wouldn’t be beneath her stepfather to replace her on an assignment.

“Listen,” she finally said, “all I can say is that I really haven’t been myself lately, although that’s beside the point and doesn’t excuse my bad behavior. But like I mentioned earlier, the, uh, the heat isn’t working in the office, which partially explains my, uh, um...” Emily met his curious gaze.

“Clothing removal?” Bering suggested politely, but Emily could see the humor in his eyes.

Now he was having fun at her expense. She countered in a tone of mock sincerity, “You mean my recent medical emergency? Yes, it probably does.”

“Emily, I’m sorry. I—”

She didn’t know if his look could be considered contrite, but it was close enough for her. She grinned and said, “I’m kidding. I should have known it was coming. I’ve suffered from dehydration before.”

“Really?”

“Yep, as a teenager—I think I was seventeen or eighteen. I was an assistant to the roustabout on an oil rig and I—”

“You were what?”

Bering looked both intrigued and doubtful. She wanted to assure him that she was no stranger to hard work, but she knew better than to tip her hand in that way. It had been impulsive to share that much with him as it was. She rarely talked about her personal life, unless she could see it as a direct benefit to the job. And intuition told her that there wasn’t anything personal she could relay to this man that would change his mind about the job she was here to do.

“The roustabout is the maintenance person who keeps things clean and running smoothly on the platform. I worked for him as an assistant. The pay was good, but it was hot and busy and I forgot to take my breaks. I ended up dehydrated and I passed out then too.”

She wanted to laugh at the look of shock on his face.