I do, I do, I do (30 page)

In one of her beloved books, Juliette had read that a person's past flashed before her eyes while she was drowning. It hadn't happened that way for her. Her life had passed in review later, while she was recovering from deep racking chills and trying to cope with the shock of nearly dying.

What she examined was a safe sheltered life, predictable and monotonous. She had drifted through the years doing the same things day after day, week after week, with little variation. No challenges obstructed her path. Nothing alarming occurred, nothing exciting happened. She had sleepwalked through her boring routines, shying away from new experiences.

In retrospect, marrying in haste and impulse was more understandable than it had first appeared. Now she remembered the quiet desperation she'd felt as the years passed and she began to feel she was wasting her life. She remembered thinking that she had passed silently through the world and only Aunt Kibble would care when the end came. One of her pastimes had been to wonder what sort of epitaph would mark her tombstone.

Miss Juliette March never committed an improper act.

Here lies what's-her-name, gone but not forgotten.

She never went anywhere, never did anything.

In the end, marrying Jean Jacques, and all that had followed, had changed so much in her life, yet it had changed little.

She still fretted and worried about propriety and appearances. There was still no one who loved her or who would mourn her passing if she had drowned in Crater Lake. Yes, she had left Linda Vista. She was here in the Yukon, and she had climbed Chilkoot Pass, but not willingly, and she'd complained and resented every step. She had stepped out of monotony, but she'd lacked the sense to enjoy her new experiences.

Worse, once the confrontation with Jean Jacques lay behind her, she could so easily lapse into the same deadening routine she'd endured before her uncharacteristic break with convention.

She absolutely could not let that happen.

"Juliette? Come out of there so we can strike the tent. Everything else is packed."

She looked around the small wedge tent. The furnishings, such as they were, had been packed, but she could imagine the cots, the heavy stove made of Russian sheet iron, the piles of coats, hats, gloves. The camping equipment, their toiletries.

She hated sleeping in a bag atop a narrow cot, hated the cramped quarters, hated being too hot or too frozen. She detested wearing the same clothing day after day, loathed the awful beans and bacon and biscuits they lived on. Not being able to wash her hair and having to rely on spit baths was a hideous imposition. And most of the time Clara and Zoe rubbed her nerves raw.

However, if it hadn't been for the foregoing circumstances, traveling in the Yukon wouldn't have been too horrible. At least she could now say that she had been somewhere and had done something. She'd made a start at changing her life. But there was more to be done if she truly wanted to change.

"Juliette? Damn it, what are you doing in there?"

"I'm coming!"

She stepped into a pearlescent frozen world. A light shower of new snow had powdered last week's drifts.

The sky was the color of old silver. If one had to run across the ice behind a dog sled, this was as good a day as any to do it. Thinking about the ice made her heart stop until she ground her teeth and shook away the thought. Others had already left Crater Lake, traveling across the ice with no mishap. But most had decided to camp on the shore until spring. For a moment she wholeheartedly wished she could stay, too.

When she lifted her head and looked at Clara and Zoe she couldn't believe her eyes. "Good heavens! What have you done to yourselves?" They wore hideous gray masks.

"It's ash and bacon grease," Clara said. Before Juliette could protest, she'd rubbed the muck on Juliette's face. "We're going to be exposed to wind and raw temperatures out there on the ice. Tom gave us eyeglasses, too. To protect against glare."

Juliette stared at the blue-tinted glasses Zoe wore over the gunk on her face. Her face was framed by the fur trimming her sealskin hood, and she looked like a creature out of a nightmare. Now Juliette did, too. Her shoulders sagged.

To complete the indignity, here came Ben Dare, looking rugged and handsome in a fur-lined jacket and heavy boots that rose almost to his knees. She was going to have to speak to him. And she would have to thank him for saving her life. And she would do it looking like a demented monster in a bad dream.

He considered her, a twinkle of amusement softening his grim expression. "Before we leave, could you and I talk?"

Beneath the mask of ash and grease her cheeks burned hot. She didn't remember being naked in his arms, but she could imagine it. Had done nothing for a week but imagine it. Visualizing Ben pressing her naked breasts against his bare chest, and rubbing his hands on her shoulders and back and arms made her squirm and feel feverish and tingly all over her body. In a secret part of her mind, she resented being unable to recall the most shameful moment of her entire life. It seemed that fate ought to let her remember the two of them being naked together.

"Juliette," he said in a low voice. Behind him Clara and Zoe had begun to strike the tent while the Chilkats loaded their piles of goods onto sleds. "When I thought I'd lost you, too…" His gloved hands curled into fists at his sides. "We need to work this out. Helen was an important part of my life for eight years. I can't pretend the marriage didn't happen or that I didn't care for her."

Juliette's head came up, and she stared. She had spent countless hours trying to guess what they would say to each other. Not once had it entered her mind that he would talk about his late wife. She had supposed they would make an excruciatingly awkward attempt to discuss the day of her near drowning, and be swamped by embarrassment.

"Why are you talking about Mrs. Dare?" The words emerged in a blurted rush.

"I know you don't want to hear about her, but—"

"Ben, I enjoyed hearing about your late wife. She sounds like a remarkable woman. I just don't understand why you're talking about her now."

He tried to see her expression through the lenses of the blue-tinted glasses Clara had insisted she wear. "You were upset when I talked about Helen the day we climbed Chilkoot Pass."

"Why on earth would you think that? I felt nothing but admiration for Mrs. Dare, and envious of the life you had together." Envious? She hadn't fully realized it then, but that's exactly what she felt. Ben had loved his wife and had stood by her, unlike some husbands she could name.

Now he looked puzzled. "You've seemed distant since Chilkoot. I felt you preferred not to see me, and assumed it was because talking about Helen offended you in some way."

This was nearly as embarrassing as discussing their nakedness would have been. She pressed her lips together and looked at the snowy ground. "I… thought we were spending too much time together. I felt that Clara and Zoe disapproved."

He tilted his head to stare at the sky. "Sometimes I'm an idiot. Of course you're concerned about appearances."

"I've lost someone, too. I understand wanting to talk about a loved one. And don't you remember? It was me who asked you to speak about Mrs. Dare."

His eyebrows came together in an expression of curiosity. "I didn't know you'd lost someone."

Their talk was edging toward dangerous territory. "He's been gone for a year now," she said uncomfortably.

"I'm sorry. Was it a brother? Your father?"

She could say that she'd lost her father, and it wouldn't exactly be a lie. But she cared too much to mislead him completely. "No," she answered, looking for an escape. "Oh, I see that Clara and Zoe are ready to leave."

Ben's frown deepened and his gaze narrowed, and she felt his jealousy. Amazement widened her eyes, and a tiny thrill made her shiver. Suddenly she felt like a femme fatale, an entirely new experience. And she profoundly wished that she could remember their naked moment on the shore. A femme fatale should remember such events.

Clara and Zoe gave the tent to the Chilkats and cast a pointed glance toward Crater Lake and then back at Juliette.

"Ben," she said, speaking rapidly. "Thank you for saving my life at the risk of your own." He could have bobbed up under the ice and drowned before breaking free. The frigid temperature could have paralyzed him and cost him his life. "I'm forever grateful. I… I was thinking about you right before I fell into the water." This new femme fatale persona was amazingly brazen and brave.

Her tinted glasses made his eyes flash cobalt blue, and he looked so handsome that he stopped her breath in her throat.

"I was thinking how foolish I'd been to worry about the impropriety of us seeing each other. We're friends, after all. At least I think—I hope we're friends," she added, feeling flustered. She was new at femme fatale assertiveness.

His hands opened and closed, and she had a sudden light-headed notion that he wanted to take her into his arms. "If I have my way, you and I are going to be more than friends," he said in a low, intimate voice that almost made her swoon.

"Ben? Juliette?" Clara called to them as she retied the scarf that held down her hat and protected her mouth and nose. "The others will be waiting."

Clara's intrusion reminded Juliette that she and Ben could never be more than just friends. "I'm content with your friendship," she murmured in a voice filled with regret. She wished they really could be more than friends. She loved his easy confident stance and the way his jacket emphasized the breadth of his shoulders. "I wonder how you'd look without that awful shaggy beard." Dismay rounded her lips. "I didn't mean… What I meant was…"

He laughed and then grinned at her. "If you don't like the beard, it's as good as gone."

"Oh, but I didn't say that. I just—"

Clara took one of her arms, and Zoe took the other. "We're going." Clara looked over her shoulder. "Ben Dare, do we have to drag you along, too?"

"I hope you ladies enjoyed a good night's sleep," Ben said, falling in behind them. "It's going to be a long, hard day."

The first time Zoe explained sledding, Juliette had listened in horror. The second time through, she had committed Zoe's instructions to memory. She had promised herself that running along behind a dogsled wouldn't be as awful as it sounded.

But it was. To begin with, she could barely see over the four hundred pounds of goods piled on the sled she guided. Until she realized the dogs would follow the sleds ahead, she worried that she couldn't see well enough to guide them effectively, assuming that she could guide them at all. In rapid order she learned that a more important concern was keeping up with the others.

After the sled shot forward, pulling out of her grip, and she fell flat on the ice, Tom again showed her how to run. Not on her tiptoes, as she'd tried to do, but flat-footed in a rhythmic side-by-side, almost shuffling-forward motion. Once she practiced, she discovered she could maintain a pace that was faster than she would have believed herself capable of setting.

During the first hour her thoughts vacillated between worrying how thick the ice was to feeling self-conscious about Ben observing her waddling run.