Midnight Sun (Sinclair Sisters) (3 page)

And yet in some bizarre way, he missed him.

At least he’d had someone to argue with.

Call shook his head, thinking the climb down from the summit must have slightly addled his brain.

Turning away from the view of the cabin, he hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders, whistled for Smoke, the big part-wolf, part-husky dog he’d adopted as a pup, and started off down the trail, heading back from his overnight trek to the house he had built along the creek.

It had been more than four years since Call had returned to the Yukon, seeking the solitude of the forest, searching for a quiet place where he could forget the past and put his life back in order. As he walked along the trail, images of those days threatened to creep in, but he firmly pushed them away, consigning them to the part of his brain where they could no longer hurt him.

He didn’t like to think of the past, to remember what had sent him into his self-inflicted exile four years ago, and so he kept walking, his strides lengthening as if he could leave the painful memories behind with every step he took down the hill.

He spotted the tall rock chimney marking his home on the creek and almost missed the two specs moving farther down the mountain that signaled a pair of unfamiliar cars coming up the road. Being an hour out of Dawson on a bumpy dirt lane and only a few sparse inhabitants along Dead Horse Creek, visitors were uncommon.

As usual, Call felt a trickle of irritation that his privacy was about to be disturbed, even for the short time it took for the cars to rumble past.

He wondered who they were and where they were going.

He wondered what the hell they were doing on Dead Horse Creek.

After making the turn off Hunker Road, Charity followed Maude’s ancient blue pickup along a winding gravel lane that followed the creek. They stopped once, at the little cabin where Maude apparently lived, so the older woman could retrieve a pair of work gloves she had forgotten.

“No sense buying new ones when I already got these,” she said, having declined the pair Charity had offered to purchase for her at the general store.

“How much farther?” Charity asked as she watched the older woman’s peculiar ambling gait, sort of like a sailor crossing the deck of a ship, only there wasn’t any water.

“Not much. Just around the next couple of curves and up the hill a piece.”

Just around the next couple of curves
turned out to be a couple of miles, each one dragging at the slow pace they were forced to travel on the narrow, muddy road. Anticipation had her squirming in her seat. She felt like a little kid on her first trip to Disney World, so eager to get there, unable to quite imagine what it would be like once she did.

As the SUV rolled on, dropping into one pothole after another, she thanked God she had rented a four-wheel-drive vehicle. A regular car simply wouldn’t be able to make it. She sighed as they crawled past another bend in the road.

At least I’ve got time to get a good look at the country,
she thought, glancing off toward the rocky hills covered with a mixture of pine, fir, and alder. The entire area was mountainous, each peak dusted with a brilliant white layer of mid-spring snow.

It was spectacularly beautiful and worth the entire trip just to see it. Charity grinned to think that for the next six months she would be living in this wild, scenic place.

They rounded another curve and the pickup’s red taillights went on in front of her. Charity had noticed earlier that one of the bulbs was out. She glanced toward the stream they had been following, out across a rickety-looking wooden bridge, and spotted a small log cabin situated among the pine trees at the edge of the creek.

The Lily Rose.
A little thrill shot through her. Never mind that the bridge looked like it might collapse at any moment. It could be fixed easily enough. She still had money to make the needed repairs.

Maude drove over the bridge as if it were perfectly safe, so Charity closed her eyes, summoned her courage, and pretended it really was. She clattered to the opposite side and released the breath she had been holding. Parking the Ford next to the cabin, she set the emergency brake and climbed out of the car.

The breath she took of fresh Klondike air was cold and clean and smelled of the pine trees that grew on the hill behind the cabin. She could hear the rush of water over the boulders in the creek as she walked toward the house.

She paused at the bottom of the steps leading up to the covered porch. The cabin was made of logs, as the advertisement had said, but the wood shingle roof was sagging and a broken board made it hard to climb the front-porch stairs.

“Needs a little work,” Maude said—the understatement of the year. The house was a shambles, Charity discovered with a sinking heart as she opened the door and walked in. It was hard not to feel a rush of disappointment.

“A cozy, one-bedroom cabin on a wild, rushing stream,”
she quoted from the advertisement. “Well, the stream is wild and rushing, and I can see the
convenient kitchen
from here.” Two steps to the right of the door, just at the end of the living room, such as it was.

“It ain’t as bad as it seems,” Maude said firmly. Reaching into the pocket of her plaid flannel shirt, she pulled out a short-stemmed pipe and stuck it between her teeth. “Just needs a little work, is all.”

More than a little, Charity thought glumly, watching Maude chew on the end of the unlit pipe and imagining the small inheritance her grandfather had left her shrinking by the minute. “The place needs just about everything.”

“Stove works real good.” Maude pointed to the big, black woodstove in the kitchen. “And the water’s piped in from the well and stored in that big tank behind the house. You don’t have to carry it up from the creek.” She turned the handle on the faucet over the sink to demonstrate and it sputtered dirty brown water out of its nozzle. “Ain’t been used in a while. Take a minute to start runnin’ clean.”

Charity’s stomach knotted. They wandered past a small, round table and four rickety kitchen chairs that had been painted white and now were a peeling, dismal gray, and stepped into the living room, ducking cobwebs here and there. The
rustic rock fireplace
was exactly that, but the smooth, round river stones were covered with a layer of thick, black soot and ashes spilled over the hearth onto the wood-planked floor.

“Roof might need some work, but the place is sturdy—I can tell ya that. When Mose moved in, he fixed it up real good.”

He must have. It looked as if it had been sitting there for the last hundred years, which she now believed it might actually have been.

“Fireplace looks real purty on a cold winter night, but the real heat comes from that little pellet stove in the corner. It’ll get hot enough to run you outta here.”

Well, at least she’d be warm. They wandered into the single bedroom, which was furnished with an old iron bed with sagging box springs but no mattress, a rickety wooden dresser, and two homemade bedside tables. As the ad had boasted, there was indeed
a bathroom with indoor plumbing
—a claw foot tub with a makeshift shower above it, a sink, and tank-overhead, flush toilet. But the toilet was stopped up and no water came out of the shower when Charity turned it on.

She sank down on the lid of the toilet and gave in to a sigh of despair. “I thought it would at least be livable.”

“Will be. Soon as we get it cleaned up. This used to be a real nice place. Won’t take much to make it that way again.”

Charity looked over at Maude, saw the determined set of her jaw, and took heart from the older woman’s words. She had come here seeking adventure. She was hardly going to let a little thing like a dirty house get her down.

“You’re right.” She stood up from the commode. “We’ll put it back in shape. It’ll just take a little more time than I expected.” And money, but she left that part out. “Once we get it cleaned up enough to live in, I’ll go back into town and hire workmen to make the necessary repairs.”

Maude smiled her approval. “Electric works real good. Mose put that in just a couple years ago.”

The power ran off a generator, Charity discovered, which was turned on each morning and evening. It seemed to be the only thing working in the house.

“I’ll bring in the cleaning supplies,” she volunteered, beginning to get into the spirit. “We might as well get started.”

Maude helped her unload the Explorer and the two of them set to work. If Charity had any doubts as to whether or not a woman Maude’s age could handle the grueling job of scrubbing walls and floors, cleaning out the fireplace, dusting cobwebs, and hauling trash, it didn’t take long to squelch them. Maude Foote had more energy than most women half her years. There were times Charity would have rested, but Maude’s boundless energy kept her working.

“We’ll burn the trash in the morning,” Maude said. “There’s some rotten food in it and we don’t want to attract any bears.”

Her head came up. “Bears?”

“Don’t worry, most the time they’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”

Most the time?

Charity shoved the disturbing thought away and continued filling the old tin bucket she had found, with ashes from the fireplace. By the end of that first day, when Maude climbed into her battered blue truck to make the short drive to her house down the hill, the kitchen was spotless, the cupboards cleaned out, the dishes all washed and put away. The fireplace held a cheery blaze made from the last of a stack of wood they had found in one of the sheds, the pellet stove was lit and hopefully would keep the house warm through the night, and Maude had helped her rig slats to prop up the sagging box springs.

She was grateful for the air mattress but even without it, as tired as she was, Charity had no doubt she’d be able to sleep. The bad news was, until she got the plumbing repaired she would have to use the outhouse.

Just part of the adventure,
she told herself, never having had the dubious pleasure. She thought of the bears Maude had mentioned, thought of having to go outside in the middle of the night, and set the glass of water she had been drinking back down on the rickety table next to the bed.

At the pounding on the door, Charity’s eyes cracked open. Her little travel alarm clock said it was only 6:00 A.M. Groaning, she tossed back the covers. She had thought it would be cold when she got up, but the pellet stove had done its job, thank God, and the house was still fairly warm. Charity pulled on her thick terry cloth robe and stumbled toward the door.

Maude Foote stood on the porch, she saw when she peeked through the grime they hadn’t yet washed off the living room windows. Charity slid back the bolt and pulled open the heavy wooden door.

“Figured you’d want to get started early,” Maude said, shoving past her into the house. “I’ll fire up the cookstove and fix us somethin’ to eat while you get dressed.”

That was the deal Charity had made. Maude had been hired as advisor, cook, and general all-around worker. Charity just hadn’t figured her employee would be so eager to get to work.

With a weary sigh, she shoved back her tangled blond hair, hooking it over one ear, and stumbled back into the bedroom. She dragged on the same jeans and sweatshirt she had worn the day before and pulled on her hiking boots for a quick trip to the outhouse.

She was shivering by the time she got back inside. The shower wasn’t working but she could at least wash her face. Pouring water from the old porcelain pitcher they had found in the closet into a matching basin, she plunged a washrag into the chilly water and began to scrub off yesterday’s dirt.

There was a mirror over the dresser, missing most of its silver but good enough that she could see her reflection. She brushed the tangles out of her hair and clipped it back and began to feel a little better.

She wasn’t used to going without makeup. Applying a little base that included sunscreen, a whisper of light brown eye shadow, and a stroke of blush to each cheek, she added a dab of lipstick and walked toward the kitchen, feeling almost her old self again.

“Thought we’d start by fixing up this here furniture a little.”

“Fix it? You mean like paint it?”

“Needs it, don’t it?”

Charity thought Maude must be the queen of the understatement. “Absolutely.” Though she had never been particularly handy, out here there really was no other choice. “Unfortunately, we didn’t buy any paint.”

“I brought some I had down to the house.”

Charity eyed her warily. “What color is it?”

“There’s a can of bright red or kind of an olive green. You can take your pick.”

Catching a whiff of coffee on the stove, Charity went over and filled her cup, giving herself time to mull the notion over. She wasn’t handy but she had always had a good sense of style and taste. “Red or olive green.” It sounded a little too much like Christmas, but hey, when in Rome …

She glanced down at the peeling white paint on the breakfast table and chairs and tried to imagine them painted bright red. She didn’t think she could handle red but maybe the green, if it actually was more of an olive. She envisioned the aging dresser in the bedroom and thought of it also painted green. If the knobs were painted red along with the ornate iron headboard of the bed … if she used bright-red accents throughout the tiny cabin, it just might look pretty.

“We’ll have to brace ’em up a little, make ’em more sturdy,” Maude said.

“Okay, but sometime today I think we should go back in to town. I want to get the workmen started on the plumbing and we’d better get something done about the roof.” So far the place hadn’t leaked but she wasn’t sure how much longer the sagging timbers would hold out. Better to be safe than sorry.

As soon as breakfast was over, they dragged what furniture they’d found in the house out onto the porch and started bracing each piece up so it wouldn’t wobble.

“We’re gonna run outta nails,” Maude grumbled. “I’ll see if I can find us some out back.” She ambled off to look through one of the wooden sheds behind the cabin while Charity continued to hammer away. She was pounding, making quite a racket, when she looked up to see a man striding down the path along the creek, headed in her direction.

He was tall, at least six-two or six-three, dressed in a pair of faded jeans that molded to long, muscular legs, and a worn denim shirt that stretched over shoulders the width of an axe handle. He was lean, no extra flesh, yet his movements spoke of power and physical strength. Whoever he was, he needed a haircut. Coffee-brown hair, several inches too long, curled over his collar, and it looked as if he hadn’t shaved for the better part of a week.

As he got closer, she noticed he was very tan, his eyes an amazing shade of blue with tiny lines fanning out at the corners. He was probably mid-thirties, and even with his unkempt hair and several days’ growth of beard, he was a very attractive man.

Charity thought of Jeremy Hauser but only fleetingly. This man and Jeremy had nothing at all in common. While Jeremy was almost ridiculously civilized, this man looked as if he had just stepped out of the pages of a Jack London novel, like a lumberjack, or maybe a trapper, home from weeks spent out in the woods.

He kept on walking, his strides long and filled with purpose, and as he approached the porch, she saw that his features were sharply defined: his nose straight, his cheeks lean, and his jaw square. There was a slight indentation in his chin. She wondered if he was a neighbor, started to smile and introduce herself when his deep voice cut through the cool morning air.

“All right, what the hell is going on?”

Ignoring the anger in his voice, Charity set her hammer on top of the dresser and climbed down from the porch.

“Good morning. I’m Charity Sinclair. I’m the new—”

“I don’t care who you are, lady, I want to know what you’re doing on this property.”

She fixed a smile on her face, though it took a good bit of effort “I’m here because I’m the owner. I bought the Lily Rose from a man named Moses Flanagan.”

He narrowed those striking blue eyes at her. “Bullshit. Old man Flanagan may not live here anymore but he’d die before he’d ever sell the Lily Rose. I don’t know who you think you’re kidding, sweetheart, but if you’re planning to squat on his property you can forget it.”

It was getting harder by the moment to hang on to her temper. “You’re wrong, Mr …?”

He made no effort to answer, just continued to glare down the length of his nicely shaped nose.

“Mr. Flanagan decided to move in with his son in Calgary. He listed the property for sale several weeks ago with Smith Real Estate in Dawson. I’m the person who bought it.”

His features looked even harder than they had before. “That’s impossible. I tried to buy this place from Mose Flanagan every other month for the last four years. He refused to even consider it.”

Her irritation inched up a notch. “Well, apparently he changed his mind. The transaction officially closed yesterday morning. I don’t know why he didn’t tell you the property was for sale.” When his black scowl deepened, she couldn’t resist adding, “Maybe he just didn’t like you.”

He opened his mouth to argue, clamped down on his jaw instead, and a muscle jumped in his cheek. Apparently her goading had hit on a portion of the truth.

“So now you’re the owner,” he said darkly.

“That’s right, I am.”

He looked her over from head to foot, taking in her Liz Claiborne jeans and the touch of makeup she hadn’t been able to resist. She bristled at his smug expression.

“And you actually intend to move in?”

“I
am
in, Mr …?”

“Hawkins. McCall Hawkins. I’m your next-door neighbor, so to speak. And I don’t appreciate all that hammering you’ve been doing. I like things nice and quiet. I enjoy my privacy and I don’t like being disturbed. It’ll be easier on both of us if you keep that in mind.”

“I’ll do my best,” she lied, thinking of the noisy dredging equipment she intended to use in the stream. She gave him a too-sweet smile. “I’d say it was a pleasure, Mr. Hawkins, but we both know it wasn’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”

Turning away from him, she climbed the stairs to the porch, picked up her hammer, and started pounding on the dresser again, dismissing him as if he had never been there. For several long moments, he simply stood there glaring. Then she caught the movement of his shadow as he turned and stalked away, back down the path beside the creek.

Of all the nerve.
Who the devil did he think he was?

She remembered passing his house just before she reached the Lily Rose, a newer, cedar-sided home with a large, metal-roofed garage of some sort attached to it. At the time she had wondered who lived there.

Charity bit back a curse as she thought of her irritating “next-door neighbor.” It didn’t matter.
He
didn’t matter.

She turned at the sound of Maude’s laughter coming up the stairs of the porch. The older woman’s gaze followed Hawkins’s retreating figure down the path. “I see you met your neighbor. Wondered when he’d show up.”

“Oh, I met him, all right, and I didn’t like him any more than he liked me.”

Maude chuckled. “Call’s all right. Long as you leave him alone. He owns a couple thousand acres on this side of the creek. Built the house he lives in when he got here four years ago. Never met a man who likes his privacy more than Call.”

“If he’s so concerned about privacy, he should have built his house somewhere back in the woods, instead of right out here on the water.”

“I guess he liked the view.”

Since she liked looking down on the wild, boulder-strewn stream herself, she didn’t argue. Besides, it didn’t matter. The property was hers to do with as she pleased.

And there wasn’t a damn thing Call Hawkins or anyone else could do about it.

Call stalked up the front steps of his house, his temper foul and his face hard. Crossing the porch, he jerked open the door and strode in, letting the screen door slam behind him.

“Sonofabitch.” He should have appreciated the quiet while he had it. Damn, he couldn’t believe his bad luck. If only he’d known the place was for sale. No doubt ol’ Mose was rubbing his hands in glee, thinking of the prissy little blonde moving in next door to him.

Of course, she wouldn’t be there long. Life this far north was hard. The rainy season had already started. For the next few weeks, there’d be too much rain and too much mud. Then summer would come and there’d be too much sun. There’d be dust and forest fires. There’d be pine beetles and hornets and flies enough to drive you crazy. If she made it till winter—which there was no way in hell she would—there’d be snow up to her pretty little ass.

He thought of the designer jeans she wore that said she was a city girl and not from around these parts, and tried not to think how good she had looked in them. He thought of her pretty face and the hint of makeup she had worn that emphasized her clear green eyes. What in the world had possessed a woman like that to come to an isolated place like Dead Horse Creek?

Of course he had also come north from the city, but that was different. Call had been born in this country. His father had been in the logging business in Prince George, a small town in the forests of British Columbia, and though his mother was American, she had loved the woods and the out-of-doors as much as her husband. Both Call and his brother, Zach, had been hunting and fishing this country for as long as either of them could remember. Both of them loved to backpack, canoe, and cross-country ski.

But Call, a year older than Zach, had been young back then, and he had been restless, curious about life in the city. The lure of his mother’s American family in San Francisco had drawn him to the States. He’d spent four years at Berkeley, where he had roomed with a boy named Richie Gill. Call and Richie had become fast friends, both of them interested in sports and the fascinating world of computers. Eventually, they’d become partners in a successful software game that had made them both rich.

Call had entered the world of business and loved it. By the time he had sold his first company and accepted the position as President and CEO of American Dynamics, he was working sixteen hours a day, so immersed in the financial empire he was building he didn’t have time for anything else.

Not even his family.

As it always did, the memory sent pain ripping through him like a ragged shard of glass. It eased as he forced the thoughts away. He never dwelled on the past anymore. He’d spent four long years trying to forget it.

“Toby!” he shouted as he crossed the polished wood floor in the living room. “Toby, are you in here?”

The younger man appeared through the doorway of the kitchen. “I’m right here, sir. I thought I’d make us a couple ham sandwiches for lunch.” Toby Jenkins had just turned nineteen, a good-looking, red-haired kid, tall and lanky, with a slender, wiry frame.

His mother lived in Dawson, ran one of the small jewelry shops in town that catered to the tourist trade. Six months ago, Toby had heard through the grapevine that Call was looking for a handyman, someone to do odd jobs for him out on Dead Horse Creek. For the first three years, Call had taken care of the place himself, but he was busier now and he needed the help. Toby lived in a small, one-bedroom cabin Call had remodeled and furnished up on the hill, far enough away so he could maintain his privacy, yet close enough so Toby could take care of the chores around the house.

“I’m not hungry,” Call said. “Wrap it up and I’ll eat it later.”

Toby frowned. “You skipped breakfast. You gotta eat something.”

Call made an unpleasant sound in his throat. The kid could be a real mother hen at times. Call figured Toby saw him as some kind of father figure, since he’d never had a dad of his own and didn’t even know who the guy was. Call had been a father once. He never intended to travel that painful road again.

“Like I said—just wrap it up. I’ll get around to it sooner or later.”

Toby ducked back into the kitchen and Call paused for a moment in front of the big rock fireplace in the living room. The house wasn’t fancy, just two bedrooms and a couple of baths, but there was a modern kitchen with the latest appliances, and the L-shaped living-dining area was nicely furnished with a comfortable, dark-brown leather sofa and chairs and accented with nineteenth-century antiques.