Wild Heat (Northern Fire) (17 page)

“I didn’t.” Nik grimaced. “I can’t say anything right with you.”

Thankfully, the waiter came up to their table right then. “Would you like to order anything, ma’am?”

Caitlin nodded. “A shaved chicken breast sandwich à la carte, no mayo, and an onion burger with fries and salad.” She knew Tack’s schedule and he hadn’t had time for lunch yet either.

“We already ordered,” Savannah offered before Caitlin could ask.

“Do you want me to bring all the food out at once?” the waiter asked.

“That will be fine,” Nik answered for all of them.

Silence descended on the table and Caitlin cast about for a safe topic to break it. Savannah was looking down at her lap, so she didn’t notice the looks being cast her way by her husband, who clearly was still very much a stranger to her.

“Have you heard anything about the movie they’re making in town?” Caitlin asked Nik.

“They are filming at Jepsom Acres.”

“Oh?” That would explain why she hadn’t seen any film trucks in town.

“I don’t know how Carey talked Rock into that one,” Tack said as he slid into the booth beside Caitlin.

Caitlin reveled in Tack’s nearness and did her best not to show it. “I wonder. I don’t remember him having much of a sense of humor or adventure for that matter.”

Rock had been four years ahead of her and Tack in school, but he’d never really been a kid. It seemed like he was always watching out for his little brother and sister. His parents had been pretty absent from the picture long before the plane crash that killed them both.

“Who’s Rock?” Savannah asked.

“A self-made millionaire who lives south of town.”

Savannah’s brow furrowed. “Then who is Carey?”

“His baby brother,” Nik answered.

“Rock’s got the patience of a saint to put up with him,” Tack grumbled.

“Glad your parents gave you Egan?” Caitlin teased as the server put their food on the table.

Despite the undercurrent of tension between Savannah and Nik, lunch was surprisingly pleasant and Caitlin was sorry to see both men leave—Tack to lead an afternoon tour and Nik to return to work.

“As long as we’re here, want to do some shopping?” Caitlin asked Savannah.

Savannah’s eyes lit up. Oh, ho. Her new friend liked to shop. “You bet I do.”

They managed to spend three hours on the boardwalk and Caitlin was so exhausted by the time she got back to the B&B that she took a nap before Tack was supposed to pick her up and take her back to his house.

Tack dropped a photo on Kitty’s desk on his way into his office.

It was a purple wild iris, one of the earliest blooming wildflowers in the area. He’d taken the picture the day before while leading a group of hikers up one of the steeper trails on the peninsula. Irises usually grew in clumps, but this one had stood beautiful and proud alone.

It had reminded him of Kitty.

He could have given the print to her the night before. She’d been at his house for dinner and a hell of a lot of entertainment after. It wouldn’t have been the same, though.

He liked the look of surprised pleasure that came over her face each time she found a new picture on her desk. The framed board he’d put up on the wall behind where she sat already had a decent “bouquet” growing from the center outward.

He wasn’t the only one providing pictures of Alaskan wildflowers. Once Egan and Bobby saw Kitty’s photo board, they’d started looking for the perfect specimens of their own to add.

The other two wilderness guides didn’t print the pictures off, though, but sent them to Kitty’s phone.

Only Tack got the privilege of seeing her delight as she picked up a new flower to add to her “bouquet.”

Which was why he made sure he was in the reception area when she came in.

She saw him and her sky-blue eyes sparked with happy welcome. “Good morning, Tack.”

“Hey, wildcat. You sleep good last night?”

Kitty gave him a sultry up-and-down look. “Oh, yeah.”

He’d taken her home after midnight, grateful that her gran and great-aunts went to bed by nine, no matter the season.

The Grant sisters’ nocturnal habits had made him and Kitty getting together a lot easier. The influx of tourists from the first of the ships also helped keep everyone too occupied to notice Tack and Kitty sneaking around.

Though it was riskier to share dinner, like they’d done the previous night. Tack considered it a calculated risk worth taking when the benefits were so pleasant.

“Shouldn’t you be gearing up?” she asked. “Your tour leaves in less than an hour.”

“It’s a pretty easy hike.” He’d taken one of Egan’s tours so his brother could drive their mom into Anchorage on a last-minute errand.

Their schedule still wasn’t as full as it would be once all the cruise lines had their Alaska routes running.

Tack could have driven
Aana
because he’d planned a day in the office, but he would take a hike over the big city any day. Even an easy one.

He would end up doing the paperwork he couldn’t delegate to Kitty at home later.

“Is Bobby at the pier by himself organizing both groups?” Kitty asked, sounding worried.

“He can handle it.”

Kitty looked at him askance. “He’s got twenty-five people signed up for the Cailkirn Beach Walk.”

“I’ve only got ten cruise passengers going up to the Skilak Lookout Trail with me.” Tack and Egan’s tours were limited by the number of passengers their two tour vans could hold.

Both had room for eleven passengers and a driver. They capped their tours at ten in case they got a call from a desperate cruise director who needed a spot for a VIP or disgruntled ship passenger.

It happened often enough that Tack planned for it. They either charged the ships three times the usual rate for the last-minute booking or gave it away to cruise directors who sent a lot of business their way. It was a win-win.

“You’re going back up to the overlook?” Kitty’s tone was wistful.

“You have the schedule.”

She turned away, but not before he noticed the tell-tale color on her cheeks. “I didn’t pay attention to the fact that
this
was the tour you were taking over for Egan.”

He wasn’t sure why it mattered to her, but for whatever reason it seemed to. “Do you want to come?”

“I’m working, if you hadn’t noticed. You hired me to answer phones and handle your scheduling.”

“So, forward the phones to your cell and take my tablet in case you need to refer to the schedule. You’re even dressed for it.”

She usually looked pretty fashionable in the office, but she’d worn jeans and a sweater today. She’d need her hiking boots, though.

“I’ve got all the info on my phone.” She shook her head. “But I can’t just leave the office unattended.”

“What do you think we did before you started working here? The phone doesn’t stop ringing when you leave in the afternoons either.” And he hated that moment when he had to forward it to his cell.

At least Egan and Bobby took their turns doing that onerous task too.

“But—”

“It’ll be a chance to see what you’re selling when you’re talking to a potential client.”

Kitty gave him a look he hadn’t seen in a lot of years. It was her
let’s do this even if it gets me in trouble
look. The one she gave him before she set about proving that not only could she keep up with him, but she’d also challenge him to keep up with her.

Hell if it didn’t send blood surging into his prick. “You in, wildcat?”

“I’m in.”

“We’ll stop and get your hiking boots on the way out of town.”

“The trail’s in the other direction.”

“So?”

She laughed, the sound so much like her old self he couldn’t help yanking her into his arms for a kiss that put arriving at the pier on time in jeopardy.

C
aitlin couldn’t believe she was going back up to the Skilak Lookout Trail with Tack.

Their last time there had been an emotional watershed.

Today she planned on simply enjoying herself. No complicated discussions about the past or feelings. No making out on the ground, though she might miss that one.

Just watching Tack in his element.

She hadn’t told him, but as soon as the customer satisfaction surveys started coming in, she’d started wishing she could see him in action. His clients loved him.

Egan and Bobby, too, but the kinds of comments that came in about Tack were different. More
intense
. It was no surprise that others considered him the epitome of the Alaskan man, but the way people claimed that he helped them fall in love with the state?

She wanted to witness that.

It reminded her so much of the friend from her childhood, the boy who taught her what it meant to belong to Cailkirn, not just live there.

Only, as she listened to Tack give an entertaining and accurate history of the town, accompanied by colorful stories, as they traveled north on Sterling Highway, it wasn’t Alaska or the area that Caitlin fell in love with.

It was Tack.

The feeling welling up inside her as she watched him talk into his headset from the front passenger seat of the tour van was as unstoppable as the inlet tides and deeper than the ocean’s abyss.

If she’d recognized this
love
during sex, she would have written it off as passion’s excess. If she’d acknowledged it when he was helping her, she’d have convinced herself it was the gratitude and loyalty of friendship. Even if she’d gotten an inkling when she found another one of his photo gifts on her desk, she’d be able to dismiss it as sentimentality.

But right here? Right now? Her heart so full that tears tightened her throat, she had no excuses.

The moment was too prosaic
not to be
profound.

She’d been so certain she was inured to adoration of this magnitude, and if it were any other man in the world, she would be. However, the walls Caitlin had built around her emotions had no hope of keeping him out.

Because Tack had been firmly entrenched in her heart since Caitlin was six years old.

His voice washed over her, the words no longer registering as she examined her new knowledge with the exultation and terror of a woman facing true love for the first time in her life. But as certain as the realization that she loved him was the discovery the emotion had always been there.

She just hadn’t let herself see it.

Not when they were teens and she never got crushes on other boys at school. Not when they were college students and it had taken her into the middle of their sophomore year before she accepted her first date.

With Nevin Barston.

Not when she’d felt raptor-size claws slash her heart when she pushed Tack away and stopped responding to his calls, texts, or e-mails.

The magnitude of her self-delusion shook her as much as finally accepting the truth of her feelings for Tack, maybe even more.

How long would she have kept hiding from the one emotion she’d denied, the one bigger than all the others combined?

Had the sex opened the cracks in her self-realization? Or had it been day-after-day exposure to this man who was
the man
to her?

Or maybe the layers between Caitlin and the inexorable understanding had been peeled away by the years of pain without him. Nevin had added to that pain, but he hadn’t been the deepest source of it.

Oh man. She
really
needed to talk to Dr. Hart.

Caitlin loved Taqukaq MacKinnon and she always had.

She’d never loved Nevin Barston. Caitlin had been bowled over by his sophistication and good looks, but he couldn’t occupy a place in her soul that was already full.

He might have done his best to break her spirit, but he could never break her heart. Because he hadn’t owned it. Not even a little corner of it.

It had always belonged to Tack, and she suspected it always would. The love of a child for her dearest friend had morphed into something else as they grew into man and woman.

And there had been a time he had loved her too. He’d never said, but she’d known somewhere inside her that she owned his heart too.

She’d ignored that knowledge and followed her plan to outrun the agony of a childhood loss she’d never dealt with.

In some strange way she’d felt like she owed it to her parents to leave Cailkirn too. They’d been so adamant about leaving the town behind. There had been a part of her that thought she had to honor their memory by following their dream and getting out.

Oh man.

Her therapist had been right when Dr. Hart had posited that Caitlin hadn’t disliked Cailkirn or Alaska, but the painful grief she identified with living there.

It had caused an obsessive need to leave the small town and she’d known subconsciously she’d never go if she acknowledged the depth and breadth of her feelings for Tack.

So she’d denied them. And him.

Doing it had cost her the one person left in her life she couldn’t afford to lose. Tack had been her anchor since she was six and then she’d cut the line and set adrift.

She couldn’t deny the horrible awareness that these revelations were coming eight years too late. The damage had been done and this huge feeling inside her had nowhere to go.

Tears tightened her throat to the point it became hard to breathe. Her heart began to pound heavy and rapid in her chest. The first panic attack since Tack had taken her to his house the first time swelled inside her.

“Isn’t that right, Kitty?” Tack said loudly through the tour van’s speaker system connected to his headset, like he realized she wouldn’t have heard him otherwise.

How had he known she was getting lost in her own head again? What sixth sense connected them?

She looked around, but the faces of the other passengers didn’t give her any clues as to what he was talking about.

“Excuse me?” she asked, her panic ebbing slightly as she did her best to focus on Tack.

“I was telling these fine people that even our resident ghosts think Cailkirn is something special.”

“If they didn’t, they’d move on to the afterlife,” she said, finally catching up.

Laughter sounded around her and she forced a smile in response, though her words hadn’t been meant to be funny. She’d just said the first thing that came to her mind.

“Is it true your grandfather haunts the bed-and-breakfast your family runs?” a woman in the second bench seat back asked.

Caitlin shifted in her seat so she could look back toward the tourists. “I’m not sure he haunts the house as much as he does my gran.”

“That’s so romantic.”

It would have been more romantic if he’d stayed in Cailkirn to take care of his family,
Caitlin thought. She kept that particular belief to herself.

Apparently she had her grandfather’s abysmal timing. Only he’d died when he left Cailkirn. She hadn’t.

Did that mean she’d been given a second chance to win back Tack’s love? Could they live out the dreams he’d abandoned when she kicked him out of her life?

Did she want to try?

Caitlin wasn’t at all sure she had the mental or emotional reserves to stand up to his rejection if she told him how she felt and Tack shut down any hope of a future between them.

Her heart physically hurt in her chest as she accepted he’d already done that.

Maybe it was for the best.

She wasn’t sure she still had it in her to hope, to reach for dreams that could shatter as easily around her feet as the mirror Nevin had once thrown at her.

Needing respite from her heavy thoughts, Caitlin spent the rest of the ride to the trailhead answering questions and sharing her own stories to help Tack entertain the cruise passengers.

Once they’d parked and everyone got out of the van, Tack locked it up and started giving instructions for the hike.

Two young men, one blond with the jock look and the other undeniably Goth with black hair and polish on his nails, broke off from the group. They’d been in the backseat with an older couple that might have been their parents and had spent the entire drive either talking to each other or texting on their phones.

They sidled toward Caitlin, separating her from the others as well.

The blond spoke. “So, my bro here bet me ten bucks you’re one of the ship’s passengers. He says I’ve got no skills of observation.”

“The only faces he remembers are the ones facing him on a football field,” the Goth twentysomething claimed.

Caitlin managed not to roll her eyes. “You lose that bet.”

She wasn’t impressed with either brother’s powers of observation. They had to be the only two people in the van who didn’t know she was a Cailkirn resident.

“So, you’re a local?” the blond pressed.

“Yes,” Caitlin said shortly. “I work for MacKinnon Bros. Tours. You need to listen to Tack right now.”

The Goth did roll his eyes. “Don’t step off the trail, leave the wildlife alone, don’t litter, blah, blah, blah. We’ve heard it before; this is our third stop on the tour. Mom and Dad insist on doing some kind of
adventure
at each port.”

Caitlin recognized the blasé attitude of a college student trying to seem uninterested in anything but clubs and parties. She also noticed he remembered three of the key rules of hiking. At least he had that over the teens who had precipitated Savannah Vasov’s first sighting of a bear.

“But other people need to hear what he’s saying.”

“You don’t. You’re an expert, I bet,” the blond said.

His brother sidled up until he was almost touching Caitlin. “You could be our personal tour guide.”

“I’m not a guide. I work in the office.” She deftly sidestepped him and tried to put more distance between herself and the young men. “All of our guides are certified wilderness experts.”

Even Bobby had his basic certification. Tack had told Bobby that if he wanted to keep working for the business, though, he’d need to get additional certifications in the winter when their tour schedule was light.

The blond moved toward her left and his brother flanked her on the right, stepping close again.

Persistent little brats.

Then, without her having to say a single thing, both young men backed up and started moving away fast.

Caitlin turned around, unsurprised to find Tack approaching. The look on his face? A little less expected.

If she were the boys, she would have retreated too.

“I’m sorry,” she said when he reached her. “I tried to get them to stop talking.”

“Were they harassing you?”

“No. Just flirting.”

“You didn’t flirt back.” It was a statement.

But she still felt the need to respond. “Not even remotely.”

He nodded. “You okay?”

“Sure. It was harmless, Tack.”

“Stay close during the hike.”

“I’m not helpless.”

“But you’re on the hike to see what we do, not to have amorous advances from little boys.”

At twenty-eight, Tack wasn’t exactly ancient, but Caitlin wasn’t about to remind him of that fact. He was in full protector mode.

“You’re hot when you get all protective like this,” she whispered as she passed him to join the others at the trailhead.

It was all she could do not to snicker when she noticed the two brothers standing on the other side of their parents as far from Tack—and her—as they could get.

Tack kept her right beside him as he started the hike, his hand landing in the small of her back.

She stared up at him in shock.

He shrugged. “They’ll all be gone tonight.”

When their cruise ship sailed. In other words, no one here was a local and it didn’t matter if they knew she and Tack were involved in a casual sexual relationship.

Not that it felt all that casual with the looks he was giving the college boys and his hand remaining so possessively on her.

This hike was entirely different from the time before. Tack pointed out the flora and fauna along the way and shared stories of wildlife sightings and information on those they could expect to make.

He told them the history of the trail and about the devastating wildfire burn from twenty-plus years ago.

Caitlin was entranced, listening as closely as any tourist who had never stepped foot on the Kenai Peninsula before.

When they reached the overlook, the cruise passengers took tons of pictures, and so did Caitlin.

She even talked Tack into taking one with her.

Tack had passed out nutrition bars and bottles of water before the hike. It looked like pretty much everyone was taking advantage of both now that they were resting.

“Remember, if you pack it in, you pack it out,” Tack told them, and watched closely to make sure none of the hikers from their group left any trash behind.

Suddenly one of them was pointing up at the sky and shouting that it was an eagle.

Everyone went silent, watching the majestic bird circle in the air above. Whether it had eyed prey or was just curious about the group of humans pointing and exclaiming, the eagle flew in dips and swoops, putting on a show no amount of money could have guaranteed.

Caitlin didn’t even try to get a picture, she was so enamored of the beautiful bird. Coming upon wildlife, even on hikes like this, was not certain—especially with a noisy group who chattered the whole way up the trail. And eagle sightings were getting rarer each year.

Tack came up close, settling behind her. “This is why I do what I do.”

She nodded, understanding in that moment more than she’d ever thought she could. When his arms slid around her, she relaxed against him, letting the security of his presence complete the perfection of the moment.

The eagle finally flew off, breaking the spell holding the group silent.

People started talking and looking ready to make the return hike.

Tack leaned down and kissed her temple. “You’re hella hot when you’re all spellbound by the beauty of our home state,” he said, neatly turning the tables on her from earlier.