скачать книгу бесплатно
“The tour ends in Ketchikan. I told the guide I wanted to get in early so we would have a six-hour layover. Do you think you’ll have time to see me and my friend then?”
Cole found his first smile of the day. The E.R. had been a mess because of the storm, and he’d been wondering what would happen with Sashi. Now he knew he’d be able to see her again. “All you have to do is let me know what airport you land at and I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Okay, that sounds great.”
“Look, you’re too special to let go. Have fun, New York. I’ll see you in a couple of days. Promise me you’ll be safe. It’s bear country out there.”
“I know. I’ve been living in it for three months.”
“Take care, anyway.”
“Bye,” Sashi said softly.
“Miss you already, New York.” Then Cole clicked off.
* * *
IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL MORNING to be leaving Marshall’s. The sun had turned the water along the coastline turquoise-blue. Sashi could hear sea lions barking in the distance. The majesty of Alaska was something she would never forget, and the huge paycheck she’d just wired home to her bank really made her stay up here worth it. She felt giddy knowing she’d earned enough to get a business loan to open up her dance studio. She finally had a place in the world where she belonged.
She got busy loading up Kendra’s and her gear into their guide’s plane. He was Joe Running Bear, an older Native chief with black hair peppered with white, whom she found very kind and apparently happy to do this tour.
Kendra was still having a hard time saying goodbye to Freddy even though she claimed she’d broken up with him. Why she continued to spend time with that weasel was beyond Sashi’s comprehension.
Sure he was good-looking, if you liked pretty boy features, calculating blue eyes and a tall wiry frame. But when you got past his looks, he had nothing else. He was a phony, just stringing every girl on. Now Kendra was standing next to him, part of his usual fawning entourage of women and men.
Finally Kendra emerged from the mob. She seemed happy. Obviously something had just happened between Freddy and her friend.
“Why are you all smiles?” Sashi asked directly.
Kendra didn’t look at her. “Joe? Are we ready to go?”
“Yes, we are.”
“Great! Come on, Sashi,” Kendra called out as she climbed into the pontoon plane secured to the dock. “I’ll tell you inside.”
Sashi had a bad feeling. What had Freddy promised Kendra now? What had she gotten herself into?
The door closed and Joe climbed into the pilot’s seat. He told them to put on their seat belts along with headphones so they could talk. He started the engine and soon they were taxiing over the water, then lifting in the air. Both girls stared out the windows, caught up in the splendor of Prince of Wales Island. Sashi found this land, covered in a rain forest of ferns and pines, magical. Bears and bald eagles made their home there, and whales dotted the coastline.
Before they touched down at their first site, Kendra grabbed Sashi’s hand. “We have to talk.”
Sashi didn’t want to stop looking out the window. “So now you feel like talking?”
“I’m going to have Joe fly us up to a lake called Red Bay. Freddy, Bridgette, Natalie, Nick and George are going to fly out for a goodbye party at the cabin located right on the lake. It’s all been arranged.”
Sashi bit her lip. She didn’t really care for Nick or George. They were two local guys from Craig who worked the fishing boats and had big crushes on the two other girls. “Why? I thought you called it off with Freddy.”
“I did, but today he begged me for a second chance. I couldn’t say no.” Kendra’s eyes began to well up with tears.
Sashi could see her friend was still madly in love with him. “Okay, we’ll do it. I’m just glad Blake isn’t coming.”
“Me, too. I think Freddy is finally choosing me over Blake. She’s been my biggest competition all summer.” Kendra reached over and gave Sashi a hug.
Sashi hugged her back. “It’s all going to work out fine,” she said, but doubted it.
* * *
COLE SUTURED A NASTY CUT on his patient’s forehead. “Cid, my friend, you really need to listen. Take it easy and lay off the booze. They have to bring you in here way too often.”
“I feel your love for me right here in my heart, Doc.” The tough fisherman pounded his chest with his fist. The blue eyes of the bar-brawler met the no-nonsense of Cole’s rich amber eyes.
“Yeah, Cid. I’m thinking you must have a thing for me by now. Asking for me by name? It’s touching.” Cole shook his head. “Come on, let’s get more personal. I’ll even get you a bed here on the rehab floor.”
At that comment Cid’s fisherman buddies, who’d brought him in, started laughing. “Doc, Cid’s a good fisherman if he could ever stay out of a bar. More importantly, out of a bet!” His captain, Lee Jarvis, always vouched for him.
Cole turned back to his patient. “Cid’s got a drinking problem. I’m worried that one night he might walk off one of your crabbing boats in a drunken stupor straight into the ocean.”
“We all have a drinkin’ problem. Just sew him up,” Lee said, getting testy. “He’s too good of an engineer to lose for the season. I’ll look into his problem after we catch our quota.”
Cole turned around in his chair. “Is that a promise?”
“No. It’s a maybe.”
Cole got up and began to strip off his sterile gloves. “Cid, I truly hope to see you in the spring. It would make my Easter dreams come true.”
Lee jumped in. “We’ll do our best, Doc.”
With that Cole left the room and began the long walk from the patients’ rooms to the hub of the E.R. He stripped his long body of the rest of the protective clothing and turned his smile on one of the new nurses.
“Stacey? The patient in room three needs another round of meds. Take either Heather or Mildred in with you. The boys can be a rough crew.”
Stacey just stared at him.
Cole turned to Mildred, who said, “Come on, Stacey. Let’s get you used to the crabbers.” But she looked back at Cole and shook her head.
“What?” he said.
“You and that amazing smile of yours. If I were twenty years younger, you’d be mine, Cole.”
“I am yours, Mildred,” he said.
“Don’t flirt with me, big boy, even if it still works.”
Cole walked away, chuckling to himself. He was looking forward to tomorrow’s reunion with Sashi.
* * *
“WE’VE ARRIVED, LADIES,” Joe Running Bear exclaimed from the cockpit. Speaking into the enormous headphone, he began discussing landing procedures. The plane circled the lake one time, then made its descent toward the pristine waters of Red Bay. The landing was as smooth and soft as silk.
As the plane taxied the two women stared out the cabin windows. A bald eagle who’d stood proud on a tree took off, its magnificent wings spread in flight. Sashi spotted startled Sitka deer moving back from the shore, robins flying to and from their nests, squirrels scampering into the undergrowth. Ancient trees stood in various states of decay. Cedars and spruce covered in moss and lichen peeked out of the morning mist hovering just above the ground.
The sun poked through the clouds, casting a blanket of diamonds over the water. The diamonds shimmered as the plane drew closer to the dock of the Pan-Abode cabin, one of many prefab cabins dotting the Alaskan bush.
Sashi lifted her eyebrows, trying to decide if she dared ask their pilot-cum-tour guide the question on her mind: Had the trees been planted on purpose to look like a wreath around the lake, or had nature created its own perfection? But where questions about Alaska were concerned, she’d learned to keep her mouth shut in case she sounded too naive.
Over the past three months Sashi had learned Alaska was a land of mystery. It was hard to believe that it was just last March her best friend from childhood had begged her to come up here.
It had all sprung from Kendra’s falling in love with Freddy, which had happened when both she and Frank Marshall’s son had attended school together in Washington, D.C. Freddy had asked Kendra to come up to the resort and spend time with him. She went because she believed she had found the man she was going to marry, and this time with him would make for a perfect summer.
Kendra had asked Sashi to come because she knew her friend needed the money to make her dream become a reality.
Sashi took in Kendra’s silhouette up front. They’d been best friends since they were three years old. Sashi couldn’t believe the past twenty-five years had gone by so quickly. During that time Kendra had become a tall, striking woman, one just as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside. She was one of those rare types of people who would hold some fund-raiser or another for a cause no one had ever heard of just because she cared. Sashi never knew Kendra to be unkind to another soul.
If people thought Kendra was odd, it was only because she was so smart. Kendra had a different way of thinking from most people. Sometimes it made her seem snobby, but nothing could be further from the truth.
“My friends,” Joe said through the headphones in his deep, rich voice. “It appears Mother Nature has looked kindly on us this morning. We had the bald eagle to welcome us and the sun to shine on us. We will be docking momentarily. Since no one has arrived yet, we will prepare for a wet docking and hike to the cabin.”
“Uh, Joe?” said Kendra. “Can you elaborate on what a wet docking is?”
His eyes twinkled as he looked back. “The parks department hasn’t kept up the dock here at the lake. So we have to wade to shore.”
Kendra poked Joe in a friendly manner. “Please tell us you have waders.”
He laughed. “Nothing to worry about, ladies. Joe takes care of everything.”
Kendra and Sashi looked at each other and smiled. On their tour yesterday, Joe had been quite a character, providing them with anecdotes about his ancestors. Then he’d made fun of Kendra’s pronunciations of some Tlingit words and told story after story until their stomachs hurt from laughing so hard.
Sashi loved this man’s company and thought it was a shame they were cutting their tour short, all because of Freddy. But it wasn’t her place to say anything. After all, Kendra was the one paying for this three-day adventure trip with Joe.
For some reason, Sashi feared that this last hurrah in Red Bay would be a disaster. She’d told Kendra that if Freddy Marshall had been serious about her, he would have wanted to be alone with Kendra. But her friend had refused to listen. She had insisted she needed to see Freddy and the group one more time before they left Alaska.
All these thoughts filled Sashi’s mind as she watched Joe exit the plane first and walk up the slope to the split-level cabin. Once he felt the area was safe, he called to them. They put on the fishing waders Joe had given them, then grabbed their night packs.
Kendra got out of the plane ahead of Sashi, visibly bursting with excitement and the knowledge that Sashi, whose waders were two sizes too big for her and whose pack weighed half as much as she did, was going to need help. Sashi watched her friend walk up the moss- and rock-laden hill.
After throwing down her pack, Kendra returned to the shore and stood half in, half out of the water. She grinned as Sashi was planning her next move.
“Sashi, what are you doin’?”
“I’m sitting here thinking of all the predicaments I’ve been in this summer. I have to tell you this is a classic.” Still clinging to the edge of the plane’s opening, Sashi could tell Kendra was trying hard not to laugh. Kendra knew Sashi hated depending on people in any way.
“Would you mind if I go get my camera?” Kendra asked. “We’re lucky that it’s such a nice day for the end of August.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Sashi said drily. “Go ahead, then maybe you can help me get off this plane.”
In a minute Kendra was back with a camera, took a few shots, then helped Sashi wade to shore. They were both laughing as the waders kept smacking Sashi in the face.
Finally the two of them made it into the cabin. Joe had made a fire and had coffee brewing for the three of them. While Kendra kept a vigil at the window waiting for Freddy’s plane to appear, Joe took Sashi to the back of the cabin.
She eyed her wily comrade. “What’s all this?” He’d been up to something. The old chief possessed the wisdom and the walk of a great tribal leader from the past.
Joe’s voice grew hushed as he placed his hands on her shoulders. “You remind me of a lone wolf pup. It’s in your eyes and in your wild red hair. Just learning about its power and strength is what makes you so strong.”
He picked up a small, rectangular handheld device. “My daughter and her husband gave this to me for my birthday. It’s a personal locater beacon if there’s an emergency. Don’t leave the cabin without it.”
“But, Joe, don’t you need it?”
He pulled another one out of his vest.
“Are they connected?” Sashi asked.
He shook his head and his eyes danced with laughter. “To satellites, yes. Me, no. I have a good friend who is a doctor named Cole Stevens. Like you he is a wolf, also a loner. He never leaves home without one. He got it for me. Same birthday, I think.”
“I’ve met Dr. Stevens. I’m supposed to meet up with him again tomorrow.”
Joe’s face broke out in a radiant smile. “Ah. He has finally found his mate.”
Sashi’s face reddened. “Oh, that’s a little bit out there, Joe. We just met.”
“No, Joe is usually right.”
“You’ve got to be making this up.” She loved the way he referred to himself in the third person. She tried not to laugh while she held a hot cup of coffee in her hand.
“I laugh about Joe all the time,” he said. “But I never laugh about safety. Never.” He held the device in his hand and showed her how to turn it on. With care he explained how each device was coded by its own transmitter signal.
“Here’s the funny part,” Joe said. “Cole and my daughter are very good friends, but they don’t know Joe has two devices.” By his smile, she knew he enjoyed telling the story. “Since they know I have little faith in modern technology always working, they offer to pay the yearly fee.”
Sashi bit her lip, trying to understand this man. “But if you don’t trust the devices, then why carry them?”
“Now Joe never said he didn’t trust the devices.” His finger shook, but his smile was back. “I like an extra one in this land of the Raven. Because of this old body, it gives me peace of mind in the back country.”
“Where will you be tonight? I don’t want to take your peace of mind.”
Joe shook his head. “You want to take a piece of my mind and keep the device on you.” He tucked it into a pocket on her padded vest. “Now let me give you another piece of my mind.” For the next ten minutes he told Sashi about bear mace and how to survive in bear country.
“Thank you,” she said, then hugged him. “Where are you flying now?”
His eyes lit up. “I’m going back to Ketchikan to be with my daughter, granddaughter and son-in-law.”
“Until tomorrow, then.”
“I will be here early.”
Sashi followed him out of the cabin and down the steep slope. “Can you give me an idea of what time exactly?”
“Depends on the weather.” Joe looked up at the sky, then back to her. “As you know, Mother Earth is going into her rainy season. I’ll be here about nine.” He smiled, waved goodbye and made his way down to the plane. “You worry about me too much, little wolf. I’m the one who’s worried about you out here without a gun. I wish you ladies would take one.”
“Joe, Freddy’s coming and I know he always carries at least two guns. Even so, we know bear safety. Everything will be all right.”
