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Losses like Jed. “Why?” he repeated, more softly this time. She’d clearly been up all night and crying besides, so it can’t have been an easy decision. She deserved whatever tenderness his baffled surprise could muster.
Lana straightened her spine, resolve settling her expression into a quiet he’d not seen on her before. “There wasn’t another way,” she said matter-of-factly.
He’d known that all along. Spirited as she was, Lana wasn’t made of strong enough stock to go it alone. Nevertheless, it jarred him to hear her put it so bluntly. He didn’t know what he expected from the moment, but it wasn’t this. Her answer was more surrender than agreement. It wasn’t as though he expected enthusiasm, but her tone couldn’t help but confirm marriage to him was a last-chance proposition.
Mack stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I was thinking it might be best if we went off to Skaguay to marry. Day after tomorrow. Skip trying to do the wedding here and just keep it private. I’ve got some business in town anyways,” he added, afraid to admit he was doing it mostly for her sake. “So I thought maybe the Tucker sisters would take Georgie for a day or two. You could do some shopping while you’re there. Things for the house and all.”
Suddenly it felt brazen to refer to the fact that she’d be moving in. Which was nonsense—of course she’d be moving in—but it just opened up a whole, wriggly issue of what kind of marriage he had in mind. He’d been clear about it before: he was offering his protection without expecting anything—anything in return. She just never seemed to believe him. The air in the cabin grew hot and prickly, and he looked around the room in the gap of silence. It was one of Treasure Creek’s nicer cabins—he and Jed had seen to that—but nice by Treasure Creek standards was a far cry from what he knew Lana was used to. What Lana had wanted.
In what Jed had always referred to as “the high times,” the Bristow place was lush and showy. Now, despite how little she had, Lana still managed to add fancy touches. The crude table in her cabin always had a tablecloth, even if it was cut from an old skirt. She always carried a handkerchief everywhere she went. He thought it ridiculous when she’d sewn a ruffle to the oilcloth that covered the cabin window to make it look more like a curtain. Now he couldn’t picture her windows without it.
“There’ll be no…expectations,” he reassured her again, feeling ridiculously awkward. “Our arrangement is purely for your protection. And Georgie’s.”
Lana took forever to answer. And even before she did, she gestured for him to sit down at the table, then arranged herself carefully opposite him. She smoothed the worn little tablecloth out with her hands. “I suppose Skaguay would be a good idea.”
“Still, I want you to know I intend to do this up right.” He’d buy her a fine wedding dress, good meals and they’d stay in a nice hotel far from the seedy side of town. Of course, Skaguay didn’t really have a nice part—the entire city was a wild, lawless den of thieves—but it was also one of the few places nearby where things of any civility could be had. Refinements were important to Lana, and he owed her that much.
Mack also knew, without her saying it, that a town-wide, smiling-faced wedding in Treasure Creek would be more than she could bear. This marriage was raw, difficult territory for both of them. A little privacy was the only decent thing to do under the circumstances. That, and the very practical consideration that there wasn’t anyone capable of legally marrying them in Treasure Creek. Mack knew the town needed a preacher, but now Mack personally needed to ensure that more than his impassioned but unordained preaching filled the pulpit at Treasure Creek Christian Church. “We can have a fine meal and some new clothes. Get some nice things,” he repeated, getting back to the subject at hand. “For you. For Georgie.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’ve made my decision, Mack. There’s no need to lure me in.”
She made it sound like he’d won some kind of standoff. Trapped her like prize game. That’s not how this was, and she knew it. “I’m a gentleman, Lana. One who knows how a wife ought to be treated, and of no mind to skip that on account of…odd circumstances. We don’t need a big shindig, but nothing says we can’t make the best of things. My wife will have nice things.” It came out like a command rather than the statement of value he’d intended it.
“Out here?” She looked at the sad little jelly jar of wildflowers that sat on her frayed tablecloth as if it were evidence of how “nice” Treasure Creek was. “Yes, even out here,” he said sharply, mostly to defy the infuriating look in her eye. It was a sorry retort, but she had a gift for driving him to that. “And Georgie, too. He’ll be provided for. You both will.” He’d promised Jed and Lana a bright future, and he was going to make that future possible, even if it made his present miserable.
It took exactly two hours for word to get out. By the time Lana arrived at the home of the Tucker sisters, a trio of spinsters who held marriage—and men in general—in low esteem, it was obvious they’d already heard the news. Frankie, the oldest and arguably the prickliest of the trio, planted her hands on her hips the moment Lana stepped in their door. “Well, now I know why you was in such a huff earlier. Mack, huh? I suppose if you felt you had to go and marry someone…” She made it sound like even worse of a necessary evil than it was. While Lana admired their spunk—and coming from somewhere in Oklahoma, they had spunk and drawls to spare—they were far too rough for her liking. They’d come to Treasure Creek not long after she and Jed, but more for the adventure of a free life than any greed for gold. More like lumberjacks than any of Seattle’s society ladies, the Tuckers spent their days building the town’s tiny almost-up-and-running schoolhouse. They may have built the school, but Lana found them the furthest thing from “schoolmarms” she could imagine.
Not that they weren’t friendly; they were kind and bighearted as the day was long, but “rough around the edges” was putting it mildly. Of course, Georgie loved the shocking, free-wheeling trio, and they adored him. Even though some part of her brain worried that the sisters’ appetite for mischief out-paced even Georgie’s, Mack had been smart in his idea to ask them to watch the toddler. They’d accept in a heartbeat, and Treasure Creek wasn’t boasting a whole lot of families able to take in a toddler on short notice. Besides, three-on-one was barely fair odds when it came to Georgie.
Once inside, Georgie headed straight for the “cookie jar” the sisters kept on their table. The Tuckers often gave Georgie what they believed passed for “cookies.” Lana thought they were closer to sailor’s hardtack than anything that would pass in Seattle for a cookie. That hardly mattered to Georgie; he gladly accepted every one they doled out.
“Mack is a fine man,” Lana said, defending him to the now glowering Frankie, as the small, wiry woman reached into the cookie jar. Frankie replied by shaking her head and making a derisive snort as she plunked a dense beige circle into Georgie’s chubby palm.
“Well, I suppose he is,” Frankie’s sister Margie conceded as she stood against the mantel and stuffed her hands into the pockets of the odd split skirt she wore tucked into huge black boots. “But that don’t mean you have to marry him. Not up here.”
Most especially up here, Lana thought. She’d been so taken up with making the painful decision, she hadn’t had time to think about the fact that other people would actually have to know. How ridiculous, she chastised herself as she felt her cheeks flush, of course everyone will know. Mack had been kind enough to keep his relentless marital campaign a secret, so she hadn’t had to deal with the public consequences of becoming Mrs. Mack Tanner until this moment. It made her feel foolish to be blind-sided by something so obvious.
Lucy, the youngest of the trio, came in from the other room scratching her short dark hair. Lana had the unkind thought that that was probably the closest that her hair ever came to being brushed. Lucy had a gift for getting under Lana’s skin, far more than the other two. Perhaps it was her age as the youngest, but it might also be the lovely woman Lana expected Lucy might really be under all that bawdy demeanor. “I guess we’ll have us a wedding! That’ll be fun.” She turned to her sisters. “We ever had a wedding in Treasure Creek before?”
Margie twisted her mouth up in thought. “Can’t recall one. Should be a hoot!”
“Well actually, that’s what I came to talk to you about. I was hoping you could watch Georgie while Mack and I go into Skaguay to make it official.”
“Skaguay?” Lucy balked. “You’re not marrying here? Mack built that church. First off even, practically before he built his own home. Why, he and Jed…” Her voice trailed off as she realized why marrying Mack in the church Jed helped build might pose a problem. Lana began to wonder if this could get more awkward. “Still, you’d think…”
Lana didn’t want to get into this with anyone, much less the Tuckers. “We haven’t got a real preacher here to do it, Lucy. And we need to buy things for the house.” It irked her that she’d had to resort to Mack’s reasoning—or was it Mack’s excuses?—but she was stumped for a better answer. “He wants us to have a fancy time of it. You know, as a gift and all.”
The sisters all raised eyebrows, clearly showing what they thought of that idea.
“It’s the only place we can order books and such for the school, too. I walked past the schoolhouse this morning. It’s nearly done, thanks to you.” Lana hoped the compliment would divert their attentions.
Nothing doing. “Oh, we saw you walk past the schoolhouse,” Frankie cackled. “Lovebirds, the pair of you.”
This was going to be harder than Lana thought. “Can you watch him?” she asked, in the sweetest version of her we’re not going to have that conversation voice.
Lucy bent down and ruffled Georgie’s hair, something that always bothered Lana but sent Georgie into fits of giggles. “Of course we can watch the little fellow. Think of it as a wedding present. A little privacy for the happy couple, hmm?”
Her bawdy tone sent the trio into laughter, elbowing each other like a crowd of sailors. Worse yet, Georgie laughed right along with them. Lana began to wonder if the next boat back to Seattle might not be so horrible after all.
Chapter Three
As it was, the next boat Lana boarded was the ferry to Skaguay, beside her soon-to-be husband. While difficult to endure, the short burst of congratulations from everyone in Treasure Creek only proved Mack’s insight correct—this really was best done out of town.
And as Mack had declared, best done right. If one can’t have a nice marriage, one can at least have a nice wedding, Lana thought to herself as she admired her fetching new dress in the big mirror of her hotel room. It was so elegant a thing, for being done on such short notice. A smart lavender shirtwaist with just enough ruffle to make it fussy skimmed over a tiered skirt of the same pale hue. As a widow, she needn’t bother with either train or veil, so she’d get to wear the dress again for formal occasions back in Treasure Creek.
The phrase made her laugh. Formal occasions didn’t really happen back in Treasure Creek. Folks were too busy surviving to think of such things. Still, if Mack was “Mr. Treasure Creek,” as the Tucker sisters jokingly called him, then that meant she was about to become Mrs. Treasure Creek. It was too long since she’d thought of any “social” event. How wonderful it would be to create a town festival or a church social. Surely she could find time in the nearly twenty hours of daylight Alaskan summer days brought.
They’d spent the full day yesterday buying things. Cloth and linens, not just one but three new tablecloths and curtains—real curtains, not just make-do ones like she had back in her cabin. New shoes and pants for Georgie, and a little wooden train set Mack had picked out himself. And books. Nearly a dozen books sat in the corner of her hotel room now. Two novels, two cookery books and a whole set of sample schoolbooks Mack had ordered crates of for the schoolhouse back home. The real surprise had come when she’d stopped to admire a pair of pearl earrings in a store window and Mack had taken her inside and bought them for her. Then he’d deposited her at a dressmaker’s while he went off to do “some business,” telling her to get any dress she wanted to wear today. And any shoes and any hat to match.
Lana Bristow, you are too easily bought, she chided herself, her thoughts snagging on the truth that she would only bear that name for perhaps another hour, if that. Of course, she could never let Mack see how easily her head had been turned by a trinket here and a new dress there, but it had been ages since she’d had a hot, scented bath like she’d had this morning.
Mrs. Smithton, proprietress of the mostly quiet, mostly respectable Smithton’s Shining Harbor Hotel, came into the room again. Skaguay didn’t see many weddings, and Mrs. Smithton had joyously intruded into all the proceedings. So much so that even Lana, who usually loved being fussed over, was reaching the end of her patience.
She could only imagine the state of Mack’s nerves under such enthusiastic scrutiny. After all, she had been through this before. Mack had never been a groom. She flinched at the still-absurd thought that she was going to marry Mack Turner. In a matter of minutes.
Lana blanched and clenched her fists. “Oh, dearie,” said Mrs. Smithton, “every bride gets the fits just before. Never you worry. You’ve kept one glove off, like I told you?” Lana found Mrs. Smithton’s concern over “good luck” wedding traditions ironic. Mack never believed in “luck,” and given all the tragedy they’d been though, the thought of her marriage being endangered by looking into the mirror fully dressed seemed silly.
The round older woman fussed with the netting on the smart, feathered hat that sat on Lana’s piled-high hair. “Besides,” Mrs. Smithton whispered with a wink, “he’s a far sight worse off’n you, if you ask me. Looks as pale as a fish, he does. Fright looks funny on a big feller like him. Been up since dawn and barely eaten a thing.” So he was nervous. Even in his fluster, Mack had seen to it that tea, toast and peach jam—her very favorite—were sent up this morning. He seemed to know so many little things about her, and yet she still felt like, even after several years, she’d barely paid enough attention to know the color of his eyes. They were blue, weren’t they? She knew so little of him.
He’d been clear on the type of marriage he proposed. Even yesterday he had assured her theirs would be an arrangement of “mutual convenience,” not “emotional entanglements.” Still, tangle was as close to describing whatever it was she felt toward Mack Tanner. It no longer mattered, did it? This had never been about sentiment, only survival. Lana shut her eyes tight. Too late to worry about the consequences of survival now. Whatever it takes, she told herself. He’s not a horrible man.
She said it over and over to herself silently, as Mrs. Smithton led her down the hall to stand at the top of the stairs and view her groom. He’s not a horrible man.
Mack’s eyes were indeed blue. Very, very blue. They stared up at her as she came down the hotel stairs, a fair bit of panic showing in their depths. Decidedly un-horrible, Mack looked elegant in a dark suit and a gray vest. The black tie knotted under his starched white collar made the blue of his eyes stand out all the more. His hair, mostly a tumultuous mass of unruly dark waves, had been neatly slicked back in the style of the day. She had the odd thought that she hadn’t seen him so clean in months, and the equally odd thought that it suited him. He looked exactly like the well-to-do man she remembered from their Seattle days. This Mack Tanner was as much the man Jed admired as Mack Tanner the rugged adventurer.
Mack Tanner her husband-to-be. Lana grabbed the rail for support as she nearly tripped down the last stair.
It seemed as if the entire hotel staff and guests had turned out for the occasion—the parlor was filled with peering eyes. Men elbowed each other, making whispered remarks about the “poor feller” while the room’s few women oohed and ahhed. Lana felt very much on display, even here among strangers. Mack was right—she’d never have survived this charade if this were Mavis Goodge’s boardinghouse in the middle of Treasure Creek.
“You’re a fine sight,” he said as she stepped onto the parlor rug. His voice was tight and unsteady.
“You cut a fine figure yourself,” she managed, then gulped at how foolish the words sounded. He really had surprised her, however. In all the muddy making-do of Treasure Creek, she’d completely forgotten the way he could command a room when formally dressed. Half her bridesmaids had swooned over him at her wedding. Her first wedding.
Stop that. You can’t think about that now. This is a new life. That old Lana is long gone.
Lana made herself smile as Mack tipped his hat to Mrs. Smithton and held out an elbow. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Smithton, we’ve an appointment to keep.”
Lana’s stomach tumbled like a windstorm as they walked down the street. The Good Lord had never seen a wedding day like this, she was sure. It didn’t really matter, she supposed, what the Good Lord thought of this whole business. He’d pretty much left her on her own, as far as she was concerned.
Mack wouldn’t take to such thinking. It was easy to see the strength of that man’s faith. Even in the darkest of times, faith was like a constant compass for him. The man had built the town’s church before his own dwelling had solid walls. He preached on Sundays, doing an admirable job filling in, until someone took the pulpit permanently. Jed had admired that, too.
She’d lost any sense of that “true north” compass needle of faith, her inner compass spinning aimlessly since the day the avalanche took Jed. Her husband’s spirituality had been mostly sputtering sparks of faith fed by Mack’s constant flame. Intense but inconsistent. Jed aspired to, but never quite achieved, a lot of Mack’s traits. Stop comparing them. Stop it.
“You all right?” Mack’s voice was saying. He’d stilled and she hadn’t even noticed. “You look a bit—”
“Well, so do you!” she shot back, not wanting him to finish that sentence, then bit her lip. The man was simply trying to be nice, and here she was, biting his head off.
Mack gave out a nervous laugh. “Well, good to see you’ve still got some fight in you. And here I thought maybe I’d left the old Lana back on the dock at Treasure Creek.” He pushed out a breath, closing his eyes for a second or two. “It’ll be all right,” he said quietly when he opened them again. “It’ll be…just fine.”
“Of course it will,” she lied emphatically. He knew it, too. Without a word of retort, Mack merely crinkled up the corner of his eyes and tucked her hand deeper into the crook of his arm, and they walked on.
“That’s a fine dress. Look at the way folks are staring at us,” he said, keeping a tight grip on her arm. Whether the gesture was meant to be reassuring or constraining, she couldn’t say. “You always did like to be the center of attention. I’d say you’ve got it here, surely.”
“I like being the center of attention? This from the man who makes himself the center of Treasure Creek? We are a pair, you and I.” She could almost chuckle about that, and it made her feel just a bit better.
“’Course, I will be insisting on the ‘obey’ part in our vows, you know,” he said, a laugh now tickling the edges of his deep voice. “Just to be clear on things.”
“If you’re fixing to get obeyed, then I’m fixing to get honored. You know, just to be clear on things.”
He looked at her with that. “Well then, I guess we really are a pair.”
It wasn’t much of a ceremony. The pastor’s wife stood in as witness, and despite the Bible and the prayers, the whole thing had an efficient, stamp of approval feel. Treasure Creek’s makeshift dockmaster, Caleb Johnson, might have been signing off on a daily shipment, for all the ceremony’s sentiment. Still, her heart did a funny jump when Mack looked her square in the eye as he pledged to honor and cherish her. It wasn’t a romantic or smitten look, but the strong sense of honor struck her hard. She knew, as he looked at her, held her hand with a steady grip and slipped a new and different ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, that he would honor her.
Lana wasn’t prepared for what that would do to her. She hadn’t realized, until his vow, how deeply alone she’d felt. The crushing black knot in her chest loosened with his words. Even if she had nothing else, she now had protection. The yawning gap of her own vulnerability—the dark force she’d fought so fiercely every moment since Jed’s death, swallowed her and stole her voice, so that her own vows were barely above a tearful whisper. She hadn’t cried at her first wedding, but now tears slipped down one cheek as the minister smiled and pronounced them man and wife.
It was done. And somehow, it had not been the earth-shattering moment she feared. It was a passage. A quiet, gigantic leap from one life into another.
Chapter Four
All through the fancy dinner following the wedding, Mack stared at Lana. Lana Tanner. His wife. He’d arranged for them to spend tonight in Skaguay for her sake, he thought. Now he began to think it was he who needed the extra time away from Treasure Creek to get used to his new marital status. The thought still stunned him.
She was a stunning woman. She’d always been beautiful—“a looker” was Jed’s favorite term—one best showed off by finery and elegance. The kind of woman a man could dress up and take out on the town with pride. Jed had admitted to him once how astonished he’d been that Lana chose him over Mack. Jed was such a romantic charmer, however, that it hadn’t surprised Mack at all that his best friend “got the girl.” There’d never been any question in Mack’s mind. Lana wasn’t his type.
Now Lana was his wife. They were both skittish through every course of the elegant meal, and it had to do with much more than the shadow of their pasts.
He’d already told her—twice—that this was a marriage of arrangement, that there were no expectations of this being anything other than two people living under the same roof. Still, for appearances sake, there could be no question behind which door he slept tonight. Jed was always so much better with women. Mack grimaced at his bumbling awkwardness. He tried to put Jed from his mind and reassure Lana again as he took his bride by the elbow after dinner and led her up the stairs to their honeymoon suite, but it made the moment no less awkward as he slid the lock shut behind them and turned to face the room.
Mrs. Smithton had been regrettably busy. All of Mack’s things had been moved into the room. The place was thick with flowers and candles, and a ridiculous amount of petals had been strewn about.
“Oh my,” Lana said, her voice nearly a gulp.
“Mrs. Smithton reads too many novels,” Mack said, then wished he’d hadn’t. Just when he thought this couldn’t get more difficult. Lana looked pale. “Lana,” he began, moving toward her to catch her if she fainted.
“You haven’t changed your mind…have you?”
“Lana…I am not the kind of man to…” Land sakes, how to say this? “To take what…what ought only to be…freely given.”
She stilled, her defiance melting into a frailty that took some corner of his heart and ran off with it. “I was afraid once you could…you’d want to…”
Now that was just plain cruel. Of course some part of him wanted. Any man with blood still running in his veins wanted, and she was a beautiful woman.
The irritating, obstinate, distractingly rose-scented widow of his lost friend. He’d better think of something to do, and fast. Out of somewhere in the mists of his jumbled thoughts, he remembered a game his father would play with him when he was sick or in pain. Surely, this was the most absurd use of such a distraction. “How about we talk?”
“Talk?”
“Think of three questions you’ve always wanted to ask me. The hardest ones you can think of. I promise to give you a truthful answer.”
She began pulling off her gloves, eyes scrunched up in thought. Another minute of excruciating silence went by, both of them fidgeting like youngsters. As traces of her usual demeanor returned, she straightened, looked him in the eye and asked, “Are you sorry?”
That was Lana. Always needing to know where she stood, always making sure you knew where you stood with her. Absolutely no mystery with this woman. He gave the question a respectful moment of thought, wanting to word his answer carefully. “No,” he said, sure he meant it. Still, he couldn’t resist adding, “not yet.”
She managed a small laugh at that, and he was glad to see it. Much of the tension had left the room, and he was glad of that, too. It was late—past ten—and the sun was finally starting its descent behind the mountains. He watched her walk to the window, the fading orb attracting her attention the way it had caught his.
“Mack,” she said, her voice soft, “why here? Why in this…”
He knew the term she’d bitten back. She’d used it too many times since Jed’s death. “You were going to say ‘God-forsaken place,’ weren’t you?”
She leaned against the window frame, looking like an oil painting in that fancy dress up against the sunset and curtains. “As a matter of fact, I was.” She sighed. She tilted her face back to him and added, “Mrs. Mack Turner had better not say such things, hmm?”
Mack leaned against the bedpost, suddenly exhausted. “I’ve heard worse. But it isn’t the talk that bothers me so much as the idea. This place is anything but God-forsaken.”
“All those lives. All those people and things lost and broken up on the trail. Jed. Your own brothers, both of them. ‘God-forsaken’ fits, harsh as it is. I just don’t see what you see.”
Mack walked to the window, still keeping a safe distance from her. In the deepening sunset, the mountains fit the “majestic” description so often employed in the pamphlets enticing men up here. He’d used the word himself when convincing Jed, hadn’t he? “They look grand now, from here.”
She made a small grunt. “From here you can’t see all the trash and abandoned equipment and dead horses. Those mountains are still only hungry beasts to me, eager to swallow men up whole.”
Mack took a step closer to her, pointed to the peak he knew was closest to Treasure Creek. Its permanent veil of snow gleamed rose-gold in the sunset. “Not all of it. Parts are still clean. Untouched. A fresh start. That’s what Treasure Creek was—is—for me. A chance to get a fresh start, to build something solid from the ground up. In a place where there isn’t much of that. Remind folks that God didn’t forsake one inch of a place like this.”
She turned away from the window, looking at him with her head cocked analytically to one side. “Why does a man like you need a fresh start? Seems you’ve done…fine so far.”
“Comes a point in a man’s life where he’s made money, he’s made a name for himself, but he wants to know he’s made a difference. Left something better than how he found it.”
Lana’s laugh had a dark edge. “And you couldn’t leave someplace farther south better than how you found it?”
“Sometimes you don’t choose your challenges. Sometimes your challenges choose you.” He suspected he was talking about more than Treasure Creek at the moment.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she said quietly.
“It’s rather easy,” he lied, thinking it would be anything but. “You get the bed, I get the floor and we both smile a lot in the morning.”
Chapter Five
Mack winced as the ornate clock on his mantel struck eleven the next evening. Georgie, as he had done every hour since arriving at his new home, offered eleven loud “bong!”s in reply.
Lana watched Mack clamp his hand over the little gold chimes and roll his eyes. He was doing his level best to be civil when he inquired, “Does he ever sleep?”
Mack’s exasperation made her laugh. She’d had that very thought so many times over the past two months, she’d almost come to believe Georgie was incapable of it. Teena Crow, the Tlingit healing woman, had offered her teas to help, but Lana didn’t trust those strange native concoctions. As if aware the conversation had turned to him, Georgie walked over and poked Mack in the knee. This brought Mack to squat down to the boy’s height and consider Georgie with the narrow-eyed impatience of someone who had their last nerve stomped upon half an hour ago. “It’s bedtime, George,” Mack commanded, pointing up at the clock for emphasis.
