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“You say your dog is anxious? How anxious?” He spoke without cracking the slightest smile, which only made him look more like something Michelangelo had carved out of stone.
Anya swallowed. Her mouth had abruptly gone dry. The snowflakes floating against her cheeks felt colder all of a sudden, and she realized her face had grown quite warm. “Very. I rescued her from a bad situation, and unless she’s attached to a leash, I can’t get her to come out from under my bed. She even eats there and only in the dark.”
It was pathetic. Every night when Anya drifted off to sleep, it was to the sound of poor Dolce crunching on kibble.
“But that’s not the worst of it. She howls. Rather loudly.” Anya’s voice grew wobbly. “I’m about to be kicked out of my cottage.”
“I see.” Brock nodded, and a lock of his disheveled blond hair fell across his forehead.
She’d heard of bedhead, but never bearhead. It, too, appeared to have its charms.
A shiver ran up Anya’s spine—a shiver she attributed to the fact that she was still standing on his front porch and the temperature had dipped well below freezing.
Yeah, right.
“Come with me.” Still clutching the bear head under his arm, he led her inside.
Anya had been in the house once, long before she’d ever heard of Brock. She’d babysat nine-year-old twins who had lived here when she was in high school. Other than Brock’s array of unopened moving boxes, the living room looked pretty much the same—wood floors, dark paneled walls and huge floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the rugged, snow-capped Chugach Mountain range. The view was breathtaking, even to Anya, who’d seen the splendors of Alaska virtually every day of her life.
Brock strode past the window with barely a glance, leading her through the dining room and kitchen and out the back door. The snow crunched beneath their feet as they headed toward a barnlike structure about a dozen yards from the house. The barn was new—at least it hadn’t been part of the landscape when the Davis twins were nine. If there was a walkway, it wasn’t visible beneath the previous night’s snowfall. Flurries were still coming down, swirling and drifting through the branches of the evergreen trees. By the time they reached the barn, the shoulders of Brock’s bear costume were dusted with a fine layer of white.
“This is my training area.” He pushed the door open with a grizzly paw and ushered her inside.
The smell of sawdust and puppies drifted to Anya’s nostrils. A strange combination, but not at all unpleasant. In fact, she found it oddly comforting. “Wow. Nice.”
Calling it a barn wasn’t really fair. The word barn conjured up images of dirty, hay-strewn floors and farming equipment covered in layers of dust. This building had been swept and cleaned to the point of perfection. A series of short, wooden dividers separated the center of the room into four pens. What Anya assumed was leftover lumber had been stacked neatly against the wall. Brock may have been new in town, but clearly he’d been busy.
Above the excess planks of wood were a series of hooks. What looked like a ski patrol jacket hung from one of them. Anya’s gaze lingered on the bright-red parka and moved over the intersecting lines of the bold white cross printed on it until Brock spoke again, stealing her attention.
“Sit there.” He pointed to one of the square, wood-framed pens.
Anya glanced at him, wishing he would offer more of an explanation. She didn’t see a chair anywhere. What was she supposed to do? Sit on the floor? But as she approached the box, a cute, furry head peeked over one of the short walls. Then another equally adorable face popped up beside it.
“Puppies!” Anya clapped her hands.
She swung her leg over the short wall and climbed inside with the dogs, sitting cross-legged in the center of the pen. One of the puppies immediately crawled into her lap, but the other one eyed her from a foot or two away.
They didn’t look like any puppies Anya had ever seen, certainly not the customary sled dogs that populated Alaska. These were a lovely red color, with white markings on their feet and chests.
“What kind of dogs are these?” she asked. “They almost look like little foxes.”
“Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers,” Brock said, as if that mouthful of an answer made a lick of sense to Anya. He reached for a newspaper that was folded and placed neatly on one of the wooden dividers and handed it to her. “I’d like you to read this.”
She glanced at the paper, this morning’s edition of the Yukon Reporter. She scanned the front page for anything dog-related but came up empty. “Um, what exactly am I supposed to be reading?”
He shrugged what appeared to be a rather muscular shoulder, visible even through the bear suit. “It doesn’t matter. Just read it.”
“Okaaay.” She gave him a wary glance, but the look on his face told her nothing. He still wore that same stony expression. Stony, but undeniably handsome.
She unfolded the paper. The headline had something to do with the ski resort. Anya skipped over that particular article. Intentionally. Although the ski mountain loomed over Aurora, Anya had managed to pretty much ignore it since the day she’d had her heart broken atop it. She instead found a story about a moose that had been spotted roaming the streets of downtown after dark.
The moose, a young adult bull according to eyewitnesses, is thought to be the cause of recent...
Brock’s deep voice interrupted her train of thought. “Out loud.”
“Out loud?” Anya raised her brows and looked back down at the newspaper, then at the two puppies with their sweet little fox-like faces, and back at Brock. “You want me to read the newspaper to the dogs?”
“Yep.” He nodded, crossed his big bear arms and waited.
Odd, she decided. Most definitely.
But she couldn’t deny he was odd in a rather intriguing way.
She resumed reading, aloud this time, acutely aware of those glacial blue eyes watching her. Her cheeks grew warm, and she had to concentrate so her tongue wouldn’t trip on the words. Those flawless good looks of his were unnerving. Not that she was attracted to him, because she wasn’t. Of course she wasn’t. He made her nervous, that’s all.
Still, she almost wished he’d cover up his perfect bone structure with that silly bear head.
* * *
Brock watched Anya read to the pups until she’d finished the article about the rogue moose that was vandalizing downtown Aurora. Not that there was much of a downtown, he mused. Certainly not compared to Seattle, where he’d lived for the past year and a half. There wasn’t a Starbucks or a Seattle’s Best anywhere in sight.
“...authorities are asking anyone who sees the moose to contact Wildlife Care and Control.” Anya paused and blinked up at him with the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen.
Brock ignored the zing they sent straight to his chest and nodded. She started on another article, something about a rehabilitated sea otter being released into nearby Kachemak Bay.
Brock shook his head and marveled at the fact that he’d somehow landed in a place where moose and sea otters made the front page of the local paper. To top it off, he was sweltering in the grizzly suit. It was the dead of winter in Alaska, but the barn was heated and he was used to the cold. Brock had spent the better part of his adult life in the snow—if not actively searching for avalanche victims, then training for the inevitable event of a slide.
He left Anya to her reading and went to change. The two pups had settled around her comfortably, even Sherlock, the more cautious of the pair. Brock was pleased. The aim of the whole newspaper exercise was to socialize the young dogs to new people, new voices. The bear suit was a similar tool for socialization training. The dogs would be living in Alaska. They needed to be prepared for the sight of bears when they were out on the mountain training for search and rescue.
Sherlock had warmed to Anya faster than he’d anticipated. It wasn’t often that Brock had a woman around to assist with training. Then again, Anya’s voice had a pleasant, lyrical quality about it. Who wouldn’t warm to the sound of that?
He frowned as he headed back to the house. This was why he’d hesitated when Anya Petrova had shown up on his doorstep asking for help with her dog—unexpected pleasantries, such as the sound of a feminine voice and a pair of eyes the exact color of Rocky Mountain lavender, only complicated things.
Since the disappearance of his brother when Brock was a child, he’d worked hard to keep people at arm’s length. It was a necessary life skill for an eight-year-old boy who’d come to learn that sometimes people vanished. And they never came home.
As an adult, he’d devoted his life to finding the missing so other families could avoid the pain and uncertainty his own had experienced. But that’s where his relationships most often ended. After the find. He’d seen the pain that losing a loved one caused. He’d lived it. And he honestly didn’t think he had it in him to live it again. So he structured his life in a way that ensured he wouldn’t.
But it had been those eyes of hers that convinced him to open the door.
He’d never seen eyes that color—such an intense shade of violet. They brought to mind a vineyard. Or a field of wildflowers. Or a dozen other romantic notions that Brock would rather not think about.
He huffed out an exhale and stalked back toward the barn, clad now in jeans and a Search and Rescue sweatshirt instead of the oppressive bear suit. He was overthinking things. She could help him with the pups he’d promised to train and provide for Aurora’s inaugural Avalanche Search and Rescue Canine Unit, and in the process, he’d teach her how to help her timid dog. It was a win–win situation for both of them. How complicated could it get?
Anya had moved on to the sports page by the time Brock returned to the training area. He milled about, organizing probe poles and checking the batteries in his assortment of beacons as she enlightened the pups on the latest developments in the local curling club.
Curling had made the sports section? Seriously? Brock was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that it was now an Olympic sport. He stifled a grin.
As things went, having her around wasn’t so bad. He glanced at his Swiss Army watch and decided to let her keep going for another ten minutes. In the meantime, he’d put a bit of his leftover wood to good use.
He reached for a small piece, not too much bigger than his hand, and dug around in the pocket of his jeans for his knife. He leaned against the workbench and crossed his feet at the ankles. Then he went to work shaving off the outer layer of the wood, one smooth strip at a time.
His grandfather had taught him how to whittle when he was a kid. It had been the last thing Brock and his brother had learned to do together. Sometimes, when he was feeling introspective, he wondered if that’s why he went back to the hobby time and again. Mostly, though, he did it without thinking.
As his knife moved over the wood in rhythm to the rise and fall of Anya’s voice, Brock lost himself in the tranquility of the moment. The tension in his shoulders eased. He forgot about the meeting with the current ski patrol members he was expected to lead in the morning and the other myriad things he needed to do in order to get the new unit started on the mountain. He even forgot about the other search he’d been concerned about—the one for a tolerable cup of coffee. He was able to let it all go until her voice stopped.
His hands stilled and his knife paused mid-stroke. He looked up and found Anya standing before him, her hands planted firmly on her slender hips.
“I’ve finished.” She narrowed her gaze at him.
The full force of those eyes was a bit much for him to take, so he focused instead on her forehead. “You’ve finished? What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve read the entire newspaper aloud to your dogs. They’re snoring loud enough to peel the paint off the walls.”
“The entire paper? Are you serious?” Brock glanced at his watch. Somehow, what felt like ten minutes had in actuality been closer to an hour and a half.
“Deadly.” She swept him up and down with her gaze and bit her bottom lip. “What happened to the bear suit?”
He tossed his chunk of wood—now carved into a nice, smooth sphere—onto the workbench. “It was a bit warm, I’m afraid.”
“That’s a shame. Perhaps you can find something lighter. I hear faux elk fur is more ventilated.”
She was baiting him, clearly angling for an explanation as to why he’d been dressed as a bear when she arrived.
Brock wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction. If she’d simply come out and asked, he likely would have. But not now. “My elk suit is at the cleaners.”
She rolled her eyes, but he could see the trace of a smile on her lips. “So when do my training lessons start?”
“They already did.” He nodded toward the paper, still dangling from her fingertips. “That was your first one.”
“And how is reading the newspaper to your puppies all afternoon supposed to get my dog quiet and out from under the bed?” Something close to anger flashed in her amethyst eyes.
Brock chastised himself. What was he doing looking at those eyes again? “That’s for you to figure out.”
“You’re seriously not going to explain it to me?”
“Nope.” He smiled, which only seemed to make her more agitated.
He could have spelled it out for her, could have told her to get down on her dog’s level and spend time there. Loads of time, doing ordinary things, until the dog became comfortable with her there. But he’d always been a believer in doing instead of telling. People typically learned more if they had to think things through.
“I’m almost afraid to ask what lesson number two will involve.” Anya shoved the newspaper at his chest.
He caught it before she spun on her heel and made a beeline for the door.
“Come back at the same time tomorrow and you’ll find out,” he said to her back.
She turned, and a curtain of amber hair spilled over her shoulder. For the first time, Brock noticed a hint of warm mocha in her skin tone. She shot a parting glance at him, and a jolt of attraction hit Brock so hard that he nearly stumbled backward.
And the way that one captivating look settled in his gut told Brock things were going to get quite a bit more complicated than he’d bargained for.
Chapter Two
Darkness had fallen over Aurora by the time Anya left Brock’s house. Of course, this was Alaska, so it had likely gotten dark shortly after 4:30—probably around the time she’d been reading the curling scores to Brock’s sleeping dogs.
Now it was nearly six o’clock, which meant she’d have to head straight to church or she’d be late for knitting group. She’d hoped to have time to run home and let Dolce out first. A familiar wave of panic washed over her when she thought of the mournful howls that were likely emanating from her cottage.
Anya let out a huff of frustration. By now she thought she’d have some inkling as to what to do about the ongoing Dolce problem. But, although an entire afternoon spent at the dog genius’s home had proved interesting, to say the least, she was just as clueless as ever.
Clueless, but still determined to get through to the dog. Giving up wasn’t an option.
The first time Anya had seen Dolce, the poor dog was being kicked in the ribs. She’d watched, horrified, from the window at the coffee shop where she worked at the Northern Lights Inn, convinced what she was seeing wasn’t real...until the little dog let out a yelp.
Then she’d marched right outside and confronted the abuser. He’d been huge, easily a foot taller and nearly twice as broad as Anya. He’d also been more than a little drunk, which was no excuse for mistreating an animal. Anya had wedged herself between dog and man, crossed her arms and told him to behave himself or she’d call the police. She could only attribute the fact that he’d gone still to the frantic prayers she’d been uttering under her breath. Or perhaps, in his drunken haze, he’d seen two or three of her. A whole group of angry females instead of only one. Her heart had just about beat right out of her chest as she stood there, fully expecting the man to unleash his fury on her in place of his dog. In the end, he’d stumbled away, abandoning the pup without a parting glance.
And Anya had suddenly found herself with a dog.
She’d made up her mind right then and there to show the dog what love—and a real home—was all about. Something about seeing her shivering out in the cold, beaten down and all alone in the world, reminded Anya of herself as a baby. She’d never been abused, thank goodness. And she’d had her mother, of course, even after her father had walked out. But her mother had been too caught up in the bitterness of being left to provide much comfort to Anya, even as she grew into a young woman.
Anya knew better than to fantasize about changing the past, but she could change the future. At least for Dolce. She wouldn’t abandon her now, even if things were less than ideal.
But if Dolce didn’t get over her anxiety soon, Anya might not have a choice in the matter. In addition to being only marginally fulfilling, working as a barista also meant she was only marginally solvent. She couldn’t afford to move out of her rent-free cottage.
Her disappointment in the first “training session” with Brock ebbed somewhat as she put on her parking brake and headed inside Aurora Community Church’s Fellowship Hall. Even though she’d been attending church regularly for several months now, the feeling of peace evoked by simply walking through the front door never failed to catch her by surprise. She’d spent many years uncomfortable with even the mention of God. Something about growing up with an absent dad didn’t exactly inspire confidence in a God known to most as God the Father.
When Clementine, an avid churchgoer, had moved to Aurora and she and Anya became fast friends, the invitations to church events came rolling in. Anya managed to decline each one politely yet succinctly. Then Clementine’s husband, Ben, left town for two weeks to mush his dog sledding team in a race out by Fairbanks. Anya’s resistance wavered at the thought of Clementine sitting in a pew alone, so she finally gave in. And that day the pastor had read a verse from the Bible that had stolen the breath from Anya’s lungs.
Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.
Anya had experienced her fair share of leaving. The holy words had hit her square in the chest and burrowed deep inside. They’d danced in her thoughts all week until she found herself back in the pew the following Sunday. And the Sunday after that—the day she’d rescued Dolce. She’d known at once the timing of saving her couldn’t be a coincidence. For the first time, she felt as though she’d been put somewhere for a reason.
And here she was now, headed to church again. On a Monday night, no less.
“Anya, hi.”
“Hey, Anya.”
A chorus of hellos rose up to greet her as she breezed into the fellowship hall, a former gymnasium the church now used for casual events such as youth group meetings and potluck suppers. And knitting, of course. She waved at the half-dozen women gathered around the long, rectangular table situated in the center of the room and found a seat between Clementine and Sue Chase. Like Clementine, Sue was a musher’s wife. The two of them were long-time Christians. Not babies in the faith, as Anya sometimes thought of herself. They were very involved in organizing ways to help the community. In fact, the knitting group had been Sue’s idea.
“Good evening, ladies,” Sue said, and the clickety-clack of knitting needles came to a stop.
Anya pulled her own needles and ball of yarn out of her tote bag as she listened.
“Next week, Gus is taking a couple of volunteer doctors out to the Bush to treat people in some of the more impoverished villages.” Sue absently wound a length of red yarn around her fingers.
Gus was the manager of Aurora’s one and only grocery store. He was also a pilot who made regular runs out to the Bush, the area of Alaska that was off the road network and inaccessible by car.
“I’d love it if we could get together at least two dozen hats to send along. So far we have twenty.” Sue’s gaze flitted around the table. “Do you all think we could get together four more before next week?”
“I’m almost finished with mine.” Clementine held up a nearly complete hat, crafted of pink yarn sprinkled with sequins.
