“Easy, huh?”
“Definitely.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “That’s what finally cost me, isn’t it?” he asked softly.
Allie took a breath. “What do you mean?”
“I was easy. Easy to be with. Easy to care about. And I made your choice easy.”
She tried to breathe again, but the air already stuck in her lungs wouldn’t let her.
“If I’d been more high maintenance, like they are, if I’d needed you more than they did, we would have stayed together. You went home because you thought they couldn’t be without you. But that I could.”
His words hit her directly in the heart. He was right. But she was stunned he’d figured it out.
Clearly he’d been paying attention. And thinking about this a lot.
Part of his appeal in the beginning had been that he was someone she could love who didn’t
need
her. That had been so attractive.
But yes, that had also made it easy to leave him.
He’d survive without her. She’d known that. She’d known that he’d go off and make an amazing life and be happy even without her, so it had been easier to say good-bye to him than to the family that did need her.
Allie felt her throat tighten and had to blink to keep him in focus. “You still don’t need me.” He’d left her and done just fine. She grabbed his arm as he leaned back. “But it’s a relief, Gavin. That’s what
I
need. I’ve got nothing left to give right now.”
“I need to have you here with me,” he said, his voice quietly intense. “I need to know you’re okay, that you’re healthy and happy, Allie. I need that a lot.”
She swallowed hard. He looked determined. She was starting to like that look on him.
“I’m feeling a lot more of all of that when I’m here with you.”
He looked into her eyes for what seemed like an eternity. Then he leaned in and kissed her softly.
The gentleness of it almost knocked her over. More than all of the passion and heat and intensity she’d experienced lip to lip with Gavin, this was the one that nearly undid her.
Stupidly, tears filled her eyes, and in spite of her best effort, one escaped. Gavin just watched it slide down her cheek. Then he lifted his finger and wiped the wetness from her skin. He didn’t panic and he didn’t insist she talk about it. He just took her hand.
“Let me show you around,” he finally said. “I want you to see my clinic, the rest of the house, the property, the town—everything I’ve got here.”
He’d kissed her, he’d carried her in his arms, he’d made her come with his mouth and tongue, and yet his hand holding hers was what made her chest warm and her mind quiet. As long as Gavin had a hold of her, she’d be okay. He seemed determined not to let go.
Allie followed him back into the kitchen. Lydia’s back was still to them and she just gave a noncommittal “uh-huh” when Gavin told her he was giving Allie a tour and to page him if anyone needed anything.
Gavin gave Allie a wink as they stepped into the short hallway off the kitchen. “She’s suspicious of you.”
Allie shrugged as they walked along the bright hallway with windows everywhere. “She should be. I show up here in the middle of the night in a wedding dress, unconscious, with no explanation? Seems weird, you have to admit.”
“I think it’s more about her not thinking any woman is good enough for me.”
She looked up at him. “Thought you said nothing was going on there.”
“She actually feels more…motherly toward me, I think.”
“Sure.”
He laughed. “Seriously. She’s always picking up after me, feeding me, criticizing me. And she tells me which women in town want to date me and why I should steer clear.”
“Because she wants you all to herself,” Allie said. Men were really dumb.
He shook his head. “She and I have talked about this. Her reasons are things like the girl being slutty, or having a bad temper, or drinking too much.”
“You and Lydia have talked about this?” Allie rolled her eyes. Of course they had. Gavin was in-your-face honest. There was little that was subtle about him. If he had an opinion, a question or advice, he let you know it. He did it nicely. But if you asked Gavin if your hair looked good, you’d better be prepared for the truth.
“Yeah.” He pushed the door at the end of the hall open and they stepped into what was clearly his office. “I was wondering why she was so critical of all the women too, but when I asked if she was in love with me, she crossed her arms, looked me up and down, shook her head and said, ‘Sorry, but no’.”
Allie felt her mouth curve. “She apologized?”
He nodded. “She was very gentle on my ego. She said she liked me, felt loyal to me, like I said, and just didn’t want me to get with a girl who wasn’t good enough, but that she had no interest in me beyond that.”
“And you believed her?” How could any woman not want Gavin? He had it all. She sighed.
“Yep. She told me, very politely, that she thinks I’m a great guy but she’s not attracted to me, there’s no spark.”
Allie laughed. “Clearly she’s not normal.”
He tugged her toward him. “I love when you laugh.”
She looked up at him and couldn’t reply right away in the face of the warmth in his eyes. “I don’t avoid it on purpose or anything.”
He gave her a little smile that seemed almost sad. “I know. But we’re going to make it more regular.”
She was all for it. “Nice office,” she commented, even though she’d barely glanced at it.
He looked around. Two walls held floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, one wall had a huge window—of course—and the other held the door that obviously led to the rest of the clinic. His desk was huge and cluttered. There were distinct piles but there were a lot of them, and he had at least four coffee cups, a bowl and spoon, and three textbooks along with the usual desk stuff—penholder, phone, lamp, clock.
He smiled. “This is the one room in my life Lydia doesn’t touch.”
“It shows.”
“I know.” He pulled her toward the door to the clinic. “But a guy needs some space to just be himself.”
“Even if himself is messy and unorganized?” she asked, following.
“Even then,” he agreed with a grin.
His office opened into a break room with a fridge, microwave, small table and coffee pot, which then led into the front lobby. It seemed to be a typical vet office with chairs in the waiting area, a tall desk where patients—or their owners anyway—signed in. What was a little unusual, though, were the huge color photographs that covered the walls.
Polar bears.
Everywhere.
But not just nice wildlife photographs of random polar bears. Gavin was in every photo.
He was bundled in cold weather gear from head to toe, his eyes covered with dark goggles, but she knew it was him. It was the grin.
She’d know that smile anywhere.
She moved toward the big photo in the middle of the far wall. It was Gavin holding two polar bear cubs and looking like he’d never been happier. Her heart ached at the sight of that smile. God, he was gorgeous, and warm, and amazing.
“These are beautiful,” she said, lifting her hand to touch the face of one of the bears.
“Thanks. Those were taken last summer. Those are twin girls.”
Something in his voice made her turn to look at him. He was looking at the photo with pride in his expression.
“Where is this?” she asked. Did they have polar bears wandering through their neighborhoods in Alaska?
“Up on the Northern Slope,” he said. “It’s one of only seven polar bear populations in the world. One of two in North America.”
“What were you doing?”
“It’s a capture and release program through the US Geological Survey that’s been around about thirty years. Three times a year—spring, summer and fall—we go out with the goal of capturing and monitoring about one hundred bears. We gather samples—like skin, hair, fat—and take lots of measurements. We also tattoo ID numbers on them so we can track them long-term. Most of the bears are monitored for years.”
His face lit up as he spoke about this obvious passion, and Allie found herself fascinated.
“Where’s the Northern Slope?” she asked.
He moved to a huge map of Alaska he had mounted on another wall. “North,” he said with a grin.
“Ha-ha.”
He pointed. “I’ve worked near both Deadhorse, which is a town of oil-field workers, and Barrow, which is a native community of Inupiat people.”
“Tell me about it,” she said.
“Really?”
Something that made him look that happy? She definitely wanted to hear more. “Yes, really.”
He didn’t need any further nudging. “The season is usually four to six weeks, and the work depends on the amount of daylight and how lucky we get finding the bears. They’re tracked with GPS coordinates from their collars, but the satellites only upload coordinates every forty-eight hours and a bear can cover a lot of ground in that amount of time, so sometimes we go a couple days without seeing anything. Other days we find ten bears at once. So we stay up there while we’re working. The days can be long and the weather can be nasty, but…I love it.”
That was clear.
“What’s this?”
The photo she was looking at showed a helicopter lifting a huge bear in a slinglike contraption.
Gavin moved to stand behind her and she leaned back into him. She loved feeling the rumble of his voice through his chest as he talked. She also loved the warm weight of his hands on her shoulders.
He chuckled looking at the photo. “That guy weighed just a bit over one thousand pounds. Can you imagine four or five of us trying to get him into that sling when he was completely knocked out? It was a great workout.”
Her eyes widened. “A thousand pounds?”
“Yep. The helicopter is the only way to move a big boy like that. That’s Wilson, one of our best pilots. I love going out with him. The most dangerous part of the work is when the helicopter is following a bear before it’s sedated. We tranquilize the bear by shooting it with a Telazol dart from a shotgun. It takes an amazing helo pilot to not crash while staying close enough that we can get a shot while the bear is trying frantically to get away. Once we get the dart in, we go up higher and follow until the bear falls asleep—and to make sure they don’t try to go into the water, then drown when the drug starts to work.”
“And you’re in the helicopter while they’re chasing the bears?” she asked with a little shiver.
“Yeah. That’s how we get up there. There are no roads in that part of Alaska, babe.”
Ugh. No roads and one-thousand-pound polar bears. She wasn’t in Massachusetts anymore.
“The next danger is working on a bear when there are other bears nearby. The work on one bear can take up to two hours, so sometimes we move the bear to a safer location. And we’re all armed and there’s always someone standing guard.”
Allie looked back at the photo. Wow. Stuff like that didn’t happen in the harbor for sure.
“I didn’t know you were doing that,” she said, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice.
It was strange to think that there were things about Gavin she didn’t know. If she’d really stopped and thought about it, of course she knew there were things about his life she didn’t know—like how beautiful the land in his new home was, or that he had a housekeeper named Lydia, or that he worked with polar bears—but this was the first time she’d really let that sink in.
It also seemed unfair with everything he clearly knew about her. His insight into who she was, how she liked to fix people, how she coped with stress and tried to make everything better, was scary.
“I got started when I got to know a PhD student in Kansas. He was working with the Geological Survey and got me hooked up. I fell for it right away.”
Not just pride, she decided, but true love—that was what she was seeing in his face as he looked at the bears.
Yeah, one more reason Gavin was probably happier in Alaska.
She shook that off. “This clinic is great.”
“Thanks. I’m proud of it. The practice was already here, but over the past year it’s grown nicely. It’s good I have Nancy to help out.”
As if on cue, the tall blonde from earlier that morning stepped from one of the rooms off the lobby. She pulled up short. “Oh, hi.”
Gavin gestured between the women. “Nancy, this is Allison Ralston. Allie, Nancy Steirs, my assistant.”
And one of his watchdogs, Allie thought. But she didn’t say anything. “Hi, Nancy.”
Nancy didn’t quite smile but she said, “Hi, Allison.”
“You can call me Allie.”
“Okay.”
“How’s Max?” Gavin asked, seeming unaware of the awkward silence between the women.
“Gave him the shot, cleaned that ear out and gave her instructions,” Nancy said, handing Gavin a folder.
“Great. I’ll poke my head in for a minute. Be right back,” he told Allie.
She watched him knock once and enter the room, shutting the door behind him.
Then she and Nancy were alone.