Midnight Sun (Sinclair Sisters) (19 page)

“God damn him.” Gathering her into his arms, he held her close and Charity clung to him. She was trembling, the last remnants of adrenaline still pumping through her blood, but eventually his body heat seeped through her clothes, chasing the chill inside her away, and she began to feel better.

“Are you all right?” He eased back a little to look at her.

She was shaking and her knees felt weak. Her cheek stung where Buck had slapped her. “More or less. I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life. Well, except for the day you saved me from the bear.”

Call smiled, but his eyes still looked hard.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “And don’t tell me you were watching me through the binoculars because you couldn’t see inside the shed.”

He eased his hold a little more but still kept an arm around her waist. “I got an e-mail from your dad. When you didn’t show up after work to use the computer, I thought I’d better bring it over.” He glanced toward Buck and his hold unconsciously tightened. “That bastard. I knew the guy was bad news. I just didn’t know he was this bad.”

He sucked in a calming breath and she realized he was still angry and fighting to rein in his temper. “You had him on the ropes,” he teased, though his shoulders still looked tense. “Another round or two, he would have been down for the count.”

“Maybe. He’s really drunk. But he’s also strong as a bull and he was really pissed off.”

Call raked a hand through his hair. “Toby said Buck’s son Tyler was here this weekend. He and Toby went to school together. Toby says Ty hates women even more than his dad does.”

Unconsciously, she shivered. “Buck said something about his ex-wife. He mentioned a woman named Betty.”

“Betty Johnson ran off with a carpet salesman when Tyler was five years old. I guess neither Ty nor Buck ever got over it.” He tipped his head toward the unconscious man crumpled against the wall. “I’ll lock him up in here till the Mounties arrive. I’ll watch him while you go get your cell phone.”

Charity bit her lip, disliking the idea, trying to decide what to do. Then another shadow appeared in the doorway.

“Hi, sorry to bother you. I’m Tyler Johnson. I’m looking for my dad. I thought he might be over here.” Tyler Johnson was as big as his father but a lot better looking, with his father’s dark hair and brown eyes. The way Buck might have looked twenty years ago.

“Your father’s over there in the corner,” Call said. “He’s about to go to jail for assaulting Ms. Sinclair.”

Tyler took in her torn blue tee shirt, her disheveled hair, and dirt-covered clothes. “Shit. Excuse me, ma’am. I was afraid something like this would happen. He gets drunk like this every year on the day my mother left him. That’s the reason I came home from college this weekend. I was hoping I could head him off.” He shuffled his feet like a schoolboy, but Charity thought it looked a little contrived.

“I know it’s a lot to ask, Ms. Sinclair, but do you think you might overlook his behavior just this once?” Ty gave her a pleading look and Charity had the feeling the younger Johnson was smoother than his father but not much different underneath.

Still, she didn’t really think Buck was a danger, not once he sobered up.

“All right. You get him out of here and for now I won’t press charges. But you can tell him he’s through at the Lily Rose, and if he steps one foot on my property, I’ll have the police breathing down his neck.”

“I’ll make sure he understands. Thank you, ma’am.”

Call walked her outside, into the late evening sunlight, and his face looked hard again. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Probably not. But somehow I take more pleasure in knowing Buck owes me than I would in putting him in jail.”

Call’s mouth edged up but only a little. Then he frowned as she stepped out into the light and he saw the red mark on her cheek. “The sonofabitch clobbered you pretty good. I wish I’d hit him a couple more times.”

Charity laughed. “You knocked him from here to Wednesday. I don’t think he’s going to forget the lesson.”

“Just to make sure, I plan to have a little talk with him myself.”

Charity said nothing, but a warm feeling spread out inside her. As they walked back to the cabin, Call reached over and caught her hand. It wasn’t the first time and it occurred to her that before the accident, he must have been a very affectionate man.

He waited on the cabin porch while she brushed the dirt off her clothes, then he followed her into the house. Closing the door behind him, he pulled a sheet of paper from the pocket of his denim shirt.

“Your dad sent a list of family names—sort of a who-begat-whom of the Sinclairs and Doakes. I figured you’d want to see it.” He handed her the e-mail message.

“Thanks.” She didn’t say more, didn’t ask him to stay or suggest going back with him to his house. She thought he would leave, since he had completed his task, but he just stood there inside the door.

“Have you … um … eaten?”

She shook her head. “I thought I’d heat up some leftovers whenever I got hungry.”

“Toby’s frying chicken. The kid’s getting to be a pretty good cook. Maybe you’d like to join us.”

She wanted to and she didn’t. Though Call hadn’t pressed her, sexual awareness crackled between them whenever they were together. The attraction was getting harder and harder to resist and she knew sleeping with him would make her feelings for him grow deeper.

On the other hand, after what happened with Buck she wasn’t in the mood to be alone. Still, she wanted to be sure he wasn’t just being polite.

“I’m all right—if that’s what you’re worried about. You don’t have to take me home like some stray kitten.”

His mouth curved up as if he liked the image. “That’s not it. I just … I thought you might want to come over and work for a while and if you did you might like to join us for supper.”

He meant it, though she wasn’t sure he liked that he did. Charity smiled and nodded. “All right. I love fried chicken.”

Call’s shoulders relaxed. “Okay, then.”

“Let me get my purse.” She still never felt quite complete without it. Grabbing a light, zip-up-the-front sweatshirt out of her room, she led him out on the porch and they started up the path to his house.

Seated at his computer, Call kept glancing over at Charity. He could still see the fading red mark on her cheek and every time he did, he got mad all over again. Damn Buck Johnson. He should have beaten the bastard to a bloody pulp.

He’d wanted to. The minute he had seen Charity on the floor of the shed and realized Buck’s intention, he had wanted to commit bloody murder. And the fact that he had, scared Call to death.

Little by little, Charity was worming her way into his affections and his old protective instincts were coming back. It was the last thing he wanted.

He flicked her a glance, trying not to think about how glad he was he had gone to her house. The truth was, he had been looking forward to seeing her all day. He figured she would show up after work to use his computer and when she didn’t, he was disappointed. The e-mail was just an excuse to see her.

The ruse had worked.

Charity was here, but now that she was, it was unholy torture. Every time he looked at her, he wanted to pick her up and carry her off to bed. He tried to tell himself it was better this way, better if they just stayed friends. But he couldn’t make himself believe it.

Toby called out just then that supper was almost ready. Determined to think of something other than Charity and how much he wanted to make love to her, Call checked his e-mail one more time, pulling up a message from Bruce Wilcox.

Call frowned. He was so engrossed in Wilcox’s message he didn’t hear Charity walk up behind him.

“What is it? You look like someone killed your cat.”

He rubbed his forehead. “More trouble at Datatron.”

“Bad?”

“Apparently those two programmers, Shotman and Wiggs, also pierced the firewall of a big gaming consortium based in Antigua. Wild Card makes its money through gambling sites on the Internet.”

“So is Wild Card suing you or what?”

“Or what is more like it. According to Bruce, the whiz kids discovered the consortium has been cheating. There are rules, you see, about gambling margins and profits and odds. When you gamble on-line—play poker, for example—there’s a random engine … software, actually … that has over a billion combinations.”

“I get it. The guys at Wild Card tampered with the software so it works more in the house’s favor.”

“Bingo. Illegal as hell in the States, but this is the Internet we’re talking about, the laws—or lack of them—in cyberspace. Still, Wild Card could be in very deep trouble if the Feds find out and U.S. law prevails.”

Charity leaned over to study the e-mail message and he could feel the soft weight of her breast against his shoulder.

“Interesting,” she said. “International intrigue over the Net.”

Call straightened away from her instead of turning around and pressing his mouth into the softness the way he wanted. He forced his mind back to the conversation.

“Worse than that, Shotman and Wiggs got greedy. They’ve been trying to trade their information back to the consortium for a cool million bucks.”

“Blackmail?”

“That’s what I’d call it.”

“What will you do?”

“Fire Shotman and Wiggs, for starters. The FBI still thinks what happened was an accident. Maybe it was and it just turned into something else. They’re still just kids. If they keep their mouths shut, they’ll probably be all right.”

“Then what? Turn the information over to the authorities?”

“We’ve got trouble enough already without adding to it. It’s industrial espionage to break into confidential company files.”

“I think I’m beginning to understand why you chucked the whole business thing and moved up here.”

Painful memories stirred and something tightened in his chest. “Yeah.” He didn’t say he moved up there because he couldn’t live with himself after what had happened to Susan and Amy.

They went in to supper and Charity said the chicken was delicious. Call could barely taste it. His appetite was gone.

Tuesday morning arrived—a warm, sunny July day. This time of year the ground was drying out and the forests with it. There was always danger of fire, but so far they had been lucky. The heat felt good and the bright sun glittering on the hillsides helped wash away the bad taste left in Charity’s mouth from her encounter with Buck the day before.

Maude and Jenny arrived right on time and Charity told them the story, relaying briefly what had happened in the shed.

“I don’t really think he’s dangerous,” she said, “not unless he’s drunk—but you might want to keep an eye out for him.”

“You should have put the horny old bastard in jail,” Maude grumbled, and next to her, Jenny almost smiled.

“Do you think we can find someone to replace him?” Charity asked.

“We can put an ad in the
Klondike Sun,
but it’s gonna take time and we’ll have to find the feller a place to live somewheres close by.”

“Dammit.”

“On the other hand, maybe we don’t need him. Everything’s up and runnin’. We got Jenny, here, to help us out. Maybe we ought to try it on our own.”

Charity’s head came up. “I don’t know, Maude. Some of that equipment’s pretty heavy.”

“I’m stronger than I look,” Jenny said in a rare show of enthusiasm. “And Grama knows lots about mining.”

Charity smiled. “I know she does.” She flicked a glance at Maude. “You really think we could do it?”

“Won’t know if we don’t try.”

She grinned. “All right, then. To hell with Buck Johnson. We’ll run the Lily Rose by ourselves!”

And so they set to work, quickly discovering it wasn’t as easy as they had first thought. Buck had done all of the really heavy work. The dredging machine weighed a ton. Even with the flotation collar, it was bulky and hard to move around, and none of them were very big women. Halfway through the day, they were wet and tired, their clothes and hair full of sand and grit. At least it was warm and they didn’t have to wear their waders anymore.

They were standing along the creek getting sunburned, ready to slosh back into the water and restart the dredge, when Toby appeared on the path.

He waved and jogged toward them, a slender young man with freckles on his cheeks and a ready smile, making his way down the bank to where they stood.

“I saw you out here working,” he said. “Now that Buck’s gone, I thought you might need an extra hand.”

Charity didn’t ask
how
he had seen them. She had a pretty good hunch he’d been using Call’s binoculars ever since Jenny arrived.

“Have you two met?” She watched Toby’s gaze slide in the younger girl’s direction and a hint of color rose in his cheeks. “Toby Jenkins, meet Jenny Foote, Maude’s granddaughter. Toby works for Mr. Hawkins—or at least he did, the last I heard.”

“Nice to meet you, Jenny.” Toby extended his hand and Jenny shyly shook it; then he returned his attention to Charity. “I’ve got things pretty well under control next door. Call said it would be okay if I came over a couple of hours a day to help.”

Charity rolled her eyes toward the heavens and flashed a grateful smile. “There really is a God.” She thought of the last grueling hours they had put in. “What do you think, ladies? Can we use another hand?”

Maude grinned. “I’d be darned glad to have ya.”

“Jenny?”

She glanced down at her feet. “This is harder than I thought.”

“I’ll pay you whatever Call pays, and be grateful for the help.”

Toby nodded, pleased to be so readily welcomed. “I don’t know much about dredging, but I’m more than willing to learn.”

“Well, let’s git to it, then.” Maude turned toward the dredge and they all set to work.

The afternoon progressed far better than the morning. With Toby’s help, they moved several yards of gravel through the dredge and into the sluice.

“I can’t wait to see what we got,” Toby said, displaying the obvious symptoms of gold fever.

“We clean the sluice box every Friday. You’ll have to wait until then.”

Toby looked disappointed and Charity fought a smile.

The day was coming to an end when another visitor appeared on the path. Charity recognized Call’s familiar rangy strides and the big silver dog trotting along beside him. Another, smaller version of the dog raced along next to Smoke on the end of the leash in Call’s hand.

“You guys wind it up,” she told her crew. “You’ve all done a great job—more than enough for today.”

Toby looked disappointed that they were quitting a few minutes early and Charity couldn’t help a smile. “See you tomorrow, Toby.”

The thought seemed to cheer him and he waved as he started toward home, passing Call along the way.

Charity started in that direction, her eyes on Call, telling her heart to stop that infernal clatter. Sometimes she wished the man didn’t look so damned good.

“Hi,” she said. A fairly lame attempt at conversation but she always felt a little tongue-tied when she first saw him.

“Hi.” He didn’t say more, just stared at her and she wondered if maybe he felt a little the same. “I brought you a present,” he finally said. “After what happened with Buck, I figured you could use a good watchdog. Not that he’s much of one yet.”

He tugged on the puppy’s leash and the little dog turned away from the beetle he was sniffing and raced toward her. He jumped up and down like a fuzzy pogo stick, rested his paws on her knees. He looked a lot like Smoke, but his tail curled up over his back and his long thick fur was tan streaked with black instead of silver.

Charity ran her hand through his warm, heavy coat. “Oh, Call, he’s beautiful.”

“He’s a husky.” Call smiled. “I couldn’t find you a wolf.”

Her own smile began to slip away. “He’s a darling dog. I’d love to have him, but I can’t possibly keep him.”

“Why not?”

“They don’t allow dogs in the apartment building I live in. What would I do with him after I got back to Manhattan?”

Something shifted in Call’s expression and his features closed up. “I didn’t know you were planning to leave.”

“Not now, not until the end of October. I never planned to live here permanently. I subleased my apartment to my sister for six months. I’ll be going back to New York when the lease is up.”

“I see.”

The words rang with a note of finality. For the first time she realized that part of her wanted to stay. Part of her didn’t want to leave this beautiful country or the man she was trying so very hard not to love.

She forced herself to smile. “I thought I told you. All this time you were worried about getting too involved. Now you can see it isn’t a problem.” She kept her eyes on his face, but a lump was forming in her throat.

“Yeah. No problem at all.”

No problem for him. But a very big problem for her.

He handed her the puppy’s leash. “I’ll take him when you leave. In the meantime, like I said, he can keep an eye on things over here.”

Charity looked down at the beautiful husky puppy and the lump in her throat began to swell. “What’s his name?”

“Whatever you want it to be.”

She knelt at the puppy’s side and buried her face in his fur. “He looks like a fuzzy little bear. I’ll call him Kodiak … if that’s all right with you.”

Bright blue eyes gazed down at her. “Kodiak,” Call repeated, his voice a little gruff. “That’s a good name for a husky.” He turned toward the path to his house. “You coming over to work?”

“I thought maybe I would.”

“I’ll see you when you get there.” He didn’t wait for her, just turned and started walking.

“Call?”

He stopped and turned. “Yeah?”

“Thanks for the puppy. I love him already.” And she did.

One more thing to leave behind when she went home.

One more thing that was going to break her heart.

“You need anything from town?” Call stuck his head inside the door of his office. It had been a place of solitude, a place where he could relax and think.

Not anymore.

Charity turned away from the computer. “When are you going?”

“I’m leaving in about ten minutes.” It was Saturday. Charity would be working most of the day. Which meant he would be staying away from the house.

She leaned back in the swivel chair in front of the computer. “Actually, there are some things I need. Why don’t I go with you?”

A muscle clenched in his jaw.
Because, dammit, you’re the reason I’m going!
“I figured you’d probably want to work.”

“Aside from the fact I’ve been at it for hours and have gotten exactly nowhere, I’m going stir-crazy staring at this screen.” She got up from her chair and tilted her head back, stretching to work the kinks out of her neck and shoulders. Her breasts thrust forward and his jeans went tight.

Sonofabitch.
“Yeah … all right. We won’t be gone long, just a couple of hours.”

Since the day she had told him she wouldn’t be staying in the Yukon, Call had kept his distance. He told himself it was exactly what he wanted, told himself it was the answer to his prayers. In a couple of months, Charity would be leaving, returning to her old life in the city. He’d be safe again, his emotions out of danger.

It was the perfect solution.

Funny thing was, instead of avoiding her, he ought to be hauling her off to bed, spending as much time there as he possibly could. He knew she would let him. When he looked at her, he saw the same heat in her eyes she saw in his. Still, a purely physical relationship no longer seemed quite right, either.

The result was that he stayed away from her as much as he could and went around with a hard-on half the day. Sooner or later, something was going to snap. He just hoped it wasn’t today.

He looked over Charity’s shoulder at the computer screen, his hand itching to reach down and cup one of her beautiful breasts. “You haven’t turned up anything?”

She swiveled her chair around and looked up at him. “Actually, I’ve turned up tons of information.” She went back to the computer and pulled up the screen that showed the chart he had designed for her. More than half the boxes were filled in.

“I found most of my dad’s side of the family all the way back to the 1880s. They were English, pretty straightlaced, follow-the-rules kind of folks so they were fairly easy to track. Walter Sinclair—my great-great-grandfather—was the first generation born in this country. The Rosses, on my dad’s mother’s side, lived in the East since the early colonial days and there’s no indication they ever left.”

“What about your mom’s side of the family?”

“I’m working on that now, but the information is a lot more sketchy. So far none of it looks particularly promising.”

“Maybe something will turn up.”

“Maybe.” She smiled, but he could see she was getting discouraged. It occurred to him how important this search was to her. She wanted to understand why she had felt so compelled to come here, and if she really did have memories of this place from another time.

“You ready to go?” he asked.

She nodded, reached down, and turned off the machine. He could see she was still thinking about her research, see the little frown lines on her forehead.

“If you feel like it later, maybe we could catch a movie or something.” Dammit, why had he said that? The idea was to get away from her.
Wasn’t it?

Wishing he had kept his mouth shut, he followed her out the door, scooping up the cell phone he had begun to carry lately on the way to the garage and his Jeep. It rang as he slid it into his pocket. Call fished out the phone and flipped it open.

“Hawkins.”

“Call, it’s Peter. Something’s come up.”

“You sound funny. You got a cold or something?”

“Broken nose … among other things. That’s the something that’s come up.”

Call’s hand tightened around the phone. “What the hell happened?”

“Guy wanted my wallet. I didn’t want to give it to him. Should have, I guess.”

“How bad is it?”

“Nothing to worry about. A couple of broken ribs, lots of cuts and bruises. I’m gonna need a little time off.”

“No problem. Take all the time you need.”

“Thanks.”

“Where’d this happen?”

“The park. It was late and I was jogging. Pretty stupid, huh?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You kept your wallet. That’s the important thing.”

On the other end of the phone, Peter laughed through his bandaged nose.

“Take care of yourself, Pete, and stay in touch. Let me know if there’s anything you need.”

Peter signed off and Call hung up the phone.

“More problems?” Charity asked.

“Peter Held got mugged.”

“Your chemist friend in Seattle?”

“That’s right, the guy doing the research at MegaTech.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s pretty screwed up. He’s taking time off until he’s feeling better.”

“I guess everybody has their share of problems.”

“Yeah,” Call said, but he was thinking he was having more than his share lately.

Toby couldn’t believe his luck. He had been dying to ask Jenny out all week but she was really shy and he didn’t think if he did that she would say yes. Then early this morning Jenny and Maude had shown up in his mother’s jewelry shop, The Gold Mine. Jenny wanted to sell the little cache of nuggets that were her wages, her share of the weekly take now that Buck was gone.

Toby treasured his own. He would never forget the thrill he’d felt when they emptied the sluice box yesterday afternoon and he had seen the little kernels of glittering gold caught between the riffles. But Jenny had come to sell her share and once the transaction was finished, Toby had casually asked her to lunch.

“I don’t know … I think Grama might need me to help her buy supplies.”

“Don’t be silly,” Maude said. “I been doin’ for myself for nigh on seventy years. You kids go on and have fun.”

Jenny still looked uncertain, but Toby thought that she actually wanted to go so he simply took her hand and led her off down the street.

She’s so pretty,
he thought. Sexy, too. And even that silly nose ring couldn’t take away from the sweetness he sensed inside her. Maybe she wore it and that tattoo to make her look tougher. If she did, it wasn’t working.