Midnight Sun (Sinclair Sisters) (6 page)

Her knees went weak. What would Max Mason do? But she didn’t remember reading where Max had come up against a wolf and even if he had, she wasn’t as brave as Max.

Her grip tightened on the wood, the wolf began to growl, and her mouth went bone dry.

“Drop the stick,” a man’s voice said from somewhere behind her. “He was mistreated when he was a pup. He thinks you’re going to hit him and he’ll attack in self-defense.”

She knew that deep voice, softer than usual, the calm tone meant to soothe her. Something like relief trickled through her that he was there and she wouldn’t have to face the wolf alone. Very carefully, she knelt and laid the stick back down on the ground near her feet.

The minute she did, the wolf sat down on its haunches and began to wag its tail. Call Hawkins walked up behind her.

“Come here, boy,” he said over her shoulder. “The lady isn’t going to hurt you.”

She stiffened a little as the wolf started trotting up the path in their direction. But his tail was wagging again and a second shot of relief swept through her. The animal sat down at Hawkins’s feet as if he belonged there and her relief melted into annoyance.

She turned to look up at him. “I don’t believe this. That wolf is your pet?”

His mouth faintly curved and though he still needed a shave, she thought it was a really nice mouth. Charity wondered what he would look like if he actually smiled.

“Smoke’s not a true wolf—he’s a wolf-husky mix. They’re not uncommon up here.”

She wanted to yell at him, to tell him he should have warned her about the dog, but just then the animal cocked its head in a very dog-like manner, reminding her of Swizzle, the big black lab that belonged to her family when she was a kid, and she found herself smiling instead.

“He’s absolutely gorgeous.” The dog was studying her with curiosity, as if he wasn’t sure he should trust her but looking as though he really wanted to. “Can I pet him?”

“He doesn’t usually take to strangers.”

But Charity was already down on her knees, holding out her hand, and Smoke was sniffing her fingers. The dog must have realized she wasn’t afraid of him anymore and he certainly wasn’t afraid of her. She ran her fingers through his long, silver coat.

“What a beautiful dog you are,” she crooned, casting a sideways glance at its master.

Hawkins was frowning again. Apparently he wanted his dog to dislike her as much as he did.

“You need to be careful out here, Ms. Sinclair. Smoke is tame, but there are lots of animals around that aren’t. This is grizzly country. There are black bears and moose. If you’re going to go hiking, you had better take someone with you who knows the terrain.”

“Funny, I must have missed the line of people offering to take me on a sight-seeing trip.”

He started to speak and for a moment she thought he meant to volunteer for the job. Instead, he clamped down on his jaw. “Come on. I’ll walk you back to the cabin.”

They weren’t very far away, but she didn’t point that out, just let him fall in behind her as she made her way back down the trail. She could feel him there, just behind her shoulders, purposely curbing his longer strides to keep from overrunning her shorter ones.

As soon as they reached the bottom of the hill, he whistled to his dog, who had run off after a squirrel.

“Remember what I said. Be careful out here.”

She didn’t answer, since she had no desire to do battle with a moose or a bear, and instead watched his tall figure retreat out of sight down the path beside the creek.

Call Hawkins was truly an enigma. Charity wondered if there was anyone else in his life besides the wolf-dog he kept for a pet.

It was late in the day by the time they were ready to set up Buck’s homemade sluice box, a long, wooden trough about eighteen inches wide tilted up on one end. The bottom was lined with wire mesh and every few inches metal riffles, like the steps of a ladder, poked out to catch the gold as it washed past.

A three-horse gasoline engine on top of a foam rubber pad set up vibrations that shook the box, separating the gold from the lighter mass of dirt and rock. Turning the engine speed up or down controlled the force, jiggling the gold into the riffles in the box.

It looked pretty homemade to Charity, but hey, she had come to Dawson for adventure and hopefully to find some gold. She never intended to embark on a professional mining career.

They positioned the box at the rear of the eight-inch dredge they had chosen after reviewing all the options, the inches signifying the diameter of the suction tube that went under the water to suck up the material in the streambed. The machine was five feet long and gasoline powered. The day they’d bought it, Buck made a deal with A-1 Fuel to set up a storage tank on the property for supplying gas to the dredge and the generator.

“Let’s see how it works,” Charity said.

Buck tightened a screw at the rear of the machine that helped keep the sluice box in place. “We’ll have to go into the water to operate the suction pipe. I’ve got my waders in the truck.” The stream was still icy cold, too cold to stay in for any length of time without special gear.

“I bought myself a pair the last time we went into town,” Charity said, proud of her foresight. She had watched a video made by the GPAA—Gold Prospectors Association of America—so she knew how the dredge was supposed to work. “I’ll just run up and get them.”

She was back on the bank of the creek a few minutes later, pulling the heavy rubber waders on over her jeans. They came up to her waist—big, baggy, rubber legs that basically was just stood in. A pair of wide red suspenders went over her shoulders to hold them in place, which Charity adjusted to fit.

Buck eyed her up and down as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “You sure you want to do this?”

Undoubtedly she did look pretty funny, with her black-and-white panda bear sweatshirt peeking out from under the suspenders and the lower half of her body swallowed up by the ugly rubber waders. Thank God she couldn’t see herself. She would probably be laughing so hard she wouldn’t be able to walk into the stream.

“I came here for gold,” she said. “Let’s get to it.”

Buck just grunted, stepped off the bank into the water, and slowly made his way to the length of flexible, eight-inch hose sticking out of the dredging machine.

She had pulled her hair up in a ponytail so it wouldn’t get wet and hoped that the waders would insulate her legs and feet. She looked down at the clear stretch of water unhampered by boulders that they had chosen for their initial effort—about three feet deep in this location—took a steadying breath, and waded in.

When Charity reached the place next to Buck, Maude turned on the dredging machine. It was louder than she had imagined. She thought of Call Hawkins and inwardly grinned. The suction pipe began sucking gravel up from the bottom of the stream and as it flowed through the dredge, Maude turned on the motor beneath the sluice box, making it vibrate back and forth.

“You got to be careful with these things,” Buck warned, pointing to the pipe. “Don’t get your hand in front of it. It can take your fingers off—or worse.”

A shiver of alarm raced through her. She hadn’t realized the job would be dangerous. She watched Buck’s big, blunt hands work the suction pipe, making the task look easy, and thought that surely she could learn to master it without losing any extremities.

“Want to try it?”

She bit her lip, more nervous than she cared to admit. But there was challenge in Buck’s eyes and a slight curl on his lips, and she wasn’t about to let him know that she was afraid. Her fingers gripped the end of the pipe and she felt the incredible suction power of the dredge. Careful to keep her hands away from the opening, she held it steady as water rushed into the pipe.

She was much shorter than Buck. Too bad she didn’t think of that before she bent to suck a load of gravel off the bottom of the stream. Water rushed into the top of the waders, filling them clear to the waist, making her so heavy she couldn’t stand up and sweeping her right her off her feet. Luckily, Buck grabbed the suction pipe or God only knew what might have happened.

Water rushed up to her neck and a heartbeat before she went under, she made the mistake of glancing toward the bank of the stream.

Call Hawkins stood there with his feet splayed, nearly doubled over with laugher. If she hadn’t been the butt of his joke, she might have thought how good he looked wearing a grin for once, instead of the scowl that usually darkened his face.

Gold! We leapt from our benches.

Gold! We sprang from our stools.

Gold! We wheeled in the furrow,

fired with the faith of fools.

Fearless, unfound, unfitted,

far from the night and the cold,

heard we the clarion summons,

followed the master-lure—Gold!

—Robert W. Service

Call laughed so hard his eyes began to tear. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed this way—certainly not in the past four years. Nothing he could imagine was as funny as Charity Sinclair in ugly rubber waders being washed like a rag mop down the creek. If he hadn’t realized she was about to get into a deep, rocky section where she could actually get hurt, he might be laughing still.

Instead, he sloshed into the stream just as she splashed by him, grabbed hold of the neck of her soggy sweatshirt, and hauled her out of the water. The sweatshirt molded to her breasts, which were even nicer than he had thought. There was a funny little panda on the front whose ears seemed to sag as she staggered to her feet, spitting and flinging water.

He couldn’t help it. He started laughing again. “Nice work, hotshot.”

She tried to stand up but the waders were so full of water, she floundered and toppled back into the creek. Call grabbed her again, hauled her up, and jerked down the suspenders, freeing her from the heavy, water-filled rubber pants. She shoved them down her legs and stepped out of the cumbersome gear, and he tossed them up on the bank.

Dripping water and shivering with cold, she climbed out of the stream, wet clothes plastered to her body, which was, he saw, very nicely curved. Her hair was a soggy blond mess, her teeth were chattering, and as she sloshed by him, he couldn’t help feeling a little bit sorry for her.

“You all right?” he asked.

She swayed a little, steadied herself with a hand against his chest, then drew away, her expression a study in misery. “More or less.”

He saw Maude Foote scurrying toward them, her wrinkled face lined with worry.

“Get a blanket, Maude,” he said. “She’s more cold than anything.”

Her legs were wobbly. He considered picking her up and carrying her up to the cabin, but figured she probably wouldn’t like it if he did. Instead, he slid an arm around her waist and she leaned into him, letting him guide her up the hill. He noticed she didn’t protest. Maude met them halfway and draped an old olive-drab army blanket around Charity’s trembling shoulders.

“You’re not hurt, are ya?” Maude asked.

She managed to muster a smile. “Just my pride.”

“It’ll be easier once the weather warms up. Most folks don’t start dredgin’ quite this soon.”

“I’ll get the hang of it,” Charity told her. By then they had reached the porch. Buck Johnson was already there and Call didn’t miss the smug expression on his face. Buck didn’t much like women, except, as he’d once put it, on their backs with their legs apart. Call had a sudden suspicion that Buck had somehow engineered the scene at the creek and was amazed to feel a shot of anger.

“You must be freezing,” he said to Charity as her slender body trembled against him. “You’d better go in and get out of those wet clothes.”

She nodded, looking utterly bedraggled. “Thanks for helping me down there.”

“No problem.”

“I guess I did look pretty funny.”

His mouth edged up as he remembered the incident again. “Yeah, you did.” She gave him a watery smile. Her lips were pink and plump—
so soft-looking,
he thought, and his body began to stir.

“If you hadn’t helped me get out, I probably would have floated all the way to Dawson City.”

“Maybe not quite that far.”

She started up the steps to the porch, sloshing water with every step.

“Charity?” She turned to look at him, surprised at his use of her first name. “What is it? Why the hell are you up here?”

Something shifted in her features. He caught a flash of uncertainty and something else he couldn’t name.

“I don’t know. I just had to come. There didn’t seem to be any other choice.”

It was an odd answer, one she seemed as puzzled by as he was. He watched her climb the stairs, noticed the way the wet jeans molded to her legs and bottom, and felt a jolt of lust he hadn’t felt in years.

She’s trouble,
he thought again. And after what he’d been through the last four years, trouble was the last thing he wanted.

“I thought I was going to drown—in three feet of water.” Wrapped in her soft yellow bathrobe, Charity stood in front of the fireplace in the living room, rubbing her hair with a towel. “And
he
had to be there. God, it was so humiliating.”

She was finally warm again, having just stepped out of a nice hot shower. Unfortunately, the plumbers had been less successful with the toilet. It still didn’t work, but they were scheduled to bring out a new one on Monday.

Assuming, of course, the sun didn’t shine and they decided to go fishing instead.

Maude chuckled. “Call ain’t really a bad sort. He’s got his own set of problems, just like you got yours.”

“Actually, he was fairly decent today.” She tossed aside the towel, picked up the brush she had set on the arm of the sofa, and began to pull it through her hair. “I’d probably still be in the water if he hadn’t pulled me out when he did.”

She could still remember the way he’d sloshed into the icy stream, as if he were immune to the freezing temperature or the creek was actually warm. He was amazingly strong and his chest was as hard as granite. She still remembered the tingle of awareness she had felt when he slid his arm around her waist.

“At least I know what I did wrong. I should have gripped the pipe farther back, put more length in the water instead of bending over so far.”

Maude frowned. “Buck should have told you that.”

The brush stilled in her hand. “You don’t think he—”

“No, not on purpose. Not that he wasn’t happy to see ya fail. Tomorrow you’ll do it right, show him just because you’re a woman don’t mean you can’t hold your own.”

Charity turned. “That’s what you’d do, isn’t it, Maude?”

She laughed. “Honey, that’s what I been doin’ all my life.”

It was late in the afternoon two days later that Charity saw Call again. From the start of this endeavor, her plan had been to take Saturdays and Sundays off. She had come to see this rugged country and as excited as she was with the prospect of actually finding gold, she also wanted to enjoy herself.

Friday had been a good day. As she and Maude had planned, she had pulled on her ugly waders and gone back into the stream, and this time her turn with the suction pipe had gone off without a hitch. Buck had glared at her, but eventually he would get used to the idea that they would be working on this project together.

By the end of the day she was tired but satisfied with her progress and really looking forward to having Saturday and Sunday off.

When morning finally arrived, she slept in late, then built herself a fire and sat down in front of it to read one of the new adventure novels she had received as a member of the Glenbrook Action Readers’ Club. She had already made the address change to her post office box in town for the four action series books a month she got through her subscription.

The day was overcast and rainy, usual weather for this time of year, but not so cold she couldn’t sit for a while out on the porch. Call’s big husky-wolf, Smoke, surprised her with a visit and she fed him some ham bone scraps from the beans and biscuits Maude had cooked for supper the night before. Afterward, she climbed a little way up the hill to get the best reception possible on her cell phone.

She called her dad, as she did once a week, and told him she was well and getting settled in. She asked about Patience and her dad said she was dating a lawyer, but he didn’t think it was all that serious. The conversation ended a little while later. Long distance calls were expensive up here and her dad had remarried several years ago and had a busy life of his own.

She phoned her apartment to speak to her sister, but Hope wasn’t in. She called her best friend, Deirdre Steinberg, an editor at Simon and Schuster, and they talked about happenings in New York.

“Jeremy’s been calling,” Dee said. “He seems lost without you. I didn’t tell him you had a cell phone, but maybe I should. He’s desperate to talk to you. I could give him the number and—”

“Please, Dee—I don’t want to talk to Jeremy, and besides, the reception out here is really bad. The phone doesn’t work unless you’re outside the house, so he probably couldn’t reach me even if you gave him the number.”

“I take it that means you’re planning to stay.”

“I’m staying, Dee. For the full six months, at any rate.”

Something beeped on the other end of the phone. “Darn it, my other line is ringing,” Dee said. “I’ll pacify Jeremy for as long as I can, but call me again—soon. I worry about you, you know.”

“I know, and thanks, Dee. The only thing I really miss up here is my family and friends.” Charity rang off and walked back to the house, feeling a little bit lonely. It wasn’t unexpected. She was miles from home and living on her own, but it was exciting, too.

In the afternoon, the rain stopped and the sun came out. Since the toilet still wasn’t working, she walked out to the little wooden shed she was growing to hate more every day. She was finished and heading back to the cabin, dodging the mud puddles that lined the path, when she heard a rustle in the bushes behind her.

Charity stopped and turned, searching the thick green forest on the hill. “Smoke? Smoke, is that you, boy?” God, she hoped it was. But Smoke didn’t appear and the rustling grew louder. When she spotted a patch of long brown fur moving among the branches of a tree, Charity screamed and started running.

Unfortunately, she forgot about the protruding branch of a shrub she had stepped over on her way to the latrine. Her pant leg caught. She tripped and went sprawling—right into a puddle of mud. Charity jerked her head around, too frightened to care about the murky stuff sticking to her clothes, certain that a bear was about to charge out of the woods any minute and chew her into little pieces.

Instead, a cute little furry brown creature the size of a cat jumped down from a rock and raced away, its long, fluffy tail dragging behind its small body.

Charity groaned in frustration and slammed her fist into the mud, sending up a stream of brackish water.

She was muttering, silently cursing as she dragged herself to her feet. Her clean, white turtleneck was covered with mud and so were the jeans she had dried overnight in front of the pellet stove. Mud clung to her boots and oozed between her fingers.

“I don’t believe this,” she grumbled, slinging mud from her arms and knocking it off her pant legs.

“Somehow I don’t have the least problem believing it.” The sound of Call Hawkins’s voice jerked her gaze toward the trees.

He crossed his arms over that granite-hard chest. “I swear, sweet pea, if you’re that afraid of a cute little weasel, what’s going to happen when you run across a bear?”

A growl of frustration rose from her throat. “What are
you
doing here? And by the way, you’re trespassing. Do you realize that?”

“I was looking for Smoke. He used to hang around when Mose lived in the cabin. I thought I might find him over here.” He eyed her muddy clothes and she heard him chuckle, sending her temper up a notch.

Charity stomped toward him, slinging mud with every step. She didn’t stop till she was inches away and staring into his face. “So you think this is funny?”

He reached out and wiped a splatter of mud off her cheek. “Yeah, I do.”

“It could have been a bear instead of a weasel. I only saw the fur.”

“It could have been a squirrel, too. And technically it wasn’t a weasel, it was a marten.”

Charity ignored the unwanted information. “What is it with you? Why do you always appear at exactly the wrong moment? You’re like … like some kind of evil genie or something.”

He laughed and she wanted to hit him. “Evil genie. I’ve been called a lot of things, but never anything close to an evil genie. I think I kind of like it.”

She poked a finger into the middle of his chest, which was as hard as she remembered. “I know I’m new out here, but I’m not stupid. In time, I’ll figure things out.”

His smile slid away. The bluest eyes she’d ever seen were staring at her mouth. “I’m sure you will,” he said a little gruffly.

“If you were any kind of neighbor, you’d try to help me instead of causing me trouble.”

“Listen, doll face, if anyone’s trouble around here, it’s you.”

She swallowed. His gaze moved slowly down her body and fixed on her breasts, and her nipples peaked as if they could feel it. He was breathing a little faster than he was before and suddenly so was she. She could feel the heat emanating from his big, hard body, smell his scent. It wrapped around her like smoke from a fire, heating her up from the inside out. His mouth was so close she could measure the fullness of his bottom lip. If he bent his head he could kiss her.

Something shifted in the air between them. It felt thicker, heavier. He was so tall and male, so damned handsome. Desire coiled through her limbs, tugged low in her belly. His eyes locked with hers, as blue as the tip of a flame. For several long seconds, neither of them moved.

Then Call stepped away. “You’re right,” he said roughly. “This isn’t easy country and as you say, we’re neighbors. If there’s something you need, let me know.”

“Wh-what?”

“I said, if—”

“I heard what you said.” She eyed him with no little uncertainty. “You mean it?”

He sighed, raked a hand through his thick, dark brown hair, dislodging several shiny strands. They curled as they fell across his forehead. “I suppose so.”

“Why?”

“Because at the rate you’re going, you’ll wind up getting hurt and I’d hate to see that happen.”

“I’m tougher than you think.”

His mouth curved and her stomach floated up beneath her ribs. “I’m beginning to believe that. I saw you working the dredge yesterday.”

She couldn’t help a smile. “I think I’m getting the hang of it.”

“Keep your eye on Buck.”

She didn’t have to ask what he meant. “I will.” Charity didn’t say more and neither did he. She watched him walk away, thought how sexy he looked in a pair of jeans, and felt a renewed shot of lust. Her heart was thumping and her palms felt damp. It was ridiculous. The man was arrogant and pushy, cranky, and most of the time, downright unfriendly.