Two Captains, One Chair: An Alaskan Romantic Comedy (35 page)

Blaze’s mouth fell open.  All she could say was, “What?”

Lance shrugged.  “You want my opinion, this was back when Bruce had just got his wings and was still being a cocky asshole to everyone.  Jack was out fishing and Bruce parked on his hole.  On purpose.  Then demanded to know what Jack was gonna do about it.  So yeah.  I think Brucey had it coming.”

“How long ago was that?” Blaze demanded, pretty sure that her guests would take umbrage to being dunked in a lake.

“Oh, at least ten years,” Lance said.  “It was before I had my license.  Brucey was flying me out for a fishing trip, all proud of himself.  You ask me, I think that dunking did a hell of a lot for Brucey’s attitude.  He used to be such a prick.  Mellowed him out something fierce.”

“That is not acceptable adult behavior,” Blaze managed.

Lance only laughed.  “Oh yeah?  Try telling Thornton that.”

“You bet your ass I will.  It’s my lodge, my rules.”  In fact, with just that little morsel of information as a guide, Blaze would have a
long
discussion with her handyman about the proper rules of decorum when potential clientele, paying guests, and lawyers were concerned.

She and Lance chatted for a few more minutes about some of the eye-opening things that her only employee had done in the last ten years he’d done business with the Rogers’ family, and then Lance sat up in his chair to peer over the dash and said, “There we go.  Lake Ebony.  There’s your baby, up on the hill.”

Blaze, whose mind had been shocked into stunned overdrive somewhere between ‘assault’ and ‘destruction of personal property’ nevertheless had all her worries vanish in a wash of bliss the moment she saw the huge green roof of the Sleeping Lady slide into view between the spruce trees on the crest above the lake.  Immediately, she found herself having trouble breathing.

Her dream.  Everything she’d ever wanted in her entire life was wrapped up in that big green roof and its half-dozen outbuildings.  Bought and paid for, sight unseen.  Six hundred thousand dollars for ten thousand square feet, thirty acres, and all the machinery and equipment to run it as a fishing lodge.  Every penny of her inheritance, gone, and then some.

Then Lance pulled the flaps and the pitch of the engine changed as the small aircraft began its descent, aiming for the deep black waters of Lake Ebony. 

I’m here.  Oh God, I’m here…
  Blaze’s heart was pounding, somewhere between elation and absolute Oh-My-Shit-What-Have-I-Done
terror
as she watched the last of the spring-budding treetops slip under the plane’s big floats.  Hers.  The Sleeping Lady was
hers
.  It was her dream come true, and it was only a lake’s-length away.

The landing was surprisingly gentle, and once they had come to a relative stop in the middle of the lake, Lance revved the engine again and got them moving towards shore.

He idled them over to the far bank of the lake, beneath the crest where the Sleeping Lady sat like a mistress of its domain, surveying the lands around it.  As they neared the shore, Blaze lost sight of the lodge through the hillside of birch and spruce trees. 

When the Cessna’s floats slid into the gravelly mud of the narrow beach, Blaze was close to hyperventilating.  She was
here
.  She was either going to sink or swim, and had nobody to blame for it except herself. 

…And she was already in debt up to her eyeballs, just
getting
here.  She’d been wanting a lodge her whole life, but now she
had
it, and was in
debt
for it, and she already almost felt like puking with nerves.  Her hands were shaking as Lance unstrapped himself and crawled out onto the plane’s left float.  “Well,” he said, “here we are.  Lake Ebony.”  He pushed the pilot’s seat out of the way and gestured for Blaze, who was still staring at the woods in front of the propeller in shock, to climb out after him.  “You got a ride up to the shop, or should I just pile the stuff on the beach?”

Jerked out of her stunned silence, Blaze climbed down onto the float and stood there, gripping the wing strut with white knuckles, as she stared up at the woods shielding her new home from view, trying frantically to tell herself she was not making the biggest mistake of her life.

Lance gave her an empathetic grin.  “Excited?”

Swallowing, Blaze nodded down at him.  This close, sharing space on the float, there really wasn’t any way for Blaze to back up and give him space—and thereby the illusion of a lesser disparity in height.  Even now, she could see the little gears turning in Lance’s head as he realized just
how
big she was.  At six-foot, Lance really shouldn’t have had to look up at her.  Unfortunately, Blaze was about twelve inches and eighty pounds off of average, and every checkout cashier and bank teller in the world had let her know it.  Some gigantic Amazon somewhere had birthed Blaze, and, once Blaze had passed between her massive thighs, the woman had left her in an alder thicket on the mountain behind her father’s house.  And, having just lost their baby due to a miscarriage, her parents had taken her in, quietly raised her on their own, and could probably be sent to jail for life for not turning her over to the authorities, if they weren’t both already dead.

That was one of the many unhappy surprises that Blaze had discovered in the lawyer’s office four months ago.  Adopted.  It still hit like a freight train, every time she thought of it.

Then she realized Lance was still looking up at her, waiting for her answer.

“So excited I think I’m gonna puke,” Blaze managed, still trying to focus all of her attention on the textured aluminum plating between her men’s Size 11 hiking boots, attempting to force her stomach into submission.

“Well,” Lance said, “If you wanna go sit down, I’ll unload for you.”

Blaze automatically felt herself prickling at how quickly he offered to do her work for her.  “I’ll be fine,” she said.  She ducked her head through the door and grabbed a load of groceries from behind the pilot’s seat, not waiting for Lance to unlatch the back compartment.  She normally tried not to make a big deal of it, but she wasn’t stupid—she knew that the Alaskan Bush was a man’s world, and that if she didn’t want to start a precedent of Let’s All Take Care Of The Poor Helpless Woman, she needed to start proving her competence the moment she stepped off of the plane.  First impressions, her mother had taught her, were everything.  If Blaze showed every man she met on the river that she was smart, capable, and willing to work, they wouldn’t patronize her, and those that did, she could simply tell them to get screwed.

Blaze had been raised by the epitome of an Independent Woman—her mother, who had made her millions in real estate, had insisted on keeping separate finances despite her father’s greater wealth—and after earning her way through her Business degree, Blaze was
not
going to allow a bunch of scruffy, rugged, largely-unemployed men to treat her like a second-class citizen because she had a couple of A-cups and internal plumbing.  Groceries retrieved, Blaze gingerly started towards the shore, picking her way across the wet aluminum float.  Out in the woods, she heard the sound of an engine and looked up.

A stout-looking man was driving a blue 4-wheeler down a winding dirt track, pulling a flatbed trailer behind him.  It rattled and bounced as it jumped over roots and stones, making a ruckus as it worked its way down the hill to her.  Blaze watched it approach as Lance worked his way around to the other float and began opening the back compartment of the airplane to access her luggage.

When he came fully into view, the man driving the 4-wheeler looked
nothing
like what Blaze had envisioned over the phone.  Instead of the hairy, dirty, graying, plaid-covered Bushrat she had been expecting after exchanging instructions with his gruff voice over the phone, he was clean-shaven, with jet-black hair, relatively tidy, and wearing tight blue jeans and green flannel shirt.  A well-worn Carhartt jacket was slung over his shoulders, zipper open, exposing a broad chest beneath.  And he looked
young
, which was completely at odds with how long she’d heard he’d been skulking around this part of the Yentna. 

Hell, from the way
some
people told it, he’d been living in the same damned cabin since the Gold Rush, so Blaze had hired him fully expecting a wrinkled old fart who had to grab his reading glasses to figure out which nut went on which bolt.

But to her shock, even from this distance, Blaze could see that Jack Thornton was built like a Greek god.  Pecs that strained against his shirt.  Shoulders that made divots in his jacket.  Legs that looked like they could crush the 4-wheeler like a used soda can.  When Jack slowed the vehicle and the deepest green eyes that Blaze had ever seen met hers, however, Blaze felt her heart give an extra thud.  Then she watched his muscular ass stretch against the jeans as he dismounted…

…and her elephantine foot slipped out from under her, and she went crashing backwards into the frigid waters of Lake Ebony.

Cold and humiliation washed over her like a wet blanket from God, putting out her idle fantasies as quickly as if she’d been dunked in liquid nitrogen.  Blaze sputtered to the surface, gasping, blinking up at the horrified face of the pilot, who was kneeling on a float, offering a hand to help her, and then her very first employee, who was smirking.

…smirking?

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