Working It (20 page)

Fantastique
! Now I am more nervous.

“He is pretty cute, isn’t he?”

Laney nods her head. “So what’s the prob?”

“I don’t know,” I say, pressing my hand to my queasy stomach. “I didn’t come to Alaska to fall in love.”

“Okay then, don’t.”

I chuckle.

“I am serious. Don’t fall in love.” She strums the strings softly. “Only…”

“Only?”

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”

“Who said that?”

Laney shrugs. “Beats me. I saw it on a Snapple bottle.”

And so now I am taking advice from high caloric beverage manufacturers.
Fantastique
!

I walk to my closet and pull out my Burberry boots.

“Nothing that has happened in the last month has been reasonable.” I zip up my boots. “Falling in love with Calder MacFarlane would be the most illogical, unreasonable thing of all!”

“Some things can’t be scheduled and organized, Fanny,” Laney says, putting down her ukulele. “But you know what? Those are usually the best things of all.”

I don’t bother reminding Laney that Calder was once in love with my best friend. Sure, Vivia and Calder never dated. They flirted, maybe kissed, but that’s all. Still, I can’t help feeling I am violating the girl code—the unwritten rules prohibiting a girl from dating a friend’s brother, father, ex-boyfriend, or any man she was really into.

My phone suddenly chimes and vibrates, announcing the arrival of a new message. I grab it off my nightstand and take a deep breath. It’s probably Calder saying he can’t make dinner after all.

I open the text screen and let my breath out in one long exhalation. The message isn’t Calder cancelling dinner. It’s much worse.

Text from Vivia Perpetua Grant:

What do people do for fun in Sitka on Friday nights? Got any plans?

I consider lying to Vivia, but I have never lied to my best friend and I don’t want to start now, over something as unimportant as a boy.

I consider telling her the truth. I even mentally compose a text:
Vivian, I am going to have dinner with Calder.
I don’t send it because I know what will happen. Vivia will blow up my phone with probing texts—
Are you kidding me? I thought you didn’t like Calder? I thought you said he was a cocky cowboy? How serious is it? Are you gonna have crazy hot monkey sex with him?
—and then she will tease me relentlessly.

Or she will be hurt and angry because I violated the girl code. I imagine those texts—
So all of that talk about Calder being arrogant and too flirty, was that just bullshit? Were you lying to me the entire time we were in Scotland? Did you like him back then? Is that why you steered me away from him? How could you do this to me?

I turn the ringer off, toss my phone into my purse, and promise myself to keep things strictly platonic with Calder until I have a chance to speak to Vivia.

Just Blow It

I am sitting in Calder’s jeep, watching him casually talk with a friend in the parking lot of Ernie D’s. Why was I ever worried about him wanting anything more from me than a platonic relationship?

All of my stressing about falling in love and upsetting the chronology of my life plan. My worries about violating the girl code. Agonizing over this being a date or non-date. My nervous stomach. It was all for nothing.

Calder picked me up at six o’clock, looking devastatingly handsome in dark jeans, a button-down plaid shirt, a charcoal wool sweater, and a navy pea coat with the collar turned up. The slouchy gray beanie on his head and expensive leather boots on his feet gave him a hip, hot young actor look. If Zac Efron were starring in a movie set in Sitka, he would work this look, and he would work it just as hard as the sexy Scot is working it now.

I introduced him to Hector and Keith, and the three of them talked about guy stuff, like the Scottish football leagues, ice fishing around Alaska, and where to find sexiest cavewomen in, grunt grunt, Sitka. Then, Laney arrived.

Laney and Calder did their little name-game thing, Laney beaming like a supermodel who has just been told she can eat a grape when Calder remembered to call her Laney Amps.

When Laney said she was headed to Ernie D’s to check out the venue’s acoustics in case she decided to play at the next open mic night, Calder offered her a ride.

“You don’t mind?” Laney asked.

“Of course not,” Calder answered.

After dropping Laney off in front of Ernie D’s, Calder pulled into the crowded parking lot behind the bar.

“I need to talk to a friend,” Calder said, shifting into neutral and pulling the parking brake. “Be right back.”

And now I am sitting in the jeep, holding my hands up the heat vent, and listening to the muffled music coming from a place that proudly proclaims they have “slow service, dirty glasses, great tunes, loose women, and liver-punishing liquor.”

This is not the way dates go down. It’s too laid back. Too casual. He didn’t bring me flowers or a big Hershey kiss. He didn’t compliment my ensemble or kiss my cheek.

Maybe Calder was serious when he said we could just be friends. Maybe he’s not that into me.

Putain!
I should have skipped the Dior!

I wiggle on the seat, trying to reposition my lacy thong.

I should have skipped the La Perla!

Calder’s friend, a squat, muscular man with dark stubble on his jaw and head, suddenly reaches into his pocket, pulls out a small package, and hands it to the Scot.

If I didn’t know Calder better—if I hadn’t seen him pluck my best friend off the side of a cliff and fly her to safety—I would think he was up to shady business. Helicopter pilot, sheep wrangler, and drug dealer?

Ridicule!

Totes Ridiculous!

Calder takes the package and slaps his friend on the back. The other man laughs, shakes his head, and waves at me before disappearing through the back door of Ernie D’s.

The driver’s side door opens, and Calder hops in. I get a whiff of his dark, woodsy cologne, and it reminds me of that day at the airport in Anchorage when he pulled me to him and kissed me until my knees trembled.

A tendril of cold snakes its way down the back of my jacket and I begin to shiver.

“Are ye cold,
banfhlath
?” Calder turns a dial to the right and a blast of heat pours from the vents. “Ye’ll be warmer in a minute.”

He turns, bracing himself on my seat, and reaches into the back of the jeep to grab a wool blanket. He tosses the blanket over my legs, tucking it around my waist as if I were a child.

“
Merci
,” I mumble, trying to keep it cool and casual, trying not to let him see how much he is affecting me. “But I am not a child.”

“Aye, ye’re definitely not a child,” he says, chuckling. “Ye are as light as a wee bairn, though. ’Tis no wonder yer teeth are clacking together like castanets. Ye need to eat more, woman.”

He is only teasing, but my cheeks flush with heat.

“I believe that was the plan”—I give him a sickeningly sweet smile—“yet we are sitting beneath a neon sign, outside a bar that promises to provide its patrons with the opportunity to acquire STDs and cirrhosis of the liver.”

Calder glances out the windshield at the sign and laughs.

“Sorry about the detour”—he reaches into his pocket, pulls out the package his friend gave him, and hands it to me—“but I had to pick up a wee gift for ye.”

“For me?”

I stare at the package as if it could give me one of Ernie D’s promised STDs. I don’t do presents. Presents are thoughtful. Presents are Belgian chocolates-sweet. Presents imply emotional bonds, commitment, and a need for reciprocation.

“Aye.” He grins and winks. “Take it.”

Putain de merde
!

Ohmygod! So this is what it feels like to suffer with chronic RBD? I have talked Vivian through her most manic bouts of Romantic Bipolar Disorder. I have plied her with expensive French wine, spoken to her in soothing tones, and stood in mute horror/wonder as her feelings for a man swung like a pendulum in a Tiffany tall case clock. I can almost hear her teary voice in my head, “I love him…I hate him! I want him soooo bad! I want him to just go away!”

I take the package from Calder, carefully remove the simple brown wrapping paper, and open the box. Inside the box, resting on a mound of cotton, is a flat silver whistle on a keyring. A small silver charm is also connected to the ring.

I look at Calder, frowning.

“Take it out of the box,” he says.

I lift the whistle out of the box and hold it close enough to see that the little silver charm is a high-heeled shoe. The underside of the whistle has been engraved with one unrecognizable word.

“What does it say?”

“
Banfhlath
.”

I hold the whistle in my hand, rubbing my thumb over the cold, smooth metallic surface. I don’t know what to think or how to feel about this unusual gift.

“It’s a rape whistle,” Calder says.

I close my hand around the whistle and stare at the large, brawny Scot through wide, incredulous eyes.

“Whhh…whhhy? Do you intend to rape me?”

He laughs—a deep, rumbling, happy laughter that makes me feel hot from my aubergine-painted toenails to my flat ironed hair.

“No,
banfhlath
,” he says, leaning close enough for me to see the tiny specks of light blue sparkling in his dark blue eyes, like shards of sea glass. “When I take ye to my bed, ye’ll not protest.”

He leans even closer and presses his lips to mine tenderly, slowly, confidently, as if he had done this a thousand times. My stomach lurches, and I am afraid I am going to have to reach down and pull it up from inside my boots.

Calder pulls away and stares at me. His lips pull back in a cocky teeth-baring “yeah, you know you want me” grin. Normally, I would make some ego-deflating, semi-humorous comment that would knock a man back down to my size, but the cocky Scot is right. I do want him. I want him bad.

He slams the jeep into gear, pushes the accelerator, and maneuvers out of the parking lot. We are speeding down Halibut Point Road, away from town, when he finally speaks again.

“The whistle is in case ye encounter any other meth-head shoe bandits, and I’m not there to protect ye.” He shifts into a higher gear. “I ordered it from a shop in Vancouver and Mangler picked it up?”

“Mangler?”

“Mangler, my friend back there. He’s a fixed-wing pilot. That’s his call sign.”

“Ah,” I say. “What does it stand for?”

Calder chuckles. “I dinnea think ye wanna know,
banfhlath
. ’Tis not a story fit for ladies.”

“What?” I slug him in the arm. “Well, now I have to know. Come on. Tell me.”

He shakes his head.

“Please?” I bat my eyelashes at him. “I promise not to let it wound my delicate sensibilities.”

He rolls his eyes and groans.

But the eyelash batting works, and he tells me the whole sordid, painful story.

“Mangler got pissed one night, picked up a woman at a bar, took her to a hotel, and discovered she was actually a he. Mangler jumped out of bed, grabbed his pants, and zipped them up so fast that he got his…” Calder takes a deep breath and exhales slowly before finishing the story. “He went to the ER and they called it ‘testicular mangling.’ Henceforth, he has been called Mangler.”

“C’est
horrible!”

“
Oui
!” Calder laughs. “
C’est trés horrible
.”

I forgot he speaks fluent French. Hearing his deep, rumbling voice speaking my native tongue does a little something to my heart.

“What’s your call sign?”

Calder laughs again, but this time it is flat, forced. “Ye dinnea want to ken my name.”

“Yes, I do.”

“’Tis not important, really.”

“It is important to me,” I say. “Please?”

“Verra well.” He sighs. “But ’tis stupid.”

“Stop stalling, Calder MacFarlane.”

“Aye, ma’am!” He shifts gears and exhales again. “Flatline.”

“
Excusez-moi
?”

“Flatline.”

Calder tells me the story of how he earned his call sign. One of his first missions was to respond to a distress call from a point hundreds of miles west of Sitka, in the frozen unforgiving Bering Sea. The crewmember of a fishing vessel took a nasty fall and was having difficulty breathing. The ship’s physician believed the fisherman had a punctured lung and internal bleeding. Besides Calder, his co-pilot, the rescue swimmer, and mechanic, a young bright-eyed public affairs officer tagged along to observe and photograph the rescue for a new article.

“’Twas a challenging rescue,” Calder says solemnly, his gaze fixed on the dark, twisty road. “We took off around zero five hundred and it was still dark. The winds were twenty-five knots out of the north, and the sea was churning like the water in a washing machine. Monstrous swells. Anyway, we located the trawler and lifted the patient off the ship. We were securing the patient when a wave knocked one of the trawler’s crewman off his feet and carried him overboard.”

“
Merde!
”

“
Oui
!” Calder makes a sharp right turn, and we are climbing up a steep road. “The rescue swimmer made his way down the line and dropped into the sea. Several minutes passed, with wave after wave lifting him high in the air and plunging him back into the sea. He finally got a lock on the victim. We lifted them into the helicopter and raced back to the base.”

“With two patients, not one.”

“Aye.”

“How does the rescue swimmer survive in such cold water?”

“They wear Nomex drysuits, seven-millimeter neoprene gloves, neoprene hoods, helmets…”

“
Incroyable
!”

“Aye. ’Tis an incredible sight to behold.”

“So did one of your patients perish?” I ask in a soft, reverent voice. “Is that how you got the call sign Flatline?”

“What?” Calder turns into a small apartment complex parking lot. “Nay, lass. I didn’t lose a patient. They both recovered.”

He pulls to a stop and puts the jeep in park, then turns to look at me, a big Calder-esque grin on his handsome face.