The Suspect Groom

Her eyebrows arched in disbelief. The picture she’d sent was from ten years ago when she was twenty-five, and that little white lie had prevailed throughout her correspondence with Ivan. In his advertisement for a mail-order bride, he’d said he wanted a young, healthy, strong woman to be his wife. Trina fulfilled the requirements, except for the youthful part. “That was a posed photo,” she said, hoping that explanation would cover the ten extra years. “With makeup and special lighting.”

“I like you better this way. You look real.”

With the pilot’s help, he loaded her two suitcases and steamer trunk into the back of a four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee. Then he turned to her. “Is this all of it?”

“Yes.” Those few cases held all her earthly belongings. Trina had been ruthless in discarding everything that wasn’t absolutely essential. She’d sold all her furniture, had given away her trinkets and mementos.

In Alaska, she wanted a completely fresh start. A brand-new life, full of promise and adventure. And maybe she’d even find love.

David held open the door on the passenger side. “Let’s roll.”

She fastened her seat belt and settled back for the ride, noticing that he peeled off his heavy leather gloves and wore only a light thermal pair for the drive. “How far are we from the lodge?”

“Not far.”

“In terms of miles?”

“Time and distance don’t mean much out here. In a blizzard, it can take an hour to go a mile. In clear weather, like today, we’ll be at the lodge before your eyes get accustomed to the glare off the snow. Have you got sunglasses?”

“Yes.” Prescription sunglasses! These would be the perfect thing to wear. Not only would she be able to see clearly, but the dark lenses would disguise the faint traces of laugh lines around her eyes. She fished them out of her canvas bag and put them on.

The snowy panorama, though muted by the sunglasses, was spectacular. She scanned in all directions, absorbing the view, then turned her gaze to the man who was driving. She’d been right about the strong jawline. His profile appeared to have been chiseled from granite. He was remarkably good-looking. “Have you lived up here long, David?”

“I was born near Skagway at the foot of the Yukon Trail. I left for a while, but I came back home. It’s funny how that happens, how the place where you have roots calls you back. No matter how far you roam, there’s one place on earth where you really belong.” He smiled. “What about you, Trina? I know you’re from Colorado, but is that where you were born?”

“I was born in Los Angeles, but I don’t consider that home.” Her father had been in the military, and they had lived in dozens of places. She wasn’t fond of her personal history and preferred not to remember her family’s unsettled life-style, ruled by a dictatorial father. She changed the subject. “So, David, what does a foreman on a game preserve do?”

“It depends. Mostly I take care of the livestock.”

“The moose and the bear?”

He laughed. “They take care of themselves. We have domestic animals. Horses, a couple of beef cattle. We tried sheep and chickens, but the wolves found them too appealing.”

“Appealing?”

“Succulent,” he said.

Aware that she was in a different land with different rules, Trina swallowed the automatic exclamation of disgust that rose in her throat. Succulent? Yuck! Though she knew the food chain was a part of nature, she’d never been a farm girl, and she hated to acknowledge the natural fact that meat came from a living creature. Rather, she liked to believe that it grew on trees in prepackaged cartons, which were then available in the butcher’s section of her local supermarket.

“Also,” David said, “I maintain the property. Do some carpentry, some building, some repairs. Mostly, at this time of year, I run the snowplow. And I handle the hiring and firing when we need help. During slow times, I do a lot of the paperwork for Ivan, setting the appointments for the hunters who stay at the lodge.”

“The hunters.” There was another source of possible conflict. Trina had tried not to dwell on that part of her future husband’s business. His land wasn’t a pristine game preserve where the Alaskan version of Bambi and Thumper scampered free. The lodge was a hunting operation.

She had reread the letter several times wherein Ivan told how he had stalked and killed a bull elk. Though he described the skinning and processing of the venison in detail, she had sensed an obvious admiration for the magnificent animal that provided its meat. He’d mentioned another hunter who’d accompanied him on that expedition—David St. John. Though Ivan didn’t say much about him, it made Trina feel more familiar with the foreman. “Ivan mentioned you,” she said. “In his letters.”

“Did he?’ David pointed to a fence post. “That’s the beginning of Stoddard land.”

She peered along the fenceline that stretched farther than the eye could see. “All this?”

“It’s a big place. Over two thousand acres.”

“Why is it fenced?”

“Mostly to keep the poachers out.”

“Well, of course.” She tried to make sense of this vast, bizarre land. “I don’t suppose a scrawny little bit of barbed wire would hold something as big as a moose.”

“You’d be surprised. There are two things you need to remember about moose, Trina. They’re a whole lot more dangerous than Bullwinkle. However, they are just exactly as dumb as they look.”

He turned and they drove through a gateway that stood open. “Not much farther,” David said. “The lodge is over this ridge, just through the forest and straight on from there.”

They entered a corridor between tall spruce trees, so thick that the forest blocked the sunlight. The branches started high on the trees, and the dark trunks seemed to surround David and Trina in an ominous, impenetrable fortress. Amid the trees, there was silence and so much less snow that patches of the narrow road’s surface were visible. “Taming this land is quite an accomplishment,” she said.

“Alaska is never tame. At best, we puny humans have momentary control. But the environment is king. The Haida Indians understood that. They always made peace with the local spirits of trees and wind and water. But nobody ever really expects to conquer the land. No more than they can change the weather.”

“If it was that bad, no one would live here.”

“There are rewards. The sight of the first snow. Ever held a snowflake on your glove and watched it melt?”

She shook her head. “Never have.”

He continued, “There’s a special smell in a winter camp fire. No sparkle of a diamond mined in Africa is as beautiful as sunlight on a waterfall or the northern lights. And the springtime? It’s heaven. You can taste spring in the air. In the melting snows, the fjords are lush and inviting. You want to run across the remaining ice floes and roll around in the green. But then, crack! The ce breaks. And you’re stranded. Trapped.”

He glanced over at the woman who sat so primly beside him. Her full lips were slightly parted. Her head was cocked slightly to one side, like a curious fawn. “Stop me, Trina. I’m beginning to sound like a damn poet.”

“Like Ivan,” she said.

“Oh, yeah.” David couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice. “Ivan’s real poetic. A regular bard.”

“In his letters, he is.”

He didn’t want to argue with her. It wasn’t right for him to be thinking about her at all. She was Ivan’s woman. Not his. “Just remember, Trina. Southeastern Alaska can be very beautiful, but it’s dangerous, too.”

When they came out of the trees, their way was blocked by several four-wheel-drive vehicles and pickup trucks. David pulled to the side of the road and parked. “Let’s check it out. This must be the big crisis.”

“Is that a police car?” She gestured toward a beat-up truck with police lights on top and a sheriff’s star painted on the side.

“Belongs to the sheriff from Osprey.”

“Fascinating,” she said. Though he started around the Jeep to open the door for her, Trina opened her own door. She needed to assert her independence.

David escorted her toward a burly man with a dark walrus mustache. He was huge, as tall as David and half again as wide. Was everybody extralarge up here? Or was it just the padding of parkas and snow gear? Though she was above average height at five feet, eight inches, she felt positively petite as David introduced her to Reuben Kittridge. “Reuben’s the sheriff.”

The big man shook her hand. Beneath eyebrows that were nearly as bushy as his mustache, he studied her with penetrating eyes. “You’re the mail-order bride,” he said, “and I’ll be doggoned if you aren’t a pretty little thing.”

“And you’re a pretty big thing.”

“You’re right about that.” He glanced at David. “She’s a beauty. Ain’t Ivan got all the luck?”