Northern Escape

Nick gently disengaged his hand from hers.

“Okay. I guess I missed something,” Merrilee said. “I didn’t realize you were famous, Mr. Hudson.”

“Please, call me Nick, and trust me, I’m not famous.”

Teddy Monroe jumped in. “Oh, yes he is. He’s only the most popular travel writer at the New York Times. He travels all over the world and specializes in blogging about places that are off the beaten path. Wow, you’re going to blog about us, aren’t you? This is so cool!”

He grinned at her enthusiasm. “I came for the Chrismoose celebration. I thought it’d make for some interesting articles.”

“Really?” If Nick hadn’t been so used to studying people and reading them, he would’ve missed the flicker of alarm in Merrilee Weatherspoon’s eyes. “The New York Times, huh? That’s impressive.”

“It pays the bills.”

“He’s being modest,” Teddy said. “He started working there right after college—” she looked at Nick for confirmation “—at least that’s what it says on your bio page.”

He nodded. “I was lucky. My parents owned a diner and the travel editor for the Times used to come in. He mentored me, got me an internship while I was in school, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“I’m not a stalker or anything,” Teddy said. “I just love New York. It’s my goal to move there next year and study acting.”

“Teddy’s our aspiring thespian and quite the New York fan,” Merrilee said.

“Hey, my boss used to live in New York. You might’ve heard of her—she was a chef there before she moved here and took over the restaurant.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the door she’d entered through. “Gus Tippens.”

It struck Nick as charmingly naive that this girl from a town with one street and no stop lights would think he might know one other person in a city of millions.

“New York’s so big,” Ms. Weatherspoon said with a tight smile. “I’d be surprised if Nick had heard of Gus.”

“Her? Gus?”

“Short for Augustina,” Teddy said. “Just like my name is short for Theodora.” She rolled her eyes. “Why my parents had to name me after my grandmother …” She shook her head. “How you stick a baby with a name like Theodora is beyond me.”

“Well, I’m sorry to say I’ve never heard of Gus but I’m looking forward to eating at her restaurant.” His curiosity was piqued. “That sounds like a good story, in fact. You don’t find many Big Apple chefs who move to the Alaskan wilderness and open a restaurant.” It would make a great human interest angle, especially since it was a given some of his readers would recognize Gus’s name or at least the restaurants in the city where she’d worked.

“And she trained in Paris,” Teddy said, as if to ensure he was suitably impressed. He was.

“Did you come over for something in particular, Teddy?” Merrilee said. He had a sense she was uncomfortable with the conversation.

Teddy looked sheepish. “Oh, yeah. Gus wanted me to check if her box of truffles came in on the flight.”

“It sure did.” Merrilee picked up a box from the corner of her desk and passed it to Teddy. “I was going to run them over as soon as I got Nick checked in.”

Teddy backed her way toward the door she’d come through earlier. “Okay, then. I guess I’ll see you tonight at dinner. I mean—not like that. It’s just that, you’ll be eating over here and that’s where I work, you know, at the restaurant.”

Nick was hard-pressed not to laugh but he didn’t want to hurt the young woman’s feelings. “Sure. I’ll see you then.”

She gave a little wave and pushed open the connecting door. For a brief second he caught a glimpse of a dark-haired woman with a shock of white in the front and he felt something of a shock himself. Striking. Arresting.

While the blonde had been nice, she didn’t attract him. But that woman—he assumed she was Gus—well, she was a different story altogether. He was definitely looking forward to dinner tonight.

“We’ve got to figure out something and figure it out fast,” Merrilee said, trying not to panic, pacing back and forth in front of the counter of Bull Swenson’s hardware store. She’d had to bide her time until he’d finished loading the final trim order for the almost-complete new community center.

Normally Merrilee found comfort in the smell of sawdust and lumber, but she wasn’t feeling it now. She was too stinking worried.

Bull stroked his beard, a sure signal his wheels were turning. She’d fallen for Bull like a ton of bricks the first time she’d laid eyes on him twenty-five years ago. They’d been an item ever since.

Bull had repeatedly asked her to marry him and she’d repeatedly turned him down. When she’d left her husband in Georgia, she’d so desperately wanted to escape his cheating and lying ways that she’d packed her RV and driven as far away as she could. The day she’d wound up here, she’d known it was a special place. She’d found where she belonged.

And while she’d vowed to never marry again—and meant it, once had been enough—technically she also couldn’t because her jack-ass husband wouldn’t sign the divorce papers. She’d claimed to be divorced anyway because at first she’d thought it was just a matter of months until Tad relented and signed.

However, months had turned into years and then to confess the lie had become too awkward. Tad had shown up last month and finally signed, but once the truth came out, things just weren’t right between her and Bull. He told her he loved her, but he’d also told her he wouldn’t ask her to marry him again. The asking would be up to her.

She wondered if things would ever be right between them again. But Nick Hudson, with his New York connection and his blog, was far bigger trouble than her and Bull’s strained relationship.

Bull finally spoke. “So, he writes for the New York Times and he’s already said he wants to write about Gus?”

“Yep. All this time and now when she’s starting to feel safe again, to get her life back, this guy could ruin everything for her.” Merrilee rubbed at her temple, feeling sick inside. “What are we going to do? If he finds out the truth …” She couldn’t suppress a shudder. Both Gus and Bull knew her opinion of reporters. They were snakes. Merrilee didn’t trust a journalist as far as she could throw one.

“Where is he now?”

“He’s out with Dalton looking around town. Dalton’s grounded until his plane part comes in—”

“Oh, did Juliette fly him in?”

Merrilee paced back and forth, which she knew drove Bull crazy but she was too anxious to stand still. “Yeah.” Dalton Saunders was the primary pilot who made the runs out of Good Riddance and Juliette Watson filled in when there was overflow or in a pinch like now when Dalton’s plane was out of commission. “Anyway, Dalton stopped by the airstrip so I sent Mr. Hudson off with him. They were getting along like a house afire when they left.”

She’d found that particularly annoying. She didn’t like Nick Hudson. If she was honest, it wasn’t the man himself, more the threat he posed to Gus, but nonetheless she found it galling that Teddy had acted the fool and then Dalton had been chummy. If it was up to Merrilee she’d stick his butt back on the next flight to Anchorage but it was a free country and she, unfortunately, couldn’t run him out on the figurative rail.

She rubbed her fingers over her forehead in a futile attempt to ward off a headache. “I assured her she’d be safe here, Bull. I can’t let her down.”

It had been a terrible time. Gus had been a wreck when she’d arrived in Good Riddance. She’d been engaged to Troy Wenham, son of a prominent New York politician from a long line of prominent politicians. Wealth and power had crowned them minor royalty.

According to Gus, his family had disliked her intensely from the beginning, considering her a gold digger. Troy had become increasingly controlling and Gus had broken the engagement. Infuriated, Troy had refused to accept it.

Merrilee had never pressed for details but she knew Troy had begun stalking Gus. Going to the police had proven useless in the face of his family’s power and influence.

She’d switched jobs and moved. He’d followed her by tracing her credit card usage and he’d threatened that she’d never be free of him.

It had taken careful planning but Lauren Augustina Matthews had dropped off the face of the earth. Troy had never found her here because Merrilee was unknown to him. Even though the story in Good Riddance was that Gus was Merrilee’s niece, she wasn’t. Gus’s mother, Jenny, and Merrilee had been friends since childhood. Jenny had died before Gus and Troy had met.

Merrilee had been honored when Gus had contacted her for help. She’d assured Gus they’d keep her safe and help her start a new life in Good Riddance. But if Nick Hudson blogged about her or her restaurant in the Times all it would take was one sharp-eyed detective, or Troy himself, to put two and two together and once again he’d begin his terror campaign.

“Merrilee, the way I see it, she’s got three choices.” When Bull spoke, she paid attention. He’d spent two years in a Viet Cong prison during Nam. She had no idea what he’d been like before. All she could attest to was he was now a man who considered every angle and said nothing lightly. “We don’t know this guy so trusting him with the truth is risky.” She and Bull were the only ones privy to the real deal.

“We could kill him, but it’s damn hard to get away with anything like that these days, plus he’s just sort of stumbled into a situation, he’s not here with malice.” Bull was dead serious, which was just one of the things she loved about him. He weighed every course of action, even the outrageous ones. “And that leaves us with the third option, which isn’t good, but about the only thing she can do is ask him not to mention her or her restaurant in his posts.”

She rubbed at the throbbing in her right temple. “He’s a journalist. That’s just going to make him want to dig deeper. How much can he find out, do you think?”

Bull cocked his head to one side, considering, stroking his beard. “He’ll probably figure out pretty quickly that’s not her real name. It won’t take much digging to find out I own the restaurant and bar, not her—that’s a matter of public record, even though we’ve kept it quiet. Outside of that, I don’t think there’s much he can find.”