Northern Renegade

Actually, Alberta had proven comforting. Within two days of Tansy’s arrival, Alberta had corralled her and told Tansy not to worry about Bradley. According to the psychic/matchmaker, Bradley wasn’t the one for Tansy and his infidelity was a reflection of him, not her. It was all standard comfort-your-dumped-friend verbiage. Tansy had found some solace in being told she hadn’t fallen short as a woman because it was all too easy to feel inadequate when you’d expected to spend your life with a man while he was busy seeking the next best thing.

It was sweet to hear Alberta talk about her new marriage. “A honeymoon stage is good.”

“You’d better believe it.” A sly wink and an elbow nudge accompanied her words. “I’m on my way to check in on my stud muffins. Why don’t you walk over and say hi with me?”

Dwight and Lord Byron, Alberta’s three-legged tomcat, both hung out at the airstrip center office. Tansy couldn’t exactly see either Dwight or Lord Byron as stud-muffin material, but, as with beauty, reality was in the eye of the beholder.

It sounded good to Tansy. She wasn’t ready to get back to work and perhaps if she knew who the stranger was, she could shake off the impact of those few seconds when his eyes had pierced hers. And the surest source of information was Merilee.

Tansy trailed along with Alberta to the door halfway down the front of the building.

They stepped into the airstrip office, the scent of cookies and coffee in the air. Merilee and one of the bush pilots, a pretty, newly married brunette named Juliette, had their heads together over paperwork at Merilee’s desk. Juliette and her husband, Sven, were her neighbors out at Shadow Lake. Juliette’s husky puppy, Baby, sat waiting patiently between the two women. Baby actually flew in the plane with Juliette on trips. It was cute.

The object of Alberta’s affections sat across the room, staring at the chess table before him. Dwight not only had a new wife, but a new chess partner had materialized in Jefferson Walker Monroe.

According to Jenna, Jefferson had simply walked into town one day and sat down in the rocking chair on the other side of the chess set and that had been that. It turned out that the only relative Jefferson had left was Curl, the town’s taxidermist, mortician and barber.

Curl hadn’t actually known he had a long-lost relative, particularly a man of color who recounted stories of playing the saxophone with greats such as Count Basie and Louis Armstrong and playing studio sessions with Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. However, Curl had embraced Jefferson, as had the rest of the town’s people.

Tansy had looked him up on Google. Jefferson Walker Monroe was the real deal.

In so many ways, Good Riddance was like the collection of Santa’s misfit toys from the Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer TV classic. Maybe that’s why Tansy felt right at home.

Dwight and Jefferson sat on opposite sides of the chessboard. They were a study in juxtaposition, their only commonalities white hair and lined faces. Both men had witnessed the change of seasons for more than eight decades.

Dwight’s long white beard and fringe of white hair rested against the collar of his checked flannel shirt. Long summer days and harsh winters had weathered his skin to a permanent ruddiness. Tall and thin, his carriage bore a permanent stoop. His overalls, while clean, were as worn and weathered as his face.

Across the table, Jefferson bespoke a sophistication of a bygone era of well-dressed couples, two-olive martinis and a husky-voiced chanteuse in evening wear. With his close-cropped white hair, wire-rimmed spectacles and well-pressed suit he should’ve appeared ridiculous in a town ruled by work boots and flannel. However, he simply looked like a man comfortable in his own skin, waiting to be called onstage to play the next set.

Lord Byron, who was possibly the ugliest cat Tansy had ever seen, but had survivor written all over him, lay curled on top of the empty potbellied stove.

“Hey, sweet thing,” Alberta said loudly to Dwight, whose hearing wasn’t so good these days.

The cat’s ears pricked but he didn’t open his eyes.

Before Dwight could respond, Jefferson smiled, mischief glinting in his eyes. “I’ve told you not to talk to me that way in front of your old man.”

“Hey, beautiful,” Dwight said to his wife. Most assuredly a case of beauty in the eye of the beholder. He turned back to his chess partner. “Don’t make me call you out, talking to my wife that way.”

“Won’t make any difference if you’re not any better at fighting than you are at chess. And if you don’t have better moves behind closed doors than you do on the chessboard.…”

Dwight grumbled beneath his breath and moved a chess piece.

Tansy laughed at the byplay as Merilee looked over her shoulder. “Afternoon, ladies.”

Tansy waved. Alberta spoke up. “What’s shaking, Merilee? Juliette?”

Juliette opened the back door. “I’m off to Wolf Pass for a pickup. See you guys later.” Baby trotted out behind her.

Merilee stood, stretching. “Bull’s nephew Liam just got into town. We haven’t seen him in years. We knew he was coming but we just didn’t know when.” Merilee looked at Tansy, a question in her eyes. “He was just over at Gus’s.”

Liam. Tansy turned the name over in her head. It fit. It was unusual, and the man himself, in that brief moment of eye contact, had struck her as just that—unusual.

“I saw someone with Bull, but there are still people in town that I don’t know. Or rather who live out of town.” There were a number of people, men mostly, who lived out in the wilderness surrounding Good Riddance.

“Liam’s a nice name,” Alberta said.

Merilee nodded. “He’s a nice guy. We don’t know the whole story but he just got out of the Marines. He was a sharpshooter. I’m surprised he’s out—don’t know why—but I’m glad he’s here.”

Something slid over Tansy. A sharpshooter. The man’s sole purpose had been to kill people. Hard. Dangerous.

“When did he get out of the military?” Alberta said.

Merilee shrugged. “All we know is Bull got an email from his sister saying he left in May setting out for here. His sister’s not the most reliable source. We thought for years Liam and Lars had joined the Army. Where he’s been in between or what happened, I have no idea.”

“So, I guess he’s not married or he wouldn’t have left his wife behind?” Alberta pursed her lips in consideration.

“He’s divorced. His cousin Dirk told us when he was here. Liam’s got a twin, Lars, who’s also a Marine and a younger brother, Jack, who’s a Navy SEAL, but beyond that—” another shrug from Merilee “—is a mystery. Bull and his sister have been estranged for several years now. She’s an odd bird and doesn’t seem to play well with others.”

None of it should matter to Tansy any more than any of the other people she’d encountered here, but strangely it did. There was something about the man that attracted her, drew her, from the moment she exchanged that glance. She felt unsettled inside… well, even more so than before. And it wasn’t just a curiosity. It was a sexual attraction, a wanting that had been instant, and it was a feeling that she simply wasn’t accustomed to. She’d felt desire with Bradley, but that had been a culmination of getting to know him, of wooing and bonding that grew as she got to know who Bradley was inside. Although she’d obviously been way off the mark with what was inside Bradley. How could she have been so wrong about him? She wanted to just wake up and have things the way they used to be. However, she kept those thoughts to herself, not even sharing them with Jenna.

But how could she be attracted to a stranger when she still felt that way about Bradley?

“Interesting,” Alberta said, and for one disconcerting moment Tansy thought the other woman was commenting on what had been rolling through Tansy’s head. But then she realized Alberta was merely commenting on Merilee’s rundown on Liam. “Where’s he gonna stay?” Alberta said.

“Bull and I have talked about it and discussed it with Skye and Dalton. We knew he was coming, just not when. He’s going to stay in the other cabin out at Shadow Lake.” Merilee smiled at Tansy. “Liam’s your new neighbor.”

MALLORY KINCAID GNAWED on the end of her pen—a bad habit, that—as she stared at the blinking cursor on her computer screen. The air conditioner hummed in the background, working overtime in the humid heat of Louisiana’s Indian summer. She could close the blind on the hot sun slanting through the window but she liked the feel of it against her skin.

Good Riddance, Alaska. The satellite image showed a small town, with one main street running through its center and surrounded by trees. Lots and lots of trees.

That’s where Liam Reinhardt was now. She quit gnawing on the pen and placed it on top of one of the piles on her desk. He obviously wasn’t trying to hide. It’d been easy to follow him via his credit card usage.

He’d left Minnesota and headed southwest, rolling through South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, back north into Montana, west again to Washington and finally Alaska via Canada. He hadn’t been in any hurry. He’d spent four months traveling, alternating between motels and campgrounds.

He might pick up and move on tomorrow, but Mallory had a feeling he’d finally arrived at his destination. His uncle lived in Good Riddance. Bull Swenson owned a hardware store/sawmill and the deed to several parcels of land in addition to an interest in the airstrip and the local eatery—public records were a beautiful thing.

The remoteness of the Alaskan wilderness seemed to fit Liam Reinhardt perfectly. She just couldn’t imagine a man like him settling down in the suburbs.

It’d been a crapshoot when he was discharged. She figured he’d either land at Quantico as a civilian adviser or he’d go to ground. Apparently he was going to ground.

She opened another tab and typed in flight information. She winced at the results. She hadn’t thought it would be cheap, but it was going to be damn expensive to get herself there. However, she had to do what she had to do. A couple of keystrokes later and she was printing her boarding pass for a flight tomorrow.

And that was the easy part. Adrenaline surged through her. The challenge lay in getting Liam Reinhardt to actually talk to her. And part of that adrenaline surge was due to the fact that she was admittedly infatuated with and fascinated by the man.

She came from a military family and had pursued a career as a military historian. She’d grown up surrounded by men in uniform and had always considered them a cut above the rest, but there were always a handful of men who stood out even above them. Liam Reinhardt was one of those men.

He’d performed brilliantly in what was his final mission. It hadn’t gotten a lot of coverage in the media, which was the way the corps had wanted it, but those with military knowledge knew the importance of what had gone down, and that Reinhardt had been the one to deliver the goods. She had seen him a year ago in a video conference when she’d been in a Marine general’s office on a documenting assignment and had been smitten from the moment she’d seen him and heard his voice—online, that is. Since then she’d followed his career, researched him and come to realize he was the man meant for her.