Czytaj książkę: «Stranded With Her Rescuer»

CHAPTER ONE

Present day, Churchill, Canada.

‘YOU MUST BE KIDDING!’

Kitty Callaghan bundled herself tighter in her complimentary blanket and swapped her hand luggage into her right hand to give her left a break.

‘Sorry, ma’am,’ the polite woman said, widening her arms to usher her towards the exit. ‘Canadian federal law. No one can stay inside the airport after shutdown.’

‘But I have nowhere to go,’ she pointed out, though it was hardly necessary since this was the same official who’d been working for hours to find beds—or even sofas—for the one hundred and sixty-four passengers who’d found themselves stranded in their remote dot-on-a-map after smoke started billowing from their aircraft’s cargo hold thirty-five thousand feet over Greenland.

‘We’ve done everything we can to find accommodation for the final six of you. Three will be bunking down in the medical centre and two will be guests of the Mounties tonight in their holding cells. That’s every bed we have in town.’

Which left her sitting up all night in some waiting room.

This was the price she paid for being good at her job. Or maybe for simply doing it. Airlines had a way of not appreciating it when you captured their stuff-ups for posterity. She’d been way too busy filming the whole emergency response that had followed the pilot’s spectacular touchdown of the massive airliner on the remote, ice-patched runway to get herself higher up the queue for overnight accommodation. By the time she’d started paying attention to where she was going to spend the rest of the night, there had been no more room at the inn.

‘You don’t have a hotel here? Or even a B & B?’

The woman’s compassion wasn’t making her feel any better. ‘Actually we have nearly as many hotel rooms as residents but they’re all booked up because of bear season. And we’re out of volunteers with sofas.’

‘Bear season?’ Kitty blinked her confusion, glancing around. ‘Where are we exactly?’

Other than someplace snowy somewhere on a high arc between Zurich and Los Angeles up over the top of the planet. She’d been sleeping comfortably when the captain had made his emergency announcement and the chaos that had followed really hadn’t been the time to be pumping the flight crew with questions.

‘Churchill, Manitoba, ma’am,’ the woman said proudly. ‘Polar bear capital of the world.’

Churchill…

All the ice the A340 had come sliding in on suddenly seemed to relocate to her chest.

She’d heard of Churchill…

‘And what is bear season exactly?’ she said, tightly, to buy herself the time she needed to get her fibrillating heart under control.

The woman smiled, oblivious to the sudden extra tension in the near-empty terminal. ‘Oh, hundreds of bears migrate here to wait for Hudson Bay to freeze over, to go hunt on the ice for the winter. Numbers are at their peak right now. They’re everywhere.’

‘Maybe I could snuggle in between two of them for the night.’

The woman had a right to be disappointed at Kitty’s tone, but she had a right to be snitchy. Her plane had caught fire in mid-air. She’d endured an emergency landing then been bounced out into the bitter cold via the emergency slides with nothing but the light dress on her back, the complimentary blanket she’d been snuggled in, and her cabin bag, which she’d packed with the minimalist precision of a pro. Just her camera gear, some basic toiletries and an e-reader; none of which were going to help her out here. She had nowhere to go for the night except the heated police station waiting room because apparently this one was off-limits. And to top it all off, she’d landed in the only place on Earth she’d never planned on visiting—not because of its resident bears, but because of one human resident in particular.

Desperation set in like a low-hanging cloud. ‘What about your house?’

The woman had no reason to continue to be kind to her, but she did. God love Canada. ‘I’ve already sent two people home to my husband. Both on the sofas. Someone is on their way to get you and drive you into town, ma’am.’

‘Can’t they just keep on driving me to the nearest city? Something with beds?’

Apparently that thought was just hilarious.

The woman laughed. ‘The only way in or out of Churchill is by plane or train. And Winnipeg is a thousand miles to the south.’

Right. Which part of polar bear did she miss? Their trusty pilot must really have been desperate to get them out of the air to have landed them in the sub-arctic.

‘When will they send another plane, do you think?’ she asked weakly.

The woman glanced at her watch and frowned. ‘Let’s just get you sorted for tonight.’

This wasn’t the tightest spot she’d ever been in, though it was the first involving live predators, and the thought of sitting uncomfortably in some waiting room for hours scarcely appealed. Especially when there was no guarantee that she’d get on a flight tomorrow. Or the day after, or the day after.

Her lashes drifted shut.

Desperate times…

‘Does Will Margrave still live up here?’ she breathed.

He’d moved to Churchill right after the quakes in Nepal. Right after he’d lost Marcella. She’d exploited a working relationship with a clerk at the Department of Foreign Affairs to find out that he’d come home to Canada—come here—and then she’d pretended to delete the knowledge from her brain.

‘You know Will?’

She’d thought she had. Once. ‘It’s been a while.’

The airport officer moved immediately towards the phone. ‘We don’t usually ask Will because his cabin is so far out of town. Kind of isolated—’

Of course it was. Because this day wasn’t perfect enough.

‘Just try him, please,’ she urged. ‘Make sure you tell him it’s Kitty Callaghan. My full name.’

Kitty glanced out at the airport car park as the woman made her call. The sideways sleet was illuminated against the darkness of the night by floodlighting and she wondered whether the lights might serve as a beacon for any rogue bears wandering past looking for a late-night snack.

‘Any airport in a storm…’ she muttered.

The airline officer’s surprise drew Kitty’s focus back across the terminal.

‘Okay! John can take you straight there,’ she called, hurrying across the shiny floor. ‘The taxi ride is on us.’

Suddenly, the police waiting room didn’t look quite so bad. Compared to facing Will again. ‘Right now?’

The woman glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘As soon as your taxi gets here. Looks like it’s your lucky day!’

Lucky.

Right.

It wasn’t as far as the airport official had implied, as the crow flew, but no self-respecting crow would be out in this weather. The roads gouged through the hardening Boreal sog were slow going, impossible to see more than ten feet ahead of the old SUV that served as one of Churchill’s two taxis. It crept along deeper into the forest until they finally pulled up in front of a shadowy cabin with dim firelight glowing inside.

Proper Snow White territory.

‘Here we are,’ the driver chirped as a hooded figure appeared in the cabin’s entrance. He reached across Kitty to open her door and she clambered out into the bitter cold in pumps already soggy from the dash across the airport car park. Immediately her lungs started hurting with the cold.

‘Enjoy your stay,’ the driver grunted, more to himself than to her, before crunching his vehicle in every ice-topped puddle back up the long drive.

She turned and stared at the shadowy forest cabin.

‘Heat’s escaping,’ a gruff voice called from the open doorway. Then the figure turned and went back inside and only the puffs of mist where his words had been remained, backlit by the light pouring out of the cabin.

Lord…

Time had done nothing to diminish the effect of his voice on the hairs on her neck even as they gathered frost straight out of the sub-arctic air. The gruff rumble turned her insides to jelly just as much now as it had in Nepal. Fortunately, jelly couldn’t stand up to the frost in her chest any more than the frost outside it.

Ice was good like that.

The timber protested underfoot as she eased herself up the frosty steps and squelched into the cabin’s boot room where she kicked her sodden purple pumps off amongst the rugged footwear already lined up there. The blanket was doing almost nothing to keep her warm, now. But the cabin beyond the boot-room door glowed with warmth and it was enough to lure her over the threshold and back into Will Margrave’s world for the first time in five years.

‘Help yourself to coffee,’ he rumbled from the shadowy back of the cabin, somehow managing to make the friendly offer about as unfriendly as it could possibly be.

‘Right,’ she said, glancing at the large coffee pot simmering on the old stove. ‘Thanks.’

She turned the steaming mug in her numb hands as Will came back into the room, his face still shielded by the fleeced hood of his coat, only adding to her tension. He passed her, wordlessly, and moved into the boot room to shrug the coat off and onto a hook.

Sense memory kicked her square in the belly.

A stranger hearing him for the first time would expect some kind of old salt of the woods. But the man who returned, bootless and coatless, seemed scarcely older than the thirty he had been in Nepal five years ago. His brown hair was messy thanks to his hood and it hung down over his eyebrows. Stubble followed the angles of his jaw up to his cheekbones. He looked as if he should be in a cologne advertisement on a billboard.

Kitty cleared her throat to clear her mind. ‘Thank you for—’

‘You still okay with dogs?’

The question finally drew his eyes to hers and she found herself as breathless as the very first time she’d ever gazed into them. Iceberg, she remembered. The ethereal, aquamariney, underwater part. An old ache spread below her skin. She had never expected to look into those eyes again.

Will tired of waiting for her answer and broke the spell by moving to the door and opening it wide. Two thick-coated dogs burst in and, behind them, a third. Before Kitty could do more than twist away from them, three more bounded into the room and immediately pounced on her. A seventh held back, lurking by the door.

‘Oh…!’

Will barked their names but Kitty was far too busy protecting herself from the onslaught of their wet noses and tongues to pay attention to who was who.

‘You keep your dogs in the house?’ she cried out of surprise as their assault finally eased off.

Those ice-blue eyes weren’t exactly defrosting as the snow on her blanket had. ‘You think that they should be out in the weather while you enjoy the comfort in here?’

Well, things were getting off to a great start!

‘No, I…it’s just that you kept them outdoors in Nepal.’

And winters there could be brutal, she was sure. She flinched as doggie claws scraped on her bare arms.

‘Churchill isn’t Nepal,’ Will grunted, then made a squeaking noise with his lips and six of the seven dogs happily mauling her immediately turned and grouped around his legs. The seventh needed some manual assistance from Will.

As he reached around the dog to pull it back, his hand brushed her thigh where her summery skirt stopped. Her skin was too cold and numb even to feel it, let alone to blush at the unexpected contact, but her imagination was in no way impeded by the cold. If anything it was doing double duty standing here in this cabin with Will.

‘You’re freezing,’ Will observed, unhelpfully. ‘Not exactly dressed for the conditions.’

A sense of injustice burbled up immediately, as strong as it had once before. Only this time she defended herself. ‘Actually, I was perfectly dressed for Zurich where I departed, and for Los Angeles where I should be stopping over by now.’

Two tiny lines appeared between his brows. ‘You don’t have anything else to put on?’

She shuffled her blanket more firmly around her and wished the fire would do its job more quickly.

‘Our luggage won’t be released until tomorrow.’ Assuming it hadn’t been damaged in the fire. As if to make his point, her body unhelpfully chose that moment to shudder from the chill.

Those glacial eyes stared needles into her but then he broke the gaze by sweeping his thick sweater up over his head and tossing it gently to her. ‘Put this on, my body heat will help warm you faster. Tuck the blanket around your legs while I get you some socks. And stay by the fire.’

The sweater he removed smelled exactly like the cologne she’d imagined him advertising before. With a healthy dose of man for good measure. Because he’d left the room again in search of emergency socks and because she could disguise it in tugging the thick sweater over her head, Kitty stole a moment to breathe his scent deeply in.

Her eyelids fluttered shut against the gorgeous pain.

All the progress she’d imagined she’d made in the years since Nepal evaporated into nothing as Will’s scent filled the spaces between her cells. She’d come to believe she’d fabricated her memory of that smell, but here it was—live and warm and heady—exactly as she remembered.