She bit her lip and the words dried up. Frustration sharpened, its gnawing teeth slicing clean through the last of his patience.
“To hell with it all.” He sagged back in his seat. “If you want to go, then fine. I promise to take good care of your dog. Have a nice life.”
“Wait.” She clasped his wrist.
Thank God. He swallowed back relief that she hadn’t called his bluff, because yeah, it was a bluff. One thing was certain. There wasn’t a chance in hell he could let this woman walk away alone. “I want to hear what you have to say, but I don’t have the luxury of a lot of time. I’m in the air force. I have to report in, let my superiors know if I go too far from base.”
Her hand turned cold under his. “You didn’t have to go with me today. I appreciate your help this far, but I don’t want to be the cause of your standing in front of a firing squad for going AWOL.”
Firing squad? Where had that extreme statement come from? Pieces of this woman’s life shuffled around in his brain with jagged edges that didn’t come close to fitting together. He was missing something. “Where did you say your sister lives?”
“I didn’t. We’re private.” She thrust her hands into her hair, her voice cracking. “Call us weird or freaks or whatever.”
“Whoa, tone it down a notch there.”
Her fists thumped the seats. “Okay, fine. My sister’s deaf. She wants to get a cochlear implant. It’s going to take some major maneuvering to make that happen for her, logistically and financially. But she wants it. I’m on board.” Her words tumbled on top of each other, steamrolling through his brain, almost too much information to assimilate after so long of her parceling out every crumb. “Misty’s planning to leave soon and I’m just worried about her alone out there if there’s still some killer on the loose targeting people who leave my town.”
“All the more reason we should just leave this to the authorities.”
And still, Sunny evaded his eyes. “Everything I said about my sister is true. I’m scared for her, leaving on her own. I want to talk to her, to make sure she has solid plans in place. To tell her good-bye.”
He studied her hazel eyes and for once he hated all the military training, because he could see she was still evading, still hiding a crucial piece of herself. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Believe me when I tell you, I’ll do anything to protect my family.” The honesty of her words was unmistakable this time.
He waited for more, for the rest.
Something shifted in her eyes, taking them from hazel to a dewy green. She cupped his face in her hands. “Our time together was amazing. Memorable. Special. I wish I had the luxury of staying longer, of basking in the afterglow. But I need to check on my sister.”
The turmoil behind her eyes built, swelling with the sheen of tears, the last thing he would have expected from her. Then she sealed her mouth to his, her lips cool even in the warmth of the truck cab.
Her fingernails dug into his face, not enough to hurt but enough to hold. Not that he intended to back away from her, now that he finally had her in his arms again. Her tongue met his, fully demanding and taking. The salty taste lingered, mixing with coffee and the wild abandon of Alaska that seemed to permeate her. He took risks and lived on the edge as a rule, yet still she knocked him off balance.
The need to have her, to be inside her again, seared through him so hard and hot and fast he wanted to throw the truck in gear and take her home with him. Did that make him a caveman? Hell if he knew, and right now, hell if he cared. He just burned to keep her with him, to protect her from whatever it was out there that had her so damn frantic. And he could have sworn she wanted to stay with him too.
But then she tore herself away, panting, gasping for air and grappling for the door. “The plane leaves in twenty minutes. I hope I don’t have to leave alone.”
Without a word, she thrust the door open and almost fell out of the truck cab, uncharacteristically clumsy. She yanked her stuffed-full backpack with her and kicked the door closed.
She charged across the parking lot into the mist of blowing snow as if she truly didn’t give a damn whether he joined her or not.
***
Sunny yanked her gloves on and scrubbed the tears from her eyes before they froze, clearing her view of the path to the tiny plane with a propeller on each low wing. A Cessna 303, her brother had told her in his email. As if that even mattered to her now, but she was desperately grasping at minute details to help fill up the gaping hole in her gut over walking away from Wade so abruptly. She’d really thought he would come with her.
Instead he’d only pushed for her to stick around on his terms.
She hefted her backpack into place, the weight somehow heavier than when she’d started out a few days ago. She couldn’t turn her back on Phoenix, her sister, everyone in her mountain village. She had to make sure, in person, that he understood how important it was that he leave Alaska. Leave the U.S. with his family and start over in Canada, and if he’d chosen that option long ago, life would be so much simpler now. Why was he so damn set on staying in Alaska? She had to make everyone understand how important it was not to naïvely think they could block out the rest of the world through limited contact.
Now that she’d stepped out, she realized how foolishly they’d limited themselves in communicating during a crisis.
At least she’d gotten the email from her brother about the wire transfer of the money and how he’d arranged this flight. She didn’t know how he’d worked that miracle and she didn’t care. She just hoped her own warning to him and the community made it through.
She needed to get a move on fast and quit letting the good-bye with Wade tear her up. She would see him when she came back to get Chewie. She would tell him… something. She didn’t know what yet, which of course only served to remind her of his words. Of how he knew she was holding back. He would know in the future too and she couldn’t see how to get past that.
Time. She just needed time to figure out a way to straddle these two worlds.
The pilot stood beside the plane, waiting with a clipboard in his hands. Wearing Nomex coveralls that added bulk to what appeared to be a wiry frame, he jotted notes. With the earflaps down on his snow hat, he didn’t hear her coming until she stopped almost in front of him. He looked up fast, aviator shades covering his eyes and a groomed beard shading his jaw.