for conversation.
“You live around here? May I—” she took a quick, nervous breath “—offer you a ride?”
“Scrap’s never ridden in a car.”
Incredibly, her eyes got larger. “Oh, right. The bear.”
“But if you’re game,” he said, only to tease her.
She swallowed. “Sure. Why not?” Scrap was in the bushes, sniffing at the rabbit trails. “I’ve never chauffeured a bear cub before. Should he misbehave, the car’s only a rental.”
Noah laughed, surprising himself with how good it felt to have something to laugh about. Strange that his amusement should come in such an unexpected package. “That’s okay. You couldn’t take a car like that where I’m going. I live in the woods, off the beaten path a ways.”
She glanced toward the trail that led into the forest. Her eyes widened as if the path were as fraught with danger as the Chisholm trail. When she looked at him, her stare was direct but not uncomfortable. Ever since he’d come back to Alouette, battered, busted and burned, he’d endured enough curious stares to last him a lifetime.
She doesn’t gape because she doesn’t know, he reminded himself, running a hand over the lower half of his face. The beard was an obvious attempt at camouflage. A mistaken one. Even in his isolation, he’d heard enough of the rumors to realize it had only upped his curiosity factor with the townsfolk.
“Then you’re an honest-to-goodness backwoods-man?” The twinkle of whimsy returned to her eyes. “Like the ones in Tall Tales of the North Country?” She shrugged. “I picked up a rather outlandish paperback at the airport.”
“I guess you could say that.”
“I’m in awe.” A wide smile transformed her somewhat plain face. She had character and smarts—he’d seen that right off—but her natural smile and the quirky sense of humor that accompanied it made her seem less serious and more attractive. Almost pretty. He thought she needed reason to smile more often.
Like he had any right to give advice on the subject.
“Don’t be. I’m not Paul Bunyan.” Noah dropped his hand to his belt. Tourists tended to consider the natives of Upper Michigan quaint in an uneducated, unsophisticated way. He wasn’t willing to be the source of their entertainment. All he wanted was to live his life as simply, decently and privately as possible.
Which didn’t allow for women with wide eyes, wide smiles and wide, curvy, made-for-a-man’s-hand hips.
Her eyes, having followed the direction of his lowered hand, became dark and serious again. “Then I’m off.” She spun on her heel and walked briskly to the car, all business. The way he’d thought he preferred it, right? “According to my map, I should be within a mile or two of Alouette. Is that right?”
“You’re on track,” he said, sorry for her departure all the same. It was only his loneliness, he decided. There were better cures. For one, he could pay his folks a long-overdue visit as soon as they got back to town. Maybe even drop in on old friend or two. It might be time.
“Well…” She paused beside the door for a moment, seeming to search for a suitable expression of gratitude. “Thank you,” she said, simple and sincere, a woman after his own heart. Which was strictly a manner of speaking, he reminded himself.
“Welcome.” He sounded suitably gruff, even though he wanted to ask her name or her destination. It was safer not to. This way, they’d never meet again.
For the sake of his peace of mind, that was best.
She slid behind the wheel and he closed the door after her, the soft thunk overriding the moment when she might have said something more. Behind the glass, she blinked at him, her lips slightly parted. Get going, he made himself think so she would read the sentiment on his face and take him for no more than a grouchy backwoods hermit, a role he’d filled well for the past two years.
Her glance dropped again to his belt, and she turned resolutely away, putting the car in gear with a sure thrust of her hand. She peered over the hood, tapping the horn for warning. Scrap was still snuffling at the underbrush, so Noah gave her a wave to send her on her way.
She went, not looking back except for one quick flash of her eyes in the side mirror. They were blue, he saw, deeply blue as a spring-fed lake on a sunny day. His body stirred with renewed interest, but he tamped it down, telling himself the pretty color of her eyes didn’t mean jack. Hell, he could look at the genuine thing fifty yards outside his cabin door. He sure didn’t need to get tangled up with a woman because her eyes were clear-lake blue. Nor because her smile was soft and her heart was courageous and her body was the generous sort that could keep a man warm at night.
CHAPTER TWO
“THESE DIRECTIONS are ridiculous.” Claire double-checked her notes before tossing them aside and edging the car toward what might—or might not—turn out to be Bayside Road. There were no road signs to speak of, but her instructions were to make a sharp right at the Berry Dairy ice-cream cone stand and continue up the hill till she came to the Neptune gateposts. “Whatever happened to street addresses?” she wondered, turning the wheel hand over hand.
Alouette was a nice little town, she’d give it that. Picture-postcard pretty in the daytime, she suspected, when spring sunshine would glance off the dancing waters to brighten the bayside business district of red-and cream-colored brick and stone buildings.
But for now the town was dark and silent. At the marina, black-as-midnight waves slapped at the hulls of boats that had been battened down with sails tightly furled. Even so, it was surprisingly easy for Claire to imagine herself there, sipping coffee in a café that overlooked the harbor. Idling away her time. Doing nothing.
She sighed.
The road to Bay House rose steeply through another thick pine forest. Interspersed with a few maples and birch, the trees densely carpeted the hillside, making the twining roadway seem insignificant in comparison. Claire was beginning to understand that this was a land where nature always overpowered humankind.
She was glad to see that paved driveways had been carved out of the wilderness. Lawns even—vast stretches of them, lit by old-fashioned globe streetlights. The handful of houses she glimpsed through the trees were more handsome and substantial than the humble frame bungalows she’d seen down below. She shifted behind the wheel. Given the upscale neighborhood, Bay House might yet turn out to be a prospect.
At the top of the hill she found the Neptune gateposts—matching sea-god statuary set atop red stone bases gone green with moss and twined with vines. The connecting wrought-iron fence was clogged with a tangle of shrubbery and trees that obscured her view of the house. The gate, an elaborate construction running to rust, stood open, one side pulled halfway off its hinges and dipping lopsided into unmown grass.
“Here I yam,” Claire announced as she always did, clicking to low beams as she drove through the gate. “All that I yam.”
It was a silly saying that had become habit, one she’d begun with her first assignment for Bel Vista. She’d been sent to a ritzy Cliffwalk mansion in Newport because the owners were going bankrupt and the property was available at a bargain-basement price, a “cheap” three mil or so. Coming from modest Midwestern beginnings as she had, she’d been awed and intimidated by the
