dash distance from the phone in case her flight was suddenly scheduled—but by late that afternoon she’d gone a little stir-crazy. Will, good to his word, had busied himself all day and left her to her own devices. She’d poked around the cabin and browsed through his books but there was only so much reading a girl could do. Especially one who usually filled her days to overflowing with to-do-list. It didn’t take long for the tiny cabin surrounded by all these trees to start closing in on her. Enough that she’d temporarily forgotten how wild this place really was despite its modern comforts.
Dexter was stoked to be released from his tether and tasked with being her bodyguard. He galumphed alongside her into the trees, breaking out in wider and wider arcs, sniffing everything he found. Kitty trod carelessly at first but then Dexter’s obsession with the Boreal floor drew her eyes downward, too, and she realised what it was she was walking on with her spanking new boots.
Living creatures.
The ground was blanketed with lichens, waterlogged plantlets and mosses, all of it jewelled with icicles. Leaves the colour of bruises poked up from between a mossy groundcover so green it was almost yellow. Something white that looked as if it belonged on a reef rather than a forest floor. Some kind of pale parasitic plant, growing happily on anything that didn’t fight back, alongside earth-toned fungi piggybacking on a tree’s circulatory system. Such a perfect natural system working in balance; crowded and chaotic and tangled, but everything was getting exactly what it needed to survive. And all of them poking above last night’s snowfall. Now and again, a rare patch of actual ground, something hard underfoot. Not the ground that was made of dirt and went down and down until it hit bedrock—this ground sat on permafrost; a layer of ice, far below, that never managed to thaw, even in summer.
Which would explain the bone-numbing cold rising up through the forest floor into her boots.
She stepped out of the thicker copse of trees to the edge of a clearing and stared into the distance. Orangey brown as far as the eye could see, everything frosted with ice, punctuated by the one-sided Tamarack trees that reached for the sky, and dotted with little swamps of frigid surface water. Really this was just one big, thriving wetland. All of it in soft focus, courtesy of the gentle fog.
She filled her lungs with the cleanest air she’d ever tasted and eased it back out again just as slowly.
It took her a moment to realise that Dexter was growling.
It started low in his long throat and then burbled up and out of his barely parted lips, his tail stiffening and vibrating minutely. He’d turned his stare straight back into the forest, the direction she would have to go to get the short distance back to the house.
Thoughts of all the things out here that could be bigger than her flashed through her mind. Bears, wolves, even caribou could do some damage if they were in the right mood. Or the wrong one. Her eyes darted around for anything with which to defend herself, then she gave up and peered deep into the empty stand of trees she’d just left, breath suspended.
Out of nowhere, a massive flash of grey bounded towards her out of the darkness. She hadn’t even seen it lurking! But before she could do more than suck in enough breath for a scream, Dexter’s tail lifted from its low, stiff position to a higher wave. Less like an accusing finger and more like a parade flag.
‘Jango!’ Will stepped out of the shadows behind his dog.
A sawn-off log made for a convenient place to slowly sink down in lieu of collapse. Jango sneezed and bounded off with Dexter to explore, leaving Kitty with only Will to defend her. Even without the firearm he’d slung over his shoulder, she trusted he could do just that. Probably with his bare hands.
He was just that kind of man.
Maybe that was why she’d fallen so hard for him back in Nepal.
‘Did I wander too far?’ she asked, immediately contrite.
‘I needed to give Jango a run to see how her leg is doing, thought I might as well come this way.’
Pfff… ‘Worried about the tourist getting lost in your forest?’
‘Just worried for my dog,’ he corrected carefully.
That brought her eyes around to the hound snuffling around a distant tree. ‘What happened to her?’
‘She lost a pad to frostbite,’ he said. ‘Standing guard over an injured hiker last winter.’
Concern stained her voice. ‘And she’s still healing?’
‘She wore a mediboot all summer. It’s just come off.’
Kitty couldn’t shake the feeling that it was an excuse. Maybe he didn’t trust her outside alone. Once a rescuer, always a rescuer.
‘It’s stunning out here,’ she breathed, turning back to the open stretch where Boreal eased out into more open wetlands. ‘Is it all like this?’
‘Where it’s not tundra,’ he grunted. ‘Or Hudson Bay.’
He extended his hand to help her to her feet. It took two deep breaths before she could bring herself to slide her fingers into his. But two layers of arctic gloves muted the old zing and she only had to contend with the gentle pressure of his strong hand around hers until he released her.
‘Listen, Will…’
His back tightened immediately and he turned away from what was coming. She caught his elbow before he could spin away fully.
‘I wanted to…’ Lord, how did you start a conversation like this one? Thank you for telling me your wife died. ‘When Marcella—’
‘Sorry it was such a group announcement,’ he interrupted.
It was part of what had first drawn her to him, Will’s ability to just know what she was thinking. ‘Don’t apologise. I was so grateful to have heard after everything we’d seen on the news feeds. The quakes… I messaged you. Twice.’
She’d tried to convince her network to let her go to Nepal, to report on the recovery—desperate to see Will still breathing with her own eyes—but in the end the vast numbers of media streaming into the city had only been putting more pressure on Kathmandu’s limited resources. Instead, she’d kept herself glued to the feeds coming into her network, looking for the slightest glimpse of Will working with his rescue dogs in the capital. Even as she’d reminded herself why she shouldn’t even care. It hadn’t occurred to her that either of them faced such risk staying to help out after the first quake.
He winced, but then his gaze lifted and locked onto hers. ‘I wasn’t really in a position to chat.’
No. He’d just buried his wife.
Metaphorically.
He tugged his arm free and turned to stride away from her along the squishy Boreal floor.
Will’s eventual message had shattered her and, as she’d quietly wept, she’d known a deep kind of shame that she was crying not just out of sadness that her friend had died, but also for relief that Will had not.
‘How are you doing now?’ she risked, catching up with him.
He shrugged, and she supposed it was meant to appear easy. ‘That was two years
