was lean, no extra flesh, yet his movements spoke of power and physical strength. Whoever he was, he needed a haircut. Coffee-brown hair, several inches too long, curled over his collar, and it looked as if he hadn’t shaved for the better part of a week.
As he got closer, she noticed he was very tan, his eyes an amazing shade of blue with tiny lines fanning out at the corners. He was probably mid-thirties, and even with his unkempt hair and several days’ growth of beard, he was a very attractive man.
Charity thought of Jeremy Hauser but only fleetingly. This man and Jeremy had nothing at all in common. While Jeremy was almost ridiculously civilized, this man looked as if he had just stepped out of the pages of a Jack London novel, like a lumberjack, or maybe a trapper, home from weeks spent out in the woods.
He kept on walking, his strides long and filled with purpose, and as he approached the porch, she saw that his features were sharply defined: his nose straight, his cheeks lean, and his jaw square. There was a slight indentation in his chin. She wondered if he was a neighbor, started to smile and introduce herself when his deep voice cut through the cool morning air.
“All right, what the hell is going on?”
Ignoring the anger in his voice, Charity set her hammer on top of the dresser and climbed down from the porch.
“Good morning. I’m Charity Sinclair. I’m the new—”
“I don’t care who you are, lady, I want to know what you’re doing on this property.”
She fixed a smile on her face, though it took a good bit of effort “I’m here because I’m the owner. I bought the Lily Rose from a man named Moses Flanagan.”
He narrowed those striking blue eyes at her. “Bullshit. Old man Flanagan may not live here anymore but he’d die before he’d ever sell the Lily Rose. I don’t know who you think you’re kidding, sweetheart, but if you’re planning to squat on his property you can forget it.”
It was getting harder by the moment to hang on to her temper. “You’re wrong, Mr …?”
He made no effort to answer, just continued to glare down the length of his nicely shaped nose.
“Mr. Flanagan decided to move in with his son in Calgary. He listed the property for sale several weeks ago with Smith Real Estate in Dawson. I’m the person who bought it.”
His features looked even harder than they had before. “That’s impossible. I tried to buy this place from Mose Flanagan every other month for the last four years. He refused to even consider it.”
Her irritation inched up a notch. “Well, apparently he changed his mind. The transaction officially closed yesterday morning. I don’t know why he didn’t tell you the property was for sale.” When his black scowl deepened, she couldn’t resist adding, “Maybe he just didn’t like you.”
He opened his mouth to argue, clamped down on his jaw instead, and a muscle jumped in his cheek. Apparently her goading had hit on a portion of the truth.
“So now you’re the owner,” he said darkly.
“That’s right, I am.”
He looked her over from head to foot, taking in her Liz Claiborne jeans and the touch of makeup she hadn’t been able to resist. She bristled at his smug expression.
“And you actually intend to move in?”
“I am in, Mr …?”
“Hawkins. McCall Hawkins. I’m your next-door neighbor, so to speak. And I don’t appreciate all that hammering you’ve been doing. I like things nice and quiet. I enjoy my privacy and I don’t like being disturbed. It’ll be easier on both of us if you keep that in mind.”
“I’ll do my best,” she lied, thinking of the noisy dredging equipment she intended to use in the stream. She gave him a too-sweet smile. “I’d say it was a pleasure, Mr. Hawkins, but we both know it wasn’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”
Turning away from him, she climbed the stairs to the porch, picked up her hammer, and started pounding on the dresser again, dismissing him as if he had never been there. For several long moments, he simply stood there glaring. Then she caught the movement of his shadow as he turned and stalked away, back down the path beside the creek.
Of all the nerve. Who the devil did he think he was?
She remembered passing his house just before she reached the Lily Rose, a newer, cedar-sided home with a large, metal-roofed garage of some sort attached to it. At the time she had wondered who lived there.
Charity bit back a curse as she thought of her irritating “next-door neighbor.” It didn’t matter. He didn’t matter.
She turned at the sound of Maude’s laughter coming up the stairs of the porch. The older woman’s gaze followed Hawkins’s retreating figure down the path. “I see you met your neighbor. Wondered when he’d show up.”
“Oh, I met him, all right, and I didn’t like him any more than he liked me.”
Maude chuckled. “Call’s all right. Long as you leave him alone. He owns a couple thousand acres on this side of the creek. Built the house he lives in when he got here four years ago. Never met a man who likes his privacy more than Call.”
“If he’s so concerned about privacy, he should have built his house somewhere back in the woods, instead of right out here on the water.”
“I guess he liked the view.”
Since she liked looking down on the wild, boulder-strewn stream herself, she didn’t argue. Besides, it didn’t matter. The property was hers to do with as she pleased.
And there wasn’t a damn thing Call Hawkins or anyone else could do about it.
Call stalked up the front steps of his house, his temper foul and his face hard. Crossing the porch, he jerked open the door and strode in, letting the screen door slam behind him.
“Sonofabitch.” He should have appreciated the quiet while he had it. Damn, he couldn’t believe his bad luck. If only he’d known the place was for sale. No doubt ol’ Mose was rubbing his hands in glee, thinking of the prissy little blonde moving in next door to him.
Of course, she wouldn’t be there long. Life this far north was hard. The rainy season had already started. For the next few weeks, there’d be too much rain and too much mud. Then summer would come and there’d be too much sun. There’d be dust and forest fires. There’d be pine beetles and hornets and flies enough to drive you crazy. If she made it till winter—which there was no way in hell she would—there’d be snow up to her pretty little ass.
He thought of the designer jeans she wore that said she was a city girl and not from around these parts, and tried not to think how good she had looked in them. He thought of her pretty face and the hint of makeup she had worn that emphasized her clear green eyes. What in the world had possessed a woman like that to come to an isolated place like Dead Horse Creek?
Of course he had also come north from the city, but that was different. Call had been born in this country. His father had been in the logging business in Prince George, a small town in the forests of British Columbia, and though his mother was American,
