to gauge if she could trust him.
The answer was yes. And no.
It all depended.
She could trust him to put up with her until he could get rid of her, to try to answer a few questions, but she couldn’t trust him to spring into action and solve all her problems. Since Patricia’s death, he had one blinding obligation and that was his daughter. Period.
Besides, his action days were behind him, lost now in the haze of his Army Ranger years, his stealth and manual-combat skills as rusty as his aim though he still maintained a closetful of weapons. Hell, every man, woman and child in Frostbite, Alaska, knew how to shoot a gun. It went with the territory.
All this justification made him uneasy, especially when he glanced at his dinner guest and met her troubled blue gaze. If her mother was half as innocent as her daughter, the poor woman was in for a lot of trouble.
Though he tried to dissuade her, Katie helped him clear the table and wash the dishes. He wasn’t crazy about standing so close to her in the kitchen. The room had always been the warm, comforting heart of the house. Katie brought a level of tension with her that ruined this ambience and he resented her intrusion. The thought flitted through his mind that things were soon going to go from bad to worse. His level of uneasiness began to creep up off the charts.
The electricity went out as he put the last plate on the open shelf.
He stacked more wood on the fire and lit another lantern, which he used to go check on Lily who was sound asleep. He replaced her kicked-off covers. As he walked back down the dark hallway, he noticed a light on under the door of Helen’s room.
He raised his hand to knock to make sure she was okay, to try to cajole her back into the kitchen so she could get herself something to eat. Before his knuckles touched the wood, the door swung open.
Helen faced him, carrying a small backpack in her hand. She’d changed into her snow clothes—thermal, watertight overalls and a blue jacket with a hood. A pair of heavily insulated gloves dangled around her neck on a tether. Her feet were clad in thick socks, awaiting boots, he supposed.
He said, “Helen?”
“I’m going to my sister’s house,” she said.
He stared at her a second. She’d been part of his household for years and to say her current behavior was out of character was like saying if an elephant took a hankering to sit down, he’d need more than one chair.
Nick shook his head.
“I can’t stay here. I can’t bear to hear talk about him. Why did she come here? She’s going to make things worse—”
She stopped abruptly and met his gaze, her large dark eyes swimming in pain. He knew exactly what she was thinking, because he’d been thinking it himself. By coming to this house, Katie Fields had unintentionally brought the past alive. He said, “Is your sister expecting you?”
“None of the phones work.”
“Damn, we lost the phone line already? I’m going to have to break down and get a cell phone one of these days.”
“It doesn’t mater. My sister will be home. I’m sorry, Mr. Nick, to abandon you—”
“I’ll drive you—”
“The snow’s too deep. Even if you got me there, you’d never get back. I’ll take one of the snowmobiles.”
“Helen—”
“It’s not far. And you have Lily to watch.”
She sidled past him and he made no move to stop her, but he didn’t like her going off into a storm by herself. On the other hand, he couldn’t take Lily out into this weather. Well, well, his visitor might come in handy after all. “Wait,” he called, approaching Helen. He spoke fast and low. She shook her head, but he ignored her and went looking for Katie.
This time he found her in the living room, seated in a big red chair pulled up close to the fire, and for a second, his breath caught.
Firelight danced across her face, sparkled in her eyes, glistened in her hair. She sat forward, warming her hands, her trim body taut. She looked so bright and so alive she rivaled the fire itself.
He rubbed his eyes before entering the room and stood with his back to the fire, staring down at her.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, fine.” Reluctantly, he added, “I need a favor.”
She immediately nodded. “Of course.”
“Helen is taking a snowmobile into Frostbite to visit her sister. I’m not comfortable with her going out in this alone. Will you keep an eye on Lily while I give Helen a ride? It shouldn’t take more than twenty or thirty minutes and Lily is sound asleep. I doubt she’ll stir.”
“Helen is leaving because of me, isn’t she?”
“It’s her choice. I won’t be long.”
Katie said, “I spent half my youth babysitting. I’d love to watch Lily.”
Helen was sitting on the bench out on the porch, lacing up her boots. He put on his snow gear. In unison, they moved to the garage, where they both pulled on helmets. Nick pushed the larger of the snowmobiles out the door. As he and Helen roared away from the house, he looked back once, reassured by the flickering of the lanterns visible through the falling snow, his home a comfortable island floating on mounds of pristine white.
KATIE WATCHED the retreating lights of the snowmobile disappear, with her hands clenched into fists at her side.
It all came down to time.
Time for stories read to a child, time for Helen to get sulky and distant, to require aid, to retreat.
Time to eat and wash dishes, time to build fires and light lanterns, time for everything and everyone except her mother, the one person to whom every second might mean the difference between life and death.
What was going on? Why was it so hard to get an answer to anything in this house?
She turned away from the window in a huff, frustration demanding movement, movement all but impossible unless it was contained within the log structure. She stomped down the hall until she found an open door with a soft light coming from within. An oversize window covered with lacy curtains took up half of one wall. The bed was positioned in such a way that a person could look outside while lying down. The view must be gorgeous when it was actually possible to see outside.
Nick had left a lantern burning on his daughter’s dresser; its flickering light cast dancing shadows against the walls, but it also bathed a sleeping child’s face. Katie covered her mouth with her hand and stared.
Lily Pierce was an angel on earth. Fine blond hair, long dark lashes, rosebud mouth, rounded cheeks…the whole nine yards. She was the treasure inside the castle, the princess inside the steeple, and all of a sudden, Nick’s fierce determination to see to her needs at any cost made a little more sense.
Katie backed quietly
