person who had been stealthily following him could be dangerous. His shearling coat was more suited to the mountains than to this more moderate climate and it could encumber him in a tussle. The thick padding could also protect him from a man Alexi and his brother, Danya, had forcibly removed from this small oceanfront town—a very dangerous man with a grudge against the Stepanovs….
A flash of lightning lit the grotesque masks on the totem poles outside the resort—a reflection of the Northwest Pacific’s Native American heritage—and Alexi thought about the past week.
Someone was riffling through the details of his life; a woman’s voice had queried several people in Venus, Wyoming, about her old boyfriend, Alexi. The name the woman had used when speaking to his father and his brother didn’t really matter; it was probably false. She had supposedly reached the wrong number—striking up a conversation with the new owners of Alexi’s ranch. The innocent pretext led to a seemingly friendly conversation that released too much of Alexi’s personal information.
She had asked if he was seeing anyone. Was he seeing anyone? Not likely, not after a woman had taken everything she could from a man, including his pride.
Alexi frowned slightly as a light, cold rain began to hit the ceiling-to-floor windows in the resort’s pool and social area room. Like tiny snakes flowing to join others, the rain slid down the glass as he thought about his ex-fiancée, now another man’s wife. A model bent on a runway career, Heather Pell had moved on to bigger opportunities provided by her millionaire husband.
Three years ago Heather had returned Alexi’s ring and his dreams in a cold note that said she didn’t “want to be stuck on a godforsaken ranch for the rest of my life.”
He’d put almost everything he’d saved into building the home she wanted, into the ranch he wanted. Did he love her? Alexi didn’t know now. Looking back, he hadn’t been thinking about love that much at the time. Maybe he was so entranced with his pictured dreams of marriage, home and children that he hadn’t seen the reality of what their relationship was missing—a love like his parents.
In the end he’d sold the ranch at a loss and was glad to be rid of the house his ex-fiancée had designed. Unable to settle into new goals and dreams, Alexi had taken the opportunity to remodel a home for his father and to visit his cousins in Amoteh.
Burned by his ex-fiancée, Alexi had decided to leave attachments of the heart to other men; he wasn’t stepping into that cow pile again, asking for more pain.
Restless with his thoughts and more comfortable in nature’s elements, Alexi opened the resort’s door and stepped out into the night. He decided to lead his stalker away from the Amoteh Resort; he wanted no trouble within his cousin’s luxurious domain.
As Alexi moved through the dormant but manicured gardens, he took the wooden steps downward. They led toward Amoteh the town, which was fed by tourists in warmer weather. Walking slowly, making certain that he could be followed easily, Alexi moved away from the resort. The resort’s exterior lighting framed the huge painted totem poles and Alexi glanced at the eerie shadows thrown against their masks—and the person moving through them, following him.
His stalker was small and quick, agile, too.
Alexi’s senses tightened as rain, changing to a mix of sleet and snow, lashed his face. He left the resort’s steps and moved onto a footpath, which led to his father’s retirement home.
Home? Not yet. In the process of gutting the old house, Alexi wanted it livable by late spring. His father could relocate, enjoy the summer fishing and spend the winter sharing the Stepanov immigrant brothers’ stories with Fadey—next to a blazing fire.
The storm hit Amoteh’s brown sandy beach in a furious crash of waves. Snow fell steadily now, topping the piles of driftwood and tall beach grass. The path led half a mile northward over sand and brush and ended with wooden steps that had to be replaced, a sprawling back porch that was rotting and cluttered with old discarded cabinets, doors and windows. But the house overlooking the Pacific Ocean was sound and, despite cosmetic problems, the skeleton was based on sturdy cedar beams.
Alexi glanced at the ocean, the winds catching the waves, sending sprays from the whitecaps. Violent, elemental, the water called to him, perhaps to his dark, brooding side that few people had ever seen.
If he decided to buy the Seagull’s Perch, a local tavern, he might settle permanently in Amoteh….
Alexi opened the weathered door and stepped inside the house’s sunroom. The plastic he had installed over the open windows rattled, protesting the rising wind.
He waited in the cold darkness; the creak of the wooden porch told him the stalker didn’t match his weight. His visitor might be trained for other work—
When the door creaked and opened, Alexi held his breath. The stalker stepped inside the open door and Alexi kicked it shut. “Looking for something?”
“Alexi?”
He’d recognize that soft, husky female voice anywhere…and that scent amid a storm of other ones. At the resort’s New Year’s Eve dance one week ago, held for locals and for guests, he’d danced with Jessica Sterling, a guest at the Amoteh.
At around thirty, Mrs. Jessica Sterling—widow of the Sterling Stops magnate—had a feline grace, gliding and sensuous. She had walked slowly through a crowd of people to find him at the seafood buffet. Her face had been in shadow, her silhouette framed by the light behind her. Her hair had been pinned into a neat chignon and that long, slender neck led to gleaming bare shoulders. The black dress had been long and formfitting, clinging to her hips. Her long emerald-chandelier earrings had caught the light, glittering and swaying along her throat as she’d moved toward him.
As she had moved closer, the thigh-high slit in her dress had revealed a gleaming smooth leg before it fell to those well-kept, polished toes in her strappy high-heeled sandals. As Alexi’s gaze had moved upward, he’d found a neat waist and only two tiny straps holding up the low-cut bodice and the smooth-flowing softness within.
In contrast to her sophisticated look, Mrs. Jessica Sterling had carried the scent of soap and fresh air, not Parisian perfume. But her unique scent had disturbed Alexi on a level he didn’t want—her scent was that of a woman, exotic and feminine.
Just two feet from him, she’d stopped and slowly looked him up and down. Inches shorter than his six-foot-three height, her high heels lessened the distance between those slanted, mysterious green eyes and his own. “Alexi Stepanov? I’m Jessica Sterling. Would you like to dance?”
The next day she’d come to the Seagull’s Perch, where he’d been filling in for the vacationing bartender. The owner would soon be retiring and Alexi was working to get the feel of the tavern—balancing his past life against a new one—and the money it would take to make a start in Amoteh. Jessica Sterling wasn’t the barroom type; her long, all-weather raincoat had covered an expensive woolen sweater and slacks. In her brief visit she’d ordered an expensive white wine from Rita, the waitress—but Alexi knew Jessica was studying him as he worked behind the massive walnut bar.
He’d thought at the time that a woman like her—one who would walk through the night alone to a tavern filled mostly with men—would do nothing but cause trouble.
Now, in the cluttered sunroom amid the scents of freshly cut wood, he caught the fragrance of a woman—
“Alexi Stepanov?” Jessica asked in that same husky
