about the conditions she ran into on these trips.
Aiden was very intent on what he was doing, and his concentration allowed him to land the plane smoothly, gliding to the ground with little more than a bump before the plane slowed and came to a stop near a small shack illuminated by a single pole light. There was an SUV waiting beside it but no one was in the SUV. And no one came out of the shack to greet them, either. In fact, there was no indication of another human being anywhere around. There was just the field, the shack and a whole lot of fir trees in the distance.
But at least they were on terra firma again and the relief of having accomplished that without incident was enough for Emmy to once more vow that she would rise above whatever rough patches she encountered.
As Aiden shut down the engines and began flipping levers and noting gauge readings on a paper on a clipboard, he said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. The bed and breakfast where you were supposed to stay had to close. Their pipes burst. So you’ll be bunking with me. And since my cabin is between here and Boonesbury proper—what there is of it—we won’t get into town tonight.”
“Bunking with you?” There was enough of a surplus of shock in that to completely hide the fact that something like titillation had taken a little dance across the surface of her skin at the idea of “bunking” with him.
“Let me rephrase that,” he said, obviously fighting a smile as his end-of-flight tasks came to a conclusion and he turned toward her. “The B and B is the only thing we have in the way of a hotel or motel so there isn’t really a choice but to stay with me. But you won’t actually be staying with me. My cabin has an attic room complete with its own bathroom, and it can only be reached by an outside staircase. So in actuality it’s a separate residence. Well, except that you’ll need to use my kitchen. But it’s a pretty cozy room that I’m sure you’ll be comfortable in. And I promise you’ll have complete privacy.”
Again Emmy was reminded of her predecessor and of Evelyn’s gripes about some of the accommodations she’d had to suffer through. And even if the attic room of Aiden Tarlington’s cabin was nice enough, there was the added complication of being in close proximity to the man and how awkward that might be. Emmy didn’t appreciate this situation any more than Evelyn would have. Plus she knew it would only be made worse if she didn’t find a way to curb her heightened awareness of how attractive he was.
“There’s nowhere else I could stay?” she asked.
“Sorry.”
Emmy chewed that over in her mind to get used to it.
Certainly it would have been preferable to stay somewhere else. Away from him and the odd effect he seemed to have on her. But if that wasn’t an option it wasn’t an option, and she’d have to make the best of the situation.
Besides, she assured herself, before too long she would get used to being around him and stop even noticing how attractive he was. This whole situation—and his knock-’em-dead good looks—were all just a novelty. A novelty that would wear off.
And as soon as it did, there wouldn’t be a problem.
She hoped.
Aiden’s cabin was made of rough-hewn logs and was situated near an evergreen-bordered lake with nothing else as far as the eye could see around it.
Moonlight reflected on the undisturbed, glassy surface of the water to cast the only light as Aiden took her bags onto the front porch. He bypassed the door to the lower level and instead went around to the right side of the building.
Emmy followed, finding a wooden staircase there.
“Let’s get your things upstairs and turn on the space heater to warm the place while we have a little something to eat.”
Emmy was all for warmth, because he hadn’t been exaggerating about the cold that was even more noticeable here than it had been in Fairbanks.
The second floor was one large room except for the bathroom. One large room with a brass bed, an overstuffed chair, a reading lamp and a very old armoire. And nothing else.
Emmy thought that cozy was stretching the truth a bit, but she didn’t say that.
“The bed has a feather mattress,” Aiden informed her as he set her suitcases on the wooden floor that hadn’t seen stain or varnish in several decades. “I hope you aren’t allergic.”
“I’m not,” she said as she poked her head into the bathroom, where she found toilet, sink and a claw-footed bathtub with a very dated showerhead dropping down from directly over the middle of the tub.
Aiden had turned on the space heater by the time she returned from inspecting the bathroom.
“I wouldn’t recommend using the heater all night long. It can get pretty hot if it’s on for hours at a time. And there’s an electric blanket on the bed, under the quilt, so you’ll be warm enough while you sleep. Getting out of bed in the morning is just sort of a shock to the system.”
“I can imagine.”
“Wakes you up, though.”
“Mmm.”
“Come on, let’s go downstairs. I have some sandwiches made up since we didn’t have any in-flight food service.”
He held the door open for her, and Emmy went out into the cold again.
At the bottom of the steps Aiden went ahead of her to the main door. As he did, her gaze dropped inadvertently to the jeans-clad derriere that was visible below his jacket.
Like the rest of him it was something to behold, and Emmy silently chastised herself for looking, snapping her eyes up to a safer view.
But the view wasn’t actually much safer when she took in the expanse of his back and broad, broad shoulders, or the sexy way his hair waved against his thick, strong neck.
“Ladies first,” he said then, and she noticed belatedly that he was waiting for her to go in ahead of him.
Emmy stepped into the cabin, glad for the warmth coming from the old radiator against one wall.
The place seemed about double the size of the attic room but it still wasn’t large. Or luxurious. Living room, dining room and kitchen were all one open space, with a mud room off the kitchen in the rear and a single bedroom and another bath on the other side of a log-framed archway to the left of the living room.
The furnishings were as inelegant as the cabin itself. There was a brown plaid sofa and matching easy chair at a ninety-degree angle to each other, with a wagon wheel coffee table in front of them and a moderately sized television and VCR across from them.
Aiden’s stereo equipment was on an arrangement of stacked cinder blocks against one wall, there was a fairly nice desk taking up another, and a scarred oak kitchen table and four ladder-backed chairs stood in what passed as a dining room only because the table and chairs were near the bar that separated the kitchen from the rest of the cabin.
“I know it’s nothing fancy,” Aiden said in response to Emmy’s glance around. “But Boonesbury provides the cabin and most of the furniture for the local doctor, and I’m usually not here enough for it to matter that it isn’t too aesthetically pleasing.”
“But
