That Deep River Feeling, page 2
Zeke Montgomery was turning out to be the most stubborn-ass man Morgan had ever met, and as she lived in Deep River, a town noted for being full of stubborn-ass men, that was saying something.
He towered over her, solid and immovable as a rock wall, all black hair, unshaven black stubble, and the fathomless black eyes that she remembered from the bar back in Juneau, the night of Cal’s funeral.
He had his hands in his pockets and he looked just as wild and uncivilized as he had a couple of months back. Perhaps even more so. He wore a worn-looking, long-sleeved black Henley, a pair of dark jeans with holes in the knees, a battered parka, and hiking boots, and he had the unkempt, rumpled air of a man who’d spent considerable time camping out in the bush.
She had no idea what he was doing on her porch, and to be honest, his appearance was a bit of a shock. But given how her brother’s pal Silas had arrived in Deep River, and then his other pal Damon a couple of weeks after that, it had only been a matter of time before Zeke turned up.
Since he’d basically told her that night he’d failed to give her his number in the bar that anything she needed she only had to call, it made a weird kind of sense that when he had turned up, it was to stand on her porch like a large, rumpled black bear.
Her reaction to him, though, did not make sense.
The night in Juneau, when she’d first met him, she’d only been aware of a vague kind of…unsteadiness in his presence. But that she’d put down to grief.
Yet even though grief had lost its sharp edge now, she still felt unsteady and had no idea what to make that—or of how she’d blushed under his steady, dark stare.
She never blushed. She was a village public safety officer (VPSO), and she was the law in Deep River, and not only that, she was a West—the family that had once literally owned the town—and no one tended to tangle with her.
Which was just the way she liked it.
Men, though. They were far too much trouble.
Exhibit A standing on her porch, for example. Who’d inexplicably made her blush like a teenage girl and who also wasn’t taking no for an answer. He also didn’t appear to be leaving.
What had her stupid big brother been thinking? Why had Cal thought she needed looking after?
Ridiculous, not to mention ironic coming from the man who’d ceased being her protective big brother the moment he’d left Deep River for Juneau. Certainly, him getting all worried about her from beyond the grave was a little late in the piece.
Especially when she was a grown woman of twenty-six, who’d been taking care of herself for years already, not the thirteen-year-old girl she’d been when he’d taken off.
Zeke still hadn’t said anything, midnight eyes giving her a thousand-yard stare. Another woman might have been intimidated by his massive height and his heavily muscled torso, not to mention the whole beard thing he had going on, but Morgan had never been that woman.
Plus, although Cal had left Deep River years ago, he’d kept in intermittent contact and had told her a little about his friends. Zeke, he’d said, was very stubborn, a man of few words, and didn’t much like people. However, he was also protective, generous, and very honest. A good guy to have in a tight spot.
All well and good if you were in a tight spot, but she wasn’t. She was home and what she wanted was to go inside, make herself some dinner, and relax after a busy day, not make a tour of all the things wrong with the house purely to entertain Cal’s annoying, taciturn, and erstwhile missing friend.
The missing friend who didn’t seem to be all that bothered that his other friends, Silas Quinn and Damon Fitzgerald, had been getting worried about him, though they tried to pretend they weren’t.
Morgan let out a breath while Zeke simply stood there. Silently. Like a granite statue of a man. Making curiosity tug lightly inside her about why he’d decided to turn up now, a couple of months after Cal’s death, and what he’d been doing in the interim since Cal had left Deep River to him, Silas, and Damon.
The other two now lived here, Silas with his fiancée, Hope, who owned the Happy Moose bar, and Damon with his soon-to-be wife, Astrid, Deep River’s mayor.
Morgan had been going to ask them if they wanted her to open a missing person’s investigation, but it hadn’t quite gotten to that point.
No need now, since he’d arrived here all by himself. A camp, he’d mentioned, which indicated he’d been living in the bush for…how long? And why? Why hadn’t he let them know he was here? And why hadn’t he gotten in contact with her earlier if Cal had supposedly told him to look after her?
Zeke’s eyes glittered in the late-afternoon light, and she thought he might say something about her threatening to shoot him with her Taser, at least.
But he didn’t. He simply turned around without a word and walked down the porch, disappearing around the corner of the house.
For a second, Morgan could only gape after him.
Perhaps it was a dream he’d been there. Perhaps the single beer she’d had at the Moose just before she’d headed home had been one too many. Then again, could you really say one beer was one too many? And more importantly, what in God’s name was he doing?
The porch wrapped around the house and she went after him, peering around the corner. This side faced the river, and on summer days, if you sat on the chairs outside the living room windows, you could see the green water rushing by, glinting off rocks and sparkling in the sun. Her favorite view in the whole wide world.
It was that time of year now, the Deep River filling the afternoon with a liquid sound, the same soundtrack that had punctuated all the important moments in her life.
Along with the noise of the river came the spicy scent of the bush that surrounded the house, mixed with warm, dry earth and the green dampness of the river itself. The scent of home. It was a familiarity she never got tired of and never would.
Zeke had gone down the steps and out onto the lawn that lay between the house and the river and was now looking back up at the house. The sunlight threw his shadow against the stand of spruce and fir at his back, making him seem almost as tall as they were, a giant…
No, not a giant. A bear. A big black bear wandering into her home and sniffing around like he wanted to make it his den.
Pesky things, bears. There’d been one hanging around the house lately, but her approach to the plentiful wildlife in Deep River was that if you left it alone, it would leave you alone.
Sadly, she didn’t think that applied to stubborn-ass men.
She walked along the porch, then went down the stairs that led onto the lawn and came up beside him.
“What part of ‘I’m going to arrest you for trespassing’ or ‘shoot you with my Taser’ didn’t you understand?” she said.
Zeke ignored her. “See there?” He pointed to the roof. “Definitely going to need some new shingles. Guttering, too, needs work.” His pointing finger lowered. “And the second-story windows. Some of the frames are going to give you trouble come winter.” Then he pointed at the pipes that ran down the side of the house. “And I’m thinking that the downpipes over there might need replacing too.”
Morgan glared at him, annoyed at his continuing inability to listen. “You want me to get the zip ties?”
“You can try.” Zeke didn’t look at her. “Cal asked me to take care of you. And that means fixing up the house.”
Ah. That explained things.
“Well, why didn’t you just say?” she muttered, her irritation lessening somewhat, since she was very familiar with the male tendency to want to fix things to show they cared. That had been Cal’s default too. Still, she didn’t want this particular male hammering at her guttering right now.
“It’s fine, Zeke,” she said. “You don’t have to—”
“I should take a look under the house, make sure the plumbing is okay. How’s your wood supply?”
Morgan frowned. Persistent, wasn’t he? “Are you listening to me?”
“About as much as you’re listening to me.”
She gritted her teeth. He still wasn’t looking at her, his dark eyes narrowed as he kept on scanning the house like an engineer looking for structural faults.
Really, she wasn’t sure why him offering to fix her house bugged her so. Because all the things he’d mentioned were things that she’d been going to fix herself, but hadn’t gotten around to it due to the fallout from Cal’s death.
Oil reserves had been discovered lying beneath the town, oil that now belonged not only to Cal’s three friends who’d inherited the town from him, but to all the people who leased land in Deep River—a.k.a. the entire town. The leases were bought and sold for nominal amounts of money, since when Jacob West had founded the town over a century earlier, during the gold rush years, he’d intended Deep River to be a haven for those who weren’t comfortable anywhere else.
A refuge and a sanctuary for those who needed it, even those who had no money.
Morgan believed very strongly in her ancestor’s vision and so had Cal, and the oil discovery had been a shock. Especially since Cal had kept it a secret from her.
She wasn’t sure why he hadn’t told her, but whatever, the town deciding to take up Silas’s suggestion of kickstarting tourism to replace oil dollars and getting some projects started had eaten up her time.
That and the usual duties of a VPSO—fire safety, search and rescue, first responder duties, plus all the paperwork—didn’t allow for much rest and relaxation. She also involved herself in the day-to-day running of Deep River, so yeah, busy.
But still, she could be handy with a hammer. She was an independent person who much preferred taking care of others to being taken care of herself, especially by persistent men with painted-on ears.
“Zeke,” she said, striving to keep a grip on her patience. “If I need help with the place, I’ll be sure to let you know. But right now—”
Zeke walked off abruptly yet again, going back to the porch and climbing the stairs.
What. The. Hell?
“Hey,” she called, going after him and hurrying up the steps and onto the porch. “Where are you going?”
He vanished around the corner again and so she followed, catching up as he strode to her front door.
“Hey!” she repeated. “Zeke, you can’t just—”
Zeke pulled open the front door and stepped inside as if he owned the place.
The bear is in your house now, Goldilocks.
Ignoring that aggravating thought and trying to hold on to her thinning patience, Morgan went after him.
He stood in the entranceway, giving everything another of those slow, careful scans. The space was high ceilinged, with big wooden beams crisscrossing overhead, and it had always felt echoing to Morgan, especially when she’d been a kid. Like a church, her mother, who’d never liked the house, used to mutter darkly. But with Zeke’s massive form standing there filling the space, it felt…small almost.
He glanced up at the big chandelier a West ancestor had made out of deer antlers that her mother had always wanted to get rid of but her father had insisted needed to stay.
“Light fitting could use replacing.” His voice was very deep and rumbling, a bit like the river when it flooded. Or an avalanche. “I bet the electrical work in this place could do with a look over.”
Morgan put her cop face on. “Zeke Montgomery.”
“What?” He didn’t even spare her a glance. “If you’re gonna arrest me, then get on with it.”
But she’d gone off that idea. It wasn’t worth the aggravation.
“I’m not sure I can be bothered.” She eyed up his tall form. “Are you always this annoying?”
He frowned at something he’d obviously spotted on the ceiling. “Yes.” Then he turned and walked calmly through the doorway to the left that led into the big living room.
Lord, give her strength. What was with this guy?
Morgan found herself following him yet again, this time into the living room. “You know that walking away from people without a word is rude, don’t you?”
Zeke had gone down to where the fireplace was, looking at it and frowning yet again. “I didn’t walk away without a word. I said yes.” Crouching down in a surprisingly fluid movement for a man so large, he leaned forward into the hearth to peer up the chimney.
There had been no sarcasm in his voice, or at least none that she could detect, so maybe he genuinely thought that his curt “yes” wasn’t rude. Maybe he genuinely thought that turning and walking away before a conversation had ended was fine too.
Taciturn and stubborn, Cal had told her about Zeke. A man of few words.
She gave him a more appraising look, the tug of curiosity deepening.
The way he’d twisted himself revealed that it wasn’t only his jeans that had holes in them. The faded black Henley he wore underneath his parka also had some holes, through which she could see bare, bronzed skin.
For some reason, the sight made heat rise in her cheeks.
She shoved it away, concentrating instead on the holes and not on the skin beneath it. Huh. Looked like he’d been living rough for quite some time, at least if the state of his clothes was anything to go by. Where had he been? And why?
Perhaps that was why he was also being such a stubborn, persistent ass. Perhaps he hadn’t been around people in a while. Sometimes that happened to hunters and trappers who’d been in the bush too long. They simply forgot how to interact.
Morgan’s annoyance, though intense while it lasted, never lingered, and it quickly faded now.
Out of the three of Cal’s friends he’d owned the supply and transport service Wild Alaska Aviation with, she knew Silas the best since Silas had grown up here. Damon was a transplant from LA, whom she’d only gotten to know once he’d moved to Deep River weeks earlier, but Zeke had remained an enigma, no matter what Cal had told her about him.
She wasn’t really a fan of enigmas, not when oil had been discovered in her town and she had people to protect. The townsfolk had taken the oil news pretty well and had successfully managed to resist the lure of the oil company flashing money about in return for their leases and drilling rights, yet it still paid to be vigilant.
Her family might not own the town anymore, but she still had a duty to it.
Morgan chewed on her lip, examining Zeke’s muscular form.
One of Cal’s friends wasn’t going to be a threat to the town. And hey, if he wanted to do a few odd jobs around the house, why not take advantage of the free labor? Especially when he seemed hellbent on doing them.
But he could give her a little something in return too. Information about himself for example.
Zeke shoved himself back from the fireplace and rose to his full height, dusting his hands off on his jeans. “Chimney’s good.”
“Well, thank God for that,” Morgan said. “I might have a giant stranger who doesn’t listen to a word I say in my house, but at least the chimney’s good.”
He studied her from beneath ridiculously long, thick black lashes and didn’t smile. “Yes, that’s what I said.”
Right, so in addition to being rude, he didn’t have a sense of humor as well. Had he somehow lost it out in the bush? Or had he never had one at all?
The curiosity inside her deepened further, along with a weird echo of the unsteadiness she’d felt out on the porch. A small flutter, like a firefly flying around in a jar.
Strange. She had no idea where that had come from.
“Where have you been, Zeke?” she asked. “And why are you here now?”
He hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans, a classic dude pose. “I told you. I’m here because Caleb asked me.”
Morgan gave him her cop stare. “I’m afraid I’m going to need more than that.”
Chapter 2
Morgan had her arms folded again and was giving him that very stern, no-nonsense glare. Which would have been effective if she hadn’t looked as cute as an extremely irritated china shepherdess.
Not that she didn’t have reason to be irritated. Walking away from her without a word was rude. Then again, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. Goodbye wasn’t appropriate since he wasn’t actually leaving and telling her to follow him seemed redundant. Anyway, he’d thought he’d answered her questions.
Still, getting her riled wasn’t a great idea. He didn’t want to cause an issue. But he didn’t want her to stop him doing what he’d been asked to do either, which was to look out for her.
You might have to make more of an effort with her.
Zeke didn’t like that thought. People could take him as he came or not at all, an attitude that had worked out pretty well for him so far. He had a great job that he loved, that consisted of guiding hunters and hikers in the wilderness, a bit of search and rescue, climbing expeditions, as well as flying planes. Of course, he’d found himself dealing with more people than he would have liked, but since those people didn’t care that he didn’t talk much, didn’t seem to need him to be polite, and certainly didn’t give a shit about what he wore, it wasn’t a problem.
Morgan, though, wasn’t one of those people. And he didn’t think she’d appreciate conversations about how to start a fire when the weather was wet, which type of mushrooms could be eaten safely, or what were the best types of bivouac construction.
He was going to have to think of some other things to say that wouldn’t actively piss her off. Unfortunately, right now, he couldn’t think of any.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said at last. “I told you why I was here.”
Her eyes really were the brightest blue, a noonday sky in the middle of summer. And they were full of summer lightning too, electricity snapping and crackling.
“Because Cal asked you to, right?” One delicately arched apricot brow arched even higher. “And do you always do what Cal asks you to?”
