Reckless Fortune, page 7
It made her wonder what it would be like if she really had come all this way to marry him, sight mostly unseen.
No, she told herself sternly. You are not wondering about that.
“I guess that goes under the heading of things it’s reasonable to expect brides to do, even if they’re fake,” she said after a moment.
“Even if it wasn’t, it’s not like I’d be able to hold them off. They’re wily and determined.” Bowie nodded his head toward the plate in front of her, pancakes, butter, and enough birch syrup to drown them both. “You might as well fortify yourself, darlin’. You’ll need it.”
Five
By the time they made it over to his parents’ house that evening, Bowie had been given a great many opportunities to second-guess himself. Not only himself, but the self-control he’d always prized so highly.
Sure, folks around the lake liked to call him a daredevil and other, less entertaining, things sometimes. Everyone and their mother could tell a thousand stories about the risks he’d taken and what a thrill hound he’d been since he was a kid, but even when chasing the biggest adrenaline highs, Bowie wasn’t reckless.
He’d spent a little too long in the service for that. Carelessness killed people. Sometimes it had killed people he knew. He might like to appear like he was wholly unbothered by the kinds of things that shocked other people, but that came from practice.
It didn’t make him reckless. Ever.
But Autumn McCall made him feel reckless, and that was a problem.
Especially because she seemed completely immune to his usual charm. He’d assumed he could, at the very least, endear himself to whatever woman showed up here for the summer. But Autumn did not find him even remotely endearing, apparently. A fact she did nothing to hide. Every time he aimed a smile her way, she frowned at him.
It was enough to give a man a complex.
And it might even have been dispiriting if he didn’t keep reminding himself that it was a good thing.
A great thing.
Because he would be taking the sight of Autumn in the early morning—padding into his kitchen with her face bare and her hair tousled, looking soft and warm from sleep—to his grave with him. Along with the instantaneous little fantasy life he’d lived there for a minute, imagining other scenarios. Of her waking up tousled, but because he’d left her that way. Of her coming to find him for more—
Yeah. It was a fantastic thing that she wasn’t that into him.
He needed to keep reminding himself of that fact.
And besides, no man became a saint without a little bit of temptation. Or a truckload of temptation. It was the not giving into said temptation that mattered.
Or so he kept telling himself.
Especially as he and Autumn walked up from the water’s edge toward his parents’ house, after paddling their way here along the shoreline in his canoe. He could have done without the view on the way over. Not the glorious lake on a summer evening, the water like glass. The family of moose grazing as they passed. The birds wheeling around overhead. A fish jumping for insects. A perfect Alaskan summer evening, in other words, and usually he would have paddled along feeling right with the world.
But tonight he’d spent the trip staring at Autumn McCall kneeling there in the front of the canoe, like she’d been sent here for the express purpose of driving him round the bend.
And it was working.
Though he would die before he’d let his family see that. Especially when Autumn didn’t even seem to notice her effect on him. She was too busy looking at everything, sighing happily when she particularly liked what she saw—like the baby moose—and otherwise frowning at him.
Always frowning at him.
He had to remind himself how awesome that was.
“You survived your first day!” Piper called out from up on the wide, wraparound porch of the house as they approached.
“With a joyful song in my heart,” Bowie replied.
His sister made a face as she came down the steps. “I wasn’t talking to you.” She bounded across the yard to meet them, sticking out her hand toward Autumn as she drew close. With a big smile on her face. “Autumn. I’m Piper. I am so glad to meet you. If you’re already thinking you made a terrible mistake, well. You did. But the good news is, the rest of us can help ease the blow of being forced to spend three months in solitary confinement with Bowie.”
“She actually hero-worships me,” Bowie told Autumn. “She just has a funny way of showing it.”
Neither one of them responded to that. It was like he wasn’t there.
“I have three sisters,” Autumn was saying, shaking Piper’s hand like it was a lifeline. And this after he’d taught her how to operate every ground and water vehicle he had. “Not one of them responds to a dare the way your brother does. I must know your secrets.”
Piper smiled smugly. “Training.”
And even though he had what he considered a proper sense of foreboding about the unholy union of Piper and this woman who he’d been up half the night trying not to fantasize about, Bowie left the two of them talking. Because he needed to put some distance between himself and those fantasies. He jogged up the stairs to find his brother and Violet sitting side by side on the summer sofa that they hauled inside when the weather turned. Nestled up cozy and cute the way they liked it.
“I still don’t understand what you see in my brother,” Bowie said to Violet, but he was grinning.
“I think it was all the snow,” Violet replied as if she was taking him seriously. She shoved her glasses up on her nose as she turned her smile on Quinn. “It blinded me.”
Quinn did not seem concerned about his woman’s eyesight. His arm stayed where it was, not so much along the back of the sofa as it was around Violet, in her usual bright colors. Tonight it was her favorite. Pink.
“I was certain you would’ve run that poor girl off by now,” Quinn said to Bowie.
“Autumn’s a hardy Montana girl, used to wrestling bears and climbing mountains,” Bowie replied, grinning even wider while he said it, because that was the only response he should have been having to his fake new bride. Not all the rest of the feverish stuff inside him, thank you. He kept thinking that if it weren’t all so new and unexpected, he’d be dealing with it better. He wouldn’t get tied up in knots just because she even canoed pretty. “It’s going to take a lot more than a day in my company to run her off.”
Quinn nodded. “So . . . two days?”
The good news was, Quinn being Quinn felt familiar. And that was a relief after losing his head the way he had the moment he’d laid eyes on Autumn, so Bowie went and leaned against the porch railing. Like he didn’t have a care in the world, because that usually got his brother’s back up. He compounded it by treating Quinn to the most carefree grin he had in his arsenal.
“Now, Quinn,” he drawled. “We can’t all carry women off and make them live in rundown shacks, hoping to run them out of Alaska.”
“I miss the shack,” Violet said, her face going dreamy the way it did when she was having her typical big thoughts. Bowie had never met another person who got paid to think, but Violet made it look good. “There’s something so atavistically compelling about living in concert with the elements. Not forever trying to fight them off, but accepting them as part of your own experience. Letting them enhance you instead of attempting to bend them to your will.”
And even though he was used to it by now, watching his previously grim and humorless brother look at his woman the way he did then, with all that affection and heat, almost made Bowie wish—
But no. That kind of connection and commitment wasn’t for him. He already took care of a hangar full of planes. That was all the connection and commitment he needed.
He’d promised.
“If you’re that into it, professor, we can always go spend a few days out there,” Quinn said. “It’s different in the summer. For one thing, there are more bears.”
Violet shivered. “I’m not afraid of bears,” she lied.
“You thought I was a bear,” Bowie reminded her.
“I was realistically and appropriately concerned that the large creature crashing toward the shack was a bear, yes,” Violet said primly. It had been their very first meeting. “I wouldn’t call that afraid.”
“Obsessed, then,” Quinn suggested.
Bowie was just happy his brother’s attention had been diverted from him. And happier still when the front door opened and Bowie’s best friend in the world stepped out, holding two beers in each hand.
Noah Granger was a different kind of brother to Bowie. They’d met in the marines and after they’d each done their stint, Noah had decided there was nothing for him back in Texas. Grumpy SOB that he was, he’d decided there were a few too many people around here, too. He lived even farther out than Bowie’s parents, though he came in too often to be considered a true hermit. More like a hermit-in-training.
Bowie took one of the beers and waited as Noah gave the other two extras to Piper and Autumn, who’d made their way up onto the porch. Still talking intently. But when they went over to Quinn and Violet, Noah joined Bowie at the railing.
And for a moment they stood there quietly, watching as Piper introduced Autumn around, and then did it all over again when Lois and Levi came around the side of the house. Holding hands, because his parents were still cute like that.
“Well,” Noah said after a time. “Damn.”
Bowie knew exactly what he meant. Autumn was all curves and unearned swagger. There was no getting past it. “Yup.”
“That’s a Grade A catastrophe.”
“It is,” Bowie agreed. He shook his head sorrowfully. “I blame you, Noah. You sat there, listened to me shoot my mouth off about this contest, and never once slapped me upside the head to keep me from doing something so foolish.”
His best friend was unfazed by this attack. “If a man wants to dig his own grave, I get out of the way. Or give him a shovel.”
And what could Bowie say to that? So did he. He took a swig of his beer instead.
There was a certain fatalistic pleasure in the whole thing, Bowie thought as the party moved down the porch to another set of stairs that led out to a small patio. Levi started flipping burgers on the grill while the others helped carry out the rest of the food from the kitchen. When the big picnic table was loaded up with the usual casual feast, they all settled in around it and he found himself next to Autumn.
Who didn’t seem to notice where she was sitting, because she kept looking out over the lake and sighing happily.
Bowie couldn’t blame her. He was used to it and he still found it beautiful. But she’d been doing it all day.
“Do you not have lakes where you come from?” he asked, reaching over her for the potato salad.
She looked at him, then down at her loaded plate. “We have all kinds of lakes. My favorite, Lake Como, reminds me a bit of this. We used to hike all around it and sometimes camp there when I was growing up.”
“That must be why you haven’t turned tail at the sight of Bowie’s ramshackle house,” Piper said. “If you’re used to roughing it.”
Autumn frowned. Not at him, for once. “I would not call the house ramshackle.”
He was pleased to hear her defending him. Possibly too pleased.
“Piper has unreasonable expectations,” Bowie said. “And also doesn’t have a hangar attached to her cute little cottage.”
“Piper is also grown,” Piper retorted, taking the bowl of potato salad from him before he could spoon any on his plate. “And doesn’t like squalor.”
“I’m sure Autumn didn’t come this far north to listen to the two of you squabbling,” Lois said. She eyed the new arrival with her usual frankness. “I know why folks used to do the mail-order bride thing way back when. What makes a modern woman try it on for size?”
If Autumn felt intimidated by being the center of attention—much less in Lois’s sights, a fate a great many locals went to extraordinary pains to avoid—she gave no sign. She put down her fork, considered the question, and took her time doing it.
“I can see the appeal, can’t you?” she asked eventually. Even holding Lois’s intimidating gaze. “All you have to do is answer an ad and be willing to uproot yourself, and just like that, you get a whole new life.”
“Is that what you’re after?” Levi asked.
Autumn smiled, but it was that reality show smile that Bowie had seen a lot of today. He couldn’t say he liked it.
“Not necessarily,” she said. “But I understand the allure in a way I never did before.”
“How did you even find out about this contest?” Violet asked.
“I heard it on the radio.” Autumn relaxed beside him, her shoulders inching down just enough to make it clear she’d had them up near her ears. “My stepmother and I were cooking up big batches of stew to freeze, and she likes to listen to the radio in the kitchen. They started talking about the contest up here, I started daydreaming, and here we are.”
Bowie doubted very much that his nosy family would accept that as the final word on the subject, but the conversation moved along. Piper was excited about the summer jams she was making or planned to make. Noah made a passing reference to the projects he was working on, way out at his place, that he claimed he never wanted help with. Quinn always had a lot to say on the state of the lakeside community, though these days, it was less about how burdened he felt by that responsibility and much more of a conversation. Sometimes he even laughed, like Violet had gotten all her pinks and purples on him.
“I can’t imagine moving to a place like this from a big city,” Autumn said to Violet at some point. “Coming up north from rural Montana isn’t really that much of a stretch. But from San Francisco?”
“There was some culture shock,” Violet said, then laughed when Quinn shot her a look. “But all in good ways. Unlike most of the people at this table, I don’t have anything against cities in general or San Francisco in particular. And the winter here is definitely ferocious, but I loved it. To be honest, I expected it to be worse than it actually was.”
“It was much colder when I was growing up,” Autumn observed. “Is it the same up this way?”
That set off the usual cavalcade of commentary on the changing climate, which everyone at the table had witnessed with their own angry eyes and happily blamed on the big, bad cities. Everyone except Violet, who wanted to cite studies. And usually did.
When Bowie looked over at Autumn, she had a satisfied look on her face, as if she’d known exactly the sort of storm she would kick off.
She only looked more satisfied when she caught his glance. “Not my first rodeo.”
He could only incline his head in acknowledgment. “I’ll have to remember how sneaky you are.”
“I’m not here to make friends,” she told him, but ruined the line that even he knew was classic reality show villain by laughing. “Though that’s too bad, because I like your sister.”
Bowie decided that it was beneath him to complain about the fact she liked Piper more than she liked him. He should have celebrated it. Instead, her laughter seemed to add to the enduring problem that was her, making her that much more shiny and impossible.
Get a grip, marine, he ordered himself.
“We need to remember to take our first-day picture,” she was saying, because she wasn’t impaled on her own laughter. “It’s on the list, but I left all of that back at your house.”
“Yes,” Bowie said. Still impaled, and looking over to see Noah’s knowing expression didn’t help any. “Your list.”
He’d had a fuzzy sort of idea of what the day would hold. After breakfast, he’d cleaned up, and had expected that he would show Autumn around, make sure she knew how to operate everything from an ATV to a canoe paddle. The generator, the emergency radio, the regular radio. He thought he might take out a map so she could get a sense of where the few trails they had around here were. How best to make her way to his parents’ house—a long walk—or, if necessary, all the way down to the other end of the lake to the Mine. A much longer walk.
He had not been prepared for the way Autumn came charging out into the kitchen after breakfast, her arms full of materials he hadn’t recognized at first.
Possibly because he’d been a little too caught up in looking at Autumn.
Because sure, there were the mouthwatering curves. He couldn’t say he’d gotten used to them, because who could? But he’d been braced for the sight of them, and maybe that was why he had only then gotten around to noticing that she was . . . pretty. Just ridiculously pretty.
And, as if she had a personal commitment to test his limits—as if that were her entire purpose here, not some stupid prize—she had dressed herself in something other than the jeans and T-shirt. It was not exactly warm on a summer’s day in Alaska, so she’d gone for the kind of practical, layered outfit that any woman Bowie knew would wear.
But it was the way Autumn wore it. Hiking pants that whispered when she walked, calling even more attention to her hourglass shape. Three competent layers on top. The T-shirt that she was wearing now, the long-sleeve midlayer with a hood, and the thin vest she’d zipped up when they went outside.
None of it was sexy. It was hardly lingerie.
And yet, once again, Bowie had found himself struck dumb.
Because he liked the women he took to bed fluffy and far away, and he liked all the women he knew here at home because they were as functional and pragmatic as he was. It had never occurred to him that a woman could be both practical and pretty. Not in a way that got to him the way she did.
Maybe that was why it took him a little too long to notice that she’d gone ahead and transformed his kitchen into a kind of office space. Then proceeded to deliver a presentation on how she intended to pioneer it up around here, complete with a list of daily and weekly goals that she wrote on the whiteboard she’d brought with her.
