Reckless Fortune, page 9
She decided to ignore that. Bowie Fortune in that bomber jacket, jeans, another rock-and-roll T-shirt—Van Halen this time—and those same mirrored sunglasses needed a great deal of ignoring.
Even though he set her heart to clattering. Or because he did.
“I am making a gill net,” she told him, like the librarian she wished she was sometimes—but only so she could read more. She doubted she would enjoy the dealing with patrons and cataloging things part of the gig. “You have a few, so you should know it’s a kind of net used for fishing—”
“This is rural Alaska. I know what a gill net is. You could have used one of mine.”
“I wanted to make one myself. They’re very effective at catching fish.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment and her hands stilled. She wanted to keep pretending she didn’t quite see him, but he was pulling his sunglasses away from his eyes, apparently so he could really commit to staring down at her.
“You know what another great way of catching fish is?” He seemed to take too long to ask that question. Or maybe it was that she could see all that Montana night sky that passed for his gaze. “We call it straight-up fishing.”
“I’ve seen your fishing rods. They look like they could launch a space shuttle. I don’t really think that’s the pioneer spirit, do you?”
“Remind me, how many pioneers had a generator so they could take hot-water showers?”
Autumn found that unduly antagonistic but chose to rise above it. “I appreciate that I don’t have to heat water on a campfire. Really. And I’m not trying to have a fully authentic experience. I just think it’s going to be hard to have a pioneer summer if I don’t do any pioneering. That’s why I put it on the list.”
“I read a lot of things on your list, Autumn.”
Bowie was holding her gaze with an intensity she didn’t like at all. Because she liked it too much. She really should have come out against too much looking when she’d tried to have the sex talk.
His expression was . . . leveling. “If you want to do subsistence living, this is the place to do it. If you want a taste of that authenticity, you can go live in the dry cabin my great-grandparents built. The only way to get closer to land is to build a shelter with your hands.”
She did not think it was her imagination that he looked at her hands then. Or that he found them wanting.
“I’ll consider that,” she told him, trying to match his overtly placid tone. So placid it tipped over into confrontational. “It would be more realistic. But I’m not entirely sure that realism is the point here.”
“It’s a point.”
“Anyway, my gill net is coming along nicely. As you can see.”
“Have you ever fished with a gill net before?”
“Don’t worry, I get the concept,” she said loftily. When in fact she’d watched some stuff online and decided it looked doable, which wasn’t really the same thing. “What with it being a net, and all.”
He looked entertained by that answer, which made her doubt it was as easy as she’d decided it was. But Autumn had decided a long time ago that doubt was for suckers, so she shrugged it away.
“I thought when you wrote that you were on a run that you were exercising,” she said instead of continuing to debate her gillnetting skills. “Not flying a plane.”
“If in doubt,” Bowie told her then, still looking entertained, “you can pretty much assume I’m flying.”
“Where did you fly today?” she asked. She nodded toward the lake. “Somewhere with water, I’m guessing.”
He nodded. “I picked up some climbers in McGrath and took them up into the Alaska Range. There’s a lake I know about seven thousand feet up that makes a good base for some more moderate climbs. Sometimes I can pretend I’m a hero and take sick folks to hospitals from hard-to-reach villages along the Kuskokwim. But today it was tourists.”
She studied his face. “But you’re happy no matter what, because you’re flying.”
“It’s flying,” he agreed, as if that was an explanation. And the smile he gave her then was different from the grin she’d gotten used to. Wider. Less about charm and more . . . him, maybe. It felt like a gift. “There’s not a whole lot I can think of that’s better.”
She had the impression he didn’t talk about himself much. Oh, he talked around himself and could fill the air with chatter. That much had been clear on the flight up. But what did he ever really say about the real Bowie Fortune?
Autumn kept her gaze on her weaving, her fingers tugging on the rope as she tried to look as if she was only half paying attention. So he wouldn’t get spooked.
“When did you learn how to fly?” she asked, almost offhandedly.
From the corner of her eye she could see him shift his weight, then fold his arms as if he planned to be there awhile. And she wasn’t even looking at him directly, so she couldn’t pretend the giddy sort of feeling that moved in her then was about how handsome he was. It was just him. The simple fact he was near.
“I used to get in some trouble when I was younger,” he told her, and his eyes gleamed unrepentantly when she glanced up at him. “You know how it is in a place like this. You make your own fun. And sometimes it’s maybe too much fun.”
“I do not know,” Autumn countered. “Right about when most people were making their own fun, I was making school lunches for my sisters.”
“You’re obviously a better person than I am,” Bowie said, but not the way people had said things like that to her in the past, like she should climb down off her cross. Bowie sounded cheerful. “There was an old man down in Hopeless who’d been a bush pilot most of his life. When he caught me sniffing around his plane one time, he told me I could either expect to get the wrong end of his shotgun or he could teach me a much better way to waste my time. And I don’t really like getting shot, so I chose the flight lessons.”
Bowie was leaning against the tree now, looking completely at his ease. Autumn continued weaving in her pieces of rope, feeling . . . hushed, somehow. She told herself it was the scenery. The man as well as the lake before her, stretching out lazily as the afternoon rolled on by. The sun was testing itself against some clouds, but that only made the sky above them seem more complicated.
She had the stray thought that she could listen to him tell her stories forever.
“It turned out, flying was even cooler than I thought it would be,” Bowie said. “It was what I thought about while I was in the service, when the US Marine Corps had other things for me to do.”
“Like getting shot at?”
He didn’t quite smile. “Like that. When I came back home, I liberated the rattly old plane I first learned on from the junk heap and I started tinkering with it.”
“I’m guessing you’re good with engines, too.”
Because she’d seen the evidence. The planes in his hangar, some of them looking sleek and new. Others clearly halfway through a tinkering process. And she had the thought that the Bowie she’d spent all day with yesterday would make a flirty little remark here, something about how good he was with engines, or his hands, or something.
But this Bowie actually looked serious. “That’s the thing about Alaska, Autumn. If you don’t figure out how to be handy, you’re probably not going to make it here. In Anchorage, sure. But out this way, you live or die by what you can make. And make work, even when it shouldn’t.”
His words seemed to have a little too much weight, so she laughed. “I’m not a city girl, Bowie.” She shook her head at him. “You do know that most people consider Montana sufficiently rugged, don’t you?”
“You have too many roads,” Bowie replied, but he was grinning again. “Roads make you soft.”
“I’ve been called many things in my life, but not soft.”
She reached the end of the row she was weaving and tied it off. Then stepped back from her net and was suddenly aware, once again, that they were alone.
Entirely alone.
Just the two of them and the wind.
It wasn’t like that had changed any since he’d brought her here. But every time she became aware of it again, it was like a ribbon of heat wound around her. Through her.
She could feel it now, a glimmering deep inside.
“What do people call you?” Bowie asked, his voice low. And she was sure she could see that same glimmering in his eyes.
Last night, while she and Piper had been talking about canning and herbs and the kinds of edible plant life around here, she kept feeling his eyes on her. She’d told herself it was just because she was a stranger here and he was keeping tabs, as anyone would. She’d tried to tell herself the same thing last night after she’d charged away from him, running off to her room to hide—to her enduring shame.
But here it was again, and it was hard to convince herself that she was making it up.
At the same time, she’d watched her sisters’ many love affairs and epic crushes, so she knew better. She was here in Alaska for a reason. And this was not the reason.
Though looking at his jaw—still not shaved and somehow even more attractive for all that ruggedness—she wished it was.
“My sisters have a theme,” she said, grinning broadly. As if there was no glimmering. No heat. “The word bossy gets tossed around a lot, but they like to dress it up. The Bossiest Girl in Ravalli County, for example, thanks to Willa. Autumn of Our Discontent, courtesy of Sunny. Jade prefers Captain Bligh.”
“Captain Bligh?” He laughed, and she shouldn’t have let herself feel a pang that the moment, the glimmering heat, was gone. She should have been grateful. It was what she’d wanted, wasn’t it, or she wouldn’t have told him these nicknames. “Does that mean they actually managed a mutiny? I’ll admit they looked like the mutinous type.”
“They attempted weekly mutinies while we were growing up,” Autumn said. “But I’m betting you know all about that yourself.”
Bowie let out another laugh. “It sounds like my sister has been making scurrilous accusations.”
“Are they scurrilous? She says your older brother, Quinn, was tapped to be in charge of the community here from a young age. And that you took that as a personal challenge.”
“It wasn’t the in charge part I minded. It was more the Quinn part.” Bowie shook his head. “My older brother could teach joylessness to members of the Inquisition.”
“He seemed perfectly delightful last night.”
“You’re talking about New Quinn. New as in the past six months. Violet,” he clarified when Autumn looked at him quizzically. “She brightened up the place. And achieved the impossible, which is making my brother act like a normal human being. I keep expecting it to wear off, but if anything, he’s getting happier. I won’t lie, it’s disconcerting.”
“I’m going to take all of that as an affirmative.” Autumn crossed her arms and stared at him like she was some kind of judge. “You, Bowie Fortune, did in fact attempt to mutiny against your brother’s authority.”
Bowie took on a philosophical expression, still leaning against that tree. He reminded her of the sort of dangerous outlaw who all the stories suggested was likely to come high-nooning into any given western town when the urge took him. And here she was, a born-and-bred western girl. Maybe she was a little too susceptible to that kind of thing.
“This is why I declined Uncle Sam’s offer to continue my service to this country,” he told her. “I’m just not any good with authority figures.”
“Is anyone good with authority figures? Or are they only selectively good with authorities of their choosing?”
His dark eyes gleamed. “Six of one, half a dozen of another, and none of them are my big brother.”
But it felt a lot like he wasn’t talking about his brother at all. It felt a lot like he was telling her something critically important, to her, and Autumn found her throat entirely too dry. “I guess it’s lucky, then, that you work for yourself.”
“That and the fact Quinn and I aren’t kids anymore,” he agreed, the intensity in his gaze lightening. Autumn couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not. No matter how dry her throat was. “We don’t try to settle things with our fists anymore. I guess it’s different when it’s sisters.”
“The reason Willa has nails like scimitars is because she and Jade used to pound on each other,” Autumn said drily. “And probably still would if Willa wasn’t constantly armed.”
“I stand corrected.”
And then, once again, the moment held. Once again, that glimmering ribbon pulled taut between them.
Autumn jerked her head away and jutted her chin toward her day’s work with Lost Lake lying pretty and bright beyond it. “We should take today’s picture in front of my gill net. I already made some videos but this is exactly the kind of hardy, survivalist content—with a view—that people are looking for.”
Bowie seemed to take a very long time straightening from the tree. And then another eon or so to slide his sunglasses back over his eyes.
Like he was made of honey and molasses, especially when he smiled. And this time, it was the kind of smile that made every hair on her body feel like it was standing on end.
Except in a good way.
Only she couldn’t allow it.
And Bowie’s slow grin didn’t help.
“You don’t want to get ahead of yourself now, darlin’,” he drawled, and the grin didn’t take away the fact that he was chiding her. Letting her down easy, once again, and it turned out it really did make her feel violent. “You don’t even know if your Montana net works up here in the Last Frontier. Might want to make sure it does before posting it all over the place.”
And then he sauntered off toward the house while Autumn stayed behind with her gill net, plotting 101 ways not to catch fish with it, but to do something about Bowie Fortune.
Seven
The net did not work.
Autumn would have described her reaction to that as enraged if she allowed herself to feel her own temper. Instead of shoving it down and locking it away because there had never been any point in competing with all the other big emotions around her.
But she seethed a bit privately, because it annoyed her that Bowie had been right. That she was, in fact, getting ahead of herself.
Over the next two days, Autumn checked her net morning, noon, and night. And a whole lot of other times in between, but the fish—that she could see with her own eyes swimming blissfully around in the lake—avoided the net completely.
“I’m sorry to tell you this,” she told Bowie on Saturday morning, out in the hangar where he was doing something incomprehensible to one of his planes. Tinkering, he called it. “But if we were depending on me to feed us in pioneer times, we would be very, very hungry.”
Bowie let out a very male sort of grunt from the raised platform he was on. He shoved his wrench in his back pocket, then turned to look down at her. “Good thing I have a freezer filled with food and a thing called a refrigerator, if you don’t feel like waiting for something to thaw.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s not the point.”
“Besides, I thought you’d moved on from fish and were all about plant-based food sources.”
His grin was nothing short of dangerous then, especially because what he was doing was so . . . him, maybe. Male, something in her whispered. Not that women weren’t perfectly capable of playing with plane engines. But Bowie, in his jeans and a Springsteen concert shirt with grease on his hands and a little bit on one cheekbone, too . . .
Well. Autumn could applaud Rosie the Riveter internally and be glad that he wasn’t Rosie at the same time.
“I’m glad to know that you pay attention to me when I talk,” she said, with studied placidity. “I was beginning to think I was just talking into the void.”
“Plant-based food sources are very important to a subsistence lifestyle and are, of course, more plentiful at this time of year,” he intoned. Repeating, verbatim, one of the lectures she’d given yesterday. “But I’ll ask you this. You spent hours yesterday collecting greens. They tasted good when you cooked them up, I won’t deny it. Yet when you think back to last night’s dinner, is it the greens you remember most?”
She could have said that she remembered the greens chiefly because she’d gone full hunter-gatherer and had foraged for them. It had taken all day. It had rained the day before and continued on into yesterday morning, but had tapered off. Then it had been warm enough to be humid, so she’d felt as if she’d been tramping around looking for seaweed. She’d come back to the house, sweaty and cranky—though she would have died before admitting that her back hurt from being hunched over and her hands were scratched up from the foraging part—to find Bowie in his rambling living room area, reading a book.
Autumn hadn’t known, until that moment, that she’d been waiting her entire life to see a gorgeous man reading a thick, well-loved book of his own volition. She’d had no idea how much she’d wanted to see such a thing.
But she did not intend to tell him that.
“I like a steak as much as the next person,” she said instead, wrapping her hands around her coffee mug and nestling a little more deeply into the cushions of the sofa that she’d been delighted to find out in the hangar when she’d come looking for Bowie this morning.
Sometimes I sleep out here, he’d said gruffly from up high.
You sleep with your planes?
Not in any euphemistic sense, he’d replied, in that edgy way he sometimes had that made everything in her dance a little bit. Sometimes I don’t feel like walking back into the house.
And for some reason, that had simmered between them for much too long.
“I don’t think that’s true, Autumn,” he was saying now, and leaned against the nose of the Cessna. “The next person in this scenario is me, and I’m a dedicated carnivore. If I recall correctly, your position was that you didn’t want to dilute the glory of the greens you’d gathered with meat from my freezer. And then ate all of yours anyway.”
