Wilderness defender, p.7
Wilderness Defender, page 7
“Good,” Will replied, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “Hopefully we’ll wrap this mess up soon and get back to Anchorage, where you’ve got a whole team of people who’ve got your back, too.”
Yeah, it had been good to see some of their faces on the video call earlier and she looked forward to seeing even more of them in the morning.
“Thanks for the reminder,” she said.
“Anytime.”
The call ended and she glanced at Stormy, who was now snoring softly, still cuddling with her new kitten friend. She left them there asleep and started up the stairs to the second floor. Lex’s and Danny’s voices wafted down the hallway toward her, and she followed them to the toddler’s room. The door was ajar, and she stopped a few paces away from it and listened. By the sound of things Lex was reading a story about a very silly pigeon who kept asking for things he couldn’t have. Lex was playing the role of the pigeon in a cartoonish voice while Danny kept telling the pigeon no, in between gales of hysterical giggles.
Her breath caught. The happiness and love that flowed between father and son was so obvious. And the weight of all the times she’d tried and failed to convince Lex that he’d be a good father crashed down around her heart, sending unshed tears to her eyes. She closed them tightly and stopped the tears from falling.
Help me, Lord...I don’t want to be jealous or resentful of Lex’s happiness. I want to be happy for him. I don’t want to feel this sadness in my heart. Please erase my pain so it doesn’t impact my actions now.
“Keep go’n, Daddy!” Danny squealed. “More pi’gon!”
She turned and started down the stairs, back to the living room, where she sat on a couch and tried to distract herself with a Victorian suspense novel she found on a side table. Stormy had rearranged herself into a giant circle on the floor, tucking her nose against her tail, and the kitten had curled itself into a new ball inside it. Ten minutes later, she heard Lex’s footsteps on the stairs, but didn’t look up until she heard his voice.
“Hey, how are you doing?” he asked softly. He sat down on the opposite end of the couch and turned toward her, leaning his back against the arm.
“I’m okay,” she said. “How about you?”
He ran his hand over his neck.
“Tired,” he admitted. He glanced at Stormy and the kitten, and chuckled. “So looks like someone didn’t get the memo about Stormy being a big scary beast.”
“What’s the kitten’s name?” she asked. “I’ve been talking to it on and off and felt bad I didn’t know what to call it.”
“His name is Mushroom,” Lex said. A grin crossed his face, as if happy for the brief distraction from more serious topics. “Danny named him, although he pronounces it Mu’shoom. It’s apparently short for Mushroom Pizza.”
Poppy snorted, barely catching the laugh in her hand as it spilled out over her fingers.
“That’s a great name for a kitten,” she said.
“I agree.” Lex’s smile grew wider. “I think it’s because of the calico pattern, but I’m not quite sure.”
And for a long moment they sat there, neither of them saying anything, just listening to the sound of the rain beating against the window and the fire crackling in the hearth. She turned to face him and leaned back against the opposite arm of the chair. Their knees bumped.
“I called Will and briefed him,” she said. “We had a short team meeting tonight and will have another longer one tomorrow with the entire team.”
“Your entire team is participating in a joint meeting about Johnny’s murder and the poaching of blue bear cubs?” he asked.
“Yes and no,” she replied. “We try to have regular team meetings with the K-9 unit about the various cases we’re working on. We have three main ongoing investigations right now, along with this one.”
“What are the other cases?” he asked.
For a moment she wondered if he was just making small talk, until she saw the keen interest shining in his eyes.
“Well, one that’s right up your alley is what’s been happening at the Family K Reindeer Sanctuary Ranch,” she said.
“That’s the one run by Addie Kapowski?”
She wasn’t surprised he was familiar with it. Lex had always had a close relationship with the various animal sanctuaries around Anchorage.
“Yup,” she said. “Addie’s niece, Katie, is my boss Lorenza’s assistant. A pen of reindeer were let loose recently and all but two were accounted for. Stormy and I were part of the team that found one of them, but the other one is still missing and we can’t discount the possibility it was stolen and whoever poached it will be back for more.”
Lex frowned. “If there’s anything I can do to help with that, let me know.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m sure my team will appreciate that. Also, I’m looking forward to hearing from my colleagues Sean and Gabriel, who are currently searching Chugach State Park for a family of survivalists named the Seavers. The father of the family is the son of our tech guru Eli’s godmother. She’s dying of cancer and hoping to reconcile with them before it’s too late.”
“Chugach State Park is also where a bride recently went missing, right?” Lex asked.
Considering the case had made national news she shouldn’t be too shocked it reached Gustavus.
“Violet James, yes,” she said. “I’ve been working that case, too.”
“Did they ever find any of them? I haven’t really followed the case.”
“The tour guide, Cal Brooks, was found murdered,” she informed him. “The maid of honor, Ariel Potter, was found at the bottom of a cliff with nonfatal injuries. She helped us find the missing reindeer actually and is now engaged to my colleague Hunter McCord. I really like her. The groom, Lance Wells, and the best man, Jared Dennis, were found holed up in a cabin and severely injured. Lance had been hit over the head and Jared was shot. They say it was Violet.”
“Who is still missing,” Lex confirmed.
“Who is pregnant and believed to be on the run,” Poppy said. “Lance claims she was having an affair with the dead tour guide and the baby is Cal’s. I’m suspicious of Lance, though, after the mixed messages I got from my interviews and not sure he can be trusted.” Then she found Will’s words leaving her lips. “After all, there are far easier ways to get out of marrying a bridezilla than trying to kill them.”
It was a throwaway line, something meaningless, and she wasn’t even sure why she’d said it.
But Lex leaned toward her and grabbed her hands.
“You don’t think that’s what happened with us, right?” he asked thickly.
“Not really, no,” she said, “although I had gotten very caught up in wedding planning—”
“Because you were incredibly organized,” Lex interjected. “You were good at all that wedding stuff so I just left you to it.”
“I didn’t want you to leave me to it.” Poppy stood, pulling her hands out of his grasp. Was that what he thought? “I wanted us to work together. I wanted us to be partners. But you said it yourself, just hours ago, that we were never good at being a team. It was like you never wanted to listen when I talked about wedding plans, and every time I made an appointment for something important you canceled on me because somebody else needed you more.”
He leaped to his feet, too, and for a long moment they just stood there, face-to-face, just a breath away from each other, and neither of them stepped back.
“I don’t understand,” Lex said. “You think I called off marrying you because I didn’t want to help you with wedding planning?”
“No, of course not,” Poppy protested. “I didn’t know what to think. How could I? You didn’t explain. You just told me you weren’t ready to be a husband or father.”
“I told you I was having doubts,” Lex said. “I was very honest about that.”
“But you never explained why you were having doubts about me...or what I could do about it.”
“Because I wasn’t having doubts about you!” Lex burst out. “You might be the most dedicated and driven person I’ve ever met in my life, but you still can’t fix something that’s not your doing. I didn’t have a single doubt that you were an incredible, amazing, beautiful woman and any man would give his right arm to be married to you.” His voice dropped, his tone growing huskier. “I doubted that I could be what you needed and that I had what it took to be the kind of man you deserved.”
Poppy’s heart seemed to gasp, sending shivers coursing through her veins. A moment later, she took a deep, fortifying breath and forced herself to have the courage to say the words she needed to say. “Then you went and had a family with somebody else.”
“Do you think I was the same man when I had Danny that I was when I gave up on us?” he asked. “Because I wasn’t. Losing you broke me into pieces. It destroyed me, blew my life apart, made me reexamine my life and, with God’s help, reshaped me into being someone better than I’d ever been before.” He stepped closer and their fingertips touched. “Losing you changed me, irrevocably.”
“It changed me, too,” she whispered.
Thunder crashed outside the window. She looked up into his handsome face and watched as something softened in the depths of his eyes. His mouth opened, and then closed again, as if his brain kept coming up with words he wouldn’t let himself speak. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry if I ever made you doubt how much I wanted you to be my wife.”
His fingers brushed up her arm until they rested on her cheek. Her hands slid up his back. And they both stood there for a long moment, frozen in a tableau, and Poppy feeling somehow both lost and found at once.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
Lex broke his gaze as a wistful grin turned at one corner of his mouth. “Honestly?”
“Yes, honestly,” she said.
His eyes met hers again. “I’m thinking I missed you.”
SEVEN
“I missed you, too,” Poppy admitted softly. Then she felt her eyes close as Lex pulled her closer into his chest. Her face tilted up toward his.
“Lex!” Gillian’s voice sounded from somewhere behind them as footsteps clattered on the stairs.
She opened her eyes and leaped back, feeling Lex pull away from her equally as fast. They turned and she watched as the older woman appeared in the doorway. And Poppy wasn’t sure if she’d just arrived on the main floor, or if she’d seen their embrace and then stepped back and announced her presence to be polite. The cheerful smile that crossed Gillian’s face as she entered the room gave nothing away.
“Actually, I was looking for you, Poppy,” she said. “I wanted to ask you again if you and your colleague would consider relocating here for your time in Gustavus. We have two large suites on the main floor that would have plenty of room for your K-9 partners. You’d have full use of the kitchen and the fenced-in backyard. And as we don’t open again for the season for a few days yet, you’d be free to use our common areas for your meetings. We’ve also got high-speed internet, plus a photo-quality color printer and fax machine if you need it.”
The idea of getting out of the motel was even more appealing now after she’d spent a bit more time there and Eli had said the motel’s internet wasn’t up to the task for what he needed for the meeting tomorrow. As much as she’d enjoyed taking Stormy for a walk, it was no substitute to having an actual yard she could play in.
“I’ll be honest,” Gillian added. “I’d feel safer with you here. It’s twice in one day we’ve had a prowler outside our home watching my grandson. And as you know, we don’t have an active police force in Gustavus. If you need, I can call your boss and formally request your protection.”
“I’m sure she’ll agree,” Poppy said, “and as for Will, he’ll be thrilled to move him and Scout here. Thank you.”
In fact, there was no good reason to stay in the motel when they could relocate the operation here. None except the fact she suspected the man who’d once broken her heart had been about to kiss her, and she’d been on the verge of kissing him, too.
Thankfully calling Will gave her an excuse to walk away from the confusing moment she’d almost had with Lex and the distraction of something else to think about.
Within moments her colleague had agreed to relocate. While the continued threat against Lex’s son and the realization they’d be better equipped to do their jobs and coordinate with their team from the bed-and-breakfast definitely played into it, she was sure part of him was just happy to be out of the underwhelming surroundings. Since she hadn’t unpacked her suitcase yet and had even left it zipped, Will was happy to grab her stuff and bring it over with him and Scout.
Less than half an hour later, he had arrived, and Gillian was showing Poppy to her new digs. The room had high ceilings, with an en-suite bathroom and a large colorful rug more than big enough for Stormy to stretch out on at the end of the large four-poster bed. Lex was standing in the living room with Will as she said a quick good-night to them both, without quite meeting Lex’s eye. Then she lay awake, willing her body to sleep and reminding herself of all the reasons why this relocation made the most logical sense, despite what her heart might feel.
She awoke to sun streaming through the window, the scent of coffee, eggs and bacon wafting down the hall from the kitchen and the gentle whine of Stormy standing politely by the bed. The wolfhound’s head plonked down on the pillow beside Poppy’s at eye level. She rolled over and rubbed Stormy between the ears. Then she got up, got dressed and steeled herself to face whatever the day held.
When she stepped out into the hallway and headed for the living area, a cacophony of ridiculous and happy noises reached her ears, including what sounded like giggling, howling and high-pitched music wailing. What was she listening to? She rounded the corner as Stormy galloped in one step ahead of her, and saw Danny sitting alone in a high chair at the kitchen table facing Will’s laptop and laughing wildly.
A few more steps into the room revealed Will was standing by the counter, fixing himself coffee, and Lex was at the stove making scrambled eggs. Each was keeping a watchful eye on whatever Danny was doing.
The tall and blond form of Trooper Sean West sat at a desk, attempting what sounded like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on a harmonica while his K-9 partner, an Akita named Grace, was sing slash howling along. Danny was a rapt audience, oscillating between trying to sing and dissolving into giggles.
Sean’s eye met hers through the screen and he grinned.
She waved and he waved back.
“Hey, Poppy!” Sean said. “Sorry, been having a lot of time alone in remote areas recently and been trying to teach myself something new. Still need a lot of practice.”
She laughed.
“It’s great,” she said. “Don’t stop on my account.”
Her colleague’s grin widened.
“Are you good with starting our team meeting in fifteen or twenty?” Sean asked.
She glanced around the kitchen. An array of cereal, bagels, bacon and fruit spread across the kitchen counter, along with the scrambled eggs Lex was fixing.
“No problem,” she said.
“Great, I’ll let the others know,” Sean said. He pushed a button and his face disappeared.
She turned and looked quizzically at Will.
“Am I late?” she asked.
“Sean’s early,” Will said. “He and Gabriel had a lead he wanted to chase, so he called hoping that we could bump up the call time.”
“Big doggy sing, too?” Danny’s hopeful voice drew her gaze back to where the toddler sat in his high chair pushing cereal around on the table.
“She doesn’t sing,” Poppy told him. “But she barks and howls, very loudly.”
Danny’s little face fell.
“But she does other tricks. Do you want to see?”
The little boy’s eyes widened again as he nodded. Wordlessly Lex took the skillet of eggs off the heat, turned the stove off, fixed a cup of coffee and came around the other side of the island to join his son. She hadn’t even realized that he’d fixed the coffee for her until he offered it to her and asked, “Half a spoonful of sugar, two splashes of milk, right?”
He’d remembered.
“Perfect,” she said. “Thank you.”
He set it down on the table in front of her. She picked it up, took a long sip, then called Stormy over to her side, oddly feeling the same nervous flutter in her chest of not wanting to let her audience down that she’d felt when demonstrating Stormy’s training to Lorenza.
Immediately, the wolfhound left the ray of sun by the sliding door where she’d been chilling with Scout, walked over and stood in front of her expectedly. Poppy did a quick mental calculation. Standing, the dog’s face was almost parallel with her shoulder, and despite the fact the ceiling was probably nine feet, showing off how high the dog could leap was probably best left as an outside trick.
“Okay,” she said, “I’m going to give Stormy some instructions and you copy what I do, okay?”
Danny’s smile lit his face. “’Kay!”
She slowly walked Stormy through sitting, lying down, rolling and crawling, while Lex helped Danny follow along with the gestures and commands. Gillian appeared in the doorway partway through the demonstration and stood there watching the show. Danny’s favorite trick was definitely watching the huge dog sneakily crawling across the floor like a secret agent and had her demonstrate it three times, before Lex challenged Stormy to see which one of them could crawl the quietest and most stealthily. The dog won. Finally, she took her K-9 partner’s favorite ball and hid it behind the bookshelf while Danny covered the dog’s eyes with her ears. Stormy dutifully weaved her way around the room sniffing, before sitting in front of the shelf and woofing triumphantly. Danny clapped and cheered.
