Love at First Bark Read online

  This wasn’t the first time Mia had attempted to fight off an attraction to Ben. Or even close to it. She’d allowed herself an extended look at the photographs of him at Everest base camp in the feature St. Louis Magazine did of his second attempt to summit Everest. She’d taken such a careful look that she could perfectly recall how well snow and sunlight and fresh air favored him. And made her lose her breath just a little.

  Suddenly, it occurred to her that addressing what those kisses had meant might be harder in the magical snow-globe land where they were headed. And it didn’t help that it wasn’t only her imagination any longer. She’d felt those hands sliding up the bare skin of her back, and she’d lost herself in those fabulous lips, even if it had only been for a short while.

  Now it was if there were an electrical field drawing her body toward his.

  Realizing she’d totally been derailed from Ollie and Ben’s conversation, Mia struggled to curtail her thoughts. Ollie must have asked how come the dogs’ feet didn’t sting from touching the snow because Ben was explaining how dogs and wolves had specialized blood vessels close to the pads of their feet that kept them just above freezing temperatures when walking on snow.

  “Were there dogs on Mount Everest?” Ollie asked.

  “There were a few stray ones hanging around base camp. I heard that sometimes they follow climbers up the mountain some, but they didn’t on my ascent.”

  “There’s snow there all year round and it’s always cold, my dad said. I’d live there if I could. I’d always want it to be winter. Would you?”

  Ben gave a light but quick shake of his head, reminding Mia that she’d not heard him say much about his trip to the summit. A fellow climber died from acute altitude sickness when he was at base camp, and another had died later in the season. She’d read that in the article. She’d wanted to ask about it, but she’d never had the opportunity.

  “You know, Ol, there’s cold, and there’s Everest cold,” Ben was saying. “Even at base camp, it’s really high up and the air’s thin. It gives you a headache almost all the time. And it’s hard on your lungs. I’m glad I went back and climbed it again. But no, I wouldn’t live there. There are plenty of places where you can get to a snowcapped mountain all year though. Places that are a lot more forgiving than Everest.”

  Ollie’s mouth puckered into a sideways frown as he locked his hand in Ben’s free one. “That sounds even colder than the North Pole.”

  As Ben and Ollie fell into a conversation about altitude and direct sunlight, Mia felt a sharp rush of gratitude for Ben. Regardless of what was happening between her and him, God willing, for the rest of Ollie’s life, or at least until he was grown, Ben would be there for him. And if she was being totally honest with herself, maybe, just maybe, he’d be there for her too.

  * * *

  As Ben drove through the dark night, he realized it was probably a good thing Irene had come along. After the make-out session outside the shelter, Ben was having a hard time keeping his continually burning desire for Mia in check. Irene being here had kept his hand from closing over Mia’s back or hips a half-dozen times today.

  As Ben drove through the dark night, he was growing more and more confident that there would be a time for him and Mia, and all he needed to do was be patient.

  Hearing Irene talk of how much Ollie was like his father reminded Ben of the other child Brad had fathered. Just as he hadn’t found a way to tell Mia about the baby before Stacey approached her, he hadn’t come close to figuring out a way to tell Irene or Victor. Not only was Ben not convinced it was his place, but he had no idea how he’d find the words. “By the way, the martyr of a son you’re mourning, not only did he cheat, but there’s an illegitimate grandson you might want to meet” wasn’t going to cut it.

  Sooner or later, he was going to have find a way. Perhaps it would come out here over the next few days. Maybe Mia would want to do it. Ben needed to talk to her, to bring light to some of this stuff. And this trip would be the best opportunity he’d get for some time alone to do so.

  If he could first promise himself he’d keep from kissing her again, that was. At least until she was good and ready to be kissed.

  She’d driven for four hours this afternoon, and by that time, Ollie had been ready for a break from the far back, so Ben sat in the middle row with him, playing checkers on a magnetic travel board that had been balanced on the armrest of Ollie’s seat. Lynn sat in front, regaling them with her Kenyan schoolhouse tales, and Irene dozed in back.

  Ben had sat diagonally behind Mia, admiring the perfect line of her chin and the delicate shape of her nose. Her hair was growing out again, fast too. The sexy, short haircut she’d gotten this summer had drawn his attention to her smooth neck like a beacon. Now it had reached shoulder length again and was full and flowy, inviting him to lose his hands in it and find the smooth skin of her neck with his mouth.

  To draw his wandering mind back to the monotonous task of driving long distance and away from all the things he wanted to do with Mia, Ben shifted in his seat and readjusted his hands on the steering wheel. It had started snowing an hour or so after dark. By that time, patches of packed snow were becoming more frequent on the roads, and a light snowfall was beginning. When Ben had noticed the strain in Mia’s knuckles as she’d gripped the wheel, he’d offered to take over again, and when he’d promised he wasn’t tired, she’d not argued.

  The last eighty or so miles, the roads had become completely snow-packed. He’d dropped down to a steady sixty miles an hour, and the Escalade handled fine. In the darkness, the headlights and gentle snowfall were mesmerizing, and for the first time all day, the entire group was quiet, captivated by the dance of the snowflakes in the headlights.

  Finally, after managing a pace of just twenty miles an hour on tight, windy roads nestled in thick woods for the last several miles, Ben navigated down the long, private drive that led to the cabin. He held his breath, hoping that, after a lengthy online search with Lynn breathing down his neck before they’d chosen it, the photos, virtual tour, and reviews held true, and the cabin would be an inviting place to spend the next five days.

  With Ollie craning in his seat to look out the front windshield, they rounded a bend in the road, and finally the cabin was in view. A short laugh escaped Ben as he took it in: a wide single-story ranch, peaked at the center, built with traditionally notched white-pine logs and accented with the rounded stone of the Great Lakes and a wraparound porch supported by thick pine columns. Snow-covered landscaping lights were on, sending a cascade of soft yellow out across the flat, snowy yard, and porch lights and a few interior lights glowed into the night, welcoming them after a long journey.

  Ben parked in the plowed circular drive as a chorus of approval filled the car. Turbo rose in his crate and shook himself off as if anticipating the end of the long drive. Then Ollie exclaimed that Santa should move his shop here, and Ben agreed, laughing aloud for the pure joy of it.

  Chapter 19

  Mia could tell the sun was shining brightly even while she was cuddled deep into the cozy mattress and fluffy pillow of the double bed, her eyes still closed. Early-morning sunlight reflected off the snow-covered cedars and pines and streamed into her southeast-facing room, warming her face and body. It was a five-bedroom cabin, and Mia had chosen one of the two standard bedrooms that were joined in the middle by a long but narrow Jack-and-Jill bathroom. Ollie had the adjoining bedroom. The walls were notched pine, and the furniture was mostly pine too, decorated with Northwoods quilts and pillows and knickknacks and cedarwood-scented wax warmers.

  She’d left it up to the other members of their party to sort out the remaining three rooms, two of which had private bathrooms and were considerably nicer than the third. As she’d helped Ollie drag his bags into his room last night, she’d listened to their conversation, curious to see how it played out. At the onset of the discussion, Lynn had insisted that sinc
e Ben had footed the entire bill—something she’d not made known until that moment—he have the master suite on the end. Irene had agreed, just a bit less enthusiastically. That left Irene and Lynn to sort out who had the room with en suite bathroom, king-size bed, and plush furniture, and who had the no-frills standard bedroom with a double bed and no TV.

  Knowing her mom, Mia was certain Lynn could care less about a private bathroom or a bed that was larger or more comfortable than the hard double she slept on in the small house she shared with three other staff a half mile from the school where she taught in Kenya. However, her mom was as strong-willed as they came and clearly enjoyed goading Irene into disagreements, so Mia had suspected a contest for the better bedroom. Irene was accustomed to both upscale living and self-promotion. When Lynn instead offered right at the start to take the smaller bedroom, it seemed as if Irene was a touch disappointed in her anticlimactic victory.

  Surprised by how well she’d slept, Mia tossed off the cozy down comforter and stretched. Usually her first night in a new place was mostly a wash as far as sleep was concerned, but not here. A glance at her phone showed it was a couple minutes after eight. She’d forgotten how the sun came up later this far north in winter, and earlier in summer. She’d slept almost nine hours, only stirring once when the puppy had whined and needed to pee.

  She headed over to the wide window, the wooden floors cool but not freezing against her bare feet. Looking outside, she covered her mouth, smiling wide. Who needed TVs or smartphones in the face of all this beauty? Just outside the door was a winter wonderland: towering, snow-covered pines and cedars, and a blanket of white, powdery snow on the ground. Even the footsteps they’d made last night as they’d checked out the yard had been covered by fresh snow.

  A movement in her far-left field of view caught her eye, and Mia gasped in surprise. Something big was out there, fifty or so feet away, walking among the pines. Not just big. Really big.

  From her viewpoint, she was only able to see its body, a muscular, brown one, long legs, and no obvious tail. She tried to match the body she was seeing with her knowledge of horses and cows, the only animals that large she’d seen in person, but something didn’t fit.

  To her disappointment, the animal disappeared behind a thick pine. Mia craned her neck, hoping for another glimpse, and waited. Thirty seconds, then a minute passed, and nothing. Then she saw movement again, but it didn’t make sense.

  Suddenly, she gasped as she realized what she was seeing suspended in midair was actually a massive antler. The rest of the animal was still hidden behind the tree.

  She dashed across her room, through the bathroom, and through the open, adjoining door. “Ollie! Ol, wake up! You have to see this!” She felt a bit bad waking him, but he’d dozed a lot in the car yesterday and had gone to bed much later than usual. Waking up now would help get him back on a normal routine.

  With the zero-to-sixty sleep-to-wake cycle that Mia suspected was a childhood superpower, Ollie popped up from the mound of covers he’d been buried in.

  “Is it Sasquatch?” Ollie’s eyes grew big, and Mia wasn’t sure if that was from fear or excitement, or both. In the car yesterday, Lynn had filled him with Sasquatch stories from her youth when she’d come up here on trips with her parents in summer and had gone on night Sasquatch search walks with a cousin led by a group of local Sasquatch hunters.

  “No, sweets, it’s better.”

  She jogged to Ollie’s same-side window and gasped. Not only did she have the perfect view from here, but the animal was now walking straight toward the house. She held a finger to her lips as Ollie joined her.

  Ollie’s mouth gaped open. “Is it a reindeer?”

  “No, that’s a moose. A big one. A boy.”

  It was walking straight toward the cabin. His antlers had to reach four or five feet from tip to tip. He was big and powerful and completely awe-inspiring. Tears filled Mia’s eyes. “He’s majestic, isn’t he?”

  “How do you know he’s a boy?”

  “Because he has antlers, and moose are in the deer family. In the deer family, only males have antlers. This is the first moose I’ve ever seen in real life.”

  Mia and Ollie hardly breathed as the big bull moose continued straight toward the house, stopping once he reached the edge of the wraparound porch. He sniffed the bannister, sending a shower of snow cascading off the top. Mia wished she’d grabbed her phone, but she was afraid if she went for it now, he’d catch the movement through the glass and run off. Instead, she left her arms draped over Ollie’s shoulders and watched. She could feel the excited walloping of Ollie’s heartbeat as she held him against her.

  The moose was close enough that she could see moisture on the light-brown, thick, coarse fur on his neck and back. She also noticed the softer, shorter velvety-brown hair around his mouth and nose, and the almost odd way his antlers projected out from the crown of his head underneath his big ears.

  “Magnificent.”

  “Mom, can I go get Mimi?” His voice was barely a whisper.

  “Okay, but tiptoe out of here until you’re out of sight.”

  The moose was walking slowly along the side of the porch, smelling the top railing. Mia wondered if the cabin owner or one of the regular renters left out food on occasion. She also wondered what kind of food they’d leave out for a moose.

  The floor creaked when Ollie was halfway out of the room. The sharp sound must have been audible outside because the moose stopped his casual stroll and cocked his head their way, one of his massive antlers bumping against the closest porch column. Mia stood frozen in place, certain he was looking right at her for the first time.

  She was just barely aware of Ollie coming back into the room, whispering in the louder-than-regular-talk way that he did. Then a dog jumped onto Ollie’s bed, and a series of sharp, high barks erupted through the room.

  After letting out a startlingly loud snort, the giant bull moose trotted away from the house into the woods in the same direction he’d come. Once he’d made it a good distance, he turned to look at the house and snorted again.

  “Wow.”

  Mia turned to find Ben standing behind her. When he met her gaze, she was fairly certain her cheeks flushed tomato-red. He was wearing a pair of dark-gray running pants and a white long-sleeved T-shirt and looked fresh and awake as if he’d been up awhile. Through the doorway, she spotted his open laptop on the living-room coffee table.

  And you’re in your pajamas. With the excitement over their woodland visitor, when she’d let Ollie go after Lynn, Mia hadn’t given a single thought to the fact that she was wearing only the button-down red flannel nightshirt that had been a Christmas gift last year or that she most definitely had bedhead.

  “Can you believe it?” Ollie asked, drawing Ben’s attention away from her as Turbo continued to bark from atop Ollie’s bed.

  Ben ruffled Ollie’s sleep-messy hair. “Hardly. A bull moose like that is something to see, all right. I was outside walking Turbo a half hour ago, and I spotted a female on the other side of the lake. I didn’t think we’d get any this close to the house.”

  Mia finger combed through her hair as Sadie let out a single bark from Mia’s room where she and Sam were crated. Irene appeared in the doorway to Ollie’s room, her mouth pursing sharply. She didn’t shy away from looking Mia up and down, Mia bet disapproving of her bare-from-midthigh-down legs. Hopefully, her lack of a bra wasn’t obvious.

  It wasn’t as though she’d planned this. She had to force her arms not to lock over her chest. “I’ll, uh, get dressed and take the dogs out. I didn’t think I’d sleep this late.”

  “I’ll take them out if you’d like,” Ben offered. “Turbo won’t mind going out again, I’m sure.”

  Mia shrugged. “Sure. Thanks.”

  “With moose this close to the house, I think we should keep Sadie and Turbo on leashes. Sam’ll be fine unle
ss he starts to show some inclination of being ready to leave Sadie’s side out here.” Ben looked at Ollie, lifting one eyebrow in invitation. “Want to come? You can put on your boots and throw your coat over your pajamas.”

  “Heck, yeah,” Ollie said, sounding like Taye. He raced into the Jack-and-Jill bathroom and, leaving the door wide open, started to pee a loud morning pee. The sound reverberated through the room and sent Irene away with a frown.

  Turbo hopped off the bed and trotted in after him, eyeing Ollie’s pee stream from a distance and cocking his head quizzically at the toilet.

  “Like I said,” Ben said, chuckling, “he’s not one to pass up the opportunity to scent mark on something. Thankfully, he’s figuring out pretty quickly he can only do it outside.” Calling Turbo to his side, he passed through the bathroom to the crates in Mia’s room when Ollie finished.

  Mia followed, reminding Ollie to wash his hands and wondering if Ben had any idea that even though the room had only been hers for one night, his presence in it made her heart race and her palms sweat. “Sam will have an accident between here and the front door if someone doesn’t hold him,” she said to fill the quiet that seemed more pronounced by the combination of being in a nightshirt and having Ben so near her bed. “He still thinks anything outside his crate is free range. Sadie’s doing better though. I’ll hold him till you get your boots on and get Sadie and Turbo leashed.”

  Ben agreed, and Mia made quick work of snatching up Sam from his crate, even though he did his best to lunge free as soon as it was unlatched. Once he was snug in her arms and straining to lick her chin, she followed Ben and Sadie into the main cabin. The kitchen, dining room, and living room were part of an open floor plan under a high, airy vault.