Read Online Under Alaskan Skies by Grace Carol - Free Book Online Page B

the stairs creak. She paused. His face was half in shadows. She could barely see his eyes, but in the flickering light from the fire she could see something in his gaze that held her there like a prisoner.
    “I … I have a little headache,” she said. “I came down to get an aspirin.”
    “Come here,” he said. “I have a cure for headaches.”
    She knew she shouldn’t listen. She knew she should just go back upstairs and forget the headache, but there was no way she could ignore him or pretend she hadn’t heard. She couldn’t imagine his patients ignoring his orders, either. When he said come here in that certain way he had, she had no choice but to obey and come.
    He told her to sit on the floor with her back against the couch and rest her head between his knees. She was too tired to protest that she wasn’t dressed and thus at risk, and to make matters worse, he was in his underwear. She was too tired to ask what the cure was. If he said he had a cure, he must have one. They were alone, half dressed, miles from anywhere. The air in the room was filled with tension as thick as thefog outside. Whatever happened here would stay in this room. But nothing was going to happen. She’d only known him for a number of hours, but somehow she knew she could trust him implicitly. It was herself she couldn’t trust.
    He put his hands on the sides of her head and used his strong fingers to massage her temples and knead the back of her neck. She felt the air whoosh out of her lungs and the tension flow out of her head. Her skin tingled. Then he laced his fingers through her hair, sifting the tendrils between his fingers. The fire in the woodstove had burned down to embers. As the stove cooled down, her body felt as if it was on fire. She moaned softly.
    “Is that better?” he asked in a deep, slow voice.
    “Mmm,” she said, her head nestled between his muscular thighs. Her lips were numb. She couldn’t form any words. She couldn’t even think of any words to express how she felt because she’d never felt this way before. She could stay there forever, as limp as a rag doll with every hormone raging, if it weren’t for that warning voice inside her head, the one that asked her if she knew what she was doing.
    The answer was no, she didn’t. She braced her hands on the floor and tried to get up. She couldn’t. He reached down and pulled her up. She didn’t dare look at him. Instead she walked to the stairs and without a backward glance she took the stairs one at a time, her legs wobbling, gripping the banister so tightly her knuckles were white.
    She tumbled into her bed and fell asleep immediately. The next thing she knew she heard banging in the distance and smelled coffee. She reached for thewind-up clock on her bedside stand and held it in front of her face. Eight-thirty. She never slept past six. She grabbed her long flannel robe and ran down the stairs. Not only did she smell coffee, she smelled cinnamon rolls. How could that be? Where was Matt? Who was at the door?
    “Hello, Carrie.” Merry Munger stood at the doorway, her short, round body encased in a yellow slicker and knee-high rubber boots on her stubby feet. “Just wanted to see if you were okay,” she said peering around the corner into the living room. “Heard you got company.”
    “That’s right,” she said, stuffing her arms into the sleeves of her robe. “The doctor who came to see Donny. I couldn’t fly him back last night, so he had to stay.”
    “Mmm-hmm,” Merry said. She glanced up at the sky. “Doesn’t look like flying weather today, either.”
    Carrie scanned the gray sky, measuring the low overcast. Her father had taught her so much about the weather up here, she almost didn’t need to listen to the forecast. She would have been surprised if it had cleared, since the winds were from the northwest.
    “I hear your friend is one young, good-looking fellow,” Merry said.
    “Really?” Carrie said. Of course word would have