Expect the Sunrise (28 page)

Mac still had her hand. He stopped, turned, and with gentle pressure made her sit on a boulder behind her. “Just … stay here, aye?”

She watched him as he traversed the path, then crouched to retrieve something. She couldn’t help but notice his broad shoulders and the way the wind returned his scent to her. He smelled again of the biodegradable Ivory soap they’d used to wash in the river. Clean but enough Mac for her to smell the campfire smoke and his masculine scent. His stubble flecked red, especially when the light of the fire blazed against it. She had the errant urge to run her fingers through it, bristly and harsh, yet surrendering to her touch.

He turned, smiling, and his expression glowed in the light of a singular emergency candle she’d had in her pack. In a Sierra cup, he’d melted the candle into its wax and banked around it the pieces of a Hershey bar—she hated to know how long that had been in his pocket—and blueberries. “Happy birthday, Andee.”

Her mouth dropped open, and for a glorious second, she couldn’t speak. Her birthday.
He remembered my birthday.

Mac knelt before her, grinning, his blue eyes alight. “Make a wish and blow out the candle.”

Make a wish? She could hardly breathe let alone think. She took a breath, then shook her head. “I … I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything. Just make a wish and blow out your candle.”

She watched the candlelight as it bent and flickered in the breeze against the pane of night. “I don’t want to, because if I do, I won’t be able to see you. The night will close in, and it’ll be dark.”

Mac’s smile turned wry. “Okay.” He set the cup down and sat opposite her, his knees drawn up, his arms over his knees. “I wish I had a cake or something—”

“A cookie.”

“A cookie?” he asked.

Andee picked out one of the blueberries. “Sarah always sends us cookies. Big ones, the size of a pizza.”

Mac took a piece of chocolate. “My ma sends me a black bun every year, even though my birthday is in March. Wraps it up and sends it to Fairbanks or Anchorage or even out to Virginia one year.”

“What’s that?”

“Your mother never made you a black bun? Where is her Scottish heart?”

“My mother isn’t Scottish. She’s Nunamiut Indian and French.”

Mac shook his head. “I’m sorry for you. Black bun is a New Year’s cake made with raisins, currants, almonds, and spices. It makes a man want to go home.”

“Your family sounds incredible.”

“They are. My da is loud and raucous. Ma keeps him and the rest of us safe and healthy. No matter where I go, a part of me will always be in our kitchen, watching my mother make bannocks or stovies.”

Andee laughed. “Typical that you’d associate memories with food.”

“Don’t you?”

“No. I … ah …” She frowned. She associated memories of her father with flying and the woods, and her mother with late nights hovered around their rummage-sale kitchen table in their one-bedroom apartment. Later her mother’s lab coat and the stiff smiles of her colleagues as she fought for a toehold in the medical community. She saw her mother wearing her mortarboard, their pictures side by side as college graduates. She looked at the candle. “Hard work, I guess. I remember a lot of lonely meals.”

Mac’s smile dimmed. He touched her hand when she reached out for a piece of chocolate. “I was thinking that maybe you could … uh, come to Deadhorse with me. After all this. Meet my family.”

Andee stared at him, her breath tangled inside. “I … I don’t know. I—” she shook her head—“Mac, don’t you think maybe it’s all just … being out here? I was afraid, and you were there.”

She saw him look away and was suddenly afraid of the feelings she let accumulate, of those fairy-tale endings that had filled her childhood dreams. But Mac wasn’t a knight in shining armor, and she’d never been a damsel in distress. Until now maybe. Her voice wavered. “Why did you kiss me?”

“Forget it.” He stood.

“No.” She grabbed his wrist, everything inside her aching to be back there in that moment when he’d held her and she’d been charmed by his wonderful smile. “Ever since I met you, I feel like I’m in knots. One second you’re arguing with me, the next you’re helping me carry Sarah, the next you’re saving Flint’s life, and then you’re accusing me of being a terrorist. And then … then you find out I was the one who didn’t save your brother.” She saw him flinch. Her voice fell. “Then you’re kissing me like no one has ever kissed me before.” She dropped her grip on his wrist. “I don’t understand.”

He remained still, the wind blowing against him, flickering the candle, snuffing it out until only a wisp of smoke spiraled and dissipated into the night. “The truth is, Andee, I don’t understand either.”

Mac couldn’t leave Andee sitting in the dark, although every instinct told him to run—far and fast. He wanted to bury this moment in his fleeting memories. Then he’d never have to remember that for a minute he’d thought he could have this woman who’d gotten so far under his skin that he might be ripped in half if he tried to pry her out.

He didn’t understand why he needed her in his life.

But more than that, he didn’t understand why she couldn’t need him back.

“Mac, I’m not sure what to think. I’ve never been in this position before, I guess.”

He looked at her, puzzled. “You’ve never …” What? Been in love? Did he have feelings of love for her? Admiration, yes. Respect, yes. Desire … yes, that had scared him the most. But love? He looked at the outline of her face, her luminous eyes.

She seemed to know what he might be thinking—or at least he hoped she did—for she shook her head. Her eyes glistened. “I have a pretty sorry track record when it comes to relationships. Not that I’ve had a lot of boyfriends. In fact, I haven’t. Yes, I got asked out, but I know how relationships end up. And I can’t be that girl who hopes for so much and in the end realizes it was just a dream.”

He sat before her, cupped her face in his hand, rubbed his thumb along her cheek. “You’re talking about your parents.” But he understood her words and knew how it felt to pin his hopes on something, only to have it blow up in his face.

She shrugged and looked away. The grayness barely illuminated her face, but he saw the pain carved into it. “When I was twelve, four years before we left my father in the woods, my mother got a call on our HAM radio. Dad had been working undercover in Anchorage and had been shot. Of course, at the time we thought a gun had accidentally gone off by one of the hunters on his plane. My mother got a flight to Fairbanks, and we left within the hour.

“I’ll never forget seeing him, a central line protruding from his chest and an oxygen machine breathing for him. He’d been shot in the stomach, and it dissected his liver. My mother got us a room at a hotel, but we didn’t use it once. We stayed by his side, sleeping on a cot or in a chair until he was well enough to be released. We lived in the hotel for a month, my mother nursing him back to health. I remember it as a happy time. We played chess, and when I had him in check, he’d wiggle his knees and upset the board. My mother cooked all his favorites—oatcakes and porridge—on a hot pot. A couple of times they sent me out to get pizza.”

“Sounds like they loved each other very much. What happened?”

“Love was never their problem. I found out not long ago that they corresponded for years—still do. My dad just couldn’t give up his career.”

Suddenly the pieces fit into place. “As an FBI agent.”

He saw the sadness in her eyes. She nodded. “Gerard loved his job. But more than that I think he felt compelled to do his job.”

Gerard?
Mac searched through his mental files.
Her father couldn’t be Gerard MacLeod, could he?

“I told you he was a Vietnam vet. Only after I did SAR work and watched victims cope with the deaths of their friends did the connection spark. He saw so many of his friends die and couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t among them. I guess he thought he had to do something extraordinary to justify his shame of living.

“I’m not sure why he couldn’t choose my mother and me. Maybe he simply couldn’t accept that God had chosen him to live, and he had to somehow prove his worth to the world. Prove that saving his life had been worth it to God.”

Mac rolled her words through his mind. He’d always held a pragmatic view of life—the good of the many outweighed the good of the few. But since Brody’s death, that theory hadn’t helped him cope with the loss of his best friend or accept the man he saw in the mirror.

He might be more like Andee’s dad than he wanted to admit. Only, from his recollection, Gerard had been labeled a hero.

Nothing at all like Mac.

“In the end, though, I think it was their pride that kept them apart,” Andee continued. “Neither could say the words
I need you.
Or
please don’t go
. It broke my mother’s heart and turned my father into a bitter, driven man.”

As Mac ran his thumb down Andee’s cheek, her words burned. Anyone who needed him was going to get hurt, just like Gerard had hurt Andee and her mother. Most of all, if he slowed down enough to need someone, that would only get his attention off what was most important.

Andee smiled at him sweetly, sadly.

A woman would have to crash-land at his feet to get his attention. He’d joked about that to Brody so many times he’d actually started believing it. Only Andee had done just that. Crash-landed in his life, blowing apart his defenses. Somehow over the last few hours, he’d lulled himself into believing that maybe he could start over with Andee. Build that life his father had painted.

“My dad gave up a thousand moments with my mother and me for his job and the big picture,” Andee said. “And even though I hang out with him every summer, probably trying to recapture those happy times, I know what I missed. I can’t live like that, Mac. I can’t be the girl you leave behind.”

“But maybe I won’t be FBI anymore,” Mac said. “I’ll resign, go home, fish, or work the pipeline. Or something.” He cradled her face with both hands. “You could come home with me. Start that FBO you’ve been talking about. We
can
have a happy ending here, I promise.” He hated the desperation that filled his voice, wanted to strip it away, but it had already tumbled out. He tightened his jaw against another flood of emotion, aware that he’d just made a fool of himself.

Especially because she shook her head. “Mac, whatever drove you to be an FBI agent is still part of you. You might think you’ve given that up, but I know better.” She touched his face, ran her fingers through his beard. “The thing is, I like your dream. You have no idea how much I’d like to meet your family.” She swallowed, leaving the rest unspoken. “But I can’t compete with that place inside you that will look for terrorists in every person you meet or imagine scenarios whenever you see a marked map or a gun.”

He began to protest, but she stopped him by laying a hand against his cheek. “I can’t take loving another man who lets me down.”

He closed his eyes, just concentrated on breathing.

“We’d better get back.” Andee stood, and with careful steps, she found her way to the jagged path and right out of his life.

Chapter 16

“YOU LIKE HIM, don’t you?” Sarah’s voice filtered through the early morning, hushed against the snappy air.

Andee let herself come fully awake, realizing that she’d been semiconscious for a while now, listening to the wind in the trees, shivering under the blanket she shared with Sarah.

“He carried you down the mountain,” Andee said by way of an answer.

“That’s not what I asked. I see the way you look at him. All that toughness drops from your eyes, and inside is the Andee that laughs at Conner’s jokes or buries her face into a child’s neck. You want to trust him.”

“I do trust him. I mean, enough to help us get out of here. He saved Flint’s life. He ran toward the sound of the bear instead of away. He’s a good man; I know it.”

“Of course he is. But I think he wants to be more for you.”

Andee lifted her hand to feel Sarah’s forehead.

“I’m not hallucinating the way he looks at you, Andee. He likes you. You should have seen him watching you put up the shelters last night. Every time I look at him, I see Mel Gibson in
Braveheart
, with that long hair, the half smile, those blue eyes, watching everyone like a protective warrior. He’s got the stuff.”