Midnight Sons Volume 1 (13 page)

Abbey studied him for a moment. “Don’t look so worried, Sawyer,” she said with wounded dignity. “I’m not going to accept your proposal.” She spun on her heel and walked away, grateful he chose not to follow her.

As it happened, Abbey got a chance to talk to Allison Reynolds later that same afternoon. They met in the road outside the library. After a few minutes’ conversation, it was apparent—at least to Abbey—that the other woman had no intention of staying in Hard Luck and probably never had.

“You’re Abbey,” Allison said, smiling. “Christian told me he’d hired you.” She crossed her arms and swatted at a mosquito. “Can we talk?” Allison asked, doing a poor imitation of Joan Rivers. “I’m dying to find out how things have gone for you since you arrived.” Allison glanced both ways, then lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Are you going to stay?”

“I plan to. So far, I love Alaska.”

“But it’s summer,” Allison said as if this was something Abbey hadn’t yet figured out. “I don’t think anyone was serious about us staying all winter, do you? I mean, this is the
Arctic.
I don’t go anywhere in the winter where there isn’t a hot tub.”

“I’ve never lived through an Arctic winter before, so I can’t say, but I do know I’m going to try.”

“You are?” The new secretary for Midnight Sons spoke as though Abbey was making a serious mistake. “Anyway, I can’t talk long. I’m supposed to meet Ralph and Pearl, and they’re going to drive me out to the cabin. I’ve never had a home of my own. Christian said it’s a quaint little place. I can hardly wait to see it. But I do hope someone finds a way to get the rest of
my luggage up here soon. They seemed to think I could pack everything in three suitcases.”

Before Abbey could describe her own experience, Allison was gone. Actually Abbey was just as glad not to be around when Allison viewed her “quaint” new home.

The rest of the afternoon passed slowly, the main attraction being the vivacious and beautiful Allison Reynolds and not the newly opened Hard Luck Lending Library.

Pearl Inman was watering her cabbage plants when Abbey walked past on her way home.

“What a sorry disappointment Allison Reynolds is,” Pearl Inman muttered. “That Christian’s got mush for brains. I can’t imagine what he was thinking when he hired her.”

Abbey grinned. “Himself most likely.”

“That girl got a free trip to Alaska—which was all she wanted,” Pearl said with a disgruntled look. “Makes me downright angry to think of the way everyone’s been so excited about meeting her.”

“She might change her mind and stay.”

“It’d be a mistake if she did. Allison Reynolds is the type who causes more problems than she solves. My guess is she’ll be out of here before the week’s up.”

Personally Abbey agreed with Pearl.

“I saw you and Sawyer talking. I’m glad to hear you decided to put that boy out of his misery.”

Abbey wasn’t aware that her troubles with Sawyer were common knowledge. “If Sawyer O’Halloran’s miserable, he has no one to blame but himself.”

“Isn’t that the way it is with most folks?”

Abbey had no argument there.

“As for what happened to you this week, with the men and all, well—” Pearl sighed “—I have to say I blame Sawyer for that.”

“So do I,” Abbey said. And if he assumed he could make everything better by tossing her a marriage proposal, he was mistaken.

“The men wouldn’t have come at you like a herd of buffalo if Sawyer hadn’t tried to keep you for himself,” Pearl was saying. “Way I hear it, some of them were up in arms because of all the rules and restrictions he put on them.”

“Rules?”

“He didn’t want anyone pestering you. However, he didn’t include himself in that. But this is the only time I’ve ever seen Sawyer take advantage of a situation. You know,” the older woman said thoughtfully, “I don’t think he realized he was doing it. His intentions were to help you and the children get settled. I know for a fact that he never expected to fall in love with you.”

Abbey looked away to hide her sudden tears. Sawyer
didn’t
love her. His proposal told her that much. He was afraid she’d accept someone else, so he’d put his offer on the table. Only a day earlier, he’d vehemently insisted he wasn’t marrying anyone.

“I’ll see you later, Pearl,” Abbey murmured.

Her friend cast her a look of concern. “You okay, sweetie?”

Abbey nodded, but she wasn’t. What truly frightened her was that she’d fallen in love with Sawyer. Fallen fast and fallen hard. Once before, she’d proved what a poor judge of character she was when it came to men. She’d left the marriage
broken, her confidence destroyed. She blinked back the tears that stung her eyes, feeling a strange new desolation.

Abbey was nearly home when she noticed a truck driving toward her. She knew almost everyone in town by now and stared at the unfamiliar—yet somewhat familiar—face as the truck slowed to a stop.

“Hello,” the driver said.

“Hello,” she responded, sniffling a bit.

“I’m Charles O’Halloran.”

“Abbey Sutherland,” she whispered.

Charles frowned. “Do you mind telling me what’s going on around here?”

Sawyer sat in his office, rolling a pen between his palms. Every time he talked to Abbey he made matters worse. It started when he saw her standing on the airfield waiting for Allison Reynolds. His heart had actually hurt at the sight of her. Even now he didn’t know what he’d done that was so terrible, and Abbey wouldn’t tell him.

A man had his pride, but he’d been willing to swallow it one more time, so he’d followed her into Ben’s place. Then, before he could stop himself, he was drilling her about other men, acting like a lunatic. He’d never been jealous in his life, and he didn’t know how to handle it. John, Pete, Duke, Ralph, Mitch and the other guys were his friends. Or had been.

The office door opened and without a word of warning, in stepped his oldest brother. “Charles!” Sawyer bolted to his feet. “Hey, it’s good to see you! When’d you get in?”

“About an hour ago.” Charlie slipped the backpack from his shoulders and set it aside.

Charles looked tanned and healthy. He was a leaner, taller version of Sawyer, people often said.

Walking over to the coffeepot, Charles poured himself a mug.

Sawyer knew his brother well enough to recognize that he was upset. “You got a problem?”

His brother sighed and sipped his coffee. “Can you explain how you and Christian managed to let your brains go all soggy in the space of a few weeks?”

Sawyer laughed. “So you heard about the women.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

“We flew them here. And there’s more coming.”

“To live?”

Sawyer nodded, the humor leaving him. Just as he’d expected, Charles didn’t think much of their scheme. “We came up with the idea of offering them those old cabins Dad built, plus twenty acres of land. In exchange, they have to live and work in Hard Luck for a year.” As he spoke, Sawyer realized how ludicrous the idea must sound to their levelheaded older brother. It had to him at first, too, but his arguments had grown less convincing after Abbey’s arrival.

“The women are supposed to
live
in those old cabins?” Charles asked incredulously.

“We cleaned them out, Charlie. They’re actually quite…clean.”

With unexpected violence, Charles slammed down his mug. “Have you two lost your minds?”

“No. We did what we thought was necessary to help the community grow.” Sawyer was aware that he came across as stiff and pompous.

“It wasn’t Hard Luck you were thinking about when you advertised for women,” Charles countered. “You were thinking of yourselves.”

“We were losing pilots left and right,” Sawyer snapped. “Phil’s gone, and we were about to lose Ralph and John as well. The men were willing to stay if we could bring in a few women.”

“How many do you have coming?”

“I don’t know,” Sawyer confessed, trying to suppress his own anger. “Christian took care of that end of it.”

“Was it Christian who sent up the beauty queen, or are you the one responsible for that?”

“Beauty queen? Oh, you mean Allison. No, she was Christian’s idea. Okay, she probably won’t work out. We’re bound to have a few failures, but that’s the law of averages. Some women are going to adjust and become part of our community. Others won’t.”

“Allison Reynolds wants out of the deal. Claims she was sold a false bill of goods. I talked to her myself—ran into her at Ben’s.”

“Fine. I told you, I didn’t expect her to last. I’ll arrange for her flight back to Seattle. All I have to do is tell Christian, and he can send up another secretary. From what I understand, there are plenty of applicants.”

“Which brings up something else neither of you seemed to trouble yourself with. The media.”

Sawyer had gotten a number of inquiries, but he’d steadfastly refused to give interviews. Way up here, he felt relatively safe from the press.

“You aren’t so naive as to think the press doesn’t know, are you?” Charles asked.

“Of course they know,” Sawyer answered. “But they didn’t hear about it from me. Before long, it’ll be old news and everyone’ll leave us alone.”

“For your information,” Charles said tersely, “I read about your scheme in the Anchorage newspaper while I was in Valdez.”

“Okay, so the news is out,” Sawyer muttered, unconcerned. He had more important things to worry about than some unwanted publicity.

“How do you think the media are going to react when they learn you’ve already got a failure on your hands? These women don’t know anything about Alaska. They left everything they had and flew up here, thinking God knows what and expecting something far different than they were promised.”

“Okay, Allison’s a failure, and frankly that’s Christian’s fault. But Abbey Sutherland’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to Hard Luck. She’s already got the library organized and in operation.”

“Abbey Sutherland’s the one living in Christian’s house, right?”

“Yes.” He didn’t think now was the time to admit the mistake they’d made with the application form. Nor did he want Charles to know he’d contacted Catherine Fletcher’s daughter about the use of Catherine’s home for Abbey and her children.

“It seems you’ve misjudged the situation with her.”

Sawyer’s head snapped up. “Just what do you mean by that?”

“She isn’t staying.”

Sawyer’s eyes narrowed. “Who told you that?”

“Abbey herself.”

Sawyer felt as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him. It took a long moment before he could think clearly. “You met Abbey?”

Charles nodded.

“She’s staying,” Sawyer said, not waiting to hear his brother’s argument.

“Sawyer, damn it, will you listen to reason?” Charles shouted.

“I couldn’t care less what Allison Reynolds decides,” he told his brother. “But Abbey and her kids are staying.”

Charles groaned. “She has children?”

Sawyer rushed toward the door.

“Where are you going?” his brother demanded.

“To see Abbey.”

He made the trek between the office and Christian’s place in record time. He arrived, breathless with anger and exertion, at her front door, his shoulders heaving. Instead of knocking, he hammered his fist against the door.

Abbey answered it and stared at him through the screen.

“You aren’t leaving.” His voice was a harsh whisper.

“Sawyer,” Charles shouted from behind him. “What do you think you’re doing?” He leapt up the porch steps. “We’ve already talked about you going back to Seattle, remember?” he said to Abbey, lowering his voice.

Abbey stood on the other side of the screen door, her hand over her mouth.

It was all Sawyer could do not to rip the door off its hinges and haul her into his arms. “Abbey, listen, I—”

“Sawyer, leave the poor woman alone,” Charles broke in.

Sawyer whirled around. “Stay out of this, Charles. This has
nothing to do with you and everything to do with me.” The two men glared at each other.

“Abbey,” Charles said, looking past his brother. “Like I said, you don’t have to live in Hard Luck if you don’t want to. I’ll personally pay for your tickets back to Seattle.”

“I said I’d marry you,” Sawyer reminded her, his voice raised. “Isn’t that what you want?” His brother’s words felt like a knife between his shoulder blades.

“No. It isn’t what I want.” With that, she started to close the door.

“Abbey,” he cried, frantic to talk some sense into her.

The door closed. He fought back the temptation to open it and follow her inside.

The realization hit him that he was going to lose her, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. The last time he’d experienced such a feeling of hopelessness was the afternoon his father died.

“What’s for dinner?” Scott asked on his way through the kitchen. He didn’t give Abbey time to answer. “Can we have macaroni and cheese? Not from a box, but the kind you bake in the oven?”

“Sure.” Abbey kept her back to her son, trying to disguise how upset she was. Her hands were shaking and her eyes were brimming with tears.

All the contradictory emotions that had buffeted her for the past few days had reduced her to a helpless inertia. For the first time since her divorce, Abbey had allowed herself to fall in love—with a man who didn’t know how to love, who didn’t
want
to love.

Allison Reynolds was going to leave. She was the smart one, Abbey thought bitterly. The one who owned up to a mistake and took measures to correct it. That was what Abbey should’ve done—only earlier, much earlier, before her heart became so completely involved.

She’d made one devastating mistake by marrying Dick. She’d known it almost immediately, but instead of admitting her error, she’d tried to make the best of a bad situation. She’d had to struggle for years afterward to get her life back in shape.

Then, a few weeks ago, she’d begun to dream again, to hope, to believe it was possible to find happiness with a man. Her illusions had been painfully shattered, one by one. It’d all started when she realized her position as Hard Luck’s librarian had been a ruse—she’d been brought to Alaska to provide “female companionship” to a bunch of love-starved bush pilots.

Sawyer didn’t want her to leave; she wasn’t sure why and knew he wasn’t, either. He was resisting whatever feelings he had for her, resenting them. He’d offered to marry her, but from the way he’d proposed, he seemed to consider marriage to Abbey some kind of punishment.

“Can Eagle Catcher come inside while we eat?” Scott asked, breaking into her thoughts.

Despite her misery, Abbey smiled. “You know the answer to that.”

“But, Mom,” Scott said in a singsong voice, “I was hoping you’d change your mind. Eagle Catcher may be a dog on the outside, but on the inside he’s a regular guy.”

Her son lingered in the kitchen. He poked through cupboards, then opened the refrigerator and took out a pitcher of juice to pour himself a glass. “I saw you talking to some strange man earlier. In a truck.” Scott waited as if he expected her to fill him in on the details. When she didn’t, he added, “I thought it was Sawyer at first, but he doesn’t have a beard.”

She sighed. “That was Charles O’Halloran, Sawyer’s brother.”

“Oh.” Scott pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally he asked, “Are you all right, Mom?”

“Sure,” she said with forced enthusiasm. “Where’s Susan?”

“She’s playing with Chrissie Harris, like always. Do you want me to get her?”

“In a bit.”

Scott finished off his juice, then headed for the back door. “Don’t be late for dinner,” she called after him.

“I won’t, especially if we’re having macaroni and cheese.”

Her mind preoccupied with her own problems, Abbey thought it was quite an accomplishment that she didn’t burn dinner. In spite of her earlier resolve to stay, in spite of the fact that she’d invested everything she had in moving here, Abbey came to a decision. By the time her children trooped in, the table was set and she was ready to address the unpleasant task of telling them they’d be leaving Hard Luck. Abbey knew Scott and Susan weren’t going to like it.

They sat down at the dinner table together, and Abbey waited until they were halfway through the meal before broaching the subject. “I hear Allison Reynolds has decided she doesn’t want to stay,” she said casually. “She’s flying out first thing in the morning.”

“The new lady looked like a ditz to me,” Scott commented between mouthfuls of macaroni and cheese.

“She’s real pretty,” Susan said.

“She’s dumb.”

“Scott!” Abbey interjected.

“Well, she is. Anyone who didn’t like this place after we threw a party for her is more than dumb, she’s
rude.
”

“Allison looked nice, though,” Susan said. She stopped eating and studied Abbey.

Scott seemed far more concerned with shoveling in as much macaroni and cheese as possible, as quickly as possible. If Abbey had been a betting woman, she’d have said Eagle Catcher was on the front porch waiting for him.

“You know,” Abbey said carefully. “I’m not so sure it’s the right place for us, either.”

“You gotta be kidding!” Scott cried. “I like it here. I was kinda worried if I’d find new friends when we got here. But it’s neat being the new kid on the block. Everyone wants to be my friend, and now that Sawyer let me have his old bike, it’s like being back home.”

“There’s no ice-cream man,” Susan said, gesturing with her fork. She continued to study Abbey.

“There’s no place for us to live, either. When Mr. O’Halloran offered me the job, I didn’t tell him I had a family.”

“Why can’t we stay right here?” Susan wanted to know. “This is a nice house.”

“Because it belongs to Sawyer’s brother Christian,” Scott answered for her. “Sawyer told me he was going to phone some old lady who used to live in town. He thinks we should be able to rent her house. We don’t have a problem, Mom. Sawyer’s taking care of everything.”

“It’s not just the living arrangements,” Abbey went on. “The trucking company can only take our furniture as far as Fairbanks. There’s no way to get it to Hard Luck until winter.”

“I can wait,” Scott volunteered.

“Me, too,” Susan agreed.

“What about our supplies for winter?” she asked.

Both children stared at her as if she were speaking another language. “What does everyone else do?” Scott asked.

“They buy enough supplies to last them a year. Best as I can figure, that’d be nearly five thousand dollars for the three of us. I can’t afford that.”

“Can’t you get a loan?” Scott suggested.

“No. I didn’t know any of this, and now, well, it just makes sense for us to go back home.”

“But Sawyer—”

“Please,” she said, cutting Scott off. The last person she wanted to hear about was Sawyer. But she could see it was going to take more than excuses to convince her family they had to leave Hard Luck.

“I’m beginning to think we made a mistake in coming here,” she whispered, barely able to look across the table at her children.

“A mistake? No way!”

“We
like
it here!” Susan protested.

“It’s been a wonderful experience,” Abbey said, “but it’s time to stand back and assess the situation. We have some important decisions to make.”

“You already made the decision,” Scott insisted. “Don’t you remember what you told us? You said that no matter what, we’d give it a year, and then we’d decide what we wanted to do. It isn’t even a full month yet and you’re already talking about quitting.”

“There are things you don’t understand,” Abbey said. No one had told her that when she agreed to move to Alaska, she’d be
putting her heart at risk. She would never have taken the gamble had she known the stakes were so high.

Over the past few weeks, she’d learned she could live without indoor plumbing. She could manage without electricity. She could do without the luxury of a shopping mall close at hand. But she could not tolerate another man crushing her heart.

And Sawyer would.

He didn’t know about love, didn’t trust it. His parents’ difficult marriage had left him wary and cautious; she wasn’t much better.

She’d taken all the pain she could bear from one man. She wasn’t giving Sawyer the opportunity to take over where Dick had left off. As cowardly as it was, she’d made up her mind to leave.

She didn’t expect her children to understand or appreciate that, which made everything so much more difficult.

“You aren’t serious about moving, are you, Mom?”

Abbey swallowed past the tightness in her throat and nodded.

“I thought you liked it here,” Susan wailed.

Everyone stopped eating. Scott and Susan stared at her, their eyes huge and forlorn.

“It just isn’t working out the way I hoped,” she told them brokenly.

“Is it because of Sawyer?” Scott asked.

Preferring not to lie, Abbey didn’t answer him. “Since you both enjoy Alaska so much…I was thinking we could find a place in Fairbanks. Since that’s where the truck’s delivering our furniture, I thought we could rent a house and…and settle in before school starts again.”

“I don’t want to live in Fairbanks,” Susan said emphatically. “I want to live here.”

“I’m not leaving Eagle Catcher,” Scott told her in a deceptively calm voice. From past experience, Abbey knew it wouldn’t be easy to change her son’s mind.

“There’ll be lots of dogs in Fairbanks.”

Susan began to sob. “Why do we have to leave?” she asked.

“Because…because we have to. Hard Luck is a wonderful town with friendly people, but…but it hasn’t worked out for us.”

“Why not?” Scott pressed. “I thought you liked it, too. Sawyer even named a lake after you, remember?”

There wasn’t much she
didn’t
remember about her times with Sawyer. The emotion that had hovered so close to the surface all day broke through, and hot, blistering tears filled her eyes.

“I’m so sorry…” Angry with herself for succumbing to her emotions, Abbey swiped at her face and drew in a deep breath, hoping it would relieve some of her tension.

“Why are you crying, Mommy?” Susan asked, sniffling herself.

Abbey patted her daughter’s shoulder and stood up to reach for a couple of tissues.

“Is this because of Sawyer?” Scott demanded for the second time. “Is
he
the one who made you cry?”

“No. No!”

“You were mad at him before.”

Abbey didn’t need to be reminded of Sawyer’s role in this drama. But ultimately she didn’t blame him. If anyone was at
fault, she was—for believing, for lowering her guard and falling in love again. For making herself vulnerable.

“Everyone says you should marry Sawyer,” Susan put in. “If you did, would we still have to leave Hard Luck?”

“If you don’t want to marry Sawyer,” Scott said, “what about Pete? He’s not as good-looking as Sawyer and he’s kinda old, but he’s real nice, even if he does have his hair in a ponytail. We could live with him, and he’s got enough supplies to last us all year.”

“I’m not marrying anyone,” Abbey said, laughing and crying simultaneously.

“But if you did want to marry someone, it’d be Sawyer, right?” Scott persisted, his eyes serious. “You really like him. I know you do, because Susan and me saw you kissing, and it looked like you both thought it was fun.”

“We’re friends,” Abbey told her children. “But Sawyer doesn’t love me and…Oh, I know you’re disappointed. I am, too, but we have to move.”

Neither of the children said anything.

Abbey sniffed. She wiped her nose with her tissue, then rested her hands on the back of the dining-room chair. The sooner they were gone, she decided, the easier it would be. “Pack everything in your suitcases tonight. We’re leaving first thing in the morning with Allison Reynolds.”

Sawyer sat alone at the dinner table, his meal untouched. When Charles returned to Hard Luck from one of his jaunts, the two brothers usually sat up and talked most of the night.

Not this time.

In fact, if he saw his older brother just then, Sawyer wouldn’t be held accountable for what he said or did.

His own brother had betrayed him by offering to fly Abbey out of Hard Luck. Sawyer had hoped she’d have the sense to realize she belonged right here with him. But apparently not.

Thanks to Charles’s interference, his encouraging Abbey to leave, the two brothers had become involved in a heated argument. They’d parted, furious with each other.

Even now Sawyer couldn’t understand how the brother he would’ve trusted with his life could do this to him. It was obvious that Charles didn’t know a thing about falling in love. And even less about women…

Sawyer prayed that his older brother would experience—and soon—the intense frustration of loving a woman and being barricaded at every turn. And he
did
love her, damn it.

It was particularly disconcerting when one of those barricades came in the form of his own flesh and blood.

Not for the first time since meeting Abbey, Sawyer appreciated the dilemma his father had been in when his mother had said she wanted a separation. Soon afterward, Ellen had packed her bags and returned to England with Christian.

Sawyer still didn’t fully grasp the dynamics of his parents’ relationship. He’d known for years that his mother was deeply unhappy. As a child, he’d realized she wasn’t like the other women in Hard Luck. She spoke with an accent and tended to keep to herself. As far as Sawyer knew, Pearl Inman had been her only friend. The other women had club meetings and volunteered at the school, but Ellen was never included.

In some ways she’d been an embarrassment to her son. He’d
wanted her to be like his friends’ mothers. All she ever seemed to care about were her books—and yet, ironically, it was those books that had brought Abbey to Hard Luck.

Like his father before him, Sawyer was going to walk down to the airfield come morning and watch the woman he loved disappear into the horizon.

Then, like his father, Sawyer strongly suspected he was going to get royally soused, if not falling-down drunk.

Pushing away his untouched dinner plate, Sawyer stood. He walked into the living room and gazed longingly out the window. Abbey was directly across the street, but she might as well be on the other side of the world.

The urge to breach the distance and tell her everything that was in his heart was like a gnawing hunger that refused to go away. If there was the slightest chance she’d listen to him, he would’ve done it.

From the corner of his eye, Sawyer saw Scott wheel his old bike toward his house. The boy threw the bike down, then kicked it hard enough to make Sawyer wince.

First the mother and now the boy. Exhaling a deep breath, Sawyer went resolutely to the front door and opened it. He stepped onto the porch. “Is something wrong, son?”

“I’m not your son!” Scott shouted.