Sharing Spaces (3 page)

“He's lying down now,” she said, wincing at the quaver in her voice.

“Uh-huh.” Spoken as if he already knew.

“Is this your dog?”

“Uh-uh.” Uttered as if she should know that, if she had half a brain. One hand lifted, rubbed his face, then he shifted sideways and squinted up at her. “Who the hell are you, and why are you threatening me with a frying pan?” he said, speaking slowly, as if the sound of his own words caused him great suffering.

Senna's chin lifted. “My name is Senna McCallum and I'm the admiral's granddaughter. Who are you, and what are you doing in this house?”

“I'm John Hanson, I live here, and I'm trying to get some sleep.”

Senna was shocked. “But you can't be my grandfather's business partner. You're not old enough.”

He made a noise that could have passed for a groan. “If it's any consolation, I feel very old right now.” He struggled onto his elbows. “I don't suppose you could make some coffee and bring me a cup? Coffee's in the lower cupboard to the left of the stove. And you better put that damn frying pan on the floor before Chilkat grabs it out of your hand. He's the pot licker around here and you're driving him crazy.”

T
HE ADMIRAL HAD KNOWN
he was sick long before he was diagnosed with cancer. His energy levels had been dropping steadily, and the pain that he used to hold at bay with handfuls of aspirin began to cripple him up. He'd finally sought professional advice. Aside from announcing to Jack with blunt matter-of-fact realism, that the doctor had told him he wouldn't live out the year, McCallum never spoke of his illness. The two of them carried on as if by ignoring the bad news, eventually it would go away. This was fine with Jack. He'd come to like the admiral very much in the eight years he'd known the man, so he'd just as soon avoid any discussions of the unfair and untimely fate that awaited his friend.

Jack knew the admiral came off as a cold-hearted bastard to the multitudes who had dealt with him in the military, but he had an advantage that most people didn't. He knew the admiral was a dyed-in-the-wool fly fisherman who lived and breathed to cast his lines upon some of the greatest fishing waters in the world, so when Jack's commanding officer had asked him eight years ago for some advice about where to take his father fishing, Jack never missed a beat.

“Labrador,” he said. “That's one of few places left on this continent where fish are still the size God intended them to be, and the wilderness is still wild.”

His commanding officer wanted to know more, and Jack was happy to provide any and all information. When his CO asked if he'd like to come along as an informal guide, all expenses paid, Jack could scarcely believe his luck. “Yes, sir,” he'd said, immediately. “I'd be glad to.”

“My father's an admiral,” his CO had warned.

“I know he is, sir. I'll be on my best behavior,” Jack promised.

Jack's CO was Stuart McCallum, Jr., son of Admiral Stuart McCallum, the Sea Wolf, who had long been known as the toughest, meanest admiral in the fleet. But if he was a genuine fly fisherman, Jack was sure he'd find some common ground with the crusty old man. He'd been prepared for the worst, but on that trip with the two McCallums he'd made a good friend of the old admiral. They'd fished annually in Labrador until his CO died in a plane crash and the admiral retired that same year. Two years later Jack had taken a midnight phone call on board a ship in the middle of the Persian Gulf.

“McCallum here,” the gruff voice said. “I'm in Labrador, looking at a piece of property, and I need your advice.”

It took him a while, the Navy being the way it was about unscheduled leave and all that, but the old sea wolf, though retired, still had some pull. Two weeks later Jack was standing on the shore of Grand Lake, a major jumping-off point to all of Labrador's intriguing wilds, and the admiral was saying in his raspy voice, “I want to retire here, Hanson. I want to build a place right on this lake, and I want to build a fishing lodge in the interior that's only accessible by float plane for people
who care enough to make the effort. I'm looking for a business partner, if you're interested. How long can you stay?”

Jack stayed as long as he dared, being as he was only a captain himself and not ready or willing to be court-martialed, but when he left, the admiral was already beginning construction of his retirement home. One year later, Jack's marriage was over and he decided to end his naval career as well. True to his words, the admiral readily allowed the younger man to buy into his Labrador dream.

And what a dream it was. That the admiral could harbor ambitions that required such vision and herculean physical effort astounded Jack, who believed himself to be unique in that regard. But the admiral's tireless strength had played out rapidly near the end of the project on the Wolf River. His doctor advised him to return to the States for further tests and chemotherapy treatments, but Admiral McCallum had no use for doctors or hospitals. “I'll die in my own place, and in my own time,” he said. “I want to see our lodge on the Wolf River completed. I want to sit on the porch and sip my scotch and watch the river run past. I want to see the salmon come up it to spawn. I need to know that life goes on, no matter what.”

They'd both worked hard toward making that vision become a reality, though Jack shouldered the brunt of the work in the final year of the admiral's life. As his health steadily failed, McCallum lost energy but he never lost sight of his dream. The last time Jack had flown the old man into the interior and landed on the river just below the lodge, McCallum had known he'd never live to see it up and running.

“Put my chair on the porch,” he said that evening, laboring for each precious breath. “I'll sip my scotch and watch the sun go down.”

One week later, the admiral was dead. All of North West River gathered for the traditional Irish wake the old admiral had requested, though McCallum was only half Irish, the other half being pure bull-headed Scot. All of North West River attended the party, a grand send-off the old man would have enjoyed…all except the part where the wedding planner showed up, and Jack won their last bet.

It was one of the few times he and the admiral had spoken about what would come after.

“I've named my granddaughter executor of my estate,” McCallum had said. Jack was feeding the sled dogs, and the admiral walked out to the dog yard to smoke his pipe and watch. Retired from the team, Chilkat was his constant companion, but the admiral's faded blue eyes softened as he looked upon the dogs. Clearly, he loved them all.

Jack straightened from ladling soupy dog food into a bowl. “The wedding planner?” he said. “Why not one of your grandsons?”

“They're city boys. They wouldn't want anything to do with a place like this. Senna's the only one who might feel something for it.”

Senna McCallum was the only person the admiral regularly spoke of in his family, though he also had two grandsons living somewhere on the East coast and a spinster sister out in Oregon. He'd told Jack about Senna right at the outset on that first fishing trip. “She's a good girl. Spirited, but lacks guidance. Makes all the wrong choices. She'll end up the way most girls do, paying
homage to a man that's not good enough for her, raising a bunch of spoiled brats that want and get everything for nothing. Too bad, because she's sharp. She could go places, if she'd just take some good advice, but she doesn't think much of her old grandfather. Never listened to a thing I said.”

Since then, he'd made brief but frequent references to Senna, which Jack had strung together into this general assessment: She makes her living planning other people's weddings. Got her degree in wildlife biology, wrote a brilliant paper on the Yellowstone wolf pack and landed a good job with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, but couldn't hack the politics. Couldn't compromise what she knew to be right with what would keep her employed. She's too brash, doesn't know when to pull her horns in. Was let go for stirring up all kinds of controversy and bucking the big hunting lobby over the snaring of coyotes and the baiting of bears with stale doughnuts. Spunky. She made the front page of the paper at a big legislative hearing in Augusta. Shortly after that she was conveniently laid off. Her mother's sister owns a country inn on the Maine coast, and her aunt gave her a job there, so now she's nothing but a wedding planner.

A wedding planner was someone who dealt with weepy, emotional brides, bossy overbearing mothers and grooms who didn't realize what the hell they were getting into. Queasy. Jack couldn't imagine a more insipid career, and knew from listening to the admiral talk that he wouldn't like his granddaughter at all. He hoped she never showed up in Labrador.

“She doesn't give a hoot about me,” the admiral alleged not a week before his death, puffing on his pipe
with a contemplative gaze, “and that's not her fault. I was never a very warm and friendly grandfather. I didn't know how to be. And after her father died I didn't visit them anymore. Senna's mother never liked me much, nor did the boys. It was easier to stay away. I doubt Senna will come to Labrador when I die. But I've made it all nice and legal. Did it yesterday, in Goose Bay, with Granville. Just so you know.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wish you'd quit calling me that, son,” the admiral said in a quiet voice, gazing out at the dogs.

“Yes, sir.”

“She won't come.”

Jack stood, holding the five-gallon pail and the dog-food scoop. “She'll come.”

The old man shook his head. “Not in a million years.”

“Bet you a thousand bucks she shows up.”

McCallum's eyes flickered momentarily with that old fighting man's gleam. “You're on, but you'll lose,” he said, extending his hand to seal the pact. “Give my winnings to Goody Stewart. She needs the money more than you do, and she's a damn fine woman.”

“You should've married her,” Jack said.

The admiral turned away with a shake of his head, shoulders bowed beneath the weight of the years and the pain that had beaten him in the end. “I've never been able to make any woman happy. Goody deserves to be happy.”

But Goody wasn't going to get the admiral's money, not that there was any to give, because Jack was at this very moment looking into a pair of angry eyes—gray, pale blue?—that belonged to the admiral's granddaughter.

He struggled up onto his elbows, trying to focus his eyes. Not easy, after the past few days. Damn hard, in fact. Better just to go back to sleep. Sleep it off. Sleep off everything, but she was right in his face, pointing her finger, waving a frying pan, and threatening to bring in the Mounties. Sergeant Preston and all that. He squinted and blinked. She was wearing a dark conservative skirt suit that showed off a pair of the shapeliest legs he'd seen in a dog's age.

He rubbed a hand over his face and wished she'd shut up before his head exploded. There was nothing like a good old-fashioned Irish wake to bring out the best and the worst in a bottle of booze.

She should be planning her own wedding. That's what the admiral had told him about his granddaughter. “She deserves to be barefoot and in the kitchen if planning weddings is all she aspires to.” The admiral had set very high standards, and woe to the granddaughter who lowered the bar, intentionally or not.

“Or not,” Jack muttered, interrupting Senna McCallum's diatribe about how she was here to settle the admiral's estate and had no intentions of playing cook and housekeeper to a hungover heathen who couldn't even sit up in bed. He was pleased that his words had startled her into momentary silence, giving him another chance to eye those slender, feminine legs.

“Or not what?” she said, spine stiffening, frying pan lowering a bit. Her hair was gorgeous, the rich gloss of mahogany framing an equally beautiful and expressive face that just now was scowling on the stern side, but he bet that when she smiled her radiance would shame the sun. And damn, those legs of hers would rival any high-paid model's…

“You didn't deliberately get yourself discharged from your wildlife job just to spite the admiral. It was purely accidental,” Jack said. “I'm sure of it.”

“What are you talking about?” She recoiled as if he were rabid.

“Your grandfather told me all about you, but he never mentioned how good you looked in a skirt.”

If anything, her demeanor became more hostile and her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Then you really are John Hanson.”

“I prefer Jack,” he said. He extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

She declined to shake his hand, taking yet another step back instead. “We need to talk,” she said.

Jack needed aspirin, strong coffee and a lot more sleep, but since obviously none of these mercies were forthcoming, he sat up, very slowly, and attempted once again to focus his eyes on the young woman standing in his bedroom. “We threw a wake for your grandfather yesterday…or was it the day before? I've lost track. Damned sorry you had to see the place in such a mess, but it was a good old-fashioned Irish wake, just like the admiral wanted, and I'm not sorry about that. He deserved a good send-off.”

In spite of the effort this explanation had cost him, there wasn't an ounce of sympathy or understanding in her expression. “That explains all the trash. I'm here to settle his estate and I had hoped to be able to discuss this with you as soon as possible, but I can see that's not going to be any time soon.” She paused to glance down at the dog. “Is your dog about to attack me?”

Jack glanced at Chilkat, who was still eyeing her intently. “Like I told you before, he just wants to clean the
grease out of the frying pan you're holding. That's his job and he takes it very seriously. And for your information, that dog belongs to you now, Ms. McCallum. His name is Chilkat, and he was your grandfather's lap dog. A real cuddler. I'll introduce you to the rest of the pack when you're ready, but there are some things you need to understand. The admiral and I were full business partners, the lake house was part of the business, and you're standing in my bedroom.”

The admiral's granddaughter looked confused. “Do you mean to say that the two of you shared this house? You lived here together?”

“Even Steven.”

“Then…who lives in that other cabin?”

Hopeless. He'd known it would be. Who could understand the bond between himself and that irascible stiff-backed admiral who had scoffed at Jack's plan to build a separate cabin for his own use, and then, when the cabin was complete, had suggested using it for a workshop. Who would understand that gruff old admiral was a lonely soul who
liked
sharing the lake house? Certainly not this young woman with the mahogany hair and the beautiful face which unfortunately seemed to be marred by a permanent and disapproving scowl.

“Nobody,” Jack said. “We use it for a workshop.”

She digested this as cheerfully as she had everything else. “And just how am I supposed to sell my grandfather's half of this property while you're living here and the place looks like a pigsty?”