Worth The Effort (The Worth Series Book 4: A Copper Country Romance) (17 page)

“Geez. Enough with the hermit thing, please,” he said, but in a good-natured way.

“I think it’s kind of cool. I’ve never dated a hermit before.”

“The non-hermits you’ve dated before? Anyone special?”

Part of the conversation seemed so normal—a new couple doing the “get to know you,” “tell me a little about your past” conversation. And yet, she was teasing him about being a hermit, and he was going out of their way not to drive by the site of his wife’s death.

So,
not
normal new couple stuff.

“Not anyone really special, no. I had a boyfriend my last two years at Tech. And we tried the long-distance thing for a while after graduation. It was hard, though, and we didn’t feel that what we had was worth…fighting for, I guess.”

“Where’d he live?”

“He got on with GM.”

“And you had no desire to move back to your hometown area?”

They were making the turn into Eagle Harbor now. The beach was deserted, and the harbor itself was frozen over up to the point where it joined Lake Superior.
 

“No, I really wanted to stay up here.”

“Not the greatest career move,” he said, but he got it.
 

“Nope, but I’m okay with that. I get to work on some really interesting projects. They’re all different, and many of them involve restoration of original structures. I like that. And I love the Copper Country.”

He just nodded.

“Besides, you’re not really one to talk about making great career moves, Mr. Hermit.”

He laughed. “You’ve got me there.”

“How has it been for you the past week and a half coming out of your cave?”

“Cave?”

“Shack? Fortress of Solitude?”

He snorted at that, then after a moment answered. “It’s been okay. Better than I thought, actually.”

He looked over at her and flashed a grin, his green eyes glinting with amusement. “Besides, there’s been a nice perk.”

Dear lord, she wanted him to pull off the road so she could straddle his lap like she’d done in Iron Mountain. Only this time without all these pesky clothes in the way. She just smiled and said, “How much farther?”

He laughed and said, “Too damn far.”

They passed through Copper Harbor and then drove on, past Fort Wilkins. Deni shared the story of Caleb climbing on the cannon when she was eight.

“Did you come up every summer when you were a kid?”

“No, that was the last one until the summer after my junior year in high school. I came up for the Women in Engineering summer program to see if I’d like it.”

“And obviously you did.”

“Yes. I thought maybe it would just be nostalgia, or some kind of legacy thing because my father went to Tech. I figured that once I got back up here, I’d realize it was too far away or too remote and would cross it off my college list.”

“But you didn’t cross it off.”

“No, it moved to the top of my list. Much to my mother’s chagrin.”

“She didn’t want you that far away?”

“No. I’m the baby, and Caleb and Josh were gone by then. She wasn’t really keen about the looming empty nest, and it wouldn’t be like I could just pop home for a weekend being ten hours away.”

“I heard you say something to Petey about bitching about your mom to Alison…”

She waved that away. “Yeah, she’s been a little…much…lately. She’s…concerned about me, and that tends to come across as smothering. It was really bad for the first few years after my father died, but then she eased up. But lately…” She didn’t continue. There were two reasons Deni felt her mother had become a tad overbearing lately—she knew about Deni’s SAD and was understandably worried, and the last of Deni’s single hometown friends was getting married this summer and Deni was still single with no prospects.

Which didn’t bother Deni in the least, but she still kept both those factors to herself. She didn’t want Sawyer to think she was husband hunting. Just because she wanted more than a few hook-ups, didn’t mean she was trolling jewelry stores and checking out rings.

“She started dating again,” she said. “My mom. And I think it’s great, but she’s a little freaked about it all. So the calls and emails have ratcheted up in the past year.” All true, if not the whole truth.

“Moms dating. It’s a different kind of hell,” he said.

“Yours too? Is your father living?”

He nodded. “Living, yes. But he hasn’t been in the picture since we were in high school. He was a Tech student who loved the area, married a local girl, and stayed. But it got too much for him, and he wanted to move south. Mom didn’t want to leave, and the marriage was pretty shaky by then anyway, so he moved and we stayed.”

“Did you see him much?”
 

“A little at first. Longer holiday breaks and a few weeks over the summer. I only had a year left of high school, so I didn’t go down for the summers like Twain and Huck did. I lived on campus at Tech, so it didn’t feel that much different for me. It affected Huck most of all, being the youngest.”

“And now?”

He shrugged. “Oddly enough, my mom ended up moving after all. She fell for a guy who was up here on a fishing trip with buddies, and moved out east with him. That was about eleven or twelve years ago.

“It’s nice that she’s happy and everything, but when they started dating it was just…so weird, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, taking her eyes from him and looking out the window.

They were farther north than Deni had ever been before. “I didn’t know this road even went this far up.”

“Oh yeah, all the way to the tip. But we’re not going that far.” As if to prove his point, he turned left on to a snow-covered road, which, gauging by the tread marks and new snow in between, hadn’t been driven on in a few weeks.

“Will your truck make this road?”

“Not all the way in, no. But we only need to make it”—he took a wide curve and a pole barn came into view—“this far.” He reached up to the visor and pushed a button on a remote, and the garage door, which took up half of one side of the large building, opened.

“This place has a mattress, a comforter and a roaring fire?” she asked as he pulled the truck inside.

“Nope, not this place. This place holds the transportation to the next place.” He pointed to the snowmobile parked to one side of the huge structure.

“We’re going on that?”

“You’ve never been on one? And you’ve been up here how many years?”

“Ten, if you count my years at Tech.”

“And you haven’t been on a snowmobile?”

“I haven’t had the pleasure, no.”

“Well, there is another way.” He pointed to several pairs of snowshoes lined up against the wall.
 

Normally she’d love to go snowshoeing, but she hadn’t had much exercise this year—opting to stay home in bed in the evenings and on weekends. And the thought of falling in a snow bank, overcome with exhaustion, put a damper on the whole “getting naked and sexy with Sawyer” thing.

“I’ll try the snowmobile.”

“Atta girl. Besides, it’s not very far. It’s just terrain that can’t be driven by truck. It’s a beautiful hike in the summertime.”

By her estimation, they were about two miles from the end of the earth—so, yeah, it probably wouldn’t be a long ride.

They left the truck, and Sawyer took some grocery bags and walked over to the snowmobile. Lucy bounded outside and quickly found a spot to make the snow yellow.

“I’m going to take Lucy up first and then come back for you,” Sawyer said as he started transferring things from the grocery bags to a sturdy duffle that he took down from a shelf. “If I take you first, she’ll try to follow us, and the snow’s too deep for her. I could put her in the truck, I guess—”

“No, it’s fine. Take her up first, but how…” Her voice trailed off as Sawyer pulled some sort of harness from another shelf and started strapping it on to the machine. Lucy knew what he was doing and started barking with excitement, butting her head against Sawyer’s back as he knelt at the machine.

“Hang on, girl, give me a second.” When he finished, he stood up and took a step back. Lucy jumped up on the leather seat in a position she was obviously used to.

Deni stepped forward and started to examine the harness and straps while Sawyer fastened them around his dog.

“Did you make this?”

“Yep.”

“Did you
design
it?”

“Yep.”

“Is it safe? Legal?”

“Very safe. I made sure of that,” he said, patting Lucy as if to reinforce how precious the cargo was that the harness protected. “But crazy illegal,” he added with a grin. He hadn’t shaved this morning, and the stubble suited him much better than the clean-shaven look he’d had yesterday.

He handed her the keys to his truck. “Go back to the truck and put the heater on. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes.”

“What if something happens to you?” she asked, momentary panic rising up inside her.

“Nothing’s going to happen. I do this all the time.”

It didn’t help, and she felt an irrational fear bubbling up.
 

He must have recognized it. He set the packed duffle down on the machine in front of Lucy. He took his cell phone out of his jeans pocket, handed it to Deni, and then put his hands on her shoulders.

“If I’m not back in an hour, drive back to Copper Harbor. That’s the closest place to get a signal. Find my brother Twain in my contacts. Call him and tell him where I am.”

“And where are we?”

He smiled. “Tell him I’m between my garage and the ice cube. He’ll know what to do.”

“Okay,” she said, grasping his keys and phone.
 

“But there’s nothing to worry about, really.” He looked at her again, then turned and started taking the duffle bag off the snowmobile. “I’ll take you up first and then come back for Lucy.”

Damn the SAD. Deni knew it was making her more emotional than she would normally be. “No, don’t. Keep her on and bring her up. I’m fine, really. I just wanted a backup plan.”

He studied her, and must have believed she meant it. He came over and gave her a swift kiss that ended all too quickly.

“Well, you wouldn’t be much of an engineer if you didn’t think of a backup plan, would you?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay, I’ll be right back. Make sure you go warm up in the truck.” He grabbed a helmet from an old hat rack, strapped it to his head, and then swung a leg over the machine. He jostled the duffle bag and checked on Lucy, who promptly licked the glass shield of his helmet.

“Okay,” she said, but her answer was swallowed up by the roaring of the motor as he started up. Good God, the thing was loud. Being on a concrete slab only amplified the noise, and she backed away, deeper into the garage.

He gave a wave, throttled the handlebar, and drove slowly out of the garage. He went past the truck and up onto a bank of snow that had well-worn snowmobile tracks trailing away. As soon as he’d cleared the area and was on the trail, he sped up.

In seconds, he was gone.

Chapter Fifteen

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

~ Winston Churchill

I
n twenty minutes on the dot, Deni heard Sawyer’s snowmobile. She hadn’t gone to the truck to keep warm as he’d suggested, but instead had been mesmerized by the various gadgets that lined the shelves throughout the large building.
 

Tools, yes, but also small machinery and many things that Deni could not identify. Was the hermit a mad scientist as well?
 

“What is all this?” she asked him when he’d cut the engine and taken off his helmet. He’d left the machine outside, already facing the trail back to…wherever they were going.

“Junk, mostly.” He set his helmet on the seat and took the now-empty duffle bag over to where the rest of his grocery bags were and started transferring things.

“How much do you think we’re going to eat in two days?” she asked.

“Each time I try to bring as much non-perishable food as I can, since I have to use the snowmobile in the winter.”

“Kind of like stockpiling?”

“That makes it sound like I’m getting ready for Armageddon or something.”

“Well, it does feel like the end of the earth up here. In a good way, of course,” she said with a smile.

He laughed at that as he finished with the supplies, zipping up the duffle and swinging the heavy bag over his shoulder. As he passed her, he stopped, leaned over, and whispered, “Maybe I should have just said we’re going to work up an appetite.”
 

She turned, but he’d already passed, shooting her a grin over his shoulder as he made his way back to the end of the garage.

“Ready?” he asked, plucking another helmet from the hat rack.

Ready and raring. At least to get to their destination, if not for getting on the machine.