Chapter 2 Margot
2 MARGOT
Coming to Alaska was a mistake.
I should’ve known it the moment my driver introduced himself very fittingly as Bear, or after any of the eight hundred times he’s farted in the spray-painted Suburban I’ve been trapped in for the last two hours and twenty-six minutes. It comes as a total surprise when he growls, “Here we are,” because the directions app on my phone stopped working over an hour ago, and because this particular swath of snowy evergreens looks identical to the last hundred miles of snowy evergreens we’ve driven past. But just like his four-pawed brethren, Bear needs no directions. He turns into an unmarked break in the trees and onto an unpaved suggestion of a road that makes my teeth rattle for a solid ten minutes.
When we finally come to a halt and my vision stops vibrating, I look out the window and see it. North Star Lodge. I made it. Bear pulls directly in front of a large timber-frame chalet that wouldn’t be out of place at a Swedish ski resort. Beneath its peaked roof and multiple stone chimneys are giant windows and a wraparound porch covered in fluffy snowdrifts.
“I’ll grab the bags,” I’m told, and Bear heaves himself out of the car with a last squeak of flatulence. A blast of frigid air circulates through the warm, smelly fug of the SUV, and I gasp, pulling my parka’s hood over my head. It dawns on me that until today, grabbing food out of my freezer is the only real cold exposure my tender skin has ever endured. I slide my hands into the pillow-like mittens I originally thought were overkill, simultaneously thanking and cursing Savannah. If I survive this and ever see my sister again, I’m immediately booking her a one-way sightseeing trip to Antarctica.
Bear stomps back through the snow toward the Suburban, and I see he’s left all my luggage on the porch. It takes me several tries to shoulder the vehicle door open, probably because an ice chrysalis formed on the drive here. Sure enough, there’s a cracking sound, the door swings open, and I tumble out. Bear catches me by the elbow, and I thank him before removing a mitten to retrieve some of the cash Savannah insisted I bring. “Alaska isn’t L.A., Margot,” she’d said when I questioned whether paper money was still even a thing. “Not everyone will take Venmo.” I glance at Bear, who looks like he’d sooner accept a sack of grain or cured meats as payment, and feel grudgingly grateful for my sister’s forethought.
“Thanks, ma’am,” I hear him rumble, though there’s no detectable facial movement from beneath his bushy I-can-skin-a-deer beard. “Send Trapper my regards, eh?”
Alarmed both by being called “ma’am” and by the name Trapper, I barely manage a halfhearted wave as Bear climbs back into his den and drives off in a white cloud of frozen exhaust.
And then, just like that, I’m alone. Wind whistles eerily through the trees, and I realize that, at the very least, this trip will provide the perfect inspiration for my murder mystery. Maybe too perfect .
I hurry up to the porch as quickly as I dare. Whenever I watched Christmas movies as a kid, complaining to my mom that I wanted to live in a place with four discernible seasons, I never once imagined snow being this fucking slippery. Arms wide, I gingerly make my way up the stairs and am greeted by an enormous carved wooden door that makes the entrance to this place look like Thor’s front porch.
I pull it open on well-oiled hinges, half-expecting to meet a party of Vikings and step into the glorious warmth. But I’m still alone. My face prickles as blood returns to it, and I look around. It’s just as advertised on the website: Scandinavian furniture draped with various animal pelts, a giant stone hearth in the center of the room, and floor-to-ceiling back windows that look out onto a scene that I’m having trouble believing isn’t a fake backdrop. I step closer, mesmerized. Evergreens march down a dramatic valley to where a powerful river cuts through the snow-clad earth like a dark serpent, resisting winter’s command to freeze. Beyond, in a distance so vast my brain struggles to grasp it, are mountains. Snowcapped and eternal, they make the dusty hills surrounding Los Angeles look like piles of pebbles.
Closing my mouth, I turn and look around for signs of life. The room feels more like a private residence than a hotel, and the only conceivable check-in area is a cozy book nook next to the fireplace, where an old desk stands sentinel. But no one’s there. I look up to where the cathedral ceiling gives way to a balcony on the second floor, and then remember Savannah saying that guests stay in private cabins scattered around the property. But where the hell is the staff?
“Hello?” I call out, unnerved. I pull off a mitten and check my phone for service. Nada. I’ll have to connect to the Wi-Fi once I find someone to tell me the password. Unless, of course, I’ve unwittingly been dropped off at a ghost hotel à la The Shining . I swallow, suddenly wishing Bear hadn’t scampered off so fast.
“Hello?” I call again.
When nothing stirs, I let out an exasperated huff. Pulling my mitten back on, I march toward the front door. If there’s no one inside, they must be out on the grounds. Maybe it wasn’t as cold as I imagined.
I open the door and am instantly corrected. My eyeballs sting against the inrush of arctic air, but I march out like an intrepid explorer, ready to brave the hostile unknown. Looking around, I notice a path cleared in the snow along the side of the lodge. I follow it, and as I do, I hear a faint rhythmic sound on the wind. I continue until the path turns against the corner of the lodge, and I stop in my tracks.
There’s somebody chopping wood in a snowy clearing surrounded by trees. A tall, broad somebody. A somebody with clearly defined back muscles that flex and bunch beneath his clinging thermal shirt with every fluid swing of his ax. A somebody whose labored breathing rises in white clouds around his dark curls. The wood before him stands no chance as his blade comes down with perfect accuracy. There’s a juicy splitting sound. He grunts, and somehow I’m not cold anymore.
Like a total creep, I watch him move the way you watch a random Olympic sport you’ve never seen before but suddenly find yourself very deeply invested in. Is wood chopping an Olympic sport? If not, it should be. I’ve never felt more patriotic in my life. I take a small step closer. Something about him is familiar. Even though I can only see his glorious backside, I somehow know that if he turned around, his face wouldn’t be a surprise. But how? There’s exactly a zero percent chance I know this future gold medalist of ax wielding.
A crunching sound from close behind startles me out of my trance. I turn around, and the scream I let out precedes all thought. When words finally flash across my mind, they burst like emergency flares: Brown. Huge. Fur. Huge. I stumble back from the beast, which blows out an angry steaming breath and rears its enormous head. I scream again. Or maybe I haven’t stopped screaming. As scorching adrenaline sets all my internal organs on fire, I turn and run blindly forward, arms pinwheeling. The man drops his ax in the snow, staring at me in alarm. In my lizard brain, he’s my only chance for survival, and when I close the distance between us, I don’t think—I jump.
He catches me like he’s used to random women leaping into his brawny arms, and frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he is. But apart from registering that his face is indeed the rugged masterpiece I expected it to be, there’s only one thing on my mind. “RUN!”
To my dismay, he only raises one of his thick eyebrows. Just great. Leave it to me to throw my life directly into the hands of a beautiful idiot. I barely resist the urge to dig my heels into his ass and spur him on like a horse. Instead, I whip my head around to see how closely my death is approaching. But to my utter astonishment and relief, my death is standing quietly in the snow where I left it, blinking placidly at us. I turn back to the man I’ve suctioned myself to.
“It’s a moose,” I inform him, still panting from my sprint of terror. “Not a bear.”
The man nods politely, as though this is, in fact, news to him. “An important distinction.”
“I thought I was going to die,” I say defensively, gripping him a little tighter around his neck.
“You mean this isn’t how you greet everyone?” he says in a baritone I feel right through my parka. Holy smokes . The blood rushing to my face makes my cheeks sting, and I realize my hood must have fallen back during my mad dash.
“There aren’t any wild animals where I’m from,” I say. “It just took me by surprise.”
“Then you must be Margot Bradley from L.A.”
“And you must be Trapper from… the forest?”
His full, slightly chapped lips widen into a smirk that creases the corners of his eyes. They’re dark green, thickly lashed, and make him look distantly related to the evergreens surrounding us. Like he grew here right next to them. Something about him is so familiar, and yet I can’t quite—
“No, Trapper’s my father. I’m Forrest.” A pause. “From the forest.”
At this, a breathless laugh escapes me, and I watch with a delicious flip of my stomach as he clocks my dimples. “A bit on the nose, don’t you think?”
He looks away to glance around at the heavily wooded terrain with a literal moose standing nearby. “Could be worse. Could’ve been named after my godfather.”
“Who is?”
“The guy who just dropped you off.”
I snort, which makes him smile. His perfect teeth are a brilliant contrast to his dense stubble-verging-on-beard. I become increasingly aware of my legs wrapped around his granite waist, and of the fact that I’ve just used the word “granite” to describe his body to myself, like he’s the real-life version of every romance hero ever written. I notice with growing alarm how warm he is from his exertions, and how long it’s been since I’ve been this physically close to anyone with a penis. Which is exactly the last word I want in my mind right now and therefore becomes the only word I can think.
Until, finally, I recognize him.
My smile slides off my face as a sense of unreality grips me. Because he’s not the embodiment of every romance hero ever written—just all of mine. For the record, I’ve written plenty of men into existence. Six, to be precise. To all of them, I graciously bestowed a single favorite feature, teasing out my own personal preferences across multiple characters because giving them all to one man seemed gratuitous. But now, as I stare at Forrest, I’m confronted with all of them at once. My eyes roam his features, recognizing Caleb’s coarse, chocolatey waves. Brandon’s green eyes. Levi’s sculpted bone structure. Anders’s superhero physique. Harrison’s height. And though I’ll never know for certain, probably Dax’s—
“Did you want to climb down,” he asks uncertainly, “or are you still in fight-or-flight mode?”
I blink, realizing I’ve been staring at him like a psychopath for the better part of a minute. “Right. Yes. Down,” I say eloquently.
Forrest helps me clamber off his 10/10 Would Recommend body, and I take a clumsy, snow-crunching step back from him. I begin to understand that I ran flailing from something completely harmless and straight into the arms of the actual threat.
I came to Alaska to escape everything I knew. To leave behind my identity as a romance author and write a grisly murder-mystery novel. Instead, I’m having a picture-perfect meet-cute with a man who seems ripped straight out of one of my own romance novels. A man I’ve known for less time than it’ll take me to have a muchneeded cold shower, but who somehow registered as a beacon of safety in my moment of life-or-death panic.
But Forrest from the forest? Really? Even I’m not that corny.
I put a mitten to my forehead as a pulsing tension headache starts right above my left eyebrow. It’s been the longest day in existence, I haven’t eaten anything in hours, and I probably smell like Uncle Bear’s irritable bowel syndrome. Forrest’s eyebrows draw together, making him look like one of those hotly troubled men in a cologne ad. “You okay?”
At the genuine concern in his voice, anxiety ripples through me. And yet my gaze locks with his in a reflexive search for reassurance and comfort. It’s a questionable instinct, considering he’s a very large stranger who happens to be wielding an ax. But he’s not looking at me like I’d be perfect for his human taxidermy hobby or even like I’m just another resort guest. His gaze, like his question, is soft and a little bit wary as it surveys my features—like I’m not the only person here who feels like I’ve met a piece of my own imagination come to life.
God, I need a nap. Or better yet, a ride straight back to the airport. I shake my head a little to clear it. He asked if I’m okay, and the truth is, I’m not. I haven’t been this attracted to someone in a long time, and the last time I was, it cost me my dignity, my faith in love, and several nonrefundable wedding security deposits. At the thought, panic skitters up my spine, and suddenly, I feel like a cactus in a time-lapse video, speed-growing its spikes. For better or for worse, making myself unlikable has always been my default defense mechanism.
“I’m freezing,” I announce. “I’d like to be taken to my cabin, if you don’t mind. And I need someone to collect my bags.”
At my frosty tone, Forrest’s expression and posture instantly become more guarded, and I regret my coldness. But I’m in full damage-control mode, and if I’m going to be stuck here with him for the next six weeks, establishing some distance is the only way I’ll survive.
“Right,” he says, all traces of warmth vanishing like he’s hastily rebuilding his own toppled boundaries. “Follow me.”
He picks up his ax and starts walking, but I hesitate to move. The bear-moose is standing next to the path, and even though it doesn’t seem particularly interested in rampaging, it’s still an enormous fucking wild animal. Forrest sees my hesitation and sighs. Apparently, his patience for outsiders has been exhausted. “Don’t worry about Bullwinkle,” he says. “He’s just begging for carrots. Come on.”
“ Bullwinkle ? As in … is he your pet ?”
“No, he’s a five-hundred-dollar penalty waiting to happen. It’s illegal to feed moose, but my dad started it, and now he’s practically domesticated. Just ignore him.”
I can imagine how Savannah would react to depriving any animal of a “wittle tweat,” illegal or not, and I’m hit by my first real wave of homesickness. I make a silent vow to work up the nerve to sneak Bullwinkle a carrot before I leave, but as we pass by the towering mountain of brown fur, I can’t help sidling closer to Forrest. He might be a little grumpy, but at least he doesn’t have the giant horn things. Antlers. Whatever.
Instead of leading me back to the main lodge to collect my bags, Forrest takes me on a new path through the woods to find one of the surrounding cabins that I’ll call home for the next six weeks. When I start to lose feeling in my stumbling feet, I discover that sneakers were the wrong footwear choice. I remember the subzero boots (and all the other gear) Savannah purchased and insisted I bring, and I feel a burst of appreciation for my sister. I may not want to be here, but at least she made sure I wouldn’t lose my toes.
“Not much farther now,” Forrest calls out, moving ahead of me like he was born and bred to withstand arctic temperatures in form-fitting base layers.
Meanwhile, I barely repress a shriek when a wet clump of snow falls from an overhead branch and lands on my head. I’m just about to turn back and tell him I’m fine sleeping on an animal pelt back at the lodge when our destination finally comes into view. The cabin is tiny, snowcapped, and surrounded by trees. A cozy beacon of warmth and comfort. A place with a toilet . When we reach the door and he unlocks it, I push my way past him, desperate to be inside. Forrest comes in at the pace of someone who doesn’t physically register temperature changes.
“Close the door!” I hiss. “You’re letting all the warmth out!”
He obliges me, stomping his snowy boots on the welcome mat while I rip my mittens off and practically shove my fingers in my mouth to warm them up. As my face begins to thaw, so does my nose.
“Here,” Forrest says, handing me a box of tissues from the entryway table.
I note with annoyance that his own nose is miraculously dry and adorably rosy. I blow mine with an embarrassing honk before removing my coat. My travel clothes are comfortable but not nearly comfortable enough. I need to be swaddled in the cashmere sweatsuit I recently splurged on—my consolation prize for agreeing to this trip.
I look up at Forrest and realize he’s staring at me. Probably because, thanks to the pound of snow melting in my hair, I resemble a wet jet-lagged cat. On top of feeling unnerved by him in general, his gaze makes me feel uncharacteristically self-conscious, which is probably why I blurt out, “Were you going to give me a tour or something?”
He blinks at my rude tone, and even though I can taste the word “sorry” on the tip of my tongue, I hold it in. I realize I have no legitimate reason to be annoyed with him, but the slightly panicky self-preservation part of me is searching high and low for one.
“Yes. I mean no,” he corrects himself. “I was just going to grab your bags from the lodge. Did you want me to build a fire first, though?”
I look around to see a stone fireplace in the cabin’s living room, and one of those circular wrought iron racks loaded with wood. Pretty self-explanatory, and more than anything, I need to be out of this man’s disturbing presence.
“That’s okay, I’ve got it.”
“You’ve got it,” he repeats doubtfully.
“What, I don’t look like I know how to light something on fire?” I say, ready to be offended on behalf of fire-lighting women everywhere.
“ Do you regularly light things on fire?” The concerned eyebrows are back.
“I mean, I don’t have a monogrammed blowtorch or anything, but I think I can handle a fireplace.”
His face makes it clear he thinks otherwise, but wisely, he doesn’t push it. “Just remember to open the flue.”
“Right. Obviously,” I say, making a mental note to look up why a fireplace would have a flu. Which in turn, makes me think of something critical. “Oh! I’m going to need the Wi-Fi password. I was having trouble connecting earlier.”
He squints at me like I’ve just spoken in a foreign tongue. “Wi-Fi?”
“Uh, yes? Sometimes also called the Internet?”
At this, he laughs. A deep, rich sound that, paired with his smile, momentarily stuns the neurons firing across my brain. “There’s no Wi-Fi here.”
I shake my head to clear the pheromones clogging my ears. “Come again?”
He lifts his hands and looks around the rustic log cabin as though to point out the obvious. “There’s no Wi-Fi here. Closest tower’s near Talkeetna, and that’s out of range.”
“So wait,” I say, struggling to comprehend. “You’re telling me North Star Lodge has no Wi-Fi. Period? ”
“Big part of why most folks come to stay here. They want to connect with nature—not their screens.”
I register his judgment but can only gape like a fish, unable to form words. It hadn’t occurred to me that a no-Internet situation was even a remote possibility.
“But I need the Internet,” I tell him, barely checking the panic in my voice. “I need it for my job! To keep in touch with my sister, who has a very serious condition!”
“Well, I drive to Talkeetna once a week to pick up mail and supplies,” he says. “I guess you could tag along and use the Internet café in town.”
“ Internet café ? What is this, 2003?”
He shrugs his giant shoulders, gives me a smile that seems more like a taunt, and this time it takes zero effort to be irritated with him. On the contrary, the irritation floweth.
“Welcome to Alaska,” he says. With that, he leaves me standing in a log cabin in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness, wondering how the hell I’m going to survive the next six weeks of my life.