Chapter 3
Hudson
A cheer erupted when we walked inside Icy Asps after our interaction with the moose.
“Uncle Hudson!” The excited squeal was my only warning before a tiny body launched itself from a chair and into me. Quinn’s arms went around my neck and her legs around my waist like the perfect little barnacle.
I hugged my five-year-old niece tightly and nuzzled her neck with a bear-like growl. She giggled from deep in her belly and said, “You’re smelly.”
“I missed you too.” I tickled her sides, and she clung even tighter to me, despite her claim that I smelled. “Well, hanging out in a dumpster with your mom will do that.”
“Hey!” Amelia lightly smacked my arm as she laughed. “It was life or death. And the death of my shoes for sure.” She looked regretfully at her bare feet.
“Hudson saved you?” Quinn asked.
“Yes. As usual.” Amelia gave me a soft smile that was like a punch in the gut because it didn’t mean what I wished it meant.
It had been a difficult transition for all of us when I’d moved away from Montana and took a new job as a traveling doctor in Alaska. But continuing to be that close to Amelia had been a different kind of torture.
Yet, as I breathed in Quinn’s familiar lavender scent, I questioned my decision.
I’d lain awake for months after I left, listening for Quinn’s cries that I’d never hear.
I’d pick up the ingredients for Amelia’s favorite meal, then remember she wasn’t with me to eat it.
I went through my job like a robot, thrust right back into the depression that had nearly consumed me after Shiloh died.
Leaving Amelia and Quinn had nearly destroyed me, but it was the right thing to do. I had to believe that.
“Speaking of life or death, I need to talk to the sheriff about the moose.” I tried to lower Quinn back into the chair she’d launched from, but Quinn’s arms tightened around my neck to near strangulation levels.
“I don’t think you’re going anywhere without her,” Amelia said wryly. She took a seat at the high table, crammed with the Peaks professional hockey team. My brother had played for The Peaks as well, before his sudden death a couple of years ago, so I knew all the guys.
“We’ll pull up a seat for you!” Bret, one of the other groomsmen said.
He had a gleam in his eye I didn’t trust for a second.
Despite being a solid two-fifty, six-foot-five, and having the hairstyle of Sasquatch, Bret was a total romantic.
And last year, while I was still living in Montana, he’d gotten it in his head that I had a thing for Amelia.
Sure, it was true. But I’d been keeping this secret for ten years. I had no intention of a meddling hockey player letting my secret out. It was one of the reasons I’d known it was time to move on. If my feelings were becoming obvious to other people, I was letting my guard slip too much.
I waved my hand to indicate that I was okay. “I’ll find a free table.”
“No way,” Amelia said. “It’s been way too long since I’ve seen you. Bret, grab a chair.”
Bret’s smug grin peeked through his facial hair as he grabbed an empty chair and set it right next to Amelia’s. I forced a casual expression to my face. Whatever. I was used to pretending. I’d been doing it for this long. I could do it for one more week.
I spotted Winterhaven’s sheriff sitting at a long table near the bar.
“How’s kindergarten?” I asked Quinn as we headed toward him.
“Amazing. I can read. And we have a class lizard named Scooter. He pooped on my shoulder last week.”
“Cool,” I said. “What color is it?”
“It was green and brown. And smelled really bad. Almost as bad as you.”
I laughed. “Thanks. But I meant what color is the lizard?”
“Oh! Light green with dark green spots.”
I hated missing the details of Quinn’s life this last year.
When I’d lived down the street from them, I knew the names of everyone in her class and what she’d eaten for every meal and every scene beat of her favorite show.
Now, I didn’t even know her class had a pet.
That was big news in the kindergarten world.
Sheriff Savage stood when I approached. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a couple of pink Starbursts for Quinn.
“They were your dad’s favorite. If I had them at the house, he'd pocket them.”
Quinn buried her face in my chest shyly but held her hand out to take the candy. Sheriff Savage and I shared an amused glance.
“Has Dylan seen you yet?” Sheriff Savage said to me with a firm handshake.
I shook my head. I could see Dylan and his fiancé, Rosie, at a table with her three brothers. “I’ll go talk to him next., but I wanted to let you know there’s an aggressive moose outside the restaurant. It charged at Amelia.”
Sheriff Savage frowned. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ve been getting a few complaints about a moose this week. I’ll have one of my officers come over and keep watch. Is Amelia okay?”
We both looked to where she was sitting with the hockey team, telling a story that had them all laughing. When she held out her bare feet, I assumed it was about our moose adventure.
Sheriff Savage’s hand came down on my shoulder with a squeeze. “She’s a good one,” he said, a little too meaningfully. “Life’s too short to let opportunities pass us by.”
I tore my gaze away from Amelia and tried to wipe my face clean of expressions as I looked at him.
Was I being that obvious about my feelings for Amelia?
Or was he talking generally? Panic flared through me.
Amelia couldn’t find out how I felt. She was so tenderhearted, I could picture her letting me down gently, and then things being awkward between us forever.
He patted me on the shoulder reassuringly—though I felt anything but reassured—before sitting back down. “Go talk to Dylan. He’s been watching the door for you.”
Quinn begged to be put on my shoulders, so I obliged, and we headed toward Dylan’s table.
Rosie, his fiancé, was trying to convince her brothers to carry her down the wedding aisle on a palanquin.
“I could never choose which one of you would walk me down the aisle,” she was saying.
“This way, all of us could go down together!”
They stared at her with various expressions that all meant no way is that happening.
“Haydn and Bennett will walk you down the aisle. I’m officiating, remember?” her brother, Jules, said. Her other two brothers both nodded in agreement.
Rosie frowned. “I looked into buying a palanquin, and it’s not that much.”
“Hey, guys!” I said loudly, sensing by Rosie’s brothers' expressions that this was a good time to jump in. Dylan, who had been sitting with his arm around Rosie, looking like he couldn’t be happier, jumped up and came over to pull me into a tight, pounding hug.
Quinn leaned down from my shoulders to hug Dylan’s head.
“Quinny!” Dylan said, riffling her hair.
“Hi, Uncle Dylan. What’s a pack-win?”
“A palanquin is something a queen is carried on,” Dylan said. “And since Rosie’s a queen, I think she should get anything she wants.”
“Dude,” Jules complained with a headshake. “That is a slippery slope you’re treading.”
Dylan ignored his almost brother-in-law and said to me, “You’re here just in time. Rosie wants to do karaoke.”
That was met with groans from everyone except Rosie, who huffed, but also smiled deviously as she looked at me. “I signed you up to go first.”
“Let him eat at least,” Bennett said.
“I’m not a monster.”
“Just a bride-zilla,” one of her brothers muttered under his breath, earning all three of them a threatening finger point and narrowed eyes.
“Sounds like you’re all in the mood to watch a marathon of princess movies when I get back from my honeymoon.”
Quinn’s chin was resting on the top of my head, and her arms hung down around my shoulders. If they’d flown in today, she’d be exhausted.
“I’m going to get her back to her mom,” I said.
Dylan peered past me to where Amelia was sitting with the team. “Be careful,” Dylan said. I didn’t know if he meant with Amelia or with my heart around her, but either way …
“I always am.”