He looked up from his BlackBerry to find Merrilee watching him with raised eyebrows. “Are you back with us now?” she asked.
Going online using a mobile device was de rigueur where he came from. Nobody even blinked at it. In fact, it was likely the other person was checking email or texting at the same time as well. However, he suddenly felt as if he’d crossed some line of good manners and tucked his BlackBerry into its case. “Sorry, just needed to check on a few things.”
“No problem,” Merrilee said. She turned to Nick with a smile. “Gus is holding court next door.” Next door was the restaurant attached to the terminal and still went by the name of Gus’s. “You know how busy it is during Chrismoose, and then word got around Gus was back in town and they’re really packing folks in.” A door about midway across the room boasted a sign above it, Welcome To Gus’s. Even with the television in this room and the small group chatting up front, the muted noise from Gus’s was apparent. Merrilee eyed their suitcases. “You probably don’t want to work your way through the crowd with that. You can leave them here for now or take the outside entrance.”
Gus’s living quarters had been above the restaurant. The two-bedroom suite was accessible both from inside the restaurant and from the exterior stairs Nick had pointed out when they landed. Someone else had moved in since Gus left but Gus and Nick were going to share one bedroom and Jared got the couch. Apparently quarters were hard to come by during the Chrismoose festival in Good Riddance. Sleeping on a couch for a few nights wouldn’t kill him.
“How about we just leave them here for now?” Nick said.
“No problem.” Merrilee waved them to a corner on the other side of her desk. Jared and Nick deposited their luggage before Merrilee hustled them toward the connecting door. “Now get. Go introduce Jared to everyone and I’m sure you’re both starving since we’re four hours behind New York.”
Now that she mentioned it, Jared hadn’t really eaten anything all day other than a bagel he’d grabbed on the way to the train this morning. “I could eat a horse,” he said.
Merrilee laughed. “You won’t find horse but moose and caribou for sure.” She shooed them forward. “Bull’s bartending. He’ll want to meet Jared for sure.”
Nick grinned and gave her a quick hug. “We’ll see Bull first and then I’ll introduce Jared to everyone.”
It was good to see the obvious affection between them. Merrilee was as close to a mother-in-law as Nick was going to have. According to Nick, Merrilee had resented the hell out of him when he’d first shown up last year. Obviously she’d gotten over it.
A couple came down the stairs to the left of the front door. Upstairs must be the bed portion of the bed-and-breakfast.
As the couple beelined for Merrilee, Nick and Jared crossed the worn wood floor. Nick opened the door to the restaurant, and as the sound had indicated beforehand, it was mayhem on the other side. Actually, it reminded Jared of a Manhattan happy hour on a Friday evening. To the left of the door the bar area was packed, all the seats taken and several people standing and talking.
Booths lined one wall beyond the bar, and another to the right of the front door, with tables filling in the floor space. To the far right a group was throwing darts, and both pool tables were also seeing action. Jared spotted Gus, with her dark hair—a single swath of signature white in the front—at a large table in the corner.
He nudged Nick. “Gus is over there.”
Nick nodded. “Let’s meet Bull and grab a drink, then we’ll head over.”
Working their way to the bar wasn’t nearly as quick or easy as he’d thought it’d be. Unlike during a Manhattan happy hour, damn near everyone recognized Nick and stopped him to welcome him back and offer congratulations on the impending wedding. A few of the men jokingly offered condolences. However, everyone they encountered was warm and friendly.
They finally gained the polished bar with the brass foot rail running its length. A stuffed moose head with a Santa hat jauntily angled over one eye reigned amongst the shelved bottles of liquor and glasses on the wall behind the bar. A thickset man sporting a gray ponytail and a full beard was working a draft beer pull. He looked like a Vietnam vet who’d be known as Bull.
He was. Bull and Nick clapped one another on the back and Nick followed up with introductions.
“How was the flight in?” Bull asked.
“Long, but uneventful.”
Bull grinned. “Uneventful’s always a good thing when you’re in the air.”
“You bet your sweet ass.”
The bar was as busy as the rest of the place. Nick and Jared each snagged a drink and made their way across the room to Gus. After a quick welcoming hug, Gus started the introductions. There were the Sisnukets, a delicate blonde named Tessa and her husband, Clint, reputedly the best Native guide in this area of Alaska. The local doctor, a striking redhead named Skye Shannihan, and her fiancé, Dalton Summers, one of the bush pilots operating out of Good Riddance. According to Nick, the couple was leaving tomorrow to spend Christmas with Skye’s family in Atlanta. Nick’s crew, his parents, sisters and their families were staying in Summers’s two cabins at a place called Shadow Lake. Jared was particularly intrigued when he met a guy named Logan, who had recently moved his corporate job as CFO for a mining operation to Good Riddance so he could marry Jenna, a perky blonde building a spa facility. He hadn’t expected to find the CFO of an international enterprise hanging out in this remote town. Jared thought it was cool that with a little help from technology, Logan had managed to pull himself out of the rat race yet still stay in the game.
A Native guy with a long dark ponytail was Clint’s cousin Nelson Sisnuket, who worked as a doctor’s assistant. The dark-haired woman next to him was his fiancée, Ellie Lightfoot, a school teacher. Across the table, Sven Sorenson could’ve played the lead in a Viking flick, but was actually a builder.
Jared shook hands with everyone. “Okay, I can’t swear I’ll remember everyone’s name but I’ll try.”
Across the table, Jenna smiled. “Just blame it on jet lag if you run into one of us and go blank.”
Jared was laughing when suddenly the fine hairs on the back of his neck and along his arms stood up.
Gus smiled at someone past his shoulder. “And now you get to meet Teddy.”
Jared turned and found himself looking into the prettiest light brown eyes he’d ever seen. Something hot and wild seemed to course through him. He could’ve sworn the floor literally shifted beneath his feet.
And then he crashed to his knees in front of her.
TEDDY OPENED HER MOUTH but no sound came out. One minute she was face-to-face with a gorgeous guy and the next minute he was on the floor at her feet. She’d never had anything like that happen to her. How did a woman react to that? And well, what did it mean?
The man at her feet had to be Jared Martin. Despite how busy they were, she’d seen him the moment he walked in with Nick. When Gus had deemed him hot…well, that was an understatement. Teddy had written him off earlier as probably too…something. Uh-uh. He was all “just right.” Tall and lean with a sculpted face, he looked smart, sophisticated and expensive.
For a moment she would’ve been hard pressed to even know her own name. It was as if something she’d been waiting on had just walked through the door, but she hadn’t been waiting on anything, except the opportunity to get to New York.
Lust was the first thing that had registered in her brain. That he was out of her small-town league had been the immediate chaser thought that followed. And now…what?
Little John, a regular who stood at least six-foot-seven, bent down. “Sorry, dude. I lost my footing and didn’t mean to bump into you that way.”
Ah, that made sense. He’d been caught off guard and felled by Little John.
Jared regained his feet, brushing at the knees of his pants. “No harm done,” he said to Little John. “A little humiliation is good for the soul now and then.”
Good-looking and a sense of humor…and a voice that did all kinds of funny things to her insides.
Little John smiled, nodded and turned back around to his pals. Jared looked at Teddy with a smile that quirked up the right side of his mouth slightly higher than the left. And those eyes…a pale blue that was in marked contrast to his dark lashes. She was, quite uncharacteristically, at a loss for words, her heart thumping like mad against her ribs.
“And now that I’ve made a stellar impression by literally falling at your feet, it’s nice to meet you.”
Teddy smiled at his self-deprecating aplomb. She held out her hand, managing to dredge up some semblance of composure. “There’s something terribly satisfying in having a man kneel at your feet.”
He wrapped his hand around hers. Teddy felt the impact of his touch all the way to her toes. “Does it happen often?” he said.
She was all squirrel-headed from his touch and looked at him blankly. “What?”
“Men falling at your feet?”
He released her hand and she smiled at him. “Absolutely, it happens all the time. I’ve almost gotten used to it.”