Okay, so that was clear—Hope was officially unhappy to see him.
Did you really expect anything different?
Si adjusted the bag on his shoulder, trying to ignore the stares from everyone else in the bar, not to mention the sudden, hollow feeling in his gut.
Yeah, he had expected different. Or at least, a part of him had hoped for it, especially after thirteen years.
Thirteen years and not one visit. Come on, man.
The hollow feeling yawned wider, but he didn’t have a chance to examine it too closely, because questions were being shouted at him, and although nobody had moved, it was clear that everyone in the bar was demanding some kind of acknowledgment.
Deep River had never been an effusive place, but apparently people were pleased to see him, which was a little weird considering anyone who left the town was usually viewed with some suspicion.
But then being friends with a West usually had the effect of making people feel more charitable, and since he had a bombshell of his own to deliver at some point, he decided to be charitable back, even if he didn’t particularly feel like it.
He nodded to a few people, endured a handshake here, a backslap there, took the condolences offered on Caleb’s death, and answered a couple of questions in as brief a way as possible, all the while making his way slowly, but surely, toward the bar.
Hope was standing there with her arms crossed, watching him approach, her dark eyes revealing nothing at all.
Yeah, she was not happy to see him, and he supposed he couldn’t blame her. He hadn’t been back here, not once, not even to visit, and he’d given himself a lot of reasons over the years for why that was. But it wasn’t until now, until she was right in front of him, that he realized the real reason.
It was her. He hadn’t been back because if he’d set even one foot in this town, he’d have stayed. For her. And anything more than friends would never work with Hope; he had too much of his old man in him.
Also, she didn’t want you. She wanted Caleb.
Yeah, there was that.
Still, as he looked at her now, he was conscious that his heartbeat had gotten faster, a tightness coiling in his chest, a familiar, dark pulse in his blood.
She wasn’t the eighteen-year-old girl he’d last seen beside the bonfire that night, the auburn glints in her long dark hair gleaming in the firelight. That girl had always worn her heart on her sleeve, her pretty face open, and that night there had been nothing but hurt written all over it. And anger. The firelight had picked up the tears in her black-coffee eyes too, and he’d known he’d said the wrong thing. Offering to stay had been a mistake. Caleb was who she wanted, not him.
He’d always been able to read her, but that night he’d gotten it wrong. And even now, as he stared at her, he couldn’t tell what was going on in her head. Those eyes were still coffee-black, but there were walls behind them, and while that pretty, open face was still pretty, it wasn’t open anymore. She was guarded. Giving him the face most people in Deep River gave strangers—the impassive “I don’t know you from a bar of soap and I’m not interested in getting to know you either” face.
Her hair, though, that was the same. It wasn’t wild around her head the way it had been when she’d been a kid, but worn in a long, practical plait. Yet the same auburn lights gleamed in it, like fire in the dark heart of a stone.
She had on a red plaid flannel shirt—which on some level made him want to smile, since old Bill had always worn red plaid flannel—and practical jeans, and on the surface she didn’t look much like the old Hope Dawson from years ago.
But he’d seen the leap of anger in her eyes as she’d first met his gaze—and grief and something else he didn’t recognize. And it made him think that the old Hope was still there somewhere inside her.
You better pray she’s not. You don’t want to go there again, buddy.
No fear of that. He’d learned his lesson. But what he did need was someone he trusted to talk with about the news he was bringing. Someone who wouldn’t blab it instantly to the town at large and who could give him an unbiased opinion about where the town was at now and whether what he was going to tell them would cause trouble—and if so, what kind.
He’d learned a lot of things in the military and in the years afterward, getting Wild Alaska off the ground, not the least being that reconnaissance, preparation, and planning were key to the success of any mission, and he had a feeling he was going to need all of those now.
All of those things and Hope.
“Hey, Hope,” he said, since there was no point beating about the bush. “I need to talk to you.”
“No kidding.” She crossed her arms, drawing his gaze to the soft curves beneath the flannel of her shirt. Which wasn’t what he should have been thinking about, dammit. “Thirteen years, Silas. Thirteen years without any contact whatsoever and now you appear unannounced, in my bar, demanding to talk to me?” Her gaze roved over him in a long, leisurely, and very pointed survey, ending back at his face again. “Sorry, but that’s a big no from me.”
“I get it.” He held that stare because he’d always been a man who owned his mistakes. “And you have every right to be angry with me about it. But I need to talk to you right now, and it’s important. It’s about Caleb.”
Hope’s guarded stare didn’t so much as flicker, and from the way his back was prickling, everyone else in the bar was treating him to the same kind of attention.
He cursed silently. Arriving unannounced was always going to cause a commotion, but he hadn’t wanted too big a fuss made about it. People would talk, and before you knew it, all kinds of rumors would be circulating, from the government coming to grab all the land and make people homeless, to aliens landing and the world ending.
Sadly, in this case, all those rumors might end up being true. Though it wouldn’t be the government coming, it would be big oil. And the aliens could be seen to be his buddies—at least Damon was very alien to Alaska, that was for sure. And definitely the world as the people of Deep River knew it was going to end.
No one could stop it. All they could do was take the information and decide for themselves how they were going to deal with it.
Some of that must have communicated itself to Hope because she glanced over his shoulder at the suspiciously quiet bar, then let out a breath. “Okay, fine.” Her arms dropped, and she turned toward the door that led to the little office out back. “You have five minutes.”
He wouldn’t need five minutes. Two would be enough.
But he didn’t tell her that, rounding the bar and following her into the Moose’s office area.
It was small, full of cluttered shelves and one broken-down old filing cabinet. There was a desk shoved underneath the sole window that looked out over the main street, though the window was a stark black square now, night pressing in against the glass.
He had memories of this office back from when he, Caleb, and Hope had used the bar like their own personal playhouse and Bill had let them. Si had been fascinated by the animal heads stuck on the walls, in particular one of a stag that everyone called Steve for reasons that were never explained to him. Caleb had thought the heads creepy and had been afraid of them, but Si hadn’t. He was sure the spirit of the wild still lived in those glassy eyes, and he’d spent hours looking into them, imagining the lives of the animals they’d once been.
Seriously, he’d been an idiot kid.
Steve, he noted, was still in the office and still attached to the wall near the desk. But there was no spirit of the wild in his glassy eyes. Not now.
The magic was gone.
Hope pulled out the lone chair sitting under the desk and sat down, swiveling it till she was facing him. She’d kept her arms folded and there was an “impress me” look on her face. “Minutes are ticking, Silas. You’ve now got four and a half.”
Si dropped his duffel bag with a thud and stared back at her. “I get it. You’re angry. But trust me, this is too important to indulge in personal grievances right now, okay? You can talk about how mad you are at me later. This is about Caleb, and it affects the entire town.”
The look on her face flickered, and she shifted in her chair. “Okay, fine,” she said grudgingly. “What’s this all about, then?”
He saw no need for preliminaries. Might as well tell her straight out. “Cal’s will was read a couple of days ago. A couple of personal things he left to Morgan, but everything else he left to me, Damon, and Zeke. And I do mean everything, Hope. And that includes Deep River.”
There was a moment’s echoing silence, broken only by the sound of the ancient jukebox that someone must have put a quarter into, playing “Sweet Home Alabama” for what was probably the millionth time.
Hope’s expressionless mask rippled again, shock flickering through her dark eyes, letting him catch a glimpse of that wild, passionate eighteen-year-old. The one who used to make his heart beat faster, make him smile, who’d been his ray of sunshine after his mother had died.
But then, like a light switching off, the shock was gone, the wary, guarded look replacing it once more. She wore a lot of armor, this particular version of Hope, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.
“What do you mean ‘that includes Deep River’?” she asked carefully.
“I mean, all the land that encompasses the town is now ours, and that includes the private funds and investments the Wests use to pay for the running of it.”
Hope shook her head, as if she had difficulty processing it, which was fair enough, because he was still having difficulty himself even days later. “But…he can’t have left it to you and…whoever those other people are. What about Morgan?”
“He changed his will after he came out of the army. I didn’t know and neither did the other guys, and I have even less idea why he did it.”
“Why you?” Hope fired back. “Why those other two? And who are those other two, anyway? Have you told Morgan? Does she know?”
Morgan did know. She’d been at the lawyer’s office in Juneau, looking small and pale, her pretty strawberry-blond hair, so like her older brother’s, hanging lankly over her shoulders. She hadn’t said much as the lawyer explained Caleb’s will and Si remembered thinking that the one thing she didn’t look was surprised.
But she hadn’t stuck around for conversation after it was all over, and he hadn’t thought to ask her about it, not when he’d been so shell-shocked himself.
“Yes,” he said. “She knows. But, Hope, that’s not even why I’m here. There’s something more. Something that’s going to affect the entire town.”
“Like you owning all of it won’t? Si, I hate to be a downer on this but—”
“There’s oil under the town,” he interrupted flatly.
This time, her guarded expression didn’t just ripple; it fractured, her dark eyes going wide, her mouth, which he’d always fantasized about, opening. “What?”
“There’s oil under the town,” Si repeated. “Cal had some surveys done, and no, I didn’t know he was doing them. He didn’t tell a soul. But the results were clear. There’s a large reserve, and the whole damn town is sitting right on top of it.”
Hope blinked. “Uh…”
The look on her face now was one of absolute bewilderment and he knew the feeling. He’d had it the moment the lawyer had told him, since he’d had no idea Cal had had some surveys done. Hadn’t realized there was even a remote possibility of oil in his hometown.
But the remote possibility was now a reality, and there would be implications.
“Oil,” Hope said slowly. “Under the town.”
“Yeah.” Si lifted a hand and ran it through his wet hair. His clothes were wet too, but that didn’t bother him; he’d long become inured to physical discomfort. Life in Deep River had been physical, and life in the army hadn’t been much different—except for the rules. He’d always had a little difficulty with those.
She was shaking her head again. “So…what exactly does that mean?”
Si dropped his hand from his hair. “It could mean nothing. Or it could mean everything. It could change everyone’s lives here.”
“But how?”
“Mineral rights,” he said. “The whole town is leasehold, and every leaseholder can sell those rights entirely to an oil company. Or just sell the right to drill and take some of the profits for themselves.”
Hope’s eyes got rounder and rounder. “Every leaseholder? Every single one?”
“Yes.” The lawyer who’d explained it all to him, and which his subsequent research had backed up, had been very clear. “The Wests persuaded people to move into the town on the possibility of everyone keeping their own gold, so the mineral rights were written into the leases. But no one back then thought about oil.”
Hope shifted in her chair, and despite the seriousness of the conversation, he found himself glancing down at her legs, encased in blue denim. The jeans were tight, outlining the shape of her thighs and long, toned calves.
She’d always been athletic and fit, running in the bush with him and Caleb, playing knights and princes and princesses. They’d take it in turns to be the prince/princess and then the knight, with sticks as swords, fighting each other and the dragons that lived in the mountains. As a kid, she’d been so vital and full of life, a bright spark he’d been irresistibly drawn to in the last few months of his mother’s illness. And then she’d grown up into a willowy woman, with breasts and hips and thighs, and he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her.
Seemed like he still couldn’t.
Dammit. He didn’t want to be noticing this stuff. Not now. He’d thought it might be a possibility that he’d still be drawn to Hope, but he’d thought that his physical response to her wouldn’t be so instant and visceral. At least not after so long.
Apparently, that wasn’t the case.
“That’s insane,” she muttered, her gaze sweeping, unseeing, around the room. “I can’t even imagine…” She stopped and looked at him all of a sudden. “Does anyone know? I mean, you said they didn’t, but are you sure?”
Slowly, Si shook his head. “That’s why I’m here, Hope. Because nobody knows. And I have to tell them.”
Hope couldn’t think. Her brain felt as if someone had pulled it out of her head and pummeled it before putting it back in.
Silas just stood in front of her, a massive, silent presence.
She didn’t know how he managed to seem even bigger in her tiny office than he had out in the bar, but somehow he did.
He seemed even broader, even taller, his damp T-shirt pulling tight across the muscled expanse of his chest. Perhaps it was because she was sitting and he was standing, though why she was noticing his chest, she had no idea. Not when his chest had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what he’d just told her.
The town had new owners. Oil.
Oh God. Oil.
She took a shaky breath, staring up at him, her mind struggling with the implications, because there were so many implications. The town was owned by the Wests, but they had leased most of it to anyone who wanted to pay the nominal rents and live there. These days everyone paid with money, but sometimes people paid in furs or whatever else they managed to farm, trap, or fish. It had always worked because of the town’s founder, Jacob West, and his belief that everyone deserved a place to be. A place where they felt safe and where they belonged. A home. And it was for that reason that the Wests had always refused to sell the land. Because while the Wests owned it, no one could muscle in and do things that would change the essential nature of the town.
Deep River might be literally in the middle of nowhere, but it was a haven and a place of welcome to everyone who lived there. Everyone was equal, and everyone had a say in the running of the place.
Except that was possibly going to change.
“You have to tell them?” she echoed blankly, trying to come to terms with the fact that somehow Caleb had willed the town to Silas and two other people she didn’t know. To strangers. Outsiders. When Morgan was there, his sister and a West…
What on earth had Cal been thinking?
And that’s not even the worst part.
No, the worst part was the oil discovery.
A cold shiver went down her back. The people of Deep River worked hard for their living, and some people had more than others, but no one was hugely rich—or at least, if they were, no one knew about it. But oil coming to town? That would mean money, and money always changed things.
“We can’t tell them,” she said before she could stop herself. “Can we not tell them? Can’t we just keep it a secret?”
Silas frowned. “No, of course we can’t hide it. People have a right to know.”
“But once they do…” She stopped, took a breath. “Things might get very difficult.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He lifted a hand, ran it through his damp hair once again, the black strands gleaming in the light. “Believe me, I’ve done nothing but go over the implications of this since I heard about it. But the town has always been about the people, Hope, and you know that. We can’t keep something like this a secret.”
He was right, and she knew keeping it a secret was wrong, but fear and uncertainty were twisting deep inside her.
Ruthlessly, she shoved them aside the way she did with all her uncomfortable emotions these days, eyeing him instead. “What would you know about the town? You haven’t been back for thirteen years.”
His green-gold eyes glittered with what looked like anger. He’d always been a man of deep emotions, she remembered. He kept them far beneath the surface, but they were there, burning like lava inside a volcano.
The thought of Silas’s deeply buried emotions made a shiver move through her, the way it used to do when she’d been a teenager. Back then, she hadn’t known what that shiver meant, only known that there was something about Silas’s reserve that got under her skin, made her feel uncomfortable. She’d always preferred Caleb’s ready smiles and approachability. He’d been so easy to be with. He’d never made her feel like she wanted to crawl out of her skin like Silas did.
Seemed like that hadn’t changed either.
Perhaps baiting him is not a good idea.
Perhaps sitting down was also not a good idea, not with him looming over her like the mountains loomed above the town.
She pushed herself up and out of the chair, moving over to the desk and yanking open one of the drawers where she kept her malt whisky Harry had given her. The most recent addition to the town—and recent being five years ago—Harry was an escapee from Florida, of all places, who loved the outdoors and wanted to live a homesteading lifestyle along with his girlfriend, Gwen. He had a still and made a pretty decent drop. It wouldn’t win any medals, but at least it didn’t take the surface layer of your throat off as it went down, unlike Lloyd’s moonshine.
Hope pulled out the bottle, found a teacup that didn’t have the remains of old tea in it, and poured in a splash. Then, holding on to the bottle, she turned and held the teacup out to Silas.
He glanced at it, then at her, then took it without a word. The teacup was bone china and delicate, and it should have looked ridiculous in Silas’s large hands, but it didn’t. He held it carefully by the rim and took a sip of the whisky.
Hope, meanwhile, took a gulp direct from the bottle. “So, what’s your plan?” she asked as the good stuff went down, warming her insides, banishing the cold grip of fear. “A town meeting where you say, ‘hey everyone, me and two complete strangers are the new owners of the town, and by the way there’s oil, so have at it’?”
Silas’s expression didn’t change, his intense gaze unrelenting. “Damon and Zeke were in the army with me and Cal. They’re good men. I’d risk my life for them and have, and so did Cal. But the will is clear; the town must continue to run the way it always has. We can’t sell any of the land, even if we wanted to. And let’s be clear.” Gold gleamed deep in his eyes. “We don’t want to. What we want is to get back to our business and leave the town to get on with running itself.”
She didn’t doubt him, not even for a second. It might have been thirteen years since she’d seen him, but she knew Silas Quinn. He’d always been a man of his word, a man of honor, and she could understand why Cal had thought to leave Deep River to him.
His two buddies, on the other hand… Yeah, that was a completely different story.
Another pang of grief hit her at the thought of Cal. He hadn’t said a word to her about being in business with his buddies the last time he’d visited. All he’d mentioned was that he was flying, and she hadn’t asked further about where or why. Perhaps she should have, considering how he’d died.
“What business?” She pushed herself up to sit on the desktop, deciding to leave the question of what to do with the town for another couple of minutes.
“It’s called Wild Alaska Aviation. We have a few planes, a couple of choppers too. Running supplies up in the bush, transporting hunters and tourists—that kind of thing. We’re thinking of branching out into wilderness tours as well, since tourism is becoming a big earner.”
She didn’t want to be interested in what he’d been doing the time he’d been away, yet despite herself, Hope was intrigued. It was annoying.
She took another swig out of the whisky bottle. “So where are these so-called buddies? Are they here too?”
“No.” Si sipped from his teacup, his expression unreadable. “We decided it was better for me to come alone, since this is my hometown and we weren’t sure of what kind of reception we’d get. Damon’s in Juneau, looking after the business, and Zeke is…” There was a pause, and he glanced down at his teacup. “Having a few…difficulties.”
There was a note in his voice that made Hope want to ask more questions, but asking about the doings of a couple of strangers didn’t seem all that important right now. Not given the news that Silas had brought with him.
Oil. Hell.
She lifted the bottle and took another long sip, conscious of the tension in the silence. It never used to be like that between them. Silas wasn’t much of a talker, and it had never bothered her. She’d once found it restful.
At least, until she’d turned sixteen and then things had changed between the three of them, and she hadn’t found it so restful anymore.
Silas drained the rest of the whisky in the teacup, and Hope found herself staring, her gaze somehow drawn to the strong column of his neck and the movement of his throat as he swallowed.
Something stretched inside her, like a lazy cat turning over in its sleep.
She looked away quickly, uncomfortable with the feeling.
Silas put the empty teacup gently down on the desk. “Thanks for the drink.”
“You want some more?” She lifted the bottle. “It’s Harry’s finest.”
“No, thank you.” His gaze settled on her. “You got a room free? I’m going to need a place to stay for a few days.”
She blinked at him. Of course he would. The lease on the property Silas’s father had owned had been signed over to a couple from Anchorage after Joshua died. So naturally he’d have nowhere to go.
Yet the thought of Silas staying at the Moose made her feel…unsettled. Though she couldn’t think why.
And even though she didn’t really want him here, there was no good reason to refuse. She could say that all the rooms were full, but they both knew that was a lie. The Moose only got full in winter, when the hunters and trappers came.
She was still trying to think of excuses when the office door opened and Axel put his head around it. His gaze flicked over Silas and then settled on her. “Carrie wants a cosmo. I told her we didn’t do cocktails, but she’s saying you made her one last night.”
Hope hadn’t made her one last night, and Axel knew that. He just wanted an excuse to see what was happening, and no doubt everyone in the bar had egged him on to interrupt them.
Good reason to end this conversation and now, because her head was threatening to explode with all the stuff Silas had told her.
Hope glared at Axel. “I’ll be out in a minute.” She tugged open another drawer in her desk and groped around in it, finding one of the room keys and pulling it out. “Here.” She tossed the key over to Silas, who caught it easily. “Room on the end. The honeymoon suite.”
Silas nodded, then picked up his duffel bag. He turned and gave Axel one hard, direct look. Instantly, the other man filled the doorway, lounging as if he was perfectly comfortable and planned to keep lounging there all night.
Hope rolled her eyes. “I’d like to say I love the scent of testosterone in the mornings, but it’s not morning, it’s night, and I’ve had enough male bullshit to last a lifetime. Axel. Haven’t you got something else to do?”
The bouncer was staring hard at Silas. “Nope.”
Hope sighed. Her life was spent managing difficult people of both sexes, both behind the bar and in front of it, and after today, she was kind of done. She opened her mouth to call Axel off when he abruptly turned and walked away.
She stared at Silas in surprise, unsure what had just happened. But all he did was shoulder his bag and give her one last glance, the gold depths of his eyes glittering. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
Then he strode out, leaving her alone with her whisky bottle and the sense that things were going to change, and not for the better.
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