Page 61 of Jackson's Redemption
I wrapped a robe around my waist seeking the kitchen and coffee and stopped when I saw the note on the small, round table near the front door.
Cautiously, I picked it up, really having no idea what he might have written.
Email me your schedule [email protected]. I’ll be back in two weeks.
J
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
He was coming back. Last night wasn’t the end.
A smile twisted around my lips.
It was just the beginning.
I looked at the email address again. Warner. That’s who he’d once been to me. Jack Warner. A tall, skinny kid a couple years behind me in school who had helped me out when I fell and hurt my ankle. I remembered, at the time, thinking he was too young for me, but that one day he’d probably grow up to be hot.
I wasn’t wrong.
A chance meeting that might have cost him two years of his life.
There were times I didn’t understand why he didn’t hate me more. I was only glad he didn’t.
* * *
Two weeks later
Jackson
“Hey, Doogie,” I said as I threw my duffel into the back of his Cessna.
“Jackson. Going back to Nome?”
I nodded. There was no point in going into more detail. I had booked the flight. It was early in the afternoon. Kate would finish her shift at 7:00 pm tonight. I planned to be inside her by 7:10.
“Man, I’ll tell you what. I’ve been doing some business with you guys this year. Flying all these ladies up and back. You heading to Nome again. Let me guess, there’s a woman there, too?”
I grunted and took my seat in the rear of the plane.
“I’ll take that to mean a yes,” he said cheerily. “I’ll tell you another thing, we keep bringing all these ladies up here to Hope’s Point, it’s going to us turn into a regular cosmopolitan city. Shit, next thing you know they’ll be building a nail salon and a Starbucks.”
I snorted as he took his place in the cockpit. I didn’t think that was going to happen, but he wasn’t wrong. Things were changing. There was new life in town. Some had a desire to see things grow. Others wanted to go back to their isolation.
Mountain Man, I was sure, was getting freaked by all the new people. The other day, he’d brought into town a moose he’d hunted and gutted to sell Bud the extra meat. He’d met Shelby for the first time. She’d spent about thirty minutes talking to him before she finally asked him if he could hear her.
I almost laughed.
Almost.
Now, Ark was in it deep with women troubles and Cal, well, he wasn’t speaking to us, so it was hard to know what he was making of his situation. It wasn’t like I had minded keeping to myself. Licking my own wounds for those weeks Kate had been gone. If they had noticed a difference in me when I’d returned to my shift last week, no one had said a thing.
Angel had asked why I was leaving again. Why I was headed back to Nome. I told him what I would have told anybody else.
That it was my business.
But he’d looked at me hard and nodded his head as if he understood something about me I didn’t. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want anyone to know my secrets.
And right now, Kate was that. My guilty secret because I knew the guys might think I was going after something that would burn me in the end.
