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 ofthe 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 wantedto 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 laThe 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 mymitten 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’tstoppedscreaming. Asscorching 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 creasesthe 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?”
