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That had sounded an awful lot like a goodbye.
She’d instantly tried to call back but got no answer. And she hadn’t heard from him since. His plane vanished off the face of the earth, taking him with it.
Had he crashed?
Bree scraped her nail against the frost gathering on the inside of the windowpane. It was a cold night. The dangerous kind of cold that got down into your bones and settled. Dr. Will was out there somewhere, possibly injured, and his sons didn’t care.
Why was she surprised? She’d heard rumors about the Hunter brothers and none of them were good, but the ones about Ellis were gleefully harsh. Even fifteen years after he left Alaska, the people around here still loved to gossip about him.
Womanizer. Unambitious. Aimless.
“A restless soul,” Dr. Will once fondly called him. “Kid’s too much like me for his own good and he doesn’t even realize it.”
Well, restless or not, he should care, dammit. He. Should. Care.
She grabbed her phone and found Ellis’s number in her call log. Before she could think too much about what she was doing, she tapped out a quick text then powered down the phone so she wouldn’t see his reply. She returned it to the end table and walked back to the window. In the dog yard, several of her huskies played in the swirling snow. Norte pounced after the flakes while his daughter and lead boss bitch, Aleu, looked regally down from her perch on top of her house.
Norte was still as playful as a puppy despite his advancing age. At ten years old, this was supposed to be his retirement year— one last Iditarod before he went from sled dog to house pet— but the race was only a month away. With Dr. Will’s disappearance, they’d have to withdraw. She couldn’t focus on all the work that went into preparing for the race knowing he was out there somewhere, possibly in danger.
She sketched a frowning face into the window ice with her fingernail and watched the frost immediately reform in the marks she’d made.
After a winter of training and qualifying races, her dogs were all in fabulous shape. They would easily get her to the remote spot where Dr. Will’s plane disappeared. In fact, they’d relish the challenge. So, all of the preparation would still work in her favor— just not for the race. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t disappointed. She loved mushing. Loved the physical and mental challenge of it. Loved that it was just her and her dogs against nature for hundreds of miles.
But she owed Dr. Will. He’d saved Norte’s life once and, in many ways, he’d also saved hers. Now he needed her to save him and she wouldn’t let him down.
Ellis and his brothers didn’t care, but so what? She did. And she was going to figure out what happened to Dr. William Hunter and his plane.
* * *
Los Angeles, California
After a clean bill of health from the vet— thankfully, no lasting harm from Mr. Cavendish’s kick— and a trip to the pet store, Ellis took Peanut home to his RV. Unsurprisingly, she was not impressed with her new digs.
“I can still take you to the pound,” he warned her.
He swore she turned her nose up at him as she pranced away in her little pink sweater with the glittery hearts all over it.
Why, for the love of God, pink? Weren’t dogs partially color blind? But, no, when he offered the reasonable black t-shirt with the diamond skull on it, she trotted over to the shelf and found the pink heart monstrosity. Same with the collar. Black? No way. She wanted the purple rhinestones. Food? No Puppy Chow for Peanut. Apparently, she’d only eat organic. And the dog bed had to be ergonomic memory foam.
What, was she an heiress in another life? Peanut Hilton. Jesus.
His credit card wept when they checked out. Training dogs for a living had its perks—he could make his own schedule, live wherever he wanted, and he was always outside, not tied to a desk— but it didn’t exactly pay well. Peanut was going to bankrupt him with her taste for the finer things in doggie life.
Once he got her settled in her memory foam bed on the couch, he desperately tried drinking himself into a stupor. He wanted to forget the phone call from Brielle Ives. Forget his dad. Forget Alaska.
But two hours later, he was awake again with nothing to show for his efforts except a headache. Peanut lay curled up in her new bed, a blanket tucked around her fragile body, snoring daintily.
Lucky animal.
What he wouldn’t give for the sweet oblivion of sleep.
And here he was envying a dog who wore fuzzy pink sweaters.
He bypassed the beer in his fridge for water— didn’t need more alcohol; he wasn’t his father— and pushed through the screen door of his RV.
Why the hell would he leave this to go back to Alaska?
The sand under his bare feet still held the warmth from the day’s sun. The sky was clear, the moon a bright orb against the fading ink of night, casting a splash of white across the quiet ocean. Come morning, the hardcore surfers would be out there bobbing in the tide. Not a single iceberg to be seen for thousands of miles.
