Page 17 of Bearing North
She raised an eyebrow at him and Orson cataloged that gesture to use if he ever needed to beNew Orsonagain. It managed to be both threatening, funny,andexasperated. He paid the bill with a company card and left a generous tip.
She didn’t offer him the truck keys, and he didn’t offer to drive.
The trip to Fairbanks was a hundred times more pleasant than the day before. The sky was a shade of clear blue Orson wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before, dotted with fluffy white clouds that looked straight out of romantic classical paintings. It was surprisingly hot, and the air conditioning in the truck didn’t work, so they drove with windows down. Orson was tempted to put his head out like a happy dog and howl.
It wasn’t just the sunshine and the mountain views, though those were still quite grand.
It wasn’t even that he’d gotten laid and had dopamine still coursing through his veins.
It was that Alex wasn’t blowing smoke up his nose anymore, and he didn’t have to hide who he was. She didn’t giggle. Orson didn’t grunt. He asked every question he was dying to ask, and she told him flat out whenever the question was dumb.
She was hissoulmate, and she was smart, sexy, and strong.
Orson sang to his favorite songs without shame and coaxed her into the choruses she knew. She had a husky voice and good pitch. They could probably take down the house on karaoke night with the right song.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” she warned. “We’re coming up on North Pole, and you’ll probably see Santa Claus.”
“TheNorth Pole?” Orson had been concentrating on the road map past Fairbanks. “Seriously?”
“It’s a little city called North Pole, and they take Christmas very, veryseriously.”
They didn’t leave the highway and didn’t have to. There was a twenty-foot plastic statue of Santa Claus in front of a red and white striped building, and the street light posts were painted like candy canes. The motif continued with curious Christmas-themed buildings and businesses along the highway.
“One of the city council members legally changed his name to Santa Claus a few years ago. He later ran for Congress.”
Orson gave Alex a suspicious sideways look, trying to decide if she was pulling his leg. She didn’t give her terrible giggle, only raised her near eyebrow at him. Was it a joke? He couldn’t tell, and it drove him crazy in the very best way.
14
ALEX
Alex had grown up in Fairbanks, and even though she called Anchorage home now, she always felt nostalgic as the familiar landmarks came up driving north. Eielson Air Force Base had its boundaries delineated with an imposing chain link fence. A fighter jet was landing as they drove past the airfield, and Orson craned his head to watch it. There was the flood project, several acres of landscaped water storage space overgrown with willows and alders. They passed the turn-off for Chena Lakes, where Alex had gone to plenty of parties that didn’t check ID before you got a drink from the cooler.
Then they got to North Pole, and Orson’s eyes all but popped from his head. It was impossible to explain the little city with its absurdity and exuberance. Alex relished watching him exclaim over the twenty-foot plastic Santa, the Christmas-themed lumberyard, and all the relevant street names. It was an odd juxtaposition with the sunshine and heat.
Alex had thought he was hot but hateful when they left Valdez, and alpha jerks didn’t entice her. But enthusiastic Orson, cracking constant jokes and singing along with the music…he was funny, smart,andsexy and she feared for her heart.
Forever,he’d said.My mate.His possessiveness was hot, but his happiness made her weak.
Alex could take bubbly lessons from him, she thought. And shewantedto take bubbly lessons from him like she hadn’t from Sandra. She wanted the secret to his effervescent joy. She wanted to bottle it and sip happily like a bee drinking nectar.
Oh, right. He was also abear.
Her brain kept skittering off that fact like it was too much to deal with.
Itwastoo much to deal with.
But he was a bear, she was his mate, and she still didn’t know what that meant.
Alex no longer feared that he was going to fire her, but it was ridiculously unprofessional to have slept with him on his second day as her boss, and she still wasn’t sure where they were going to land in terms of authority. Was she going to slide in as his second in command? Could she even do that? She had a lot of pride and stubbornness and was used to giving orders, not taking them. She hadhatedherself skipping around the office pretending to be sweet and non-threatening.
Andthatwas the Alex that he’d declared as his mate. He hadn’t complained about her comparative quiet and coolness on the trip from Tok, but he was also pretty busy singing and making dad jokes about the road names.
“Orson…”
“Are we going back to Anchorage?” he asked in alarm, turning to look at a sign they’d just passed.
“No, this is just the cut-off that goes around town,” Alex explained, turning onto the offramp. “Our office is on the west side.”
