Page 4 of Load Bearing
The group dispersed for lunch when they got to good stopping points and Trixie took a brief break to devour a sandwich and some chips. She sat on her truck tailgate and looked at the building with satisfaction. Sometimes, construction felt like an unending hurry-up-and-wait. She was at the convenience of the excavator operator she’d hired, and then the concrete company. Weather had stopped work for a week. The equipment broke, or got stolen, or even deliberately fouled. Now, finally, there was some visible progress and she felt like they had a fighting chance to hit their goals.
When she heard the crunch of tires on gravel, Trixie immediately assumed that it was some of the crew. Maybe they’d taken her little speech of inspiration to heart and were coming back early to get things done. She crumpledthe wrapper for her chips and tossed it into her lunch bag before she reached for her tool belt.
But to her surprise, it was an unfamiliar truck, emblazoned with a snarling bear on the door.
It took her a moment to remember the new name of the security firm she’d hired. Grizzly Protection Services, which seemed pretentious, and the man who swung out of the cab actually looked a little like a grizzly. He had a thick, scruffy beard and a scowl that it couldn’t hide.
To Trixie’s surprise, he was wearing a suit. Who wore a suit to a worksite in rural Alaska? Her opinion of him plummeted as he picked his way across the rough gravel towards her. He was even carrying a briefcase.
“I’m looking for a Mr. Pat Talon,” he called as he approached.
Trixie buckled the tool belt around her waist and sighed. “I’m Pat,” Trixie said. She had gotten in the habit of using the name for contract applications because she got far fewer unseen rejections with a male name. “It’s short for Patricia, but you can call me Trixie.”
But now that she had a good look at him, he could call her anything he liked.
Trixie didn’t think that she would ever swoon for someone in a suit, but that was one handsome hunk of man in his wildly inappropriate clothing and face fluff. He was built enough that he wouldn’t have looked out of place in Carhartts and ratty T-shirt that was the usual worksite uniform; if he had a desk job, he clearly compensated for it by working out.
Trixie thought he wouldn’t look out of place with nothing at all and was surprised by the flush of heat that ran through her at the idea of it.
He scowled at her as if she had insulted him by being awoman in charge of a construction site and Trixie told herself that he wasn’t hotter for being a chauvinist. “You here to give me a quote for some security?”
3
HUNTER
Hunter’s first disappointment was finding that he was going to have to drive to Tok, especially when he realized where it was.
The second disappointment was that they gave him a company truck instead of letting him rent something faster and sleeker.
“Oh, you wouldn’t be able to drive fast anyway,” Orson laughed. “Frost heaves.”
It sounded like some kind of frat boy challenge, but Hunter quickly discovered that frost heaves had nothing to do with iced drinks or vomit and everything to do with a crumbling roller coaster road. For a state that only had a few highways, they weren’t in great shape.
It was an eye-opening trip with impressive vistas and a lot of trees, but the weather was poor, and the promised mountains were shrouded in clouds. Hunter told himself he wasn’t on a sight-seeing expedition anyway.
Hunter usually liked solitude, but he found himself yearning for someone to share the trip with. His bear didn’t understand the quips he wanted to make about thestate of the road or the fact that the rest stops didn’t have running water.
It might have been more fun with a companion, but Orson hadn’t offered one, and Hunter certainly wasn’t going to ask. Hunter wasn’t there to have fun, anyway.
He left at six-thirty in the morning and still wasn’t at the job site until after noon, tired from the long, grueling drive. He had checked the driving estimate that his GPS gave him, but hadn’t really believed it. The journey was complicated by several grueling stops for dusty, noisy road construction.
He frowned as he finally turned off the highway onto a winding gravel road. There were big hand-painted signs at the turnoff with crooked lettering: SAVE THE SALMON. DEVELOPMENT IS DEATH.
The road opened onto a gravel pad with a silver travel trailer and a half-built structure surrounded by a pit. A single beat up pickup was backed up to it, and a figure wearing a hardhat sat on the tailgate eating.
Hunter checked his watch. He was an hour earlier than Orson had scheduled him and he hadn’t stopped to eat along the way.
This is right, his bear said, and Hunter was suddenly aware of an unexpected hum beneath his hunger.
Sometimes, instinct was a flash of warning or a gut feeling of unrest that Hunter had learned to listen to. Other times, it was an urge that might not follow logic and couldn’t be ignored. (It had once convinced him to get up at night and catch Orson trying to set off fireworks that probably would have left him with no fingers.)
Now, instinct was a feeling of contentment and rightness that Hunter had never experienced before, pulling him like a fishing line straight for the person who was standing to greet him.
He was supposed to be here in Alaska. He was supposed to take this job. He was meant to be right here, in this moment, meeting…her?
“I’m looking for a Mr. Pat Talon,” he said in confusion.
She was shorter than he was by a head, which still meant she was a tall woman, and she was buckling a tool belt at her waist. Stiff Carhartts couldn’t hide the curve of her hips. Her arms were obviously strong under a simple T-shirt emblazoned with what Hunter guessed was a band logo that he wasn’t familiar with. She met his gaze with a look of amusement. “I’m Pat. It’s short for Patricia, but you can call me Trixie.”
