Page 41 of Arctic Panda's Secret Mate
Alice and Graham, a big blond guy who hadn’t said three words, had already taken off on skis, but Haisley led Tristan around to the back of the garage for snow shoes.
“I feel like an idiot,” he said, when he’d strapped them on over his boots and taken a few wide-legged steps.
“Then we’ll be idiots together,” Haisley said, clinching on her own. “Make sure they are good and tight. There’s nothing as unpleasant as stepping out of a shoe and endingup knee-deep in snow.” Tristan gave another tug on the strap.
“Where are we going?” he asked, when Haisley led him along the ski trail. “Why aren’t we using skis?”
“Because skis can’t go where we are!” Haisley called over her shoulder. “Wait and see!”
She led him a half mile downhill along the ski trail, then turned off into the forest. The trees were mostly shriveled hardy black spruce, twisted and covered in snow. They were down between the hills now, and although the sky was bright blue above them, there was no sunlight cast in the valley. “The bottom of this draw is a swamp in the summer,” Haisley pointed out. “You couldn’t walk a hundred feet without being wet to the knees. And the mosquitos would suck you dry before you got there.”
“Are they really that bad?” Tristan asked. He was bigger than her, and frequently had to duck under low-hanging branches, sometimes scattering snow onto himself.
“Maybe worse. It’s not so bad up at the chalet because we’re up in a clear area that gets some breeze and sun. You get to like the smell of bug dope.”
Tristan chuckled. “Bug dope?”
“Mosquito repellent,” Haisley clarified. “Don’t you have mosquitos in Florida?”
“I lived in the city,” Tristan explained. “The pests were rats and panhandlers.”
“We have big pests, too. There, those holes in the snow? A moose was just here.”
“I would have guessed that was a person,” Tristan said, gazing along the broken path.
“Too big,” Haisley said. “And highly unlikely that they’d be going across the trail like that. You can see where it stopped to browse on those willows.”
“You know a lot about this area,” Tristan said. “Did you grow up here?”
“In Anchorage, aka Metropolis, Alaska. I came up to Fairbanks for an arctic biology degree.”
They talked about college for a while, comparing degrees they didn’t get. “I realized that I could get further faster in trade school,” Tristan said. “And after a couple of years working for a general contractor, I got the offer to go to Shifting Sands Resort.”
“You really love it there, don’t you?”
“I like having a place where I can be my whole self,” Tristan said after a thoughtful moment. “I don’t have to pretend to be weaker than I am, or slower. I don’t have to be careful about what I say or do because I’m keeping secrets.”
Haisley’s heart hurt. She’d only thought about the fun parts of being a shifter, she hadn’t really considered how alien it might make him feel among normal people. Was asking him to come to Alaska evenfair? But was it fair that she should go to an island where almost everyone but her was a shifter andshewas the odd one out? She didn’t think that Mr. Barnum would be into letting her do a season on-season off sort of arrangement. And the plane tickets to and from Costa Rica would be astronomical anyway.
The trail started going steeply uphill and the trees got bigger and further apart.
“Is it much further?” Tristan asked.
“Why? Are you tired? Big shifter like you running out of steam?” Haisley couldn’t resist teasing.
“No,” Tristan said, grinning back from behind the frost on his scarf. “I just didn’t want to run out of time to make love to you before dinner.”
Haisley’s cheeks heated. “We’re almost there,” she promised.
They were both panting by the time they got to the crest of the hill and Haisley was delighted by the way Tristan sucked his breath in. “Wow.”
Wowwas right.
The view down the valley was spectacular. The sky was clear blue overhead, but deep gray clouds were gathering on the far horizon. They had not yet obscured the white-capped mountains that jutted above the near hills. Tristan and Haisley had hiked high enough that the sunlight was striking all the snow-covered trees around them, and they were in a sparkling, magical grove of birches. There were chickadees and redpolls, twittering and fluttering in little flocks between the trees. Overhead, a pair of ravens were chasing each other, and somewhere, far off, a squirrel was protesting a trespasser—possibly them.
“This is one of my favorite places,” Haisley confessed. “I come here any time I need to remind myself why I live here and have this job.”
“Haisley…”
