Page 17 of An Alaskan Wedding (Alaskan Grooms 1)

The gruffness in his voice startled her. He wasn’t warm and fuzzy in the slightest. He seemed...angry. Perhaps he was upset because town resources had been used to locate her. He’d mentioned a rescue team. Surely that wasn’t cheap. And from everything she’d heard, Love was a town struggling to stay afloat.

She couldn’t help but feel a little crushed. Steeling herself against the pain caused by Boone’s behavior, she focused on getting back to a warm cabin and her comfy blankets. Investing herself in a temperamental town sheriff was dumb. And there were many things people might call her, but dumb wasn’t one of them.

* * *

For most of his adult life, Boone had been firmly in control. Of his career. Of his siblings. And of his emotions. The one time

he’d thrown caution to the wind and tumbled over the edge had been when he’d fallen in love with Diana. Although it had been an absolute train wreck, it taught him to listen to his inner voice. Something was telling him not to trust Grace. And he was now caught between a rock and a hard place because he liked her. He really, really liked Grace Corbett.

Suddenly, it felt as if he was out on that ledge again, teetering between safety and the danger zone.

When he’d realized Grace wasn’t in the cave with Jasper he’d been in the grip of a gut-wrenching fear that had threatened to swallow him up whole. It hadn’t let up on him until he’d spotted her sitting on the log with her eyes closed, as if she was an ice queen frozen in time. Joy had risen up inside him at the sight of her. And he didn’t quite know how to process that wealth of feeling. It was making him feel a little cranky.

Lately, he’d felt as if God was testing him. All the relationships in his life were at a crossroads. Honor wasn’t speaking to him. His brother Liam had holed himself up in a little bubble where nothing and no one could reach him. And his relationship with Cameron was still fractured. His grandfather seemed to have aged suddenly in the past few years, and he was scared of losing him.

And now, out of the blue, his heart was beginning to open up again. All because of Grace. Beautiful, mysterious Grace, who seemed as ill-suited to Love as he would be to the concrete, high-rise world she’d come from. But sometimes, he reckoned, the things that didn’t seem to make sense were the very things that turned out to be wonderful.

When they reached the edge of the woods, he walked quickly over to his car and opened the door while holding Grace against him with his other arm. As soon as the door was open, he set her down in the front seat and buckled her up. He opened the back door for Kona and let out a whistle. Kona ran out of the woods and made a beeline for his car, jumping right inside.

After a few minutes of rummaging around in the truck, he settled himself into the driver’s seat. He turned toward Grace and covered her up with a fleece blanket. Her teeth were chattering. He struggled against the impulse to cradle her in his arms and give her some of his body warmth. Getting her the medical attention she needed was his main priority.

“Cover yourself with this blanket. You’ll warm up in a few minutes.”

“W-where are we going?” she asked as she gazed out the window. No doubt she’d realized they weren’t heading back in the direction of town.

Boone cast a quick glance in Grace’s direction. Her lips were still a purplish hue, and she was shivering like crazy. He knew all too well that the frigid temperatures in Alaska could easily lead to hypothermia. He could head back to town and have Grace seen at the clinic, but he knew of a better, quicker solution.

“I’m taking you to get checked out by a doctor. He lives a few miles from here.”

Grace frowned. “Way out here, so far from town?”

Boone nodded. “He’s had a rough time of it lately. His wife was killed in an accident. He’s raising his son all by himself and not practicing at the moment. But don’t worry...he’ll treat you.”

“How can you be sure of that? It sounds like he wants to be left alone.”

“He does want to be left alone, but I can’t stand by and let that happen. A long time ago I vowed to take care of all my siblings, no matter what. He may be Dr. Liam Prescott, but he’s still my little brother.”

Chapter Six

A long time ago I vowed to take care of all my siblings, no matter what.

Just when she’d been about to write Boone off as a moody jerk, he went and said something that yanked at her heartstrings. This man was a protector, all the way down to his silver-tipped boots. What she wouldn’t give to have her own brother feel that strongly about her. There wasn’t a single memory she had of Brian protecting or caring for her. And she wasn’t exaggerating in her belief that he didn’t care whether she was in Alaska or Timbuktu or the Sahara.

Grace turned toward Boone, studying his strong face in profile. His rugged features were tense. A tiny vein thrummed above his eye while his hands were tightly gripping the steering wheel.

“Siblings? I assumed it was just you and Cameron. How many do you have?”

“Three. Cameron. Liam. And my sister, Honor.” Boone kept his eyes focused on the road. The snow was coming down even faster now, and it seemed to be sticking.

“Honor,” she said, wrapping the blanket ever tighter around her body. “That’s a pretty name.”

His expression softened. “It suits her. She just graduated from college last spring. She’s working on her master’s now in wildlife biology.”

“Are you close?” Although she’d always wanted to have a tight relationship with her older brother, it had never materialized. She envied siblings who actually had warm feelings for one another and strong ties that bound them together.

A sigh slipped past his lips. “We used to be, before I sent her away to school in Minnesota. Now she’d rather eat glass than be in a room with me.”

Boone’s tone hinted at a sorrow he most likely kept hidden away from the world. She recognized it instantly. It existed right under the surface where it couldn’t be seen. Seems they did have something in common after all.

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