Page 2 of Alaskan Blackout

He couldn’t have said why her seeming amusement at his expense nettled. It didn’t matter what some stranger thought of his cowboy get-up in a bar at the edge of nowhere.

But before he could inform her that he was the brother of the man who owned the place and that he’d come for business, not a drink, she shoved the tackle box across the bar to a big bear of a guy Quinton hadn’t noticed come in. Probably because he’d been too busy staring at the hot fisherwoman-server.

“Thanks for letting me try the gear, Ryker,” she said to the grizzled giant, who took the tackle box from her and set it on the floor next to a stool where he lowered himself. “I caught six coho in an hour trolling about two miles an hour using the ten-pound downrigger. Between the four of us we had the coolers full in a few hours.”

She slid one of the menus from her stack toward Quinton, then stuffed the rest of them into a wooden bracket beside a digital cash register before picking up a clean rag and wiping down the surface of the bar in front of him. As if preparing for him to take a seat there.

He shrugged out of his coat and laid it on one of the stools while taking a seat on another, waiting to reclaim the woman’s attention. She was a blur of movement as she cut limes to refill her supply, the knife blade flashing between swipes along a plastic cutting board.

“This storm rolling in stirred ’em up,” the patron with the tackle box at his feet remarked. “And you can borrow my gear anytime. I made twenty bucks off my bet with Fletch that you would have the best haul this morning.”

“And Fletch bet against me?” The woman laughed. “I’ll remember that next time he tries to sweet-talk me into running a tab for him.”

When the lime slices were finished, she shrugged her shoulders out of the straps for her waders, allowing them to droop alongside her hips. Once the neoprene fabric pooled at her waist, she had to fold the material over itself a few times before she could tie the straps into a makeshift belt.

Revealing a narrow waist and standout curves discernible even under the thick fleece hoodie she still wore.

Not that he should be noticing when he hadn’t come here for pleasure. He needed to do right by his half brother, who’d been shortchanged by their dad. Nothing could interfere with that.

“Excuse me.” Quinton leaned forward to recapture the server’s attention. “I’m looking for Clayton Reynolds. Is he around?”

The woman’s flurry of activity ceased as her gaze swung back to him. Her hands fell away from the knot she’d been making as she stepped closer to the bar to face him.

“Who wants to know?” Her chin tilted.

Defensive. Challenging.

And for one unwise second, he wished he wasn’t here for business. Because being the center of this woman’s notice stirred something inside him that didn’t often awaken.

“Quinton Kingsley,” he returned evenly, heart pounding harder at her new regard. “His brother.”

A smile slid over her features before she bit off a sharp bark of laughter. She tossed her head back, her windblown mass of copper strands dancing along her shoulders as she gave voice to a kind of dark mirth.

“Any particular reason that amuses you?” he asked when she seemed to have recovered herself.

“Yeah, there is, in fact,” she shot back, settling her elbows on the bar to face him. Her voice didn’t sound amused any longer. “I’ve been fielding phone call after phone call from you and your family for months, trying to tell you that Clayton wants no part of Kingsleyanything. Yet here you are in the flesh, the Montana rancher coming all the way to Alaska, fresh from riding the range, just so I can tell you to your face.” She leaned closer still, so near now that he could see the details of her irises in her eyes. They weren’t just one color. There were dark patches beside light ones, a complex network of shades. “Clayton.” She jabbed the bar with her index finger. “Doesn’t.” Another jab. “Want. To. Be. Found.”

Foreboding washed over him at her certainty. Or maybe it was the fact that she seemed to know Clayton so well that disturbed him.

Was this woman—the bold redhead that made Quinton’s blood run hot—a wife or girlfriend to his brother? Clay sure as hell hadn’t kept the family informed of his personal life.

“How would you know? Who are you to Clay?” he asked in a rush, his pulse surging so fast that he could hear his heart pound in his ears.

The woman rocked back on her heels, elbows sliding off the bar as she laughed again.

“And that right there tells me all I need to know about you Kingsleys.” Shaking her head, she picked up her bar mop and began to wipe her way down the counter, with a scrubbing motion that suggested she wished she could wipe him away too. “Do you really expect Clay to take your calls and your meetings when you can’t even be bothered to know him?” Straightening, she whipped the white rag over her shoulder, her cheeks flushed with color. “I’m McKenna O’Brien, you dolt. Hissister.”

Okay, technically she was Clay’s stepsister. No relation by blood.

But anger streaked through her that one of Clayton’s half brothers would trek all the way to the Aleutian Islands after Clay had made it clear he didn’t want anything to do with the family that had never claimed him as one of their own. Hell, in every way that mattered,shewas far more of a sibling to Clay than any of his biological kin.

Not only would she forever embrace Clay as family, but she would always take his side after the way he and his mom had treated her when she’d found herself married into their world. Clay’s mom, Dena Reynolds, had certainly never made McKenna feel like a stepchild when she had entered McKenna’s father’s life. McKenna had been just twelve years old and fresh from the death of her birth mom from a firearm accident. Clay had been twenty by then, and out on his own working oil rigs in Alaska while Dena settled into life with McKenna and her father in Seattle. Then, even after McKenna’s dad drank his way into cheating on Dena, Clay’s mother had made it clear that McKenna had a home with her always.

Or, at least up until Dena’s death three years before. After that time, Clayton had told McKenna that she would always have a home with him. And he’d made good on his word when McKenna’s post college life in San Francisco had turned upside down after a relationship gone bad. She’d fled to Dutch Harbor eighteen months ago to help Clayton run the Cyclone Shack, and he’d taken her in, no questions asked. When he needed to leave town for personal reasons that seemed to have a lot to do with the Kingsley clan, he’d allowed her to take over the payments on his house. His business.

Clayton was the best family she had left considering her father’s backslide into alcohol and a whole slew of other vices that did him no good. So she had no intention of sharing Clay’s whereabouts with the tall rancher whose chest looked molded of steel and eyes shone the color of summer honey.

Even if there had been a moment when the sight of him had sent a surprise bolt of heat through a body she’d feared wasn’t capable of it anymore.

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