She shares a secretive glance with him. “Why don’t you two help me unload my things and then I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Really subtle, Di.” Jonah shakes his head, but he’s chuckling. He leads the way out the door and down the path to the driveway to Diana’s rental car.
I stop dead when I spot the pearl-blue Jeep parked beside our old battered pickup truck. It’s the exact model I test-drove at the dealership.
Diana takes a break from swatting at the buzzing mosquitos to yell, “I got to drive your birthday present before you did!”
“What?” I spin around to face Jonah, because this could only have come from him. “You bought this for me?”
He bites his bottom lip.
“I can’t even …” My voice drifts, my words failing me.
Diana is grinning ear to ear. “I was supposed to be here by eight this morning, but when I got to the hotel and asked the front desk for the keys, they couldn’t find them! So, then I had to wait for that Chris guy to come in and turn over his entire office looking for them and when he couldn’t find it, he had his wife come in, too, but she couldn’t find them, either. I finally called Jonah because I didn’t know what else to do!”
Oh my god. It’s all making sense now. “So, you flew to Anchorage to find the keys.”
“I had the dealership deliver the Jeep to the lodge last night when it was ready because I figured it’d be easy enough for Diana, given the time she was flying in, to cab over there and hop in. Plus, I thought it’d be funny, you know, havin’ her roll up in your birthday present. Kind of a double surprise.” Jonah’s expression sours. “But the dumb ass from the dealer who dropped it off forgot to leave the keys with the front desk. So, we had to wait for the dealership to open and track down the guy, who had both sets in his pocket.” Jonah shakes his head. “So much for making things easier.”
“And then I somehow got lost on the way here.” Diana reaches into the passenger side and pulls out a cooler bag. Inside it is a cardboard cake box from the bakery in Toronto. “Your favorite! We need to get this in a fridge right away.”
My mind is still on this morning’s debacle, and Jonah. “So, that’s why you were in the hangar so long? You were waiting until Diana got here.”
And then he came home to find me on the porch, hysterical and professing my unhappiness about my life with him in Alaska.
My stomach roils with guilt as I close the distance. “I love it. And you.” I stretch to my tiptoes and press my lips against his, lingering longer than I normally would with someone else here.
When I pull back, he’s wearing a tiny smirk. “You had to pick the most girlie shade of blue possible, didn’t you?”
“It’s called Bikini Pearl,” I say with a smile. “When did you decide you were getting this for me?”
“I called the dealership after you went to test-drive it,” he admits.
“It’s way too much, Jonah.”
“Maybe.” His fingertips stroke my cheek as he brushes strands of hair off my face. “But I just want you to be happy here.” There’s a sadness in his icy blue eyes.
His words are a punch to my gut, given my blowup not even ten minutes ago. “I am.” I rope my arms around his neck, pulling him into me. There’s no mistaking the tension coursing through his shoulders as I cling to him. Knowing I caused that makes my chest ache. “I didn’t mean it,” I whisper into his ear.
He makes me feel so slight when he curls his arms around my body, drawing me flush into him. He kisses my temple. “We’ll talk about it later, okay? We need to help Diana with her things. I think she’s had the roughest morning of all of us.”
I climb to my tiptoes to steal one last kiss and then pull away to face my best friend, my heart brimming with pure joy. “Let’s get you settled and then we can figure out what we’re going to do for the next four—”
A glint catches my eye, drawing my attention to the diamond engagement ring on Diana’s left hand.
My mouth drops open as she squeals.
“We have some planning to do!”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“He was in your house when you moved in?” Diana stares pointedly at the moose head that looms over us, the pale pink streamers haphazardly woven through his antlers. Muriel—or likely Toby, by Muriel’s instruction—decorated the Ale House in honor of my birthday, a surprise that brought a lump to my throat when we stepped through the doors to the sound of strangers singing. Muriel carried out a strawberry shortcake—made with berries from my garden that she helped herself to while we were out—loaded with candles.
I choked my slice down, not having the heart to tell her the truth about my aversion after she’d gone to all that effort.
“Him. Them.” I nod toward the two deer heads that Toby mounted on the other side of the long, narrow room the week after we dropped them off.
“By the way, that lodge that Jonah had me go to get the Jeep?” She flashes a horrified look my way before bringing her martini to her red-painted lips—a special addition to tonight’s Ale House menu, for my birthday, and on the house. Teddy said Toby’s been practicing his bartending skills all week.
I laugh. “Yeah, I know. I stayed there my first night back, when I was stuck in Anchorage.” It feels like so long ago. “But it’s not bad once you get used to it.”
Diana’s eyes are glossy and bloodshot. She never managed to get a nap in. Soon after I showed her around, we were in the air, giving her a real look at Alaska—the vast, wild, six-million-acre expanse of the Denali National Park where she saw a grizzly bear feeding off salmon in the stream, the looming, granite-faced gorge of Ruth Glacier, the wreckage of a plane that crashed into a ridge two years ago and can’t be recovered, which I was not happy to see—before Jonah landed at an upscale mountain hotel where we had dinner reservations. It’s been nonstop since she arrived. How she’s awake is beyond me. “We’ll finish this drink and go home.”
“No, I’m fine!” She waves off my worries, her diamond ring glinting, even in the dim light.
It brings a smile to my face, even as another wave of shock hits me.
Diana is engaged.
Diana is getting married. They won’t set a date until she gets a handle on balancing law school and a full-time job, but it’s coming and I’m going to be her maid of honor. That was decided years ago, before any potential suitors had even surfaced.
The hard part? I’m now four thousand miles away.
I knew this was the natural next step for her and Aaron, and I’m genuinely happy for her.
But, if I’m being honest, I’ve also been feeling the weight of envy all day, at how my best friend’s life is moving along, with an exciting career and a posh apartment and her family just twenty minutes away from her. At how she didn’t have to uproot her life for any of it. She found a man who fits well into her urban, fast-paced life.
Me? I fell in love with a sky cowboy from Alaska.
And ever since those words tumbled from my mouth this morning, despite vehemently denying them, I haven’t been able to shake the fear that there is truth to them, that deep down inside, I know this—me here, or Jonah anywhere else—isn’t going to work.