“Can I ask you something?” Mark asked.
“I think you just did.” She heard him chuckle, but then he turned his head and looked her in the eyes and asked, “Why did you stay in Juneau after your mom left? Did you love it there that much?”
They were still walking, and it wasn’t until Mark had turned around and wasn’t staring at her anymore that she could answer. “I guess because there wasn’t anywhere else for me to go,” she said. “That sounds kinda pathetic, now that I think about it—”
“No. No, it doesn’t,” Mark interrupted.
“It does. And don’t interrupt me,” Zoey scolded, forgetting Mark wasn’t his father for just a second. But when he merely smirked at her over his shoulder, she relaxed. “I was going to move to Anchorage, but Colin asked me to stay. That’s when he said I could rent the house near his. Honestly, he made it so easy for me to say yes. Probably why I’m thirty-one years old and have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.”
“My pop always had a way of making things seem easy,” Mark said. “That was one of the reasons I left so soon after graduating. I knew if I stayed and worked with him, even for a couple months, it would be that much harder to leave.”
Zoey thought about that for a while as they trudged along. Mark was right. His dad had made it very easy for her to stay in Juneau. She didn’t hate her life, but it wasn’t exactly all that exciting. She met a ton of happy people in the tourist shop in the summers. People who were thrilled to be on a cruise and seeing the world, and there she was, a homebody who’d never even left her home state.
She’d been so lost in her own head that she hadn’t realized Mark had stopped, and she literally ran right into him. She would’ve fallen on her ass if he didn’t have super-fast reflexes, reaching back and catching her.
“Oh, thanks. I should’ve been watching where I was going,” she said. Having Mark’s arm around her felt amazing. Comforting. It seemed to her that he was slow in letting go, but the second he did, she took a step to the side, not wanting to crowd him…or let him know how much she wanted to stay in his arms. She had to get her shit together.
“It’s fine. I should’ve warned you I’d stopped. I think this is a good place to stop for the night.”
Zoey looked around and didn’t see any difference in where they were standing now than where they’d been walking for the last half a day. “Here?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re tired. You’re breathing harder than you were an hour ago, and you’ve been stumbling over your feet a little more. There’s a clearing over there where I can build a small lean-to, and there’s plenty of dry wood we can use for a fire.”
Zoey was embarrassed that they were stopping because of her, but remembering his earlier words about him not leaving her, she forced back the thought that he would be able to go a lot faster without her. Looking around, she still didn’t see anything that resembled a good place to put up a shelter or make a fire, but she didn’t argue. Mark was the SEAL; he would know.
“What do you need me to do?” she asked.
She didn’t understand the tender look he shot her way, but it felt good nonetheless.
“Can you see if you can gather up some wood? We’ll need smaller sticks and some larger logs.”
“Um…Mark?”
“Yeah?”
“I know you said you could do it earlier, but are you really going to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together?”
In response, he reached into one of his many pockets and pulled out a small silver block. He smiled as he showed it to her, but he didn’t explain what it was.
Zoey looked at it, then at him. “I’m sure I’m supposed to know what that is, but I don’t. A four on the outdoor comfortability scale, remember?”
He laughed, and Zoey couldn’t take her eyes off his face. So far, this being deserted in the middle of nowhere wasn’t too bad. Especially when she had someone like Mark to stare at.
“It’s a flint. It’ll throw sparks and start the fire for us.”
Of course. Zoey felt really stupid now. “Right. I knew that. Okay, I’ll find some logs for our fire then.” She started to turn around so she didn’t have to face Mr. Mountain Man, but Mark caught her arm and spun her so fast, she lost her balance and would’ve fallen to the ground if he hadn’t caught her—again.
He pulled her into his arms, and she couldn’t help but burrow close. Once again, he was warm and she was freezing. Just being near him made her body temperature go up several degrees.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he told her.
“You can’t just say something like that and expect it to be true,” she grumbled.
She felt more than heard his chuckle under her cheek. “Yes, I can. I’d never make fun of you, Zoey. Ever. I don’t care what you know and what you don’t. I said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m going to make sure you get back home no matter what it takes. I feel as if I got you into this mess, so I’m going to get you out.”
“You didn’t hire that woman to fly us into the Alaskan wilderness and leave us here,” she said. Then looked up at him and asked, “Did you?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head, but because he was smiling, she didn’t think he was upset with the question and had taken it as the joke she’d meant it to be.
“No, Zo, I didn’t.”
Goose bumps formed on her arms at hearing him call her Zo. No one had ever given her a nickname before. She liked it.
“You gave me something precious today, and I’ll never forget it.”
She wracked her brain trying to figure out what she’d given him and couldn’t think of one damn thing. Was he delirious? Had he hit his head when she wasn’t looking?
“Stories about my pop,” he clarified. “It’s been my experience that when people pass away, no one wants to talk about them for fear of upsetting their loved ones. But hearing about his everyday life, knowing he was happy and that you were there for him, means more to me than I can say.”
“Well, don’t get too excited, not everyone in your family liked me all that much.” Zoey knew she should’ve kept her mouth shut when he tensed against her.
“Mal?” he asked.
She nodded. “And Sean.”
“My dad’s partner?”
“Yeah. I heard him talking to Colin one night, asking why he kept me around. He said if he needed a housekeeper, he could hire a service for your dad.”
“Asshole,” Mark muttered.
“And I’m not sure his lawyer is all that fond of me either,” Zoey went on, not able to stop her runaway mouth. “When he called to tell me about the reading of the will, he didn’t sound too thrilled that I was included.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck about them,” Mark said firmly. “I like you, and that’s all that matters.”
And at that moment, standing in his arms in the middle of wherever the hell they were, that was all that mattered to Zoey too.
Eventually, Mark pulled back and said, “Come on, we need to get crackin’. I know it’s still light out, but you’re cold. I want to get a fire going so you can get warm.”