The sound of an approaching car was a welcome distraction. Hoping it was Chase, she hurried onto the front porch—to see Pete driving toward the house in his four-wheel-drive vehicle.

“Howdy,” he called, waving as he climbed out of the truck. “Chase sent me to check up on you.”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“He had me pick up a few things on the way.” He reached inside the cab and lifted out two bags of groceries and carried them into the house.

“I could’ve gone myself.” She was disappointed that Chase didn’t trust her enough to find her way around. Just how lost could she get?

“Chase wanted to introduce you around town himself,” Pete explained. He seemed to have read her thoughts. He set the bags on the kitchen counter and Lesley investigated their contents. For a bachelor, Pete had done a good job.

“What do I owe you?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Chase’s friend responded, helping himself to a cup of coffee. “Chase took care of it. He’s got an account at the store and they bill him monthly.”

“How…quaint.”

Pete added two teaspoons of sugar, stirring vigorously. “Chase said you like to cook.”

“I do,” she responded. Since he didn’t show any signs of leaving, she poured herself a cup of coffee and joined him at the kitchen table.

“There’s plenty of deer meat in the freezer.”

“Deer?”

“You never cooked deer before? What about caribou?”

“Neither one.” Didn’t anyone dine on good old-fashioned beef in Alaska?

“Don’t worry. It cooks up like beef and doesn’t taste all that different. You’ll be fine.”

Lesley appreciated his confidence even if she didn’t share it.

“So,” Pete said, relaxing in his chair, hands encircling the mug, “what do you think of the cabin?”

Lesley wasn’t sure how to answer. It was certainly livable, but nothing like she’d expected. However, as she’d said to herself countless times, she’d adjust. “It’s homey,” she said, trying to be diplomatic about it.

“Chase bought it ’specially for you.”

Lesley lowered her eyes. That couldn’t possibly be true. He hadn’t known her long enough to have chosen this cabin for her.

“He’s only been living here a few months,” Pete went on. “He decided back in March that he wasn’t going through another winter without a wife, so he started getting ready for one. The first thing he did was buy this place and move off the station.”

“Do you live at the station?”

“Nope. I bought myself a cabin, too, year or so ago.

“Chase has lots of plans to remodel, but he wanted to wait until he found the right woman so they could plan the changes together.”

Lesley looked around, the ideas already beginning to form. If they knocked out the wall between the living room and kitchen, they could get rid of the cramped feeling.

“Chase did all right for himself,” Pete said, sounding proud of his friend. “I gotta tell you, I laughed when he told me he was going to Seattle and bringing himself back a wife.”

“Why didn’t he marry someone from around here?” Lesley asked. She already knew the answer but wanted to see what he’d say.

“First off, there aren’t any available women in Twin Creeks. He might’ve met a woman in Fairbanks—used to go out with a couple different ones—but he figured his chances were better in Seattle. And he was right!”

“I’m glad he did go to Seattle.”

“He seems pleased about it. This is the first time I’ve seen Chase smile in a year, ever since his father died. He took it hard, you know.”

Lesley pretended she did. Although she’d told him about her own parents, Chase hadn’t said much about his, just that they were both dead.

“So soon after his mother—that darn near killed him. He’s all alone now, no brothers or sisters, and he needed someone to belong to the way we all do. I don’t know that he’s ever said that, but it’s the reason he was so keen on marryin’.”

“What about you?” Lesley asked. “Why haven’t you married?”

“I did once, about ten years back, but it didn’t work out.” Pain flickered in his eyes. “Pamela didn’t last the winter. I hope for Chase’s sake you’re different. He’s already crazy about you, and if you left him, it’d probably break his heart.”

“I’m not leaving.” It would take a lot more than a harsh winter to change her mind about her commitment to Chase. She’d never taken duty lightly and she’d pledged before her friends and God to stand by Chase as his wife, his lover, his partner.

“Good.” Pete’s twinkling blue eyes were back.

“Chase sent you out to babysit me, didn’t he?”

Pete laughed. “Not exactly. He was a little afraid you were gonna get curious and do some exploring.”

“Not after the conversation we had about the bears.” Lesley shuddered dramatically.

“They aren’t gonna hurt you. You leave ’em alone and they’ll leave you alone. You might want to ask Chase to take you to the dump and that way you’ll get to see ’em firsthand.”

“They hang around the dump?”

“Sure do, sorting through the garbage lookin’ for goodies. We’ve tried plenty of ways to keep ’em away, but nothing seems to work and we finally gave up.”

“I see.” Lesley wasn’t impressed. “Has anyone thought to bury the garbage?” The solution seemed simple to her.

“Obviously you’ve never tried to dig tundra. It’s like cement an inch below the surface.”

“What’s wrong at the station?” Lesley asked, looking at her watch. It was well past noon.

“Can’t rightly say, but whatever it is will have to be fixed before Chase can come home. Trust me, he isn’t any happier about this than you. Chase isn’t normally a swearing man, but he was cursin’ a blue streak this morning. He’ll give you a call the minute he can.”

“I’d like to see the town,” Lesley said. She was eager to meet the other women and become a part of the community. It was too late in the year to apply for a full-time teaching position, but she could make arrangements to get her certificate and sign up as a substitute.

“Chase will take you around himself,” Pete said again. “It wouldn’t be right for me to be introducin’ you.”

“I know.” She sighed. “Tell me about Twin Creeks, would you?”

“Ah…there’s not much to tell.”

“What about stores?”

He shrugged. “We order most everything through the catalog and on the internet.”

“There’s a grocery store.”

“Oh, sure, but it’s small.”

Well, she wasn’t expecting one with a deli and valet parking.

“What’s the population of Twin Creeks?”

Pete wasn’t one who could easily disguise his feelings, and she could see from the way his eyes darted past hers that he’d prefer to avoid answering. “We’ve had, uh, something of a population boom since the last census.”

“What’s the official total?”

“You might want to talk to Chase about that.”

“I’m asking you,” she pressed, growing impatient. “A thousand?”

“Less ’n that,” he said, drinking what remained of his coffee.

“How many less?”

“A, uh, few hundred less.”

“All right, five hundred people, then?”

“No…”

Lesley pinched her lips together. “Just tell me. I hate guessing games.”

“Forty,” Pete mumbled into the empty mug.

“Adults?” Her heart felt as if it’d stopped.

“No, that’s counting everyone, including Mrs. Davis’s cat.”

Eleven

“How many women live in Twin Creeks?” Lesley demanded.

“Including you?” Pete asked, looking decidedly uncomfortable by this time. He clutched his coffee mug with both hands and sat staring into it, as though he expected the answer to appear there.

“Of course I mean including me!”

“That makes a grand total of five then.” He continued to hold on to his mug as if it were the Holy Grail.

“You mean to tell me there’re only five women in the entire town?”

“Five women within five hundred miles, I suspect, when you get right down to it.” If his face got much closer to the mug, his nose would disappear inside it.

“Tell me about the other women,” Lesley insisted. She was pacing in her agitation. Chase had purposely withheld this information about Twin Creeks from her. Fool that she was, she hadn’t even thought to ask, assuming that when he mentioned the town there actually was one!

“There’s Thelma Davis,” Pete said enthusiastically. “She’s married to Milton and they’re both in their sixties. Thelma runs the grocery store and she loves to gossip. You’ll get along with her just fine. Gladys Thornton might be kind of a problem, though. She’s a little crabby and not the sociable sort, so most folks just leave her be.”

“Is there anyone close to my age?”

“Heather’s twelve,” Pete replied, looking up for the first time. “She lives with Thelma Davis. I never did understand the connection. Heather isn’t her granddaughter, but they’re related in some way.”

The woman closest to her in age was a twelve-year-old girl! Lesley’s heart plummeted.

“You’ll like Margaret, though. She’s a real social butterfly. The minute she hears Chase brought himself back a wife, she’ll be by to introduce herself.”

“How old is Margaret?”

“Darned if I know. In her fifties, I guess. She doesn’t like to discuss her age and tries to pretend she’s younger.”

“I…see.”

“I’d best be heading back,” Pete said, obviously eager to leave. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but would you mind not tellin’ Chase that I was the one who told you? We’ve been friends for a long time and I’d hate for him to take this personally. Me spillin’ the beans to you, I mean.”

“I’m not making any promises.”

Pete left as if he couldn’t get away fast enough.

An hour later, Lesley still hadn’t decided what to do, if anything. Chase had misled her, true enough, but she wasn’t convinced it mattered. She probably would’ve married him anyway.

No wonder he’d been so interested in Seattle’s history and the Mercer brides. Although more than a hundred years had passed since that time, she was doing basically the same thing as those women, moving to a frontier wilderness and marrying a man she barely knew.

Chase arrived shortly after one o’clock, looking discouraged. Lesley met him at the front door and waited, wondering what to say.