Wife in the Mail Read online

  Touched, Sydney crossed to him. She placed her hand over his and closed his fingers around the check. “Your offer is very kind, very generous, but I can’t go back.”

  He didn’t have time to argue. He’d promised to be back at the clinic by three. Removing her hand from his, Shayne tried to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.

  “Look, if you’re embarrassed to go home to your friends, I’m sure this kind of thing happens all the time.” Although not to anyone he’d ever known, but Ben didn’t have sole claim to being irresponsible. He couldn’t have been the only one who had thoughtlessly left a woman twisting in the wind.

  “More than you know,” Sydney murmured. Even though it had happened to her before with Ken, it wasn’t embarrassment that was holding her back. “But you don’t understand. I quit my job, ended my lease, and packed up everything to come here. I thought I was starting a new life.”

  So far, he didn’t see the misunderstanding. “I appreciate that, but—”

  “And I intend to start that new life,” she insisted, raising her voice so he’d hear her above his own.

  Exasperation sliced through his patience. How many different ways did he have to say this? “Didn’t you hear me? Ben’s gone. He eloped with someone and it wasn’t you.”

  Sydney refused to let the pain his words aroused get the better of her. Instead, she doggedly continued as if he hadn’t said anything.

  “That new life will just be a little different than I planned, that’s all.” Sydney fought to hold a tight rein on her emotions. It wasn’t easy.

  What were the odds, she wondered disparagingly, of picking two losers in a row? Two men, both charming, both intelligent and attractive in myriad ways, who’d promised her the Hope diamond in exchange for her heart and then left her holding a tiny rhinestone in its place? Talk about being a lousy judge of character…

  All right, from now on, she promised herself, she was going to stick to what she knew. Children. She understood children, could look into their hearts and know what they were about. That intuitiveness failed her completely when it came to men.

  She didn’t understand men who said things they didn’t mean.

  Shayne took back everything he’d thought about this woman. She was as scatterbrained as they came. “And just what kind of life is that going to be?” he demanded.

  Because he’d tried to be kind, Sydney didn’t take offense at his tone. He probably thought she was crazy. He didn’t understand how much she needed to begin again. Why should he? He was a man, a breed that didn’t have problems; they just caused them.

  She squared her shoulders. Directly behind him was a large bay window. Beyond it was a wonderland filled with snow, the sun gleaming off the ageless, pristine peaks of the Chugach Mountains. It heartened her.

  “Alaska’s a big, beautiful state. There has to be a place for me here somewhere.”

  “Oh, there’re lots of places,” he agreed. “But you’ll most likely freeze to death in most of them.” He looked at her. At first appraisal, she’d seemed fragile. Definitely not tough enough to make it out here. “Look, it takes a certain kind of person to move to Alaska.”

  He wasn’t going to talk her out of this. She’d never been very malleable once she’d made up her mind.

  “Well, for all intents and purposes, I’ve already moved up here, so it’s a moot point. My things are on their way to Hades.” The moving van had left the day before she did. She’d spent her last night in Omaha on Marta’s couch, counting the minutes until her flight.

  “I can tell them to go back when they get here.”

  And wouldn’t the movers just love that? A round trip to Alaska, carting around her worldly goods. Her mouth curved mirthlessly. “They’re liable to dump everything on the nearest snowbank.”

  “Alaska might be big, but there just aren’t that many places for a woman to stay, not in a small town.”

  Ben had written to her about Hades, but he hadn’t covered everything. “No hotels?”

  Shayne laughed shortly. Hades was the very definition of small. Building a hotel was way down on the priority list. There were a few rooms over the Salty Saloon, but they weren’t anything he’d recommend to a lady. “The town’s not exactly a hot tourist attraction.”

  Sydney thought for a second, refusing to give up. “All right, what about Ben’s place? You said he was gone.” Pleased with her brainstorm, she picked up her suitcases. “I could stay there until I get my bearings.”

  And your brains, Shayne silently admonished. He took the suitcases from her and put them down again. “Ben doesn’t have a place, he lives—lived—with me.”

  “I see.” Sydney paused a moment, flagging, trying to regroup her thoughts. It seemed that there was an obstacle every way she turned.

  As he waited, Shayne studied her face. Something in the set of her jaw softened him toward her. “You’re determined to give this a try, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she answered simply. “I have nothing left to lose now.” She shrugged. Who knew? “Maybe I can still find that new life.”

  She had spirit, Shayne realized. It was coupled with stupidity, in his opinion, but it was spirit.

  He refused to think over what he was about to say because if he did, he knew he wouldn’t say it. As it was, he forced the words out of his mouth. “All right, you can stay with me.”

  Sydney had hoped he’d say that. But even as he did, she felt a little guilty. He clearly wasn’t happy about the idea. “I can’t put you out like that.”

  Picking up a suitcase in each hand, Shayne glared at her. The woman was turning out to be a handful. He really didn’t need this. “Are you going to argue with me about everything?”

  She didn’t mean to sound as if she were arguing. “No, but—”

  The almighty “but.” Shayne turned on her, at the end of his patience. “Look, lady—”

  “Sydney,” she corrected, siphoning the wind out of his sails.

  Sydney, he snorted to himself. That wasn’t a name for a woman. It belonged to a man. In a pinch, to a city. But not to a woman with hair the color of summer marigolds and eyes the color of robin’s eggs in spring.

  “Sydney,” he echoed finally. “If you want to stay in Hades, you don’t have a whole lot of options open to you.” He tightened his grip on the suitcase handles. “You either stay with someone who’ll make room for you or you build yourself an igloo in the middle of town and set up housekeeping there.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, trying to read what was behind the stern expression. “And you’ll make room for me?”

  “I have room,” he corrected. There was no point in her getting the wrong idea that he was going any more out of his way for her than he actually was. “Ben’s room,” he clarified. “So, are you coming with me, or are you going to do the sensible thing and go back to Omaha?” Where you belong, he added silently.

  “I’m going ahead with my life,” she answered. “Not back.”

  And with that, she turned toward the entrance of the airport, ready to face her somewhat altered destiny.

  Already regretting his invitation, Shayne lengthened his stride to catch up with her.

  They didn’t have far to walk—Shayne had left his plane standing in the open field outside the terminal. Sydney struggled somewhat to keep up because of the deep snow.

  As she came closer to the airplane which looked small in comparison to the other planes around it, she could see that the diminutive Cessna had seen its share of travel. Sydney doubted that more than four people could fit into it comfortably. Maybe not even that.

  She couldn’t help but wonder if the old plane was safe.

  Looking for something to say, she glanced at Shayne. He was behind her, tossing her luggage in under the rear seats.

  “It’s a nice plane.”

  “It gets me where I have to go,” he said, not bothering to look at her.

  Although, he admitted to himself, there were times when he hadn’t b
een sure if it would. When he wasn’t with patients, Shayne spent his time tinkering with the plane, trying to keep it running just a while longer until he had enough money to buy a new one. “Ben and I share it.” A fond note entered his voice as he looked at the plane. They’d been through a lot together, he and the Cessna, and he tended to think of it in human terms. “I guess I should be grateful he didn’t take this with him when he left.”

  Under the impression that Hades was only accessible by plane, Sydney had to ask. “How would he have—”

  “There’re a lot of ways to leave Hades if you really want to.”

  He’d seen her question coming. His guess was that Ben and Lila had prevailed on Jeb Kellogg. The general store owner’s son was the only other person with a plane in the area. He could just picture Ben and Lila sharing space with ripened produce.

  Abruptly, Shayne turned and slipped his hands around her waist to give her a boost up into the passenger seat. She felt even smaller than she looked, he realized, his fingers touching. The discovery almost made him lose the thread of the thought he was unraveling.

  Leaning over her lap, he reached for her seat belt, then stopped. The less contact there was, the better. “Buckle up,” he said gruffly. “This isn’t going to be like the plane ride you just had.”

  No, Sydney thought several minutes into the flight, it certainly wasn’t like the plane ride she’d just had. That had been smooth and turbulent-free. Shayne’s plane vibrated and groaned as it strained to become airborne and leave the ground behind. Every motion reverberated through her body. Sydney felt as if she were on a ride in an amusement park. A very old, rickety ride.

  Shayne glanced to his right and saw that she was holding on to the armrest between them. There was a glove on her hand, but he had no doubt that the knuckles beneath it were white. He was so used to this, it never occurred to him that she’d be frightened.

  But she wasn’t whining or screaming, he noted, approval slipping through him. Barbara had screamed the first and only time he’d ever taken her up in the plane. It’d been brand-new then. At least, brand new to him, he amended. She’d been horrified over the experience and even more horrified that he had used all his life savings to pay for a second-hand plane. Born in the lap of luxury, her father a respected surgeon at a renowned hospital, she’d counted on enjoying more of the same by becoming a doctor’s wife.

  Shayne knew he’d disappointed her in so many ways during their four years of marriage, but never more than when he’d told her he wanted to come back home to practice. She’d resisted the move with every fiber of her being, but he’d managed to finally convince her to give it a try.

  They’d spent more months arguing about it than she’d actually stayed. Less than six months after she’d accompanied him to Hades, holding Mac’s hand and pressing their infant daughter to her breast, Barbara had boarded a plane out. Not just any plane, but a summoned friend’s private Learjet. Barbara had always had style.

  Or thought she did, he added silently.

  The woman next to him had less style but far more courage and class. He noticed that she’d ceased all attempts at conversation ever since they’d taken off. A closer look showed him that she was positively pale.

  “You all right?” The question was gruffly asked.

  People certainly didn’t come to him for his bedside manner, Sydney thought. She didn’t turn her head toward him when he spoke. For the time being, she didn’t trust herself to look anywhere but straight ahead. She had this feeling that if she took her eyes off the flight path, they’d plummet to their deaths.

  It was the same as when she’d first learned to drive a car. She’d been afraid to look anywhere but several feet in front of her. Except now, she wasn’t piloting the plane, thank God.

  “Fine.” The answer whooshed out of her breathlessly.

  He almost smiled at her reply. He’d been a little nervous, too, his first time up. Nervous and exhilarated. He loved the freedom flying gave him. “Takes some getting used to.”

  Ever so slightly, she nodded her head. “That would be my guess.”

  Her hands were probably like ice, even with the gloves, Shayne thought. He placed one hand over hers, offering her warmth. “You know, you can breathe. There is oxygen in the cabin.”

  Sydney felt silly. She’d been holding her breath without realizing it. Slowly she released it. Released, too, the armrest that she’d been squeezing.

  She flushed. He flew this plane all the time and probably thought she was being an idiot.

  “I’ve never been in a small plane before.” Sydney took in a long breath and forced herself to calm down. “Actually, until I flew here, I’d never been in a plane before, period.”

  Shayne spared her a glance. In this day and age of frequent flyer miles, it was hard to believe that there was anyone left under the age of seventy who hadn’t flown.

  “Omaha that exciting?”

  Excitement had nothing to do with it. A slight smile curved her lips. “No, I was just that busy.”

  “And now you’re not?”

  Sydney looked out to her right. There was only the slightest dusting of clouds, which looked like tiny bits of cotton pulled apart by eager, childish hands. She missed the kids she taught, she thought. A lot. She wasn’t aware of the sigh that escaped as she murmured, “Not at the moment.”

  Seemed like a giant leap to come all the way here for a person who’d never flown before. “Why didn’t you start out with something small, like a flight to Denver?”

  She’d never wanted to go anywhere before. But after Ken had left her more than a year ago, she’d felt the need to get away, to find somewhere she could start her life over. Ben had offered her that chance. Or so she’d thought.

  “Alaska seemed to have a lot more possibilities.” She looked down, trying to envision the people who chose to make this land their home. “Everything just seems so fresh here.”

  “That’s because it’s refrigerated.”

  The remark, so carelessly uttered, amused Sydney.

  Her laughter, sparkling with delight, surrounded Shayne unexpectedly. As did the strange, small wave that washed over him in its wake. If he didn’t know better, he would have mistaken it for pleasure.

  But pleasure had absolutely nothing to do with the present situation.

  Recovering, Sydney blew out a breath. “After what you just told me in the airport, I didn’t think I could laugh again.” She turned to him, her eyes bright. “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t mean it as a joke.”

  The denial, roughly voiced, had Sydney wondering if he had a problem accepting gratitude. He seemed nothing like his brother—at least, the Ben she’d come to know on paper. And yet she suspected that there was something kind and good about Shayne Kerrigan. It just seemed to make him uncomfortable to have someone else notice.

  She smiled warmly at his profile. “Thanks just the same.”

  He said nothing in response, pretending not to hear her.

  Chapter Three

  “How much of what Ben told me is true?”

  Her question broke the silence that had existed between them for the past several minutes. Silence that had only been interrupted by the intermittent rattle of a plane that sporadically insisted on making its movements known.

  It took Shayne a minute to absorb what she was asking. He felt like a man standing in front of a minefield. It wasn’t a situation to relish. Lately there’d been a great many minefields in his life, but they couldn’t be avoided. This one could have been.

  The ever-mounting list of what his brother owed him grew a little longer.

  Shayne glanced in the woman’s direction. Who in their right mind would agree to being a mail-order bride these days? he wondered again. At least she didn’t look as if she was going to cry anymore.

  “I don’t know, what did he tell you?”

  As she tried to gather her thoughts together to form a succinct answer, Sydney stared out the small window. There was noth
ing but a blanket of white beneath them, occasionally fringed with clusters of small wooded areas. Evergreens. They made her think of Christmas, even though the holiday was almost two months away.

  “That you and he were born here. That you’re both doctors and that he flew medicine in when he wasn’t running the clinic—”

  “Ben never ran the clinic,” Shayne interjected before she could continue. He’d never understand why Ben, given to embellishing whenever the whim moved him, always felt the need to dramatize the truth, or depart from it altogether. Just being Ben should have been more than enough for him.

  “The clinic belongs to me,” he stated flatly. He’d used his own money to build it and had driven in a good many of the nails himself. “Ben puts in—put in—” Shayne stopped, wondering if Ben ever meant to return to Hades. His brother hadn’t mentioned it in the note he’d hastily dashed off, only that he intended to snap up happiness when it presented itself and it had presented itself in Lila.

  “He put in hours at the clinic,” Shayne finally said. “He flew the plane more to entertain himself than to deliver medicine.” That sounded a little bitter, he realized, though he hadn’t meant it to be. “Don’t get me wrong, when the going got rough, Ben was right there by my side.”

  “And when it wasn’t rough?” She had to know just how badly she’d been taken in by this man’s brother. How much of a fool she’d been.

  Shayne shrugged. “He was somewhere else.” And that, he had to admit, was most of the time.

  In his letters, Sydney recalled, Ben had mentioned that he had a great many interests. She’d thought of him as a renaissance man. Now another image was beginning to form. Someone who enjoyed life and let his brother bear the lion’s share of the responsibility.

  “So he was a part-time doctor?”

  That was one way to put it, but loyalty to his brother kept Shayne from agreeing.

  “I don’t think he ever really wanted to be one.” Thinking out loud, he voiced a suspicion he’d kept locked up within him for a long time now. “I think he became a doctor because he thought it would please me.” In a way, Shayne supposed, that made him even more responsible for the way Ben behaved. “And it did.”