Iditarod Nights Read online

  He couldn't leave and she couldn't stay.

  "What do we do about it?" he asked.

  "You owe me a dance."

  ***

  A light over the mirror cast rum, burgundy and vodka prisms across the polished bar, reminding Claire of downtown Portland after dark, how the city's lights reflected on the Willamette River separating west from east. She smiled as her gaze caught the multi-colored glow of a Wurlitzer jukebox at the edge of a wood dance floor barely large enough to accommodate three couples, at most. "It's perfect."

  "I'm glad you like it."

  "Just so you know, I don't do the Texas Two Step."

  "Neither do I." He crossed to the jukebox, dropped in a coin and punched a selection. Turning, he held his hand out to her as the opening cords of an Eric Clapton tune began.

  Claire gave a light laugh. At Dillon's raised brow, she said, "I was listening to this song when I saw the nonexistent powerline."

  "I can change it."

  Desire coiled through her like warm honey. "Please don't."

  She went to him, laid her head to the beat of his heart, and moved with him, their bodies in fluid unison. The lyrics spoke of heartbreaking love with a tenuous future. This was her heaven, a place where she didn't belong yet ached to be. It didn't seem to matter. Nothing mattered but Dillon's arms around her. She tipped her head and kissed his neck, felt his pulse trip a beat. He missed a step. That was all it took, she marveled, a light press of the lips, a whispered word, a look, to ignite passion, play havoc with a person's balance. His desire grew against her abdomen. She nipped his chin, his jaw.

  "I thought you wanted to dance."

  "I changed my mind."

  He dipped his head and claimed her mouth. The force rocked her. She clung to him as his kiss skewed her own equilibrium and weakened her knees.

  "Let's go upstairs," he murmured.

  "I don't think I can make it."

  "All right."

  He drew her with him to the floor.

  ***

  Sometime before daylight, Dillon carried Claire upstairs and tucked her into his bed. Her warm body spooned to his made it possible for him to close his eyes and sleep without dreaming.

  Chapter 26

  Claire couldn't believe the number of people packed into Nome's recreation centerfor the Iditarod Awards Banquet the following afternoon. Only two mushers still remained on the trail; the rest, along with volunteers, their families, friends and race fans, sat around dozens of linen-covered tables. ITC officials announced awards and distributed trophies from a podium on stage. The room burst into applause and cheers as the first-place winner came up and spent fifteen minutes thanking everyone, including his team. Cameras flashed nonstop. Each musher was treated with high-spirited kudos. Claire received a commemorative belt buckle and a check for $1,049, symbolizing the length of the Iditarod Trail. For finishing in the top thirty, Dillon's cut of the prize money was a percentage of the balance.

  "This will buy a lot of dog food," he said.

  There seemed no end to the awards: Most Improved Musher, Golden Harness and Golden Stethoscope, Humanitarian and Sportsmanship awards, Mushers' Choice, Rookie of the Year, Checkpoint of the Year, fastest time from Safety to Nome.

  They shared tales from the trail and dined on prime rib, king crab and gallons of strawberries. Locals – some of them regulars at the Bering West – stopped to congratulate Dillon. Again, the feeling of being part of something much larger than herself, of a community, filled Claire.

  She looked over at Dillon. I love him. Waking this morning in his bed, his body radiating heat, his arm over her. Letting him cook breakfast for her. Showering together. She'd gone with him to take care of his dogs. Frank Johnson's kennel yard was small, a couple dozen assorted huskies and mutts. Bonnie and the rest of Dillon's team looked healthy and happy. Claire loved Frank instantly, a big man with wild red hair and a beard to match, easy to smile, even easier to laugh.

  "If the boss had warned me he was bringing company, I'd've put on my best overalls," he said with a chortle. "Least I can do is offer you a cuppa java."

  "Putting a fancy name on it won't make that mud you brew any more drinkable," Dillon remarked. But his tone was good-natured, as though they'd shared this conversation countless times.

  "I like my coffee to mean something," Frank said, striking a pose that reminded Claire of a Shakespearian actor and made her laugh.

  She'd not only fallen in love with an Alaskan man, she'd fallen in love with an entire state and its people. They felt like family. A fist tightened around her heart. She'd told Dillon they had two days to figure something out, but there was no out. By this time tomorrow she'd be in Talkeetna, packing for her return to Portland to keep promises made, and Dillon would stay in Nome. Where he belonged.

  "Hey." Dillon's hand on hers drew her back, concern in his breath-stopping blue eyes. "Are you alright?"

  She flashed on another banquet, when he'd rushed a green-at-the-gills rookie from the Millennium Hotel's banquet room. "Don't worry," she said, smiling, "I'm not going to faint this time."

  "You're stronger than you look."

  Tears tried to push through her smile. Can you be strong for me? "Right now it doesn't feel that way."

  Chapter 27

  Dillon stared out across Front Street at the seawall. Early morning's light cast its soft promise over the scene. Claire lay sleeping in his bed a few feet away, her head cradled in the crook of one arm, her hair spilled across his pillow.

  Things changed between them last night. Instead of an explosion of heat and passion, every moment became precious. He felt it in the way she touched him, her fingers lingering, as though committing him to memory. As though their time together was something fragile to preserve.

  He took what she gave, held it in his heart, and gave in return, knowing the more they shared, the harder it would be to do the right thing. To let her go. His head was fucked up. If she stayed, he would destroy her the way he'd destroyed the people he left behind in Portland. The past was scarred with emotion. It screamed at him. The only way to get through it was to disassociate, suppress the feelings.

  She stirred in her sleep. He resisted the urge to go to her, lay beside her and hold her. Time was too short. He felt the void creeping nearer.

  ***

  Claire found herself alone in the bed when she woke. Daylight filtered into the apartment through the open shutters. She glanced at the nightstand clock. Her plane left for Anchorage in two hours.

  Dillon stood looking out the window. He wore last night's jeans and gray sweatshirt, the sleeves pushed to his elbows, a mug in his hands. Claire wrapped a blanket around herself and went to him. He didn't protest when she took the mug from him and sipped the dark coffee. It was cold. Her eyes lifted to meet his. "Did you get any sleep?"

  "A little."

  "Another nightmare?"

  The look he gave her tore at her. "I've been pretending everything's normal, but it's not. I'm not. Or I'd get on that plane with you instead of hiding in Nome."

  "Hiding?"

  "What would you call it?"

  "Surviving. Instead of putting a gun to your head, you survived. You started over, got sober, then chose to test yourself every single day by owning a bar, for God's sake."

  "None of which changes the fact that I killed a nineteen-year-old boy."

  "That boy would have likely killed you if you hadn't shot first."

  His jaw muscles tightened, released. "We'll never know, will we?"

  Tears welled in her eyes despite her vow to not, under any circumstances, cry. "What do you want to do, Dillon?"

  "Push rewind. Freeze time. Hell, I don't know." His callused hand cupped her face.

  Claire felt his lips tremble as they met hers. She forgave him for letting her go, for being the strong one. "Love me," she whispered.

  "That was never the problem."

  ***

  Dillon cherished every touch, the taste of her, the sound she made
when she came. Then he watched her pack and took her to catch her plane.

  "If there's anything I can do to help," she told him, the determined angle of her chin not quite steady, "you know where to find me."

  Unable to speak, afraid of the despair closing his throat, he kissed her and watched her leave.

  Chapter 28

  Claire stood in the middle of the garden she and her mother put in so many years ago, a light Spring rain pattering the hood of her waterproof jacket. After leaving Nome, she compartmentalized her emotions and did what needed to be done to disconnect from Alaska and re-enter the life she left behind. A life without the Sommer family, without the dogs, without Dillon. Landing at PDX lacked the comfort of coming home she'd hoped for. But here, where her childhood memories were the strongest, she could get close.

  Mud sucked at her faded pink galoshes. They'd been waiting by the door of the covered patio, where she left them two years ago. Planting season was still at least a month off, the vegetable cages and trellises stowed in the shed, the raised beds sprouting dandelions and clover. Over the years there'd been countless varieties of tomatoes, pole beans, beets, hot and mild peppers, zucchini, half a dozen different greens, and cucumbers – especially lemon cucumbers – produced in this fifteen-foot square plot.

  Claire remembered picking the first pumpkin grown by her own hands. Her mother baked and pureed the pulp for pies. It became a tradition to let one pumpkin grow as large as possible for a Halloween jack-o-lantern. The year Claire was able to handle the carving tools without help, Mama had begun to grow weak from the cancer treatments. The brightly patterned scarf tied around her thinning hair made her pale skin appear sallow, almost transparent. It frightened Claire. She remembered tears dripping from her chin onto a pumpkin with triangle eyes and jagged teeth.

  "Don't be afraid, honey."

  Claire knew people who grieved over not recalling the sound of a deceased loved one's voice. Not so with her. She heard the gentle inflection of her mother's words as if spoken just yesterday. Mama dried her face with a dishtowel and said, "I plan to be around for a very long time."

  "Promise?"

  There'd been the slightest hesitation in her mother's response. Claire hadn't noticed it as a young girl in misery, but looking back now, she saw it with the clarity of maturity and time.

  "I promise," Mama said. "But I might need your help to take care of Daddy until I get better. Can you do that? Can you be strong for me?"

  "Yes, Mama. I promise."

  She hadn't felt strong, but she promised, hoping it would make Mama better. She never told her dad. A secret held dear. Dad thought she returned because of her promise to him, but it was the one made to her mother that called her home.

  After Caroline Stanfield's death, Alice, the stay-at-home mom next door, offered to help work the garden plot in exchange for a share of the harvest. With Alice's help, the garden continued to thrive year after year, a living legacy to the mother Claire still missed.

  By the end of her second week home, Claire found a one-bedroom apartment within walking distance of the house. Just far enough to give her breathing room.

  "It's small," her dad commented when he helped her move a few of her belongings out of storage. The rest would stay in storage until she decided what to do with it. Too much of it reminded her of Grant and would be donated or sold anyway.

  "It's all I need."

  Her time in Alaska taught her that. A place to sleep, a place to eat, a place to bathe. Her physical requirements had simplified. The rest – the emotional stuff – would take longer.

  Chapter 29

  She shouldn't be here. He watched bloody fingers grab her from behind, begin choking her. He tried to pull her free, save her, but his hands passed through the ghost-white figure and he lost his balance. Fell. Got up. She struggled to breathe, her wild eyes pleading for help. He lunged and fell again, slipping in the blood on the floor. Not the floor, snow. Cold. Red. Red with her blood. God, she needs to get out! She's going to die and he can't save her. No!

  Dillon jolted awake, realized an instant later he had fallen out of bed and was sitting on the floor. The sick knot in his stomach pushed its way up his throat. He forced himself to look over his shoulder at the tangled sheets, terrified he'd see Claire's bloodied, lifeless body.

  She wasn't there.

  The sick knot shifted to his heart. She never would be.

  He thought he understood the grief Ethan Stanfield bore. The void inside him ripped wider.

  ***

  "Got a minute, boss?"

  Dillon flinched, saw Vic standing in the doorway, sans his customary stained white apron. Quitting time already? A glance at the desk clock confirmed the diner had locked up an hour ago. "Come in. I'm – " His gaze dropped to the timesheet in front of him. It was upside-down. Like my life. "Finished." He slid the timesheet aside.

  Vic entered the closet-size office and closed the door.

  Aware of his cook's claustrophobia, Dillon straightened. "That serious, huh?"

  "You tell me." Vic pulled the room's lone folding chair around and straddled it, resting his thick arms across the back. "Kristi left in tears this afternoon."

  "Ah hell." The starch went out of Dillon's shoulders. He'd been nursing a killer headache when his young waitress waltzed into work that morning with lime-green hair. The stark color hit him like a knife to both eyeballs. He didn't remember his exact words, but the hurt look she gave him would take awhile to forget. "I'll have a talk with her tomorrow."

  "If she comes back. What's up with you, man? The girl's only nineteen. Cut her some slack for wanting to be a teenager a little while longer."

  Vic's tone rankled. Nineteen was old enough to know better. Yet even as he thought it, he felt like the lowest piece of shit over his behavior. "I said I'll talk to her."

  "You haven't been sleeping, have you."

  The observation caught Dillon off guard. Sleeping? He worked longer hours at the diner. He spent more time with the dogs. None of it helped. He couldn't sleep without the night terrors, so he stopped trying. "It's like this after every race, you know that."

  "Yeah, yeah. I know how the race screws with your sleep patterns and it takes awhile to get back to normal." Vic grunted. "Whatever the hell normal is." His eyes narrowed. "This time is different. It's been a month. Everybody can see your fuse getting shorter. Something happened out there on the trail, something that's eating your insides."

  Dillon resented being cornered by his own fallibility. "If I wanted a shrink," he said, his words sharp, "I'd hire one."

  "No you wouldn't. That's not what we do."

  "We?"

  "Wounded warriors, disabled vets, fucked-up soldiers."

  "You've got the wrong guy. I've never been in the military."

  "But you've served."

  Sworn to protect. Dedicated to serve.

  Vic nodded. "I see I touched a nerve. What was your war zone?"

  Playing dumb with the man would only piss him off. Dillon had seen Vic pissed off. Damn dangerous. "I was a Portland Police officer." Saying it raked his throat.

  "Explains why you let that pretty gal go back to Portland alone."

  "She had a – "

  "Who'd you kill?"

  The man may as well have reached across the desk and backhanded him. "None of your God damn business."

  Vic shrugged. "You can talk to me or you can find yourself another cook. I ain't sticking around to watch you self-destruct."

  "Go to hell."

  "Already been there, man."

  Chapter 30

  You'll never be the same when it's over.

  A small tremor of panic snaked through Claire as the truth of Dillon's words taunted her yet again. She looked around her office at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the dark leather armchairs and matching couch on a sage-colored carpet, the rain-spattered window overlooking downtown Portland and the Willamette River, unable to shake the restlessness beating inside her as persistent as the
weather. It had been an uncharacteristically wet June. She and Alice replanted the lemon cucumbers a week ago because the first seeds drowned.

  A headache drilled into her temple. She glanced at the Madison file on her desk, a clear case of self-defense. But something was missing, a detail lurking at the edge of her awareness.

  Three months and she still struggled to concentrate, still couldn't sleep longer than four hours at a time, still woke listening for the dogs. The fussy clothes, the shoes that hurt her feet, business lunches, courtroom appearances, prison consults, city noise, too many people pressed together. She felt suffocated. As hard as she tried, she couldn't force things to be the same anymore. The pieces of her life crumbled from under her a little more every day, like an eroding embankment.

  She'd packed and unpacked half a dozen times, with no destination in mind. Janey told her their door was always open, but Claire had no desire to encroach on her friend's hospitality again.

  Pushing away from the desk, she smoothed the front of her gray pinstriped skirt and paced. Window. Desk. Bookshelves. Window. She rubbed at the throb in her temple. What am I missing?

  And where the hell was Dillon? Three months and not a word. Three months of empty arms and an empty bed. Her dad and Helen had been in constant communication – letters, phone calls, emails. If Helen mentioned Dillon at all, Dad remained annoyingly tight-lipped about it. Kept saying a gentleman doesn't kiss and tell until she felt like kicking him. There was no denying the light in his eyes. Helen's wasn't so unlike Mama in that regard. Dad looked happy. Claire was happy for him.