JENNIFER LABRECQUE - Northern Exposure

She rubbed her index finger along her temple. That grin was lethal to a woman’s resolve. “Sorry about that. I should know better. I’ve been fighting that particular battle since residency. It’s tough to be taken seriously when you’re a woman.”

“I noticed, Dr. Shanahan,” he said. And while there wasn’t anything offensive in his words, there was a note of awareness in his voice that sent a whoosh of color up into her face. Very primal. Very elemental. Him, man. Her, woman.

“I apologize. I’m sure you’re very competent,” she said, falling back on her professionalism in an attempt to quell what felt like an intimate moment between two strangers.

He nodded, a faintly wicked glimmer in his eyes. “Of course I am. Otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here.”

Skye laughed. She got the implication—incompetent bush pilots were either grounded or six feet under.

An answering smile lit his eyes and for a moment she forgot to breathe. “So, is that your bag, Doc?” He nodded toward her carry-on. “We can head out.”

He must be kidding. She always packed a carry-on bag with her toiletries and two changes of clothing and undergarments. That way if her suitcases got lost in transit, she wasn’t stranded without anything. There was much to be said for not being caught unawares. But she was here for two weeks. Her carry-on bag would cover her for two days.

Apparently, however, he wasn’t being funny. Mr. Saunders was already turning to go.

“No, this isn’t everything. We’ll need to pick them up at baggage claim.”

“Them?” His dark eyebrows lowered.

“I never quite mastered the art of packing light.” Not to mention she was about to be in the back country. It wasn’t as if she could just run down the street to one of twenty stores to pick up whatever she needed out here in the cold, God-forsaken Alaskan wilderness. “You might want to grab a luggage cart.”

“YOU KNOW MY PLANE HAS a weight limit,” Dalton said as he stacked yet another matching bag, all in a green and blue paisley pattern, for crying out loud, on the cart. She’d brought a ton of stuff with her. You’d think she was checking into the Ritz Carlton instead of the Good Riddance Bed and Breakfast.

From the moment he saw her crossing the terminal, in her trim pantsuit, elegant hairstyle, and now the matching designer luggage, he knew she was the ambitious sort.

Was that a blush creeping its way up beneath her freckle-kissed porcelain skin? Nah. Probably just a flash of temper that went with that gorgeous red hair of hers. At least he suspected it would be gorgeous if it was tumbling down around her shoulders rather than pinned into an elegant twist at the nape of her neck.

His fingers itched to reach over and pluck a few pins and watch it fall and see just what color her eyes turned then. And that was just plain dumb-ass considering she was exactly the type of woman he needed to avoid.

She had the most incredibly amazing blue eyes. The name Skye didn’t fit her —nah, she was Dr. Shanahan up one side and down the other—but it fit her eyes to a “T.” They were the color of the sky Dalton flew through, which was a distinctly different shade than you saw when you were on the ground looking up. Yep, her eyes were the open sky at fair-weather flying altitude. Fringed by reddish-gold lashes that led him to believe her hair color was real and not out of a bottle. Of course there was one sure way to know and of its own volition his mind quickly sketched an image of her naked—red hair down around her shoulders, pale freckled skin with a thatch of fiery red curls at the apex of her thighs.

And damn it to hell, he had absolutely no business standing here daydreaming about the good doctor without clothes. Alaskan men had a reputation for being woman-desperate, but he was far from that. He hooked up occasionally with Janice, a cute diner waitress in Juneau, and outside of that, rounding up a date now and then wasn’t difficult. No, he wasn’t desperate and furthermore he wasn’t stupid. Even if he liked the idea of seeing her naked, that was the end of it. God save him from any more involvements, physical or otherwise, with ambitious women.

“That’s all of it.” Her no-nonsense tone snapped him out of his introspection.

“Good thing. If you’d tossed in the kitchen sink I’d have to circle back to pick you up later.”

“Or maybe I’d have to read the manual on how to fly your plane.”

He laughed at her not-so-subtle message that he was dispensable. “You’d be out of luck there, Doc. My plane doesn’t come with a manual.”

“How fortuitous then that I left the kitchen sink behind at the last moment.”

Dalton was about a hundred percent certain Dr. Skye Shanahan wasn’t thrilled to be here. He spent a lot of time hauling strangers from one destination point to another and he’d learned to read body language. Hers screamed that she was here under protest. “I’d say it’s a very good thing.” He glanced at the mountain of luggage and pushed the cart in the direction of his plane on the tarmac outside. “How long are you staying again?”

She bristled. “I didn’t want to leave something I might need.”

He skirted a group of guys who had obviously flown in on a hunting trip. They looked like hunters and the rifle cases were a dead giveaway. He’d take that assignment over transporting Dr. Holier Than Thou any day. But he was getting paid and that’s what mattered. And while she might be a pain in the ass, she was undisputably easier on the eyes than the hunters.

“I didn’t bring this much with me when I moved here,” he said, pretending to stagger under the weight of the bags.

“Then I guess you win the light packer award.”

He nodded. “I keep it on my mantel.”

“Good place for an award.”

“Missed diagnosis, Doc.” Her full lips tightened every time he called her Doc. “I keep my suitcase on the mantel.” It was actually a lightweight backpack but why let the truth stand in the way of a good story? Tall tales abounded in the Alaskan wilderness.

That seemed to catch her off-guard. “You keep your suitcase on your mantel? How …bohemian.”

“Yeah. It keeps me grounded—it reminds me that everything I really need can fit in there.”

She looked at him as if he’d belched in public and then cast a faintly mournful eye at the luggage cart. “I hope I’ve remembered everything I’m going to need.”

He held the exit door for her and then damn near lost one of her suitcases wrestling the cart over the threshold. “Doc, I bet when you leave, you won’t have used even half of what you brought with you.”

She shivered and tugged her wool jacket together over her sweater, whether from chill or apprehension he had no clue. Maybe a combination of both. She tilted her chin up at a stubborn angle. “But I’ll have it if I need it.”

“Yes, ma’am, that you definitely will.” He opened the door of the plane and started stowing her mountain of luggage. “Here we are.”

She stepped back and eyed his baby, aghast. “That’s a plane?”

There were some lines you didn’t cross. You could insult a man’s intelligence, his mother, his sister, the size of his private equipment, but you never, ever insulted a bush pilot’s plane. “Wings. Propeller. She’s not just a plane, she’s a damn fine plane.” He patted Belinda’s riveted metal side.

She narrowed her bewitching eyes at him. “Are you expecting me to get on that plane?”

At this point, it’d be easier if he took her luggage and let her hitch-hike her prissy ass to Good Riddance. But that wasn’t part of his contract. “That’s the general idea.”

“But it’s so …little.”

He was damn proud he managed to not roll his eyes at her. “You were expecting a 747?”