JENNIFER LABRECQUE - Northern Exposure

“Sure thing,” Dalton said.

Bull nodded. “Much obliged.”

They crossed the scarred wooden floor to the booth where Merrilee and the Doc sat across from one another. The rest of Gus’s looked the way it usually did, crowded but with everyone doing their own thing. Two pool tables in the back had games going on. In the far corner, Brody and Tyrrell Initkit had challenged one another to a dart game. Food and drinks were being served and Frank Sinatra was crooning a tune over the radio. That’s what happened when everyone knew everyone else. Even though the radio station was two hundred fifty miles west of Good Riddance, Gus had requested “dinner music” from six until nine every evening and so dinner music they had.

Bull slid into the booth next to Merrilee, leaving Dalton to fill the slot next to the Doc. His knee brushed hers and instant heat tracked through him. Next time he’d be sure to sit across from her. Keeping some distance between himself and Skye Shanahan struck him as a good idea. He drew a deep breath and found himself inhaling her scent. Make that a damn good idea.

FINALLY THE CROWD OF people that had surrounded them—God, she’d never remember all of the names, it was worse than a medical conference—had dispersed when Dalton and a man who could have doubled for Grizzly Adams waltzed in.

Welcome to the land where nothing was as it seemed. Instead of the grizzled old man Skye had been expecting, Gus had turned out to be a woman in her mid-to-late twenties, whose dark hair was threaded dramatically with a shock of white in the front.

The establishment itself was crowded but immaculately clean. Booths hugged the “front” and right walls. Tables with chairs filled the center. A long bar, complete with a highly polished brass foot rail, provided a focal point. To the left of the open kitchen, a small stage stood between two pool tables and a dart board area. The entry from Merrilee’s was over by the stage. Merrilee had explained that Thursday karaoke was big around here. Skye shuddered at the very thought.

Her head was spinning and she could’ve gotten by quite nicely without Saunders’s aggravating, albeit disturbingly attractive, presence next to her in the booth. However, there was nothing she could do about it, short of being rude. And if he was going to be her nearest neighbor, that didn’t seem the smartest plan.

Merrilee introduced the latest mountain man. “Dr. Skye, this is Bull Swenson. Bull, Dr. Skye. She’s filling in for Dr. Morrow while he’s on vacation.”

She offered her hand across the table. “Pleased to meet you …” She hesitated, finding it difficult to actually refer to him as Bull, “Mr. Swenson.”

While his hand swallowed hers, it was a gentle touch. “Pleased to have you here, Doc. And please, call me Bull.”

“Bull,” she murmured.

Gus arrived with two draft beers which she promptly served to Saunders and Bull.

“Tonight’s on the house, Dr. Skye. We’ve got caribou scaloppini or a moose ragout. Or I can whip you up an omelet if you’d prefer.”

“The scaloppini is to die for,” Bull said, seemingly serious.

Wild game scaloppini and ragout? Maybe these were some kind of Alaskan frozen dinners. “Scaloppini would be lovely,” she said.

“You know I love your scaloppini. That’s what I want,” Saunders said, slanting a charming smile Gus’s way. That smile qualified as disarming, dangerous …even downright lethal. For a second she wondered if there might be something between the bush pilot and the bar owner. But no, there didn’t seem to be any particular sparks flying there. And it was sheer stupidity that a feeling of relief chased close on that realization.

“I think I’ve got a taste for moose tonight, so I’ll take the ragout,” Bull said, picking up his beer and taking a swallow.

“Merrilee?”

“Would you mind terribly if I order that mushroom omelet with brie and gorgonzola?”

“Of course not. Chanterelles or shitake mush rooms?”

“Both?”

Gus shook her head. “It’s a bastardization, but because it’s you, I’ll do it.”

Gus bustled off and Skye looked to Merrilee for clarification.

“Gus is my niece.” Skye would never have guessed. She wasn’t seeing the family resemblance, but then sometimes that’s just the way it was.

“Gus trained in Paris,” Bull added.

Surely he didn’t mean trained? “Trained?”

“You know, got her degree from the L’Ecole Gastronomique,” Saunders explained, as if she were simple-minded. Skye appreciated good food but she’d never heard of the L’Ecole Gastronomique. Still, she’d rather lose a limb than confess that to the smug Saunders, so she nodded as if she was intimately acquainted with the cooking school.

“She trained in Paris and then came to Good Riddance?” Skye asked. This place was full of some truly odd people.

Merrilee and Bull exchanged a subtle glance which Skye almost missed. “She worked in Manhattan for a while before she came here.”

“She was working in Manhattan when Miriam sent her here.”

Bull chuckled, at least that’s what she thought it was, and shook his head. “She fell in love with the town her Aunt Merrilee had founded and decided to stay.”

Skye sipped at her wine. She wasn’t big on alcohol, but right now she really needed a drink. “How did that happen? I mean, it’s not every day that a woman wanders into the middle of nowhere and founds a town.” Or maybe it was out here.

“I’d been married for twelve years when I finally figured out it was a whopper of a mistake. Since I couldn’t kill him—well, I could’ve but I didn’t want to wind up in the slammer—I decided to pack my belongings and move as far away as I could and still retain my U.S. citizenship. Everybody thought I’d lost my mind. So I took our R.V. and started driving. I knew I’d know when I found where I belonged.

“One thing led to another. I took a wrong turn off the highway and stopped to spend the night here and I just knew. I knew I’d found the place for me. Word gets out in these parts when a single woman arrives and before long, other people started showing up. So there you have it. My ex told everyone I had a mid-life crisis but I was just finding where I belonged and it wasn’t with him.”

Skye nodded, but she was sure she hadn’t heard the whole story. It was just a gut instinct but a strong one, nonetheless. Gus arrived bearing plates as artfully arranged as any Skye had seen in the best restaurants. It smelled heavenly. After one bite, she knew it tasted even better than it smelled.

A rough-hewn timber building, a clientele wearing blue-jeans and work boots and a five-star quality meal.

Welcome to Good Riddance, Alaska.

SAUNDERS FOLDED HIS NAPKIN and placed it on the table next to his plate. “We’d better be heading out,” he said. “I’ve got an early flight in the morning which means Doc—” she wanted to throttle him every time he called her that “—has to be up early too. What time does Nelson get in?”

Merrilee dabbed at her mouth with the edge of her white linen cloth. “What time does he need to be there?”

“Six-thirty.”

“I’ll give him a call,” Merrilee said with a brief nod.

Even though this was about her, Skye was fairly clueless. And she didn’t do clueless. “Nelson?”

“Your assistant, dear.” Merrilee reached across the table and patted her hand.

“Ah. I see.” Actually, she didn’t see anything. It was as if she’d stepped through the rabbit hole. Nothing was as it seemed. She’d just had one of the finest meals she’d ever indulged in and now it was time to find out what else was in store for her.

She’d been dreading going to the cabin that was to be her home for the next two weeks. But heck, considering the meal she’d just enjoyed, it might turn out to be a first-rate accommodation—fluffy down pillows, five-hundred-thread-count sheets, a down mattress topper so thick you sank into the bed and never wanted to crawl out ….