Alaskan Fire (11 page)

“I told you,” Jack growled, “I’m
not warning you off.”

“Then what
are
you doing?”
she cried, exasperated.  “You attack me, scare the
crap
outta me, run me
down, lick me, run me down
again
—”

“I’m asking you to stay,” Jack
interrupted.  “Under my protection.”

“I don’t need your ‘protection,’”
Blaze said, bristling.

“Believe me,” Jack said, holding
her eyes for a long moment, “You
do
.”  He sounded utterly serious. 

And, considering that he seemed
to have the ability to shape-shift into a monster at will, a tiny little
self-preserving part of Blaze suggested that maybe she ought to listen to the
little man that sprouted hypodermic fangs when he got angry.  Deciding to
change the subject, she said, “So what do you…you know…want from
me
?  I
mean, aside from a paycheck.”

“I want you to stay,” Jack said. 
He shrugged.  “After that, who knows?”

Blaze glared at him.  “I’m not
screwing my employees.”

Jack gave her a startled,
half-cocked stare, then blurted, “Lady, did I
ask
you to screw me?”  The
way he said it, she might as well have asked him to go screw a rhino.

Well, question answered.  The
headline was written all over his face.  Greek God Not Interested In Screwing Yeti. 
Cheeks heating, once more fully aware of his beautiful, perfectly-chiseled
body, and just how awkward and ungainly her own six-foot-four form really was,
Blaze said, “So, uh, what do you know about farming?”

“Farming?”  Jack twitched, like
his brain was still fully occupied with trying to picture the nasty mechanics
of elephantine sex, then said, “A lot.  Anything you decide to grow is gonna do
well.”

Blaze felt somewhat irritated at
his ego.  “I was asking for
facts
, not boasting about your farming
skills.”

He frowned at her.  “I wasn’t—” 
Then, cutting off, he muttered, “What you wanna know?  Raised a lot of rabbits
in Russia.  Had goats in Arabia.  Chickens in Japan.  Pigs and cows in the
colonies.  Geese and ducks anywhere there was water.  Hell, sometimes just
trapped some wild ones and started breeding my own.”

Wow,
Blaze thought. 
This
dude’s well-traveled.
  Hiding her surprise, she said, “How about potatoes? 
You know anything about those?”

He snorted.  “More than I care
to.  You clear a spot of land, dig a trench, drop a few spuds in the bottom of
it, and in a few months you’re gonna have ‘em comin out your ears.  So many you
gotta hand ‘em out to the neighbors.  Hell,
more
, if you find your…”  He
suddenly bit off his words and gave her a wary look.

“More if I find my what?” Blaze
asked, curious.

“More if you use fertilizer,”
Jack said, quickly lowering his head in a manner that told her he had been
about to say something else.  He started picking at the porch again, and now
that Blaze was looking, she saw the point of a black talon extending from the
tip of his finger.  He was using it to idly scrape at the wood, drawing up more
splinters.

“Stop that,” Blaze ordered.

Jack frowned up at her.  “Why? 
I’m just gonna be replacing it when I rip out the porch.”

“I find it annoying,” Blaze said,
“Especially when I’m trying to think.”

“Really?”  He pried up more
splinters, raking his finger across the deck.  “I find it
helps
me
think.”

As she sat there, listening to
the
scratch-snap
of wood, thinking about how her day had completely
devolved around her, only feet from a man who had made a very convincing case
that he wasn’t human, Blaze began to wonder if this was what losing her mind
felt like.

“You are close to pissing me off,”
Blaze finally said.

“Honey,” Jack said. 
Scratch-snap.
 
“I’ve had a long day.” 

“
You’ve
had a long day,”
she sputtered.  “Who
kidnapped
you and went rabid kangaroo and
licked
you while drooling all over your shirt?”

He lifted his head and gave her a
flat look.  Then he returned to drawing designs in the wood with his talon.

Blaze took a deep breath and
glanced again at the yard.  She let it out between her teeth, forcing a smile. 
“All right.  So we’ve agreed that you’ll
let
me stay on
your
land, and you’ll protect me from…”  She gestured at his finger where it was
digging into the wood.  “…things like you.”

Jack grunted.  “Sorry to tell you
this, honey, but there
ain’t
nothin’ like me.  Not anymore.”  He looked
up at her and grinned, but it was fierce and filled with pain.  “Wolves got the
last one ‘bout six years ago.  Part of how them assholes got themselves that
land.  Killed the gal that was sniffing around, seein’ if I’d make a decent
enough mate.”  He gestured to the south.  “Pretty sure she sputched a few of
them, and there’s more than one who’s got a good limp, now, but I haven’t seen
her since they moved in.” 

“Maybe they drove her off?” Blaze
suggested, a bit horrified.

He shrugged.  “Maybe.” 
Scratch-snap
. 
“But I doubt it.  We, uh, kinda have trouble backing down, once we’re worked up.” 
He gave her a sheepish look before returning to the porch.

“Wereverines,” Blaze said, just
to make sure.  “Like were
wolves
.”

Jack snorted.  “Nothin’ like
those droolin’ pussies.”

To distract herself from the way
he was demolishing her porch, Blaze started picking dead grass and loose twigs
from her hair, deposited there from her tumble in the woods, hours before.  “So
we agree you’re gonna
let
me stay.”  It still grated her to say that,
considering she had spent over six hundred thousand dollars for that right.

“Sure,” Jack said, as if she had
been asking.  “I’ll let you stay.”  He kept prying at the wood.  By the way he
wouldn’t look at her, she felt like he was hiding something.

“I’m staying,” Blaze bit out.  “I
don’t have anywhere else to go.”

He gave her another quick look,
startled.  “You ain’t got houses in town?”

The casual way he said ‘houses’
made her feel sick.  Obviously, he had the wrong idea just how much money he
was dealing with, here.  “Jack,” she said slowly, “Let me clarify something for
you.  Before I got the six hundred thousand from my dad, I was eking out a
living on ramen and corn, working an accounting job during the day, taking
classes at night, and sometimes I couldn’t afford the
corn
, when it came
time to buy textbooks.”

“Huh,” he said.  She could see
his prospects for that steak-buying money fade from his face so quickly it
hurt.  Poor guy.  She wondered what his last good meal had been.  It was pretty
common knowledge that a good number of the Bushrats out here were just barely
eking by on the Permanent Fund Dividend and food stamps.  She actually felt bad
for getting his hopes up.

“But hey,” Blaze offered, “All
that could change if I actually get this lodge running.  Then there would be enough
money to throw around, you know what I mean?”

He stiffened with a healthy case
of Poor Man’s Pride.  “I don’t need your money.”

Sighing, Blaze said.  “Okay.  Sure. 
So tell me about this farm you’re gonna build me.”

Jack snapped off a large shard of
wood, then disgustingly picked it up and started using it to dig between his
teeth.  “Guess it all depends on what you want, tootz.  I’m here for the next
few centuries or so, so whatever ya want, I can build it.”  He pulled out
whatever had been stuck between his teeth and held it out, frowning as he
examined it.

Blaze slapped at a group of
mosquitoes clustered on the back of her hand.  “Something self-sustaining, if
that’s possible,” she said.

“Sure,” was all he said.  “What
kind of materials and budget are we looking at?”

This time, Blaze winced.  “I’ve already
scheduled some barge loads of lumber to be delivered in the next couple weeks. 
I can add some fencing to the mix.” 

Jack sniffed the air between
them, wrinkled his nose, then gave her a considering look.  “You got a green
thumb, don’t ya?”

“It’s why I want a farm,” Blaze
admitted.

Jack nodded.  “You get some Plexiglas
and I can build you a greenhouse.  Big one.  You like any particular fruit
trees?  Oranges?  Pears?”

“Mangoes,” Blaze said, laughing,
“But nobody can get a mango to grow this far north.”

“We’ll get you some mango trees,
then,” Jack said.  “And whatever else you want.”

Blaze eyed him suspiciously,
distrustful of his sudden willingness to please.  “You make it sound like
you’re wanting me to settle in.”

Jack’s fingers stopped working
the splinter between his teeth.  Blaze wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw him
blush.  He coughed.  “Girl, I been around awhile.  A male’s got a few important
duties in life, and a wise man knows it, and he does his job, quickly, without
complaint.”

Blaze raised a brow, her hackles
already bristling.  She knew where the conversation was headed and she’d heard
such chauvinist crap before.  “I already told you, I don’t need you taking care
of—”

“—cause if they don’t, they get
bitched at ‘til they do.”  He flicked the splinter across the yard.  He crossed
his beefy arms over his big, relatively hairless chest.  “So, one-story
greenhouse or two?”

Blaze stared at him, caught
between laughing and crying.  “You can make it two?” she finally managed.

“Two it is, then,” he grunted. 
“You got any idea what kind of critters you want on the place to start? 
Rabbits?  Chickens?”

Reluctantly, Blaze told him her complete
plan for the place.

Jack raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t
say it couldn’t be done.  On the other hand, for some time, he didn’t say
anything at all.  Then, “
Yaks
, you say?”  He sounded dubious.  “Don’t
those live up in the Himalayas?”

“They’re more feed-efficient than
cows,” Blaze said, her spine straightening under his scrutiny, “And their milk
is richer.”

“But you said you wanted cows,
too,” he said, frowning at her.

“Highlands and Galloways,” Blaze
agreed.  “They’re heritage breeds.  Really hairy.  Raised in Scotland.  Hardy
as hell.  Can eat brush as well as grass.”

He gave her a long look, then,
slowly, nodded.  “And you eventually want to turn this place into a renaissance
faire?”

“Only during a couple weeks in
the summer,” Blaze said.  “I’m hoping to get four to five hundred people to
show up.  Offer free flights out and everything.  Give ‘em all a taste of what
life is
really
supposed to be like.  Good food, no internet, no TV…  But
that’s
years
from now.”

Jack looked ill.  “Uh, no
offense, Boss, but I kinda like my privacy.”

“They won’t leave the grounds,”
Blaze promised.  “We’ll be roasting our own pigs, butchering our own chickens… 
Nobody will need to go off hunting in your territory or anything.”

He gave her an irritated look. 
“This
is
my territory.”

“It’s only thirty acres, Mr. I’ve
Got Ten Square Miles,” Blaze snapped.  “And if I can get five hundred people to
show up in the summer and get some cabin rentals and campsites built, we’re
looking at almost two hundred thousand dollars a year, pure profit.”

That got his attention.  She
could
see
his stomach calculating out just how many good steak dinners
that would be for him that winter.  “For two weeks a year?” he asked, sounding
incredulous.

“That’s it,” Blaze said.  “And if
we get the client base for an agritourism group going, then we could earn more
money that way.”

“Agritourism.”  He sounded like
she was talking nuclear physics.

“It’s basically people who live
in the city who get tired of the traffic and the stress and want to hire out a
cabin out on a farm for a week or two, just to get out of the fast lane for a
bit.  We’d totally have the setup, too.”

“We,” Jack said, looking
cautious.

Blaze shrugged.  “No way I could
do it alone.  You help out, I’ll cut you in on the profits.”

Jack grunted, then wrinkled his
nose.  Tentatively, he said, “Do you have any idea how much
work
you’re
talking about here, sister?  That’s like full-time jobs for ten people.  Just
the fishing lodge itself…  Hell, that’s gonna take you, me, and a couple more
guys as it is.”

Blaze deflated even as her pride
prickled.  “Then I’ll hire people.”

Jack snorted.  “You and what
inheritance?”

Oh, the
bastard.
  Another
check mark went up beside Return to Anchorage.  Shields down, Captain.  Engines
at twelve percent…  Wasn’t looking good, Jim.

Blithely unaware of her scowl, he
went on, “I get the pigs and the cows—they’re good eatin.  I get the birds,
‘cause they’re easy to keep.  I even get the goats, the buggering little
bastards.  But
yaks
?”

Blaze shrugged.  “I dunno.  I’ve
just got this feeling like maybe the world won’t be around here much longer,
and I’m gonna do what I can to save a piece of it.”

Jack stiffened, his green eyes
squinting at her.  “What do you mean?”

Blaze laughed.  She never told
anyone of her fears of an impending apocalypse, knowing they would laugh her
out onto the street.  Somehow, though, faced with this man-beast-
thing
,
she felt confident enough to tell him.

After listening to her
explanation, Jack grunted.  He started picking at the deck again in silence. 
Scratch-snap. 
Scratch-snap.
  Just when Blaze thought she was going to lose her mind, he
said, “So you want to save some heritage breeds, grow some heirloom veggies,
and maybe see us through the end of the world, is that it?”

The blunt way he put it made
Blaze’s spine stiffen.  He thought she was crazy. 
He
, a goddamn
slitty-eyed
freak
thought that
she
was crazy.