Alaskan Fire (50 page)

“You want more?” Blaze asked,
wiping her eyes again.

“No more!” Jack screamed, rolling
away from her, falling with a crash onto the debris-scattered floor.  “Fuck, it
burns!  My legs are on
fire
!”

“Well, at least you’re
feeling
them, right?!” Blaze snapped, more vindictively than she would have thought
herself capable.

The wereverine didn’t hear her.  He
had devolved into a long string of curses, imprecations, and invectives that
left her ears burning…

…And her exhaustion finally hit
her like a sledgehammer.  As the wereverine rolled around on the floor, moaning
and screaming like he was dying, Blaze slumped to the bed in a near-stupor,
knowing she probably wasn’t going to wake up for a few days.

I hate crying,
she
thought, as the blackness enfolded her.

“So, uh, you feelin’ ready to
wake up yet?  You been sleepin’ three days, tootz.  I already gave you a good
sunbath.  You keep sleeping, it’s just you bein’ lazy.”

Already gave you a good
sunbath? 
But before she had a chance to think about
that
, Blaze
felt something poking her in the ribs and she moaned and rolled away, pulling
the covers over her head.

She heard Jack sigh and walk
around the bed.

Walk
around the bed? 
Blaze peeked out from under the blankets.  Jack was looking down at her with a
platter of what smelled like steaming eggs balanced in one hand, and a book
balanced in the other.  He tossed the book so that it landed by her nose, then
lowered the plate of eggs to the mattress beside her stomach. 

“Teach me that,” Jack said,
gesturing at the smutty romantic adventure novel, “and I’ll consider it a fair
trade.”

Frowning, Blaze sat up and said,
“Consider
what
a fair…”  She didn’t finish when she realized that the drywall
of the room had been stripped to the two-by-four studs, and that through the
now-transparent walls, she saw that the rest of the lodge seemed to have
suffered similar treatment, though she could see no evidence on the floors.

Blaze was so flabbergasted that
all she could say was, “You
swept
?”

“I only just started on it,” Jack
said, almost sounding apologetic.  “But we’ve got all winter.  Place was
needing an upgrade anyway.  Already took the liberty of scheduling a few
freight-trips in with David Foruke.  He’s got a nice snow-machine rig he runs
up the river after freeze-up.”  He gestured at the plate of food.  “But you eat
something.  You been asleep for three days.”

Most people, Blaze knew, would
have been freaking out and calling the EMTs in Anchorage if someone they knew
just suddenly decided to fall asleep for three days.  Jack just treated it like
it was a matter-of-fact.  He was also walking again.  Easily.  Like he hadn’t
just spent a month in a wheelchair, wearing a diaper.

“Why did my tears heal your
legs?” Blaze demanded.

Jack winced.  “Uh, well…”

“Just spit it out,” Blaze
growled.  “I’m about ready to use my last bit of cash to charter a plane back
to Anchorage.”

Jack narrowed his eyes at her. 
“It’s freeze-up, missy.  You ain’t chartering a plane nowhere ‘til the lake
freezes up enough for something to land on it.”

“The world has this marvelous new
invention called a ‘helicopter,’” Blaze said.  “I’ll charter one of those.” 
And it would probably cost her
all
of her cash, too, but it would be
worth every penny to finally wash her hands of this mess and return to a place
where people weren’t trying to kill her and she had enough control over her
emotions not to put herself into a coma every time her neighbor looked at her
funny.

Jack’s lip lifted in a bit of a
snarl.  “So that’s it, then?  You’re just going to take off and leave your
dream here to freeze as soon as the weather turns?”

“You’ve been
hiding
something from me since I
got
here!” Blaze snapped.  “So
yes
, I
am
about to pack up and leave.”

Jack glared at her for a long
moment before he crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.  “You’re a
phoenix,” he muttered.  “You got little tricks you can do, no big deal.”

A phoenix. 
Blaze’s mouth
fell open as things suddenly fell into place for her.  “And you didn’t think
this was important to tell me
why
?” she blurted.

He gave her an irritated look. 
“Didn’t think you needed to know.  Seemed to have been doing fine on your own. 
Why bother you with something like that?”

Then Blaze remembered the way the
dread unicorn’s horn had instantly knocked him out of his Third-Lander shape
and back into human form, then similarly how he had been rolling and howling three
nights ago, yet for all his screaming, had remained perfectly human.

“The tears yank the moon-magic
out of you, don’t they?” she demanded.

Jack’s eyes widened slightly and
she saw a tinge of sweat as he unfolded from the wall.  “Who told you that?”

“Despite what you keep claiming,”
Blaze growled, “I don’t have the IQ of a farm animal.  Every time you get so
much as
irritated
, you start growing fangs.  Yet you were rolling around
screaming last night and you looked more human than you do now.”

Indeed, the nervousness in his
green eyes was beginning to lengthen the pupil, elongating his teeth…

Licking his lips, the wereverine
looked out the now-drywall-less walls, avoiding her gaze.

Suddenly, Blaze understood. 
“You’re afraid of losing your power.”

Jack jerked his head back to face
her suddenly, eyes too wide.  He quickly replaced his bored mask, but not
before Blaze saw the fear, there.  “It’s only temporary,” he muttered.

“Okay,” Blaze said.  “So keep my
tears to myself.  Gotcha.”  She snorted.  “Shouldn’t be hard.  Hell, it’s not
like I ever learned how to cry on command.  I spent the last twenty-five years
of my life training myself
not
to cry.”  She gave him a weak smile. 
“You get told your comas are ‘self-induced’ enough and you stop really
believing in the whole medical establishment.  I got really
good
at not
crying, until I met you.”

Jack watched her tentatively,
something akin to understanding in his eyes, but seemingly had nothing more to
add.

“So,” Blaze sighed.  “That the
only reason you don’t want me on your land?”

The wereverine jerked.  “Don’t
want
you here?  What gave you that idea?”

Blaze gave him a long, level
look.

“Oh.”  Jack chuckled nervously
and scratched at the back of his neck.  “Uh.  Truth is, tootz, I’d kinda like
you to stay.”

Blaze could not believe it.  “So
let me get this straight,” she said, “In some strange, weasely part of your
brain, you’ve somehow decided that calling a woman a draft animal was akin to
telling her she had a pretty smile.”

“Uh…”  Jack swallowed again. 
“Bad habit, I guess.” 

Then Blaze remembered his little
monologue whilst tied to the bulldozer, in which he had babbled about playing
with fire.  Suddenly, something clicked in her head.  All the insults, all the
rude innuendo, all the posturing, all the
bullshit
…  He was acting like
a kindergartener who tugged a girl’s pigtails because he couldn’t figure out a
better way to say he liked her.

Blaze’s mouth fell open.

Jack gave her a nervous look and
scratched at the back of his neck.  He was
sweating
, Blaze noted, and
his eyes flickered sideways like he wanted to put a new hole in the wall and
bolt.

Why did I not see this before?
Blaze wondered, caught somewhere between awe and irritation.  To test her
theory, she said, “That day tied to the bulldozer…  You weren’t just saying
that to get me to let you loose, were you?”

Immediately, the wereverine
bristled like a puffer-fish.  “Of
course
I was making that shit up,” he
growled.  “You had me swimmin’ in my own goddamn shit, you inconsiderate
orangutan.”  But the anxiety in his eyes betrayed him.

Blaze’s mouth fell open again.

Looking up at her, Jack
swallowed.  He licked his lips and turned his attention to picking a splinter
from a nearby two-by-four.  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You like to play with fire,”
Blaze said, only able to stare.  “You’ve known
all this time
, haven’t you? 
From the day I stepped onto ‘your’ land.”

“Had about a six-foot-five
suspicion,” Jack admitted.

Blaze narrowed her eyes.  “I’m
six-foot-four.”

Jack laughed.  “When you’re that
big, tootz, nobody’s really counting.”

“You like to play with fire,”
Blaze repeated.  Jack flinched, and the way he looked up at her uneasily
cinched it for her.  “Oh my
God
,” Blaze cried.  “You’ve wanted to get me
naked
all this time
, and you just let me
stew
?”

He puffed up again, looked like
he wanted to say something loud and obnoxious, then swallowed and gruffly
muttered, “I don’t bed a girl ‘cause I’m bored.”

Maybe he
was
gay.  Blaze
eyed him carefully.  “
How
many women did you have in all that time? 
Four?”

He peered at her suspiciously. 
“You get as old as I do, anything less than a decade or two don’t really
count.”

Oh, great,
Blaze thought. 
So the sly little bastard isn’t as chaste as he’s been leading me to
believe.

“But yeah,” Jack said, picking at
the splinters again, “Four.”

Blaze peered at him.  “That ‘Wereverine’
four or ‘American English’ four?”

“Four,” Jack growled.  “Not that
it’s any of your damn business.  You gonna teach me to read or should I just
pack up and head home and let you deal with this beat-to-shit mansion in the
woods by yourself?”

Blaze grunted.  For the longest
time, she looked down at the book, trying to add up things in her head.  “So,”
she said tentatively, “Just so I can get this straight.  You’re telling me
you’ll help with…uh…costs…if I teach you to read this?”  She hefted the book
and held it up between them.

“That’s the deal,” Jack said.

Blaze peeked up at him.  “And
you’ll keep giving me massages.”

Jack raised an eyebrow.  “You
haven’t been making breakfast.”

Blaze’s jaw fell open.  “I’ve
been
asleep
!”

“I noticed,” he quipped.  “While
I was hard at work fixing walls and repairing water-damage.”

“I healed your legs,” Blaze
growled.

“Your
tears
did that,
tootz,” he said, infuriatingly.  “All you did was have a little pity-fest on
your own behalf.”

Blaze narrowed her eyes. 
“Compliment me.”

The wereverine blinked down at
her, looking startled.  “Huh?”

“Compliment me,” Blaze repeated. 
“Do something other than pull my damn pigtails.”

Jack stared at her.  “You ain’t
got pigtails.”

“Do it,” Blaze growled.  “You
know, like, ‘wow, your hair is pretty this morning, Blaze.’”

“It’s a rat’s nest.”

Blaze caught her reflection in
one of the broken chunks of mirror propped up against the studs.  It did,
indeed, look like something a particularly nasty rodent would have called
home.  Frustrated, she said, “Fine, tell me I smell nice.”

“Sorry to break this to you,
tootz, but you haven’t showered in three days.”  The wereverine sniffed at the
air.  “And I’m pretty sure you pissed yourself somewhere along the way.”

Blaze flushed furiously, remembering
all the awkward, messy mornings she’d experienced waking up after a sob-fest,
particularly in her teenage crush years.  “You,” she muttered, feeling like her
face was on fire, “are missing the point.”

“What’s the point?” the
wereverine asked her, looking thoroughly confused.

Blaze’s mouth fell open.  “I’m
trying to get you to comp—”  She frowned.  “Waaaiit.  Do you even know what a
compliment
is
?”

“I thought we determined I was
illiterate,” Jack growled, looking ruffled, “not stupid.”

“Okay,” Blaze said, crossing her arms,
“Then compliment me.”

“Why?” Jack demanded, looking
suspicious.

She narrowed her eyes at him. 
“Because I asked you nicely.”

“No you didn’t.  You
told
me to.”

“Yeah,” Blaze growled, “Well now
I’m asking.”

“Don’t feel like it,” Jack
muttered.

Blaze stared at him long enough
that Jack coughed nervously and looked away.  “So let me get this straight,”
she growled, throwing the blanket off of her and standing up to stare down at
him.  She poked him in the chest.  “You were offering to
marry
me and
there’s
nothing
you like about me?”

Jack stared down at her finger,
poking him in the chest, then lifted his head to peer up at her.  “Men have had
their arms ripped off for less than that,” he said.

Blaze narrowed her eyes and poked
him again.  “There’s
nothing
”—poke—“that your little pea
brain”—poke—“can come up with”—poke—“that you like about me.”  She thumped his
breastbone one last time and left her finger there, waiting.  “And if you say I
excrete a bodily fluid that cures what ails ya, I’m gone,
tootz
.  Packing
my bags and
outta
here.”

He squinted up at her in the same
way he had squinted at the hotel manager, when he had handed them plastic cards
as ‘keys’ to their room.  Sounding leery and confused, he said, “Why do you
want a compliment so bad?”

“At this point?” Blaze cried. 
“Just idle, random curiosity to see if you can even
do
it.”

He peered up at her so long that
Blaze began to wonder if a wire had crossed in his brain and the thoughtful
look to his green eyes was actually an irreparable short-circuit.  She was
about to snap her fingers in front of his face when, finally, each word like
pulling teeth, he muttered, “I like your hair.”

“You just told me it was a rat’s
nest,” Blaze growled.

“It is,” Jack muttered.  “Still
like it.”  He reached up and lifted a red-gold lock from her chest and rubbed
it between his fingers.  “Pretty.  Like fire.” 

He likes playing with fire.
 
Heart suddenly slamming like hot thunder in her ears at his sudden closeness,
Blaze managed, “Kids in school thought I dyed it.”

Jack gently released the lock of
her hair, then traced it up to her face.  “Pretty ears, too,” he noted.  “Got
the cheekbones of a princess.”  Blaze tried not to tremble as he traced the
ridges under her eyes, then across the bridge of her nose.  “Soft skin,” he
noted, still tracing.  “Gentle eyebrows.”  He drew his finger down the center
of her face.  “Cute nose.”  He gently brushed her lips and then ran his finger
down her chin.  “Full lips, nice pert chin.”