CHAPTER ONE
“C’mon, Bessie, hold on for me.” Casey Michaels winced as the van lurched over a rut in the dirt road. “The cabin isn’t far now, unless the GPS has gone wonky.”
She frowned as she glanced at the dashboard clock. She’d been driving for six hours. The rusty van shook like an old washing machine. Her lower back ached, and her calf muscles had gone tight from pressing the gas. She flexed her hands over the steering wheel and tried to will Bessie to stay in one piece just a little bit longer. She couldn’t afford another broken axle or overheated engine, like when she’d covered the off-road races in the Mojave Desert last month. She had a tiny window of opportunity to interview this guy for her latest assignment, and she was already two hours late.
A flash of sunlight caught her eye. She hit the brakes and peered through the trees toward a glint of sunlight off the hood of a Jeep. The cabin beyond it, amid the pines, looked like something out of an Abe Lincoln theme park. Her editor hadn’t given her much information about Dylan MacCabe, other than the guy lived in the middle of nowhere, and tomorrow he would set off on a canoe adventure into the Adirondack wilderness.
This had to be his place.
Nudging Bessie into the shallow tire furrows that wound between the trees, Casey pulled her sputtering van up the driveway to stop beside the Jeep. If the man matched the setting, he’d be full-bearded, decked out in plaid, and honed by years of hewing logs. She shut off the van to a series of sputters and coughs and reached into the back seat to drag her laptop case off the pile of all her worldly possessions. Then she nudged the rusty door open with a foot.
Approaching the porch, she called out, “Mr. MacCabe?”
No response drifted out from within the cabin, though the inner door was open. That didn’t mean he was home, she supposed. She’d never locked the door of her own rural home, either. A prickling threatened behind her eyes at the thought, but Casey willed it away. Now was not the time to remember all she’d lost.
All she’d given away.
Cupping her hands against the battered screen, she searched for signs of life amid the plaid couches and braided rugs. A distinct thunk echoed, coming, as far as she could tell, from behind the cabin. Hopping off the low porch, she headed around the side, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind an ear before smoothing the travel creases of her skirt. The hacked-up remains of an enormous tree came into view as she turned the corner.
She scuffed to a dazzled stop. In the midst of the carnage stood a man of six feet or more, sporting gray office slacks and an oxford button-up shirt. The cotton of his shirt strained across massive shoulders. He twisted at his belted, narrow waist as he raised his arms. With an economy of movement, he hurled the blade of an ax with whistling swiftness down upon a propped log, the ends of his tie flying loose.
The ax split its target before she found her voice.
“Mr. MacCabe?”
The man’s head shot up, blond hair bright in the sunlight, as he shoved away a split log with a foot.
“I’m MacCabe.” He pinned her with a Viking’s marauding gaze. “You lost?”
“Not anymore.” She forced one foot in front of the other, her heart dancing like a rabbit in her chest. “I just found the man I’ve been looking for.”
Still gripping the ax in one hand, MacCabe dropped his arms to his sides. As he raised an eyebrow, an uncomfortable heat crept up her chest. She should have worded that differently. She was a writer, damn it. She hadn’t meant to be provocative. She became keenly aware of the perspiration on her chest and the dust of travel on her skin.
Steady, girl.
“Casey Michaels.” She stopped a modest—safe?—distance away. “I’m here on assignment for American Backroads.”
Recognition flickered. “You’re the reporter.”
“Yes.”
“From that trade journal.”
“American Backroads,” she repeated.
“It’s got a guy in neon-green swim briefs on the home page this month.”
She nodded with a shrug. She wasn’t responsible for choosing the website design, just for writing content.
The Viking lodged the blade of the ax in the chopping block with a one-handed stroke. “I’m MacCabe.” He stretched out his hand. “Call me Dylan.”
“Casey,” she said, as he slid a hot, gritty palm across her hand. “I can’t wait to interview you about your upcoming adventure.”
He pulled his hand back with a frown. “Yeah, that would be great.”
Sarcasm edged his voice. Most guys would be thrilled she was covering their challenges. Was he pissed she’d shown up past the appointed hour?
“Listen, I apologize. I took a wrong turn somewhere around Schenectady. I tried calling you, but…” You didn’t pick up. Or answer any of my emails. He was probably too busy chopping wood, though he looked like he’d just stepped out of a board meeting. Her fingers itched to tug the hanging end of the tie until it slid off his shoulders.
Wow. What was wrong with her? All the other subjects of her interviews were gorgeous physical specimens, and she managed to keep her professional cool.
“Frankly,” he said, “I forgot about the interview.”
“Oh?” She straightened her knees, melting under the sun of his perusal. “That’s not surprising, considering all the details you must be dealing with for tomorrow’s launch. I did text you—”
“I threw my phone across the room hours ago.” He shifted his stance, planting his hands low on those lean hips. “It’s been a hell of a day.”
Her instincts twitched. “A problem with the expedition?”
“That’s putting it lightly.”
“Last-minute glitches are inevitable.” She would not be distracted by the muscular roll of that shrug. “As a journalist, that’s the stuff I need to hear anyway. Trouble makes good copy, provides twists and turns in the narrative.”
Icelandic blue, those eyes.
“Perhaps this might cheer you.” She gripped the strap of her laptop bag for balance. “My editor is promising a full feature article for the October edition.”
He dropped his head, shook it with a short, startled laugh.
Odd. Most guys would roar in triumph. “We’re talking front page of the magazine, Dylan. The home page of the website.”
“Neon’s not my color.”
“They won’t make you wear…swim briefs. I promise. You can wear that shirt, if you’d like.” Though her editor would expect the shirt fully unbuttoned to show off the massive, carved chest under the chaff-sprinkled cotton. She forced her mind away from that thought. Nailing this interview was more important than fantasizing about nailing him.
She glanced pointedly back at the cabin. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Should we go inside and talk?”
After a pause, he strode past her, all heat and muscle, toward the cabin’s back door. “How far did you drive for this?”
“Six hours,” she confessed, falling into his wake.
He cursed sharply. “This day couldn’t get any harder.”
Harder than your butt? Seriously, though. High-rounded and rock-solid. “What’s the trouble?”
“My partner is the trouble.” Dylan swung open the screen door and stepped back to beckon her in ahead of him, acting the casual gentleman. “Garrick—Garrick Kane, my plus-one for this expedition—just bailed on me this morning.”
She brushed by his pulsing, vibrant warmth into the cabin. “He bailed?”
“Climbing the Shawangunk Mountains yesterday, he broke his arm.” He stepped into the cool kitchen behind her, the screen door banging. “He’s lucky he didn’t crack his hard skull, though I may crack it for him when I see him again.”
“But you’ve got a substitute.” Of course.
“Garrick was my substitute.” Dylan walked to the farmhouse sink where he shoved on the faucet. “My original partner recently started a new job and bought a new house, so he bailed on me months ago. Garrick agreed to take his place. But after months of planning, good old Garrick decided to take up a new athletic endeavor and blow this all to hell.” He thrust his hands under the stream of water. “And now here you are. Coming at me like a dream.”
She startled, grazed by his sidelong gaze. He was talking about the publicity, of course. Every adrenaline junkie wanted to be famous. “But there must be someone you could call.”
“Yeah, plenty of guys can take three weeks off work, starting tomorrow.”
She frowned at the sarcasm. “So push the expedition off for a week or two.” But no more than that, she hoped. She needed the payday and had no other assignments lined up.
“I can’t. I’m a professor of history at Bridgewater State.”
She absorbed that revelation with a tingle of surprise. Her editor liked to reveal as little about a subject as possible when giving Casey an assignment. The editor’s philosophy was to allow the unveiling of new information to guide the angle of the piece. Casey tucked Dylan’s revelation away and added a new facet to her inner portrait of this man.
“The semester starts in a month.” He shook his hands, spraying water, then shoved them, still damp, through his thick, cropped hair. “I have a full load of classes.”
“What about other professors, then? Someone else in your department must be free for the next three weeks.”
“How many historians do you know who can paddle 200-odd miles and portage twice as many pounds?”
With his hands shoved in his hair, she had an eyeful of the way his sleeves stretched around the balls of his upper arms. The fact that he was an academic did explain the button-down shirt and neat gray pants, like he’d just come home from a faculty meeting, but the slim, carved body beneath was definitely an anomaly. She supposed there couldn’t possibly be too many professors at that university who looked like they could bench-press her without breaking a sweat.
Another thought came to her. “Can you do the journey by yourself?”
“The canoe is too big for one paddler to carry.” He dropped his hands from his head and seized a dishrag on the counter to wipe his hands dry. “And there’s too much gear for one man to haul across portages efficiently.”
“You look like you can handle the weight.”
“It’s bulk, not weight. I’ve considered this.” He tossed the dishtowel into the sink. “I can’t do it alone.”
She groped for another solution, but came up with nothing that made any sense, even as the implications began to sink in.
She sank back against the counter. “You’re canceling the whole expedition.”
“I have no choice.” Sunlight painted his face white as he stared out the kitchen window. “It’s over.”
Her stomach dropped to her knees. This couldn’t be happening. She’d driven six hours to get here. She’d risked Bessie’s tires, battery, and failing alternator, all in the effort to nail one of the biggest assignments she’d ever been given. She’d gone all in.
She had nothing else lined up.
“I can offer you strong coffee or weak tea.” His shoulders flexed. “Unless you want to get the hell out of here and back on the road.”
And go where? Her ribs tightened as she contemplated her future. She’d given up the lease to her apartment six months ago because she’d been practically living in her car anyway. Her sister had a spare room where she could crash between assignments, but once Casey had landed this one, she’d stopped pitching for work as frantically as she had before. Once you land a whale, you stop fishing for minnows.
“That’s…a pity.” She glanced deeper into the cabin, to the living room and a table covered with papers. “Are those your plans?”
“Ex-plans.”
She didn’t ask for permission. She pushed away from the kitchen counter and entered the dimmer living room. On the table, weighed down by stones, lay a laminated copy of a very old map. Dylan came up behind her, along with the scent of fresh-cut wood, of cotton starch warmed by sunlight.
Refocusing, she said, “This is the map of the journey.”
“Yes.”
“What’s the significance of this trail?” She ran her finger across a dotted line that had been added on top of the laminate.
He shifted in a rustle of cloth. “You don’t know?”
“My editor likes to be coy. She sends me off with a minimum of information and instructions not to do any searches online until after I meet the subject of the article. She wants me to come at the story with a fresh mind.”
“Bit of an asshole move.”
“Right?” She slid a fraction away from the aura of his presence. “She’s very good at what she does, though. So I take it as a challenge.” Challenges kept her mind occupied, her hands busy, her feet on the road.
Dylan leaned over the map. “This is my estimation of an old bootlegger’s trail. The original map is a French fur trader’s sketch from the seventeenth century. I believe the two paths are aligned. That’s what I’m setting out to prove.”
Interesting thesis. “How long have you been working on this project?”
“A few years.”
She followed the dotted line he’d marked up an ever-narrowing lake to a series of rivers and an X on a spot marked Owl’s Head Rock. The path then broke and picked up again halfway across the park. In between, she noted miles and miles of uncharted, unmarked forest. She sensed the weight of a story underneath the details he’d shared. Mystery, adventure, and danger. Exactly the kind of content American Backroads was looking for and a perfect recipe for an article that could go viral and kick her career to a new level.
“You said the expedition would take three weeks?” Her heart pressed up against her throat. “Is that an estimate? Might you complete it more quickly?”
“If it takes any longer than that,” he said with a rumble in his voice, “I’ll be sending up flares.”
She imagined spending the next three weeks at her sister’s house, bunking with her four nieces until she could rustle up some more work, if she could rustle it up. She wasn’t used to an uncharted future. And while she loved her family—what was left of it—three weeks among them was more than she could handle right now. Life was simpler and less painful when she spent it with strangers.
“Let’s do this, MacCabe.” She looked up into his sun-bronzed face. “I’ll be your new partner.”
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