North to Alaska Read online

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  Watch for more at Olivia Gaines’s site.

  Davonshire House Publishing

  PO Box 9716

  Augusta, GA 30916

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s vivid imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, are entirely a coincidence.

  © 2015 Olivia Gaines, Cheryl Aaron Corbin

  Editor: Terri Blackwell

  Cover: koougraphics.net

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means whatsoever. For information address, Davonshire House Publishing, PO Box 9716, Augusta, GA 30916.

  ASIN: B00UT0VAD2

  ISBN: 9781507046593

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 9 8

  First Davonshire House Publishing March 2015

  DEDICATION

  For my interracial romance readers who keep me on point.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To all the fans, friends and supporters of the dream as well as the Facebook community of writers who keep me focused, inspired and moving forward.

  Write On!

  “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”

  - Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Also by Olivia Gaines

  The Slice of Life Series

  The Perfect Man

  Friends with Benefits

  A Letter to My Mother

  The Basement of Mr. McGee

  A New Mommy for Christmas

  The Slivers of Love Series

  The Cost to Play

  Thursday in Savannah

  Girl's Weekend

  Beneath the Well of Dawn

  Santa’s Big Helper

  The Davonshire Series

  Courting Guinevere

  Loving Words

  Vanity's Pleasure

  The Blakemore Files

  Being Mrs. Blakemore

  Shopping with Mrs. Blakemore

  Dancing with Mr. Blakemore

  Cruising with the Blakemores

  It is going to be a long four months...

  Come on inside and warm yourself by the heat we create.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1. North to Alaska...

  Chapter 2. I don’t even like you...

  Chapter 3. Aww Hell No...

  Chapter 4. What Bear...

  Chapter 5. Breaking Bear...

  Chapter 6. Making it livable...

  Chapter 7. Settling In...

  Chapter 8. Getting closer...

  Chapter 9. A shocking confession...

  Chapter 10. Say What Now...?

  Chapter 11. Happy Thanksgiving...

  Chapter 12. Amanda, it’s time for your bath...

  Chapter 12. Merry Christmas, Baby...

  Chapter 12. A Christmas Wedding...

  Chapter 13. Whoa...wait...wow...

  About the Author

  Chapter 1. North to Alaska...

  The train rumbled along the tracks of the silent backside of America as Amanda Perkins wrung her hands together for the ninetieth time since setting out for Paystreke, Alaska, a little mining town south of Anchorage. Each small town and little fishing hamlet the train rolled through brought her closer and closer to her future, and a new life with a man she had never seen but was about to marry. Cullen Mulroney had written her consistently over the past eight months and since the death of her beloved Aunt Linnie, there was little if anything left for her in Montpelier, Idaho. The only thing that town was famous for was a bank heist by Butch Cassidy in 1896; there was even a plaque on Washington Street to commemorate the town’s 15 minutes of glory. The last time anything exciting happened there was probably also in 1896. Still, it was home, or at least it had been for the past 30 years.

  The lack of excitement was why she chose to answer the ad she saw in the back of the magazine she found on the counter in Ole Johnny’s General Store. Amanda Perkins was bored with her life and tired of being one of two black women in Montpelier. Since there were even less black men, her chances of getting hitched were slim to none. Heck, she hadn’t even been on a date with the exception of the pastor’s son, who was blackmailed, or gently coaxed, as Aunt Linnie liked to call it. Blackmail, coercion, bribery; it didn’t matter. She wanted a life with a husband and a few kids running around her feet in her great big kitchen.

  For the thirtieth time, she pulled out the envelope and gazed at the photographs Cullen had sent of their home. It was a gigantic log cabin with glass windows that overlooked the Denali Peninsula. It sat high on a hill, almost up in the mountains, with lots of natural woods and trees. Her husband to be, in three days from today, was a rugged man with a beard, who hunted and provided a great deal of fresh meat to the townsfolk in Paystreke as well as in the neighboring town of Hope. Although Anchorage was only 90 miles away, he said it would be tough getting back and forth in the winter. He was very specific about the months and when he wanted her to travel. Based on her understanding, and she had done her research, she would be arriving before the first snowfall. She was ready. Her winter clothing had been sent ahead, along with her books, manual sewing machine and manual typewriter. It was her goal to write the novel that had been burning in her brain for the past five years.

  Yeap.

  Ready.

  Amanda had spent a great deal of the past eight months preparing for the tri
p that was going to change her extremely dull life. How she longed for adventure because nothing ever really happened in her world. She lived in a world of seconds that milled together to create minutes of no consequence, which ironically bided their time for a pop of chance to become fully alive. Her time was now and it had arrived.

  It was a fluke really, being in the store that day waiting for the deliveries to come in so she could pick up Aunt Linnie’s mail order medications. The magazine was on the counter and she was only perusing through the pages with her head down when Doctor Sorenson wandered in with his nurse. They never saw her sitting there as they openly spoke about her aunt’s health. Linnie was dying and the medicine she was waiting to pick up was nothing more than drugs to make her comfortable as she stitched together her minutes before making her journey to Heaven. That was how Amanda found out her aunt had cancer.

  It was an aggressive cancer that ripped through her body like a silent killer cashing in a bounty offered on the head of a very weak woman. Aunt Linnie only lasted a month and a half and the two black women in town eventually were down to one. As much as she tried to stay and run her Aunt’s newspaper, her heart was not in it, nor was it in this town. That same day in the store when she stormed out, furious with the Doctor and his gossip-mongering nurse, Amanda inadvertently took the magazine with her. Locked in the bathroom in her Aunt’s small, three bedroom home—the third bedroom served as the newsroom—she held the periodical close to her bosom. As natured called, she thumbed through the pages and saw Cullen’s ad for a wife. Her initial response was nothing more than a mere postcard. Over the next two weeks she waited.

  As her Aunt’s sickness took over their lives, Amanda found respite in Cullen’s letters. A whimsical joy unfolded in the photos he sent of him and his friends who mined for gold in the small town. His words echoed a loneliness, which resonated in the cavernous hole of her empty life as she sat beside to the only real friend she ever had. A friend, who in the middle of a cool March evening, closed her eyes to be with her Maker.

  Aunt Linnie never had any children. Amanda was an only child whose mother had dropped her off on Linnie’s doorstep when she ran away to join a traveling side show with a man named Erskin, who smelled like cotton candy and elephant dung. He was a smooth talker who led her mother down a dark road from which she never recovered, dancing about in the life in her head where she imagined she would have with him, far from the real life she actually led with Erskin. A sad life where she, too, came to Idaho to die in her sister’s arms, from what Amanda heard the church ladies call the nasty woman’s disease.

  Nope. This was not going to be her life. Amanda knew she was not ready to live in a big city and try to survive among people who did double talk and had fancy dinners with French wine. She was a simple girl who wanted a simple life. A man to love her and be a father to their children while she wrote books about adventures she would only have in her mind. In her real life, she was far more practical.

  In April, after her Aunt Linnie’s death, she made a point of getting with Joe Slankiski to learn how to shoot. She learned how to handle and clean a .9mm, a rifle, and a shotgun. She even went fishing and learned how to flay, gut, and clean fish. The month of May she spent at Lucky Luke’s Taxidermy and Bait Shop learning how to properly skin and prepare furs for tanning.

  Yeap.

  Ready.

  Cullen’s letters were becoming more romantic even after she sent him a photograph of herself. He didn’t care that she was black. If hindsight was truly a gift, then she was about to wish she had married an ophthalmologist. So many clues he had given her, but for some reason, she was so fixated on the idea that she could that it never entered her head whether or not she should actually pack her bags and head north to Alaska.

  It was too late now. She was off the train and onto a plane. Amanda was in the air and flying over the Continental Divide across Canada and into Alaska. It was late October when she landed in Anchorage and boarded a bus to one town only to find out Cullen didn’t actually live there, but he resided even further south, miles away from a five-square-block town called Talkeetna on the southeast corner of Denali National Park. The town of Talkeetna only had 876 people; the worn sign above the general store said as much. This isn’t Hope. Amanda also had the first itch of hers beginning to dwindle. Cullen had lied. In her mind, this was strike one; he didn’t live where he said he lived.

  Where Cullen lived, it was only him, or at least that is what Riley Bishop, a very virile and handsome man that could have been a real life model for the heavy duty paper towels brand, told her when her met her at the air strip in Hope. Cullen isn’t here. Riley was sent to pick her up. She checked her wallet. There was enough money to get her back to Anchorage. She wasn’t sure what to do from there. Get a job? Save some money? To go where? All of my things have been shipped to Cullen’s house. Amanda scratched at her neck.

  “Ms. Perkins, Cullen’s truck is broke down and he sent me to meet and pick you up,” he told her with a twinkle in his eye. “I’m his long time hunting buddy, Riley Bishop.”

  Amanda had always been taught to follow her first instinct. Riley Bishop made her nervous. She had sauntered out of the bus station—it really couldn’t be called a terminal—and walked about a block down the sidewalk before she bumped into Riley. A little ways back, she had seen a sign that read “Sheriff’s Office” another block or so away. She grabbed her purse, clutched it to her chest, hefted her travel bag over her shoulder, and took off running in that direction.

  Amanda never opened her mouth to say a word to the man standing in the spot where he had waited patiently for her arrival for nearly 30 minutes. He was now checking over his shoulders for a grizzly or something that could have scared her off.

  “Damn fooled woman,” Riley said as he walked in the direction she had run.

  Chapter 2. I don’t even like you...

  “There is a man trying to kidnap me and take my body into the Alaskan tundra and have his way with me,” her eyes were wide and full of fear as she yelled this bit of information at the sheriff. The Sheriff, who was as big as Riley Bishop, with a large gut and a mean scowl on his face, eyed the black lady with some suspicion. She looked about the sparse office and noticed the nameplate on the worn and nicked desk that read Sheriff Ronnie Bishop.

  Hope had just sprouted a pair of wings and was flitting its way out the door. Amanda’s heart was racing and it was inevitable that these two were about to make her feel like a rash, irrational woman that had bitten off more than her big mouth could chew. It was also painfully obvious that these two men were related.

  Sheriff Bishop tried to muster a smile and asked, “Ms. Perkins, I presume?” He didn’t wait for her to answer as he continued to walk around the desk and perch one very large butt cheek on the corner of the desk. “Around here, because we are snowed in most of the time, we are friendly, helpful and neighborly to one another. Cullen called and said his truck was broken down. Riley is bringing him a part, and since he is headed that way, he is going to drop you off as well.”

  Amanda was stubborn. She wasn’t going to back down that easily, “And what is to stop your brother, cousin, or Uncle Cousin from pulling over and tying me up and hurting me? He could tell Cullen I never arrived and keep me locked up in a cabin all winter!!!!” Her mind was in overdrive, and something in the back of her head was telling her she was in danger.

  Riley had walked into the station during the middle of her rant and both he and the Sheriff were staring at her with their jaws agape like pitcher plants waiting for dinner to fly by. Amanda was fierce in her stance, “For all I know, the two of you could have some nefarious plan for me. I know how small towns work.”

  The Sheriff was not amused by her accusations. “Ms. Perkins, it has been a long day of travel for you from, where was it, Idaho?”

  She still had not moved. He went over and keyed the two-way radio, “Eagle’s Nest to Harriet. We need a warm up and some grub.” His eyes went back to Amanda as
he asked her to take a seat. Riley took one as well, sitting across the room, looking at his feet.

  “Ms. Perkins,” the sheriff said. “I am going to excuse your words because you are probably tired, a bit stressed and more than likely scared about this life-changing decision you have made on a whim.”

  “It was not a whim. I just don’t have any reason to trust the two of you,” she said as she clutched her purse tighter.

  Riley chuffed, “Says the woman who writes to a strange man that she has agreed to marry.”

  Amanda bounded to her feet. “I know a hell of lot more about him than I do either of you yahoos!”

  The Sheriff took exception to her words. “Young lady, my patience is wearing thin with you. Sit yourself in that chair and zip your lips before I put you back on that bus and send you packing.”

  “I am still in America! I have broken no laws and this is not the Wild West. You can’t run me out of town, you oversized, badge-wearing bully!”

  Riley held up his hand to his brother. “You know on second thought, Ronnie, she and Cullen deserve each other.”

  Ronnie, who was two years older than Riley, found himself agreeing with his brother. Amanda Perkins was a handful. Cullen may need to be warned. Before either could say another word, the door opened and a grey-haired lady walked in, all smiles, carrying a thermos and three bags. “Who’s hungry?” she asked as she handed out sandwiches and poured hot coffee into half cleaned mugs. Amanda opted to use a Styrofoam cup.

  “Thank you,” she told the lady with the sweet disposition. Harriet was a small woman in comparison to the two very large men she called sons. Yet, there was something so tender, laced with a dose of love in how they spoke to their mother.

  Sheriff Bishop put his sandwich on his desk and looked at Amanda, “Ms. Perkins, this is our mother, Harriett. If you would like, she can ride up to Cullen’s place with you and Riley if it would make you feel safer.”