All My Passion (The Mile High Club, #6) Read online

  One thing about her former boss, he probably would have grabbed the towels himself if he’d seen Storm. The poor goldie looked more white than yellow, with frost and snow stuck to her coat. Kendra dried her off with one of the fluffy towels, careful to avoid Storm’s wounds. There was a mat of blood and lacerations on the right side of her coat as well. When Kendra carefully examined her cuts, they didn’t seem deep, maybe caused from brambles or trying to squeeze through a rock formation.

  Pulling out the first aid kit, Kendra found tape and gauze. The only problem was that she had no idea how to set a bone, or even if she should make an attempt. The tape would stick to Stormy’s fur. In the end, she left the kit on the counter, hoping Scott would know how to do proper first aid on a dog. She hadn’t forgotten Scott. That man had been haunting her thoughts ever since he insisted on Kendra taking Storm back to the cabin without him.

  Kendra worried that Scott would get hypothermia or buried by another avalanche, which was a pointless worry. Any avalanche that took out Scott’s location would also run over the cabin, effectively killing them both, but he was out there alone and stuck, and she wasn’t sure she had the energy to make another run down the mountain.

  “I’m strong enough to get down that mountain again, huh, Stormy?” Kendra said while she toweled the dog off. “It’s just a matter of will power.”

  Stormy’s bark was weak but present. It was as if the dog was answering back.

  “Really? You think he’s strong and brave and will be fine alone? That’s very encouraging, but I can’t bear the thought of him out there struggling. He’s cute, isn’t he?”

  With a whine, the dog confirmed Kendra’s question.

  The dog’s fur thawed into a big puddle on the carpet, Drake’s beautiful new carpet with elegant swirling patterns of gold and copper. Kendra added another log to the fire, poking and stirring the logs to maximum blaze. She hated to leave the dog in the cabin without supervision. But she needed to get back out on the slope.

  A knock on the door startled her. Kendra pushed herself up, only realizing as she stood how stiff her muscles were. A couple members of the ski patrol stood outside. After introductions, Kendra said, “I’m so glad to see you. We skied across the avalanche area about a half hour before it happened, and we weren’t sure if it was safe to go back. We’ve been hunkered here.”

  “The patrol is up the mountain as well. We can take you back on the snow mobiles. Drake called Corbin about you guys, so we split off from the group to make sure you arrived safely.”

  “Thanks. We did. I’ve got an injured dog here, and my friend is stuck about a mile down the slope. He pulled the dog out of a hole, but he’s still stuck. He’s about a mile down slope. We’ll need to find some ropes.”

  They didn’t get far. Scott called out from the mountain before the patrol started their snow mobiles.

  Kendra found herself disappointed by the rescue, once it was over. It was a strange desolate feeling. Alone with Scott, Kendra felt as if she were building toward something, that together with another day or so, they would have had time to become something. Had they ventured back to their truck with Stormy, it would have been an adventure. Now, it was over. She would go back to being the ice bitch Scott barely knew, and he would be that handsome stranger that she wouldn’t let into her heart.

  They put out the fire and closed up the house, and Kendra felt depressed.

  “We’ll get this guy to the vet. He’s in bad shape.” One of the ski patrol said.

  “I want to take him. I’m afraid they’ll put him down,” Scott said. He had already decided to adopt Storm. His job with security at the port of Tacoma gave him a stable life, one that would allow for a pet.

  The next few hours were surreal. Kendra and Scott traveled with the ski patrol to Scott’s truck. Kendra was glad it was a fully extended cab with doors. She couldn’t see the dog traveling in the back of a pickup struggling against the elements with those injuries. Dawn broke as Scott and Kendra arrived at Drake’s house with the dog in the back seat.

  There were a lot of hugs and fast explanations. No one had really slept the night before, worried as they were for Scott and Kendra, which meant people milling around with half-drunk cups of coffee and hair that mirrored images of eighties rock bands.

  “We can’t come in,” Scott said as the group started edging their way back toward the warmth of the house. “We’ve got an injured dog in the back. I need to take him to the vet right away.”

  “Most places will be closed until nine. There’s an emergency clinic in Kalispell. Let me call and see if they can take him,” Drake said, walking toward the house.

  Scott looked absolutely torn, his eyes going from Drake to the cab.

  “I’ll keep the dog company while you figure out the vet situation,” Kendra said. They had already discussed it and moving the dog in and out of Drake’s house would have just caused the dog more pain. Their friends were in a huge group in Drake’s yard, and everyone had been peeking in on the dog who kept her head down and looked miserable.

  It only took a few minutes before Drake and Scott were back.

  Scott said, “Kendra, do you want to come with me? There’s a storm predicted for later today, but we should be back here before it starts.”

  Did she? A hot bath sounded nice. A comfortable bed in a warm house would be even better. But that would mean the adventure was over. To heck with that. Kendra said, “Yeah, I’d like to go.”

  Chapter 5

  IT WAS STILL EARLY morning with the sun rising over the distant hills. Clouds grew into the sky in that thick white blanket that warned of heavy snow. With large flakes starting to fall, Scott turned off the radio and drove in silence, focusing on the drive. Kendra closed her eyes, with that drifty floating feeling, on the verge of dozing.

  She was startled awake by Scott’s deep voice. “I hear you’re selling real estate in Puyallup.”

  “My house is in Eatonville, but my office and many of my clients are in Puyallup,” Kendra said. She leaned her head against the glass. “What about you? Where are you nowadays?”

  “Port of Tacoma. I live in Puyallup,” Scott said.

  “You’re kidding!” The gears whirred in Kendra’s mind. She hadn’t taken her attraction to Scott seriously, not when he could be living across the country or adventuring with the nomadic life of a mercenary.

  “Nope. I was wondering if you’d maybe want to date when we’re back home. My life isn’t a grand adventure. I hike during the summer and play ball at the Y.” Scott glanced toward Kendra, trying to read her.

  “I’d like that,” Kendra said. She couldn’t help her huge smile. It went with the butterflies in her stomach. It had been so long since someone to whom she was attracted liked her back.

  As if he understood the momentous occasion, Storm barked. Scott laughed, “He wants us together. It must be fate. You do like dogs?”

  In her thoughts, Kendra whooped. She said, “I have a lab-shepherd mix, Millie. She’s a year old and a handful, but I’ve got her trained. I hated leaving her.”

  What went unsaid was that Kendra didn’t have any close friends in Puyallup, not the kind of friends that other people seemed to make so easily, the friends that you just called up and asked to dog-sit, so she left Millie with a kennel. Millie would be fed and walked, but she would miss the kind of attention Kendra gave.

  “I’m planning on keeping Storm if no one claims her,” Scott glanced in the rear view mirror at the dog who sat in bandages on the old emergency blanket. She seemed used to cars. The smell of wet dog permeated the cab of the truck, but Scott didn’t mind too much. He would wash the blanket, wash the dog, and all would be well.

  Kendra hoped for Scott’s sake that no one claimed Storm, but she couldn’t imagine someone abandoning that dog. Storm was well-fed and well-trained.

  By the time they pulled into The Great and Small Vet Clinic, large snowflakes were drifting onto Scott’s windshield. The clouds looked heavy with snow, ready t
o dump the rest at any moment. When Scott lifted Storm out of the passenger seat, the dog whined. As quietly as you please, she had been in the backseat chewing the bandage and now it looked like rats had gotten to her paw.

  “Storm, this is why vets have the cone of shame,” Scott admonished while he carried the dog to the door. It was a bright and cheerful blue door, painted wood. The clinic itself was in an older building but freshly painted and with a yard and stables. Kendra opened the door for Scott.

  A fresh-faced young woman smiled from ear to ear when she greeted Scott and Storm. Kendra hoped she was making googly eyes at Storm. As it turns out, this particular young lady was an animal lover through and through, barely noticing Scott or Kendra while she spoke to Storm, sympathizing with his wound. Only when she had made friends with Storm did she turn to Scott.

  “Bring her through here please. We need to fill out the paperwork. Have you been here before?”

  “No, first time.”

  There were a lot of questions. The vet came in and described the injury. She recommended surgery with metal pins instead of a cast. Kendra thought it interesting how firmly Scott told the woman that he would pay for the treatment as long as no one showed up to claim Storm. He didn’t want the dog put down if they could fix that leg.

  “There’s a huge storm coming. If you drove all the way from Lakeside, you might think about heading back or looking for a hotel.”

  It was eleven o’clock in the morning by the time they drove out of town. Scott yawned, feeling exhausted from head to toe. All of his scrapes and bruises seemed magnified a hundred times now that he was forced to drive. The roads were covered with a fine layer of snow.

  The snow slowly accumulated. Scott was stupid with sleepiness, but he forced himself to focus on the road and getting back. They were so close, just fifteen minutes, but it seemed an eternity.

  He was too tired. Scott missed the turn-off to Drake’s house. Kendra saw the sign to a hotel she hadn’t seen before. “Scott, I think we overshot the turn.”

  “Damn.” Scott blinked. He really needed this drive to end.

  “Want me to drive for a while?”

  Scott’s first instinct was to be offended. He stopped his reply while it still lingered in his exhausted mind. Kendra’s question was innocent. There was no inflection to show that she was questioning his ability or anything like that. Still, Scott liked to be in charge. It was almost a need to drive. He said, “I’m fine.”

  After turning around, he found the correct road. He rolled down his window to let the cold air in and turned up the radio. It was a trick he had used plenty of times before. Eventually, they got back to Drake’s house, welcomed by their pack of friends.

  Neither Kendra nor Scott felt much like getting into a huge discussion of the past day’s events. After separate showers, they both crashed for several hours, sleeping from late afternoon into the next morning.

  Scott was the first one downstairs that morning. The only bad thing about this whole vacation plan was sharing a room with the other guys. Sure, they had a lot of space in the downstairs game room, but he had to be quiet while dressing in the dark.

  Overnight the storm had dumped snow on the world. Still pristine without tire tracks or footprints, the landscape felt fresh and new. Scott peered through the kitchen window while the coffee percolated with a bittersweet feeling. Somehow the week was already half over. He wasn’t ready to go back to his job in Tacoma. He didn’t want to face the real world and his crabby supervisor and the pressures of a job he sometimes liked but mostly hated.

  “Why so glum?”

  Kendra had padded silently down the stairs. While he had come up from the basement, Kendra was extricating herself from the upstairs room where the women stayed, Hannah and Drake being the exception in the master bedroom.

  “Already thinking about work. I didn’t know my thoughts were that obvious,” Scott said. He grabbed a pair of tourist mugs from the cupboard, one with the picture of a turtle and Bandon, Oregon in script and one with a lighthouse. Handing Kendra the turtle, he added, “Sometimes I feel like things are going so fast, I don’t know how to slow it all down.”

  “Like yesterday? I almost wished that we hadn’t been rescued,” Kendra admitted. She was so cute with her hair in tumbled curls around her face, except for one and that curl stuck up in rebellious fashion. Scott figured that Kendra hadn’t looked in the mirror yet this morning. Her makeup had been washed off the night before, leaving the real woman. This was Kendra, a person Scott had caught glimpses of before, but was now truly meeting for the first time. He had to say, he liked her.

  “Yeah, if it weren’t for Storm’s injury, I could have spent the rest of the holiday trapped on that mountain with you,” Scott said, unable to hide the wistfulness in his voice. He was going soft.

  That brought a smile to Kendra’s lips. She said, “I’m glad we feel the same.”

  “I was serious about seeing you when this is all over. Maybe we could go on a date the Saturday after next?” Scott let his bright smile out to play, his shiniest most brilliant joyous smile, the one that never failed to charm.

  Except that one time with Kendra when he was trying to get in to see Drake...but that didn’t bear thinking on.

  This time, her smile matched his.

  “That would be great. I may find myself scheduled to show a house or something when I get back, so we’ll have to sort out the details once my calendar is on front of me. I’ll call you next Monday, okay?”

  Kendra and her schedules. Scott remembered that about her. She was the most organized person he had ever encountered, from her calendar and lists to her color coded files. Never get between an organized woman and her sticky notes. Scott said, “Sure.”

  The rest of the day passed without too much excitement. That afternoon, a man called Drake about the dog. He had heard that a dog had been rescued from Drake’s cabin and his Daisy had been missing for two nights. With deep disappointment, Scott relinquished his idea of saving Storm and bringing her home.

  His new dog adoption had appealed so much that after the news, Scott withdrew from the group. He forced a smile and faked a laugh and played the games, but his heart wasn’t in it. The owner was grateful...of course he was, and willing to pay the vet bills. But he had named the dog Daisy. Scott couldn’t believe a dog like that could have the name, Daisy. She deserved a stronger name.

  Scott felt the second loss just as keenly, but understood it less. His connection to Kendra had somehow snapped between that morning in the kitchen and their subsequent encounters. She smiled at him, but he doubted the veracity of her smile. There was a hesitation, a nervousness in her interactions new since their agreement to meet.

  And finally it was the last day, and they were saying goodbye. Kendra hugged him and exchanged phone numbers, and then they were all going in different directions.

  He flew home on Saturday night, unpacked and relaxed on Sunday, and clocked in at work on Monday.

  ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Kendra drove out of Seatac feeling confused. Scott had made all of the moves and given all of the signals, and then he had totally backed off. It was like his entire vision of domestic happiness hinged on that damned dog. Kendra didn’t understand it at all. There were a million dogs out there in hundreds of thousands of pounds waiting for adoption. So what if the dog they rescued belonged to someone else? There were plenty of other great choices. Storm-Daisy would be well cared for, so Scott needn’t worry about her.

  Kendra sighed. She looked forward to getting back into the swing of things. Two buyers had left messages on Sunday, interested in houses she had listed. She would have to split commission with Drew on the house of hers he’d sold while she was away, but heck, it was better than nothing.

  Energized, she started the laundry and grabbed a book, taking a long bubble bath while she considered the prospects of selling a house on three acres. That commission would go a long way toward her future stability. What Kendra had learned from Drake and what h
ad killed so many small businesses was that sense of expectation. If I sell three houses in August, certainly I’ll be able to sell three in September and three in October. That’s not how life worked. To sell any house at all in December was hard. People were more interested in shopping and baking than in a life-changing transition.

  And yet, people were calling to look at houses, so Kendra would show them.

  She relaxed in her bubble bath on Sunday night with Think and Grow Rich. She wanted more for her life than a duplex rental and a dog. Her life was nearly perfect. She loved real estate a whole lot more than being Drake’s assistant, not that he wasn’t a good boss, but sometimes the work got intense and the travel too much.

  She needed someone to love. Coming home to an empty house was fine in her early twenties, but she was fast approaching thirty, and it was time to settle down. Scott was the first guy in a long time who drew her attention. His smile was a huge attraction, his athleticism as well. Mostly, Kendra liked the way they were together. Those few days together were a dream.

  The next morning, Kendra whistled as she closed her car door. She was looking forward to her phone call that evening.

  “Someone’s in a great mood today,” Drew pushed open the door to the building for her. That was something that annoyed Kendra. It seemed as if Drew was always hovering just waiting for her to arrive, like he was her own personal doorman. He always came to the door and opened it for her, following her into the office.

  On the days she didn’t cut him short, Drew would chatter for an hour, pretending to need information or expertise when he had been in the business for five years.

  “I met someone,” Kendra said. She didn’t normally talk personal life, but Drew had asked her out three times already. She needed to let him know firmly that she was taken.