Knocked Up in Alaska Excerpt

Chapter One

Ford Langley knew a few things with absolute certainty. Holding on thirteen with the dealer showing anything less than a seven tended to pay off.

Holding too fast and tight to anyone was a surefire path to heartbreak.

And last, but certainly not least, he was going to burn in hell for the kind of fast, tight holds he wanted to put on Delilah Iquat.

With a flick of a tap, he built a pint of Spruce Goose until the frothy head flirted with the rim of the chilled beer mug. Hell might be inevitable for him, but not for her. Lilah glowed with bright promise imbued by all the strong, positive forces in the universe. So, he’d resist temptation again today, just as he’d been resisting for the better part of what seemed like forever.

Resigned to that, he moved down the bar, placed the pint in front of Jorg Hendrickson, and raised his own half-empty glass by the handle. “To Lilah’s twentieth-first birthday,” he toasted.

The fishing boat captain with his wild tufts of white hair and the broad chest of a weathered Viking lifted his drink. “Yah. To Lilah,” Jorg said and gave Ford’s glass the kind of hearty clunk that made him thankful he’d sprung for the beveled, extra-thick version when he’d bought the bar two years ago.

The Tipsy Goose had earned its status as a local landmark in tiny Captivity, Alaska, long before his tenure as proprietor, but he liked to think he’d scaled it up a notch with a few small improvements. Nothing major, because even as the new guy in town he’d realized the inhabitants of Captivity greeted major change with suspicion. As he’d come to learn, their definition of “major” included things like eliminating menu items nobody had ordered since the turn of the century—the nineteenth century—and removing most of the dusty, old taxidermy geese mounted on the dark-paneled walls. Proudly, over the last twenty-four months, he’d accomplished both, along with a handful of other changes, in accordance with a slow, careful plan aimed to make the establishment a local-friendly and tourist-friendly casual drinking and dining option. Aside from The Goose’s healthy balance sheet, he liked to think the success of his slow, methodical approach could be measured in the fact that nobody called him “the new guy” anymore.

“Where is the birthday girl?” Jorg asked after swallowing half the pint in one gulp.

Ford checked his watch. The Marathon Navigator was as much a holdover from his military days as the black ink etching the forearm he wore it on. While he barely noticed the badge, knife, crossed arrows, and Latin letters of the Army Special Forces tattoo anymore, he sure as hell noticed the time.

Noticed, and frowned. “Rose told me to expect them at seven.” A man could set his watch by Rose Iquat, which made it all the odder that the ruthlessly prompt proprietress of the Captivity Inn would be over ten minutes late getting herself and her daughter down to the bar for Lilah’s “surprise” party.

Jorg nodded as his pale blue eyes roamed the crowded room, taking in the decorations Ford had spent the better part of the afternoon helping Rose put in place. Yellow and white balloons floated overhead, nearly obscuring the original tin ceiling. Yellow streamers trailed down, and a banner across the archway connecting The Goose to the inn’s lobby proclaimed HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LILAH! in gold letters across a pale, yellow background. Yellow was Lilah’s favorite color. It suited her—warm and cheerful—just like the girl...woman? And God, how he struggled with that one thing. How should a man of thirty-one think of a warm, cheerful, not to mention smart, beautiful, wise beyond her years, yet very, very sheltered twenty-one-year-old? Christ, just yesterday she’d been too young to drink in his bar.

As a friend. That’s how you think of her.

He let out a slow breath and mustered up a grin for Jorg. “What’s your rush? Hot date tonight?”

The older man returned the grin with something closer to a leer. “Yah. Maybe. Now that our lovely Lilah is well into womanhood...”

Oh, hell-fucking-no. “Don’t make me kick your ass, dirty old man.”

Bushy white brows took a confused slant, then his eyes widened and Jorg’s barks of laughter filled the bar. “Not lucky with Lilah, no.” He wrestled his amusement down to a chuckle. “My days of being that lucky are long past. I meant Rose. Even the most protective mama-bear must eventually accept that her cub is full-grown. She has fulfilled the needs of motherhood and can now look to fulfill”—Jorg winked— “other needs.”

He didn’t wish to discuss Rose’s “needs.” Especially not with Jorg. First off, according to local accounts, unmarried, teenaged Rose Iquat had arrived in Captivity just over twenty-one years ago, practically penniless, pregnant, and alone. She’d single-handedly raised her daughter, worked her way up from housekeeping at Captivity Inn to proprietor, and taken no prisoners in the interim. Where Lilah was calm, Rose was driven. Lilah dispensed cheer. Rose dispensed razor-sharp observations with occasional pricks of sarcasm. The woman didn’t have needs—she had demands. And Jorg? As a widower for almost a quarter of a century, the old Swede kept no secrets about his pent-up sex drive.

Ford suppressed a shudder. This whole conversation sketched a picture in his mind that he forbade his imagination to color in. He opened his mouth to respond with something appropriately encouraging before moving on to other customers, but the man jumped in with, “And while I pluck my Rose, you can tend to the beautiful Delilah left in the garden.”

Jorg’s comment froze Ford with his beer halfway to his lips. “What?”

“Yah.” Jorg again tapped his glass to Ford’s, with more restraint this time. “Of the men in town, we are the two...” He shook his head. “I don’t know the word in English. Ogift.”

“No gift?” Ford hazarded.

Amber glints from the overhead lights tinted Jorg’s white hair auburn as he nodded, momentarily washing away years. “No gift from a lady.” He gestured down the bar. “Trace gets gifts from his lovely Isabelle,” he went on, referring to Trace Shanahan, half-owner of Captivity Air and Freight, and Trace’s new bride, former L.A. lawyer Isabelle “Izzy” Marcano.

“And Archer.” Jorg raised his chin to indicate Archer Ellison, seated on Izzy’s other side. “Archer arrived only weeks ago, and he gets Bridget’s gifts, which I thought would be yours until I watched closely.”

Bridget Shanahan and him? Never. The other half of Captivity Air had always flown high and fast to avoid any sort of real commitment, as far as he could tell. Until Archer. Also, because of Archer, as it happened, but Archer had flown back into her life determined to change that and, against very steep odds, had succeeded. But he was getting the gist of the meaning of ogift. No gift, indeed. Celibate.

Occasionally the old man proved accurate. Brutally accurate.

“I can’t...” Because his voice cracked just thinking about tending to Delilah and receiving her “gifts,” he swallowed, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Lilah will find a guy her own age to exchange gifts with.” It hurt to say it, but the dull ache in his chest didn’t make it any less true.

“Bah.” Jorg waved a big, work-hardened hand dismissively, then gestured at the decorations. “Twenty- one.” Then he pointed at Ford. “Twenty-something. Same.”

Ford took a desperate gulp of his beer to reinforce his commitment to what he was about to say. “First of all, I’m not twenty-something. I’m thirty-one, Jorg. That’s in no way the same thing. Plus, I’ve been around. Like, all the way around.” Over a decade with Army Special Forces had a way of doing that to a person. “Lilah has barely been across the goddamn street.”

“But now she is ready. Take her hand. Lead her nicely. Like a gentleman. What is the matter?” Those bushy gray brows drew together like two caterpillars mating. “You are ogift. Long-time ogift. Maybe too long? Have you forgotten how to cross a street?” The brows arched up and apart. “Or maybe Lilah is no gift to you? Too homemade?”

Homemade? Was the man referring to her Tlingit blood, or the fact that her father, whom she’d never known, had clearly been white? Race, ethnicity—neither figured into his feelings for her, or anybody else, as far as that went. He was a words-and-actions kind of guy. Lilah was simply...Lilah. “She’s a rare and precious gift.”

Well, fuck. Why had that found its way out of his brain and past his lips? He blamed it on how just thinking about... crossing the street with her...left him slightly lightheaded. “For someone younger and more, uh, appropriate,” he rushed to add. Someone who didn’t, too often, feel like a hungry predator ready to chase her down and gobble her up. Someone who wouldn’t scare her sweet soul straight out of her if he ever unleashed that side of himself. “Good luck getting across your street, old man,” he managed, picked up his drink, and walked himself down the bar.

Jorg’s laugh boomed behind him. “Yah. I think I am not the old man here. I haven’t been standing on the sidewalk so long I can’t remember how to cross a street.”

Har. Har. Without turning, he lifted his free hand and shot Jorg the bird. He remembered how to cross a fucking street. He could cross with the best of them. It just happened there weren’t so many crossable streets in a town the size of Captivity.

He made his way down the bar to where Trace, Izzy, and Archer sat, proving with their presence that once you crossed a street in Captivity, you had to figure out what the hell you were going to do on the other side. Juneau and Anchorage had far more streets. Streets a man could, with proper precautions, cross to everyone’s satisfaction, and then just keep walking without anyone getting hurt.

Deep thoughts for a party. Too deep. He shook them off and approached the group. Quite the sight, these three. Trace and Izzy were fresh off their honeymoon, so big, burly Trace bore only a shadow of his normal beard. Beside him, his tiny, polished city girl shined like a rare gem in this rustic setting. On her other side, Skyline Air CEO, Archer Ellison, ran his hand through his blond hair and settled in his barstool with the worldly sophistication of a man posing for the cover of Anchorage Magazine’s Top Thirty Under Thirty issue. Which he’d done earlier in the week.

Aiming to get under Trace’s skin, he focused attention on Izzy, smiled, and leaned a forearm on the bar, close to her own. “What can I get you, beautiful?”

Izzy returned the smile and fluttered long, dark lashes. Trace, on the other hand, stuck his arm between theirs and pushed into their space. “Are you hitting on my bride, Langley?”

“I was asking her if she’d like a drink. Ladies first, because, unlike some people who shall remain nameless, I have manners.” He aimed his smile at Izzy again. “That whole bride thing still doesn’t compute. She’s way too pretty for a hairy brute like you.”

Trace wrapped a big arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “She likes me that way. Dontcha, baby?” With that, he rubbed his stubbly jaw over her smooth throat, making her laugh and squirm away.

When she caught her breath enough to respond, she patted his cheek. “You have your charms.”

“I have a bar,” Ford pointed out. “Food and beverage at your beck and call. I can grow a beard, too.”

“You have charms as well,” Izzy conceded. “It’s a shame I was already locked into a fake relationship with Trace by the time I set eyes on you.”

Ford rubbed his palm over his heart and nodded. “Huge shame. But”—he straightened and stepped back to avoid the sledgehammer sized fist at the end of Trace’s half-hearted swing—“since all I’m good for now is drinks, what can I get you?”

“What do you recommend?” she asked.

“Got something new, if you’re game? A hard cider.”

“You brew it?” Archer asked.

“Yep.”

The other man gave an easy shrug. “I’m game. I respect your skills.”

“Me, too,” Izzy chirped.

“Three,” Trace said, “but I’m withholding my respect on account of my lack of manners.”

Ford laughed as he moved away to get their drinks. “Four,” Archer said. “Bridget’s on her way.”

“What do you call it?” Izzy asked while he filled pint glasses with foamy amber liquid.

He topped off the third. “I’m still working on a name, but The Wild Goose Chase is the frontrunner.” He set the pints in front of them.

Archer leaned on the bar and grinned at his companions. “In that case, you ought to call it ‘The Isabelle.’”

Ford laughed, despite his alleged manners, but so did Trace, and he was the one courting a lonely night on the couch. An unlikely outcome, judging by Izzy’s pretty blush and good-natured slap to Archer’s shoulder.

“Are you guys ganging up on my sister-in-law?” a sultry female voice broke through their laughter as Bridget slid between Izzy and Archer. He looked into her dancing violet eyes.

“Yes,” Izzy said and started filling Bridget in on the dis, having to do with Izzy’s unfortunate encounter with a flock of wild geese earlier in the spring that had ended with her taking a muddy header down Main Street. Since he’d been an eyewitness to that particular event, Ford tuned out to concentrate on an increasingly audible disturbance in the lobby. It sounded like Rose, talking fast and loud in her native language. Her sharp tone—a deep-seated mix of fury and betrayal—knotted his gut.

He watched the slice of the lobby visible from the archway with growing concern, which only escalated when Lilah stepped into view, looking like a long-legged angel in her fancy sandals and white party dress. Instead of curving into a radiant smile, however, her lips trembled, and tears rolled down her pale cheeks. Backing up as someone not yet visible came closer, she held both arms out, palms up, in a beseeching gesture and spoke in low, rapid Tlinget.

Rose came into view then, crying bitterly, gesturing wildly, speaking so quickly and loudly he didn’t need to understand the words to know the normally stoic innkeeper had lost all control.

Izzy murmured, “Oh, no,” and made a move to get up. Bridget restrained her with a hand to her arm and a quick, “Nuh,” before adding, “Don’t. She wanted to be the one to tell her. Wanted to be the one to deal with it.”

“With what?” he asked at the same time as Archer. Whatever the problem, it was massive and unprecedented in his comparatively brief but fairly immersive knowledge of their relationship. Since buying the bar, he interacted with them on a daily basis. Rose loved Lilah. Sheltered her. Raised her with a strict eye and a short leash. Jorg hadn’t missed the mark characterizing her as a mama-bear. But not even the fiercest mama-bear could wish for a more loving, sweet-natured, and obedient daughter than Lilah.

Nobody answered his question, but nobody needed to, because at that moment Lilah said something in her soft, calm voice and placed a hand over the front of her full-skirted party dress in a gesture that set off more unspecified warning bells in his subconscious and sent him time-traveling to a point in his life when he’d been a sweaty-palmed teen suddenly in way over his head. Rose closed in, shouting up at her daughter, her face red, her small frame shaking with emotion.

This was spiraling, fast. Instincts honed to handle trouble took control. He rounded the bar with no specific plan except to intercede in the altercation before someone said or did something difficult to take back. “This has to stop. I haven’t seen a mother go after her daughter like that since...”

And there it was. He hadn’t seen a mother so unhinged and inconsolable since the winter of his sixteenth year, when he and his seventeen-year-old girlfriend had confessed to her mom that three different drugstore pregnancy tests had yielded the same frightening result.

Those thorny memories from his past tripped up his progress, even as he focused on the discernable bump revealed by Lilah’s hand now resting low on her abdomen. His stomach dropped away as if he’d just stepped out of an airplane at thirty thousand feet. “Shit.”

Then Rose raised her arm and brought her palm down hard across her daughter’s cheek.

“Shit,” he said again and resumed his forward motion as Lilah stepped away, touched her cheek, and said something to her mother in a voice just above a whisper. Then she turned and walked quickly out of the inn.

Shit. Shit. Shit. From the corner of his eye, he saw Rose crumple to the carpet, bone-rattling sobs wracking her body as she cried into her hands. If he had the power to split himself in two, he would have stopped to help her to her feet, lead her to a private area where she could calm down and gather herself. But he was just a regular man—no special powers—and his primary concern remained Lilah, so he continued out the door. The Shanahans, Jorg, any number of people in the bar would help talk Rose down.

When he reached the covered sidewalk fronting the building, he looked up the street then down, searching for a trace of Lilah in the cool, lavender dusk—a flash of white dress disappearing between parked cars along the street, or waves of long, light brown hair trailing around the corner of a building—but he saw nothing. The quiet of the evening remained unperturbed. But Lilah, despite her ethereal appearance, also possessed no special powers. She couldn’t simply disappear, no matter how much she might want to at that moment.

On a second visual sweep of the street, he spotted her red Jeep parked curbside about halfway down the block. Concerned the engine would fire to life any second and pull away with a distraught driver steering through streaming tears, he stepped off the sidewalk and moved briskly toward the vehicle, approaching along the passenger side.

From beyond the window, he saw her huddled behind the wheel, legs crossed kindergarten-style, arms braced on the steering wheel, face pressed to her wrists. The skirt of her dress pooled high, leaving her slender thighs bare all the way to her...

He turned away, swallowed hard, and rapped a knuckle on the passenger window. At least he probably didn’t have to worry about her driving off. There were no keys dangling from the ignition. After a moment of silence, the door opened. He got in and closed the rest of the world out. Bracing himself as best he could, he faced her.

She was still huddled in the seat, but she’d arranged her skirt over her legs. There wasn’t much she could do about her watery eyes or the livid red palm print across her cheek, and they both broke his heart. Even more so when she curved her soft, full lips into a wobbly smile, and said, “Thank you for hosting my birthday party.”

“You’re welcome. I thought it went really well.”

Her choked laugh ended in a sob. Helpless to do otherwise, he reached over the center console, wrapped his arm around her, and pulled her close. She buried her face against his chest and cried like the world was ending. Which, in a way, for her, it was. She deserved time to mourn the loss of that world she’d grown up in, safe, shielded, and entirely orchestrated by her mother. Realistically, he knew this, but Lilah had always been such a vibrant, positive presence, and he wasn’t equipped to withstand her tears. “Don’t cry,” he murmured, kissing her hair. “Please. Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.”

To his surprise, she nodded, drew back, and dried her eyes with the heels of her hands, making him wish he had a tissue or something to offer her. “I know,” she said, then, with a sniffle, added, “I’m sorry,” and laid her hand on his chest. His heart beat a mile a minute under her palm.

Sorry for what? Was she apologizing for his shock, his concern, or some perceived disappointment she in no way deserved? If anybody understood and empathized with her situation, it was him. He looked down to where her hand rested and realized she was apologizing for the wet spot on his shirt left by her tears.

He shook his head to tell her it wasn’t an issue, closed his hand over hers, and squeezed gently. Switching his attention to her face, he said, “Talk to me.”

Her hand tensed, as if she intended to pull back, but he simply tightened his hold. She sniffed again but raised her wet, spikey lashes and met his gaze. The impact of those wide, heart-of-the-forest green eyes hit him like a force of nature, but he’d gotten used to that inadvertent punishment over the last year or so.

“Well, Ford, as you and half the town probably realize by now, I’m pregnant.”

Even as his brain issued an eyes-front order, his gaze went AWOL and dropped to her middle. The floof of her dress currently hid the evidence, but the clingy, halter-style top displayed smooth shoulders and full, upswept breasts. “That’s...uh...” He perp-walked his attention back to her face. “That’s quite a birthday present.” Which brought him to an important realization.

Lilah had definitely crossed a street, at least once.

And that realization led him to an even more important question. The answer promised to factor heavily into his near-term plans, which included teaching some bastard the hazards of carelessly crossing a street with Lilah and not manning up and standing with her when it came to deal with everything on the other side.

With his voice as smooth and even as the blade of a sword, he asked, “Who can I thank for giving you that gift?”