When she closed the lid to the box, emotionally drained but feeling like the empty well she’d carried in her center had finally been filled, she turned to Link with a ready smile for the man who had given her so much.
“Thank you for doing that. I thought you’d left, but you were tracking down Dad’s friends to interview instead, weren’t you?”
Link sat behind her on the floor and pulled her back tight against his chest. “Yeah. You got me fighting again. I wanted to give you something, too.”
“I don’t want to leave anymore. I don’t want to go back to Mission.”
Link bit the lobe of her ear gently and whispered, “Then don’t leave. Stay here.”
“Well, I have to stay, naturally. You gave me conditions, remember?”
“Yeah, but I want to hear it. I want it to be your choice.”
Nicole twisted in his arms and studied those blazing silver eyes she’d grown to adore. She smiled at how nervous he looked. He didn’t need to be. Not with her.
“You got me fighting too, Link. I’m staying.”
Chapter Ten
Alaska had been kicking up changes in Nicole over the weeks that she’d lived here, and with the decision to stay and give this life her all, she felt like a different person altogether. She looked down at her hands. They weren’t blistered or bleeding anymore. They were calloused and strong. She lifted her gaze to the mirror in the bathroom, and a small smile transformed her face. Proud brown eyes that came from her Yupik lineage, rosy cheeks, and shiny tresses of pitch-colored hair piled high up on her head in a messy bun. She wore mascara, lip moisturizer, and shimmery eye shadow for Link, but she’d stopped covering up the color on her cheek. No longer was she repulsed by it when she looked at her reflection. Instead, she was proud of it.#p#分页标题#e#
She only wore the green scarf now to protect her from the chill.
She’d taped the picture of her and Dad grinning at each other with their matching marks onto the side of the mirror to remind her to look for beauty in the little moments. And this life was full of them.
Nicole rinsed her hands under the small trickle of spring water that came through the faucet, then sauntered into the living room and began pulling on layers. Link had taught her so much over the past week of working on this house together, but he had yet to spend an entire night with her, and today, when he came to fix the porch with her, she was going to ask him. No, she didn’t mind splitting time between his cabin and hers, but the two miles that had seemed so minimal before now seemed like a yawning canyon. She spent most evenings with her attention on the woods outside, hoping for a glance of her wolf.
The cabin was undergoing a facelift. Link had decided to expand the porch to wrap around the house and had extended the eaves of the roof to protect it from the weather. Together, they’d repaired the dilapidated chimney, put in a new main beam to replace the last rotted one, stained the exposed rafters inside as well as over the porch, sanded down the water-damaged floorboards and refinished them, and yesterday, Link had brought in an enormous picture window, his signature for each house he rehabilitated. He’d put it in the front of the house, right next to the door, so she had a full and undiluted view of the winter woods outside. He’d even hired an electrician to patch her in to a main electrical line since they were close enough to Galena and she could afford the bill.
She hopped down the splintered porch stairs that would be replaced today and grabbed her new chainsaw from under the ledge of the porch. As she pulled the cord and let the little motor rev and warm up, she was filled with a sudden pride in her abilities out here. Every day she grew more confident in ways she’d never imagined before.
Yesterday, she’d dragged fallen, dried-out logs back to the house with Buck’s old snow machine that Link had got working for her. She had plenty on the woodpile to last her for a couple of weeks, but if bad weather hit and she couldn’t get out onto the land to gather more, she’d be up shit creek. Between her survival books and Link’s infinite well of knowledge, she was fully aware that Alaskan weather wasn’t the most dangerous part of living here. It was being unprepared for the weather that could kill her.
Smoke blasted from the chainsaw as she cut the logs into more manageable pieces, and the sawdust, to her pleasure, came out clean and white. Green logs didn’t burn well, but this was prime fire timber.
Movement caught her attention, and she let the chainsaw idle as she straightened her spine. When she saw Link’s snow machine crest the hill, she turned off the saw and jogged out to meet him. Damn, he was a sight for sore eyes, up on one locked leg, other knee resting in the seat as he maneuvered around the big spruce by the road. But when he cut the engine and dismounted, he didn’t greet her like he usually did. Instead, he shook his head hard and rattled a long, loud growl, his lips curled back over his white teeth.