Falke’s Peak

“Who knows?” Fridrik smiled now. “Maybe someday, you might persuade her to return.”

Axel turned to Gunnar, who smiled for the first time in a month. “Drive or fly?”

“Drive,” Gunnar said. “We need to pack enough for an extended stay, and it’ll give us time to figure out what to say.”

Axel stood up. “Thanks, Dads.”

Burke held up his scotch. “Go get her, boys.”

Gunnar stood up, a grin now splitting his face. “We will.”

Chapter Nine

“Earth to Dakota! Come on, girl, are you deaf?”

Dakota blinked, glanced up, and said, “Oh, sorry. I didn’t catch that. What did you say?”

Sonya rolled her eyes and reached out to pull her from her chair. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you but snap out of it, or you’re gonna miss the sexiest eye candy this side of the Mississippi!” Her coworker dragged her into a conference room where proofs from a recent photo shoot lay spread out.

Dakota glanced at the photos and frowned. What was so amazing about pictures of gamblers with smiles on their faces seated around a roulette wheel? This was Vegas. The agency did hundreds of these kinds of ad campaigns to promote tourism, the casinos and hotels, all the time.

Skeptical, she muttered, “I don’t see what you mean.”

“Not those. This!” Sonya headed to the window and, hiding behind the curtain, gestured her to look outside for herself. “He’s here!”

Dakota approached the window and stood in plain view.

“Remember him?”

She did. The story was that the model had been a waiter in Paris before he became famous on the fashion runways of Europe, and now he’d been chosen to be the face, abs and more for a new line of boxer briefs. In person, or as close to in person as she’d get, he looked human. Just another nice looking man in a dress shirt and trousers, his hair too dark, his frame too lean…and she couldn’t see his eyes, but she’d bet her last paycheck that they weren’t as blue as they would appear in the final prints. Airbrushing was a miracle of modern marketing technology.

“Yeah, he looks different…in clothes.”

“Is that all you can say?” Sonya peeked out the window again. “That man is every woman’s wet dream.”

Not every woman. “I’ve seen better,” she quipped with an uninterested shrug. Actually, she’d been with better fantasies, stretched out on the floor of a mountain homestead in the orange glow of soft firelight.

That thought damn near brought tears to her eyes, so she fisted her hands and turned to walk out.

“Dakota!”

She kept going, but Sonya followed her back to her cubicle.

“Okay, out with it. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said as she took her seat and began going through her email for the second time that day and trying desperately not to envision matching pairs of hazel eyes. Why couldn’t she get them out of her mind?

Sonya crossed her arms. “Not buying it.”

Dakota stopped, looked up, and tried to smile.

“Look, I know the guy is handsome, and I’m sure he’s probably very nice in person. He’ll make a great model for the new line, but he doesn’t make me all tingly.”

“Okay, who are you? And what did you do with Dakota?”

“I’ve never been the type to drool over eye candy.”

Her coworker straightened up. “No, but you used to at least appreciate a sexy body when the opportunity presented itself. Nowadays you’re always, I don’t know, off in your own little world or something.”

Dakota sighed. “I’m sorry. I just have a lot on my mind.” Not that she was all that enthused about spending another night alone to think and dream of what could’ve been. She frowned, staring at the unfinished design specs for the Carlson’s interactive ad campaign on her computer screen. The layout was still off, and she needed to edit the copy and wrap up the proposal before the client presentation next week.

“And a lot of work to get done.”

“Uh-huh.” Sonya straightened up and dropped her arms. “Okay, fine. I get it. Won’t bug you again. But Dakota, I’ve gotta say, you need another vacation, girlfriend, because you haven’t been the same since you came back from the last one.”

When Sonya walked away, Dakota ran her fingers through her hair and dropped her head onto her desk with a groan. Sonya was right. She hadn’t been the same, because nothing seemed right anymore.

Don’t go.

It had been a month since she’d heard Axel say that to her, five weeks to be exact since she’d kissed his cheek and walked away. Her lips quivered. A lifetime since she’d scratched Gunnar behind the ear and left a quaint little nothing of a town in rural Washington.

She glanced at the clock on her computer monitor and decided an early departure wouldn’t hurt. She wasn’t getting a damn thing done today anyway, so she shut her computer system down and grabbed her things.

Had she done the right thing? She’d thought so at the time, but now in hindsight, she wasn’t so sure. The career she’d strove for had lost its luster, become a job—one that for brief moments occupied her mind enough to dispel the loneliness but never cured the problem. Work gave her a reason to get up each morning. After all, she had bills to pay. Her rent.

Utilities. Her car note.

She unlocked her VW Beetle and slipped in on the driver’s side. Gripping the wheel, she closed her eyes a second and exhaled.

Her job wasn’t all she’d hoped it could be, and it wasn’t enough to fulfill the aching void. What had she come back for? Her family? They weren’t here. After assuring themselves she was alive and had all her limbs, her parents had returned to Colorado.

Her friends? Carrie was off on her honeymoon, and Lana was dating a physical therapist she’d met after the accident that kept her from going on the ski trip in the first place.

Her neighbors—at least those to whose faces she could put a name—were nice enough. But they were busy with their own lives, so aside from the occasional wave and “How are you?” they offered little incentive to plant roots here.

A horn honked, startling her from her thoughts and making her realize the light was green. She’d driven several blocks on autopilot. Stepping on the gas, Dakota tried to focus more on the traffic and less on why she kept dwelling on the possibility that a month ago she’d made the worst mistake of her life.

Traffic. Stop lights. Neon signs. Before her vacation, she hadn’t thought much about the hustle and bustle of Vegas. It had just been life as usual, but now she’d experienced another side to life, another world that made the previously exciting city feel too busy, congested and garishly bright.

She gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I made the right choice,” she said aloud, trying to convince herself that she believed the words.

She didn’t belong with two men. Things like that just didn’t happen, and she mentally went through the plethora of reasons why for the umpteenth time since returning from Washington.

How would she tell her parents? What kind of future could she have with two men—no, two brothers? Even considering it, she knew polygamy would be impossible. It went against societal conventions, against the law.

Yet, their parents had found a way.

They didn’t ask you to marry them, she reminded herself.