He’d mentioned something like that before, but somehow this full revelation caught her unaware. “That’s nowhere in your bio.”
“I’m a cousin, actually. My biological mother and Jeannie are sisters. I spent a lot of time with the Mikkelsons growing up, when my parents would disappear. My mother was going to put me into foster care. My aunt—Jeannie—stepped in and adopted me.”
“That had to be such a hurtful, confusing time for you. I’m sorry.”
“I was—am—lucky. Things could have turned out much worse for me. I’ve led a privileged life. I owe the Mikkelsons more than I can ever repay.”
Realization dawned. “And that’s why you’re working so hard to help the company.”
“The business means the world to them.”
Silence fell between them, thick and heavy as Alaska snow. Every bit as chilly too.
“And the reason you named that first horse Jerome?”
“That first week I was at the Mikkelson place, the week my parents made it clear they weren’t coming back this time—my biological father took a job in Australia and my mother didn’t want to parent alone. Anyhow, my uncle gave me a young Tennessee walker horse and had me choose the name. I picked Jerome, the patron saint of orphans.”
His words touched her heart, shifting her image of him ever so slightly. “Trystan, I’m—”
“No sympathy. Now your turn. Tell me the story behind your dog’s name?”
After what he’d shared, she was almost embarrassed to explain how her dog was named. “I feel like I’m coming up short. My story isn’t anywhere near as insightful as yours.”
“Tell me anyway and let me be the judge.” His voice held that teasing tone again that smoothed the edges of his gravelly timbre.
“Paige was named at the training facility. She came there as a puppy and spent two years learning the skills to be a service dog. The organization has a fund-raiser where people make a large donation to the group in exchange for naming rights to a puppy. Paige was named from a collection by a church youth group who wanted to honor one of their classmates who died in a car wreck.”
“That’s very moving...”
“Those donations make the service dogs more affordable for people who don’t have the twenty to thirty thousand dollars it takes to complete the training.”
“Two years of training?”
She nodded, lifting a hand to block the light of the sun. “Training, feeding, vetting by paid professionals, who also rely on assistance from volunteers. Paige started learning all the basics and then over time the staff saw where she would fit best. Once a dog ‘graduates,’ he or she is paired with an applicant who best matches the dog’s skill set.”
“And they know a dog’s potential even from when they’re a puppy?”
Her nerves eased as she settled into explaining the more factual aspects of a service dog. Facts were so much easier than emotions. Facts could ground her.
“Different groups work in different ways, but usually groups either know the lineage of the dogs or it’s a dog under two years old that has had extensive temperament and health testing. A dog can still wash out of training for any number of reasons.”
“What happens to those dogs?” He guided the plane to the right with a smooth turn of the yoke, the wing outside her window dipping ever so slightly.
“Sometimes there’s another type of task they can do. And if not, the dog goes up for public adoption. The waiting list for those dogs is usually long.”
“I had no idea so much went into it. I thought you trained too.”
“I did have to go to training classes, and I go to brush-up classes, as well.”
“I’m impressed by the whole process.”
She looked down at Paige. The yellow Lab raised her head, those wide, brown, knowing eyes staring straight into her soul. Life without Paige...an impossible thought now. Tears pulled at her, a knot in her throat almost obscuring her words. “Thank you, but it’s a huge help to have her in my life. I’m very lucky we were partnered up.”
Silence came again, less oppressive than before. Not quite comfortable though.
The skyline began to reveal more pronounced dips in the Alaskan topography. Enchanting to take in from this perspective. Almost as mesmerizing as the man beside her.
Turning to glance at him, she noticed the furrow in his brow, fine lines digging deep.
Her stomach dipped with a sense of foreboding she could not shake.
“I hadn’t thought about it until now—” Trystan leveled a glance at her over the top of his aviators, his eyes full of concern “—but how does your diabetes play into possible health problems if you’re pregnant?”
Five
Trystan steered his Range Rover along the winding drive through the trees toward his ranch home.
He intended to do right by his family with the press, on social media and at business appearances this month, but for him personally, things were more complicated now. He needed to prepare for the possibility that Isabeau could be carrying his child. She hadn’t answered his question about her diabetes and possible complications in pregnancy.
Time here at his house would give him the opportunity to learn more about her, to strategize contingencies. At his house. On his turf.
The charcoal-colored roof peaks of his sanctuary crested above the tall, impossibly green pine trees. Unlike his mother’s sleek home, Trystan’s property spoke to the Alaskan wilderness. Maybe not in the same rough-hewn way as the Steele complex. But still, his craftsman ranch house sat amidst trees, overlooking a crisp lake stocked with fish.
His place was part of the family estate, but Trystan had been far more interested in working with the land than the rest of his family. Another mark of his outsider status. He’d invested in horses and property. From the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a buckskin galloping away from the paddock behind the wooden barn that sat off to the back left corner of his house.
Isabeau shifted in her seat next to him, seeming to respond to the bumps in the rough, pebble-littered road. Her eyes
