She turned, grinning at him as she swaggered backward. "Just watch me, Brennan."
"Why can't you think of this as a learning experience?" he called. "I bet you'll never walk into your bathroom again without appreciating the beauty of indoor plumbing. Or turn up the heat without remembering the wood you hauled to feed the stove in the cabin."
"Keep talking, Brennan. Sooner or later you might just convince yourself that you're doing a good thing by keeping me here."
He stopped and watched her walk toward Burdy's, admiring the quick sway of her hips, the focused energy of her stride. Chuckling to himself, he started back toward the lodge.
It was getting harder and harder to stay angry at Perrie Kincaid. To tell the truth, the more he knew of her, the more he liked her. She was stubborn and opinionated and she knew her own mind. She didn't let anybody push her around. He admired that about her.
Beyond that, he thought she was just about the prettiest woman he'd ever known. He'd never really looked at her as anything but a pain in the backside, tough as nails and prickly as a hawthorn tree. But then, out of the clear blue, he had come to realize just how incredibly alluring she was.
Joe shook his head. That was one opinion he'd have to keep to himself. It wouldn't do to have everyone in the lodge and all of Muleshoe know that he was attracted to Perrie Kincaid.
Perrie slid onto a bar stool and grabbed a menu. Paddy Doyle lumbered over and wiped his hands on his apron, "Miz Kincaid. How are you this sunny morning?"
"I'm fine, Mr. Doyle. I think I'll have a lumberjack breakfast… with an extra order of bacon… cheese on the hash browns… and a double milk."
Paddy raised his eyebrow. "You sure you want all that for breakfast? You usually just have a doughnut and coffee."
"I'm in training," Perrie said.
Paddy scribbled her order on a scrap of paper, then walked it back to the kitchen. He returned a few moments later with a large glass of milk. "I heard you're entering the brides' competition," he said. "All the bachelors around town are lookin' forward to seeing how you fare. See if you're decent marriage material."
Perrie smiled. "The rules say any single woman can enter. But this single woman isn't interested in marriage. Just in the first prize."
"I also heard that you spent some time inside the Bachelor Creek Lodge this morning."
Perrie blinked in surprise. She'd visited the lodge less than an hour ago and already Muleshoe's version of Walter Cronkite was on the story. "My first and last visit."
"I wouldn't be too certain of that. A lady sets foot in the lodge and she's bound to be married." Paddy laughed. "Not one of them boys paid a cent into the bride scheme and now they're falling like tall timber. First Tanner. Now Joe. Hawk will be next."
"I'm not marrying Joe Brennan," Perrie insisted.
"I bet Joe was plenty mad when he found out you got inside the lodge. He's been dodging marriage since I met him five years ago. You know, he's dated pretty near every available woman in east Alaska."
"I know that, Mr. Doyle. Everyone knows that. Seems Joe's social life is front-page news around Muleshoe."
"Would be, if we had a newspaper." Paddy rubbed his chin. Bracing his foot on an empty beer barrel, he leaned up against the bar. "You work in the newspaper business, right?"
"When I'm not withering away in the wilds of Alaska," she said, sipping at her milk.
"I need some advice." Paddy reached back and untied his apron. "Come with me. I want to show you something."
Her curiosity piqued, she followed him through the bar to a rear door, then up a dusty narrow stairway to the second story of the building. Paddy came to another door and threw it open.
"This stuff has been up here forever," he said. "I was thinkin' about putting in a nice dance hall up here, for parties and weddings and such."
"What is this?" Perrie asked.
"This is what's left of the Muleshoe Monitor," Paddy explained. "Paper started when this was a boomtown during the gold rush days. Lasted until the thirties and then the old guy that ran it moved to Fairbanks."
"This is incredible," Perrie said, moving to stand near the line of old wood cabinets on the wall. The galleys from the final edition of the Monitor still lay on the table, covered with years and years of dust. She brushed off the masthead to get a better look. "When I was in junior high, I worked for my town newspaper. They had all the old block type left and they used it for signs and posters. I would sit and cast headlines. Local Girl Wins Pulitzer, Kincaid Awarded Nobel Peace Prize. Things like that. Now it's all done on computer."
"I want to sell this stuff," Paddy said. "What do you think it's worth?"
Perrie picked up a composing stick. "This is… probably not worth much. I'm not really sure. To someone like me, it's fascinating. When I was a kid, I dreamed about having my own paper."
"Back when Muleshoe was a boomtown, in '98, we had enough folks living here to support a paper. Nearly two thousand. And with all the money bein' made, there was plenty of news. The guy that ran the place passed on in 1951 and no one ever came back to claim his property. That press has been sittin' there ever since, collecting dust. Probably take half the men in this town to move the thing. Or I guess we could break it apart."
"Oh, no!" Perrie cried. "You can't do that."
Paddy shrugged. "Not much else to be done. Come on, Miz Kincaid. Let's go see if your breakfast is done. You hear of any market for this old junk, you let me know, all right?"
She nodded and Paddy headed for the door. But Perrie lingered for a moment longer. The scent of ink still permeated the room, even after nearly fifty years. She closed her eyes and her thoughts drifted back to the little print shop she'd loved when she was a kid. It was because of mat place that she'd become a reporter.
For an instant, she wished Joe was with her. She wanted to share this with him, the same way he'd shared the wolves with her, telling him about the first time she'd realized she wanted to be a newspaperwoman. And then she remembered how things had been left between them.
They were like a pair of magnets, at times attracted and at other times repelled by each other. She could understand the latter. But where did the attraction come from? Sure, he was handsome, but she'd never been hung up on physical attributes. She assumed he was intelligent, although she had never carried on a scholarly conversation with him. He was definitely charming, the type of man that most women found irresistible.
Maybe it was something else, something less obvious. Though he was friendly enough, he always seemed to stop short of any shared intimacy. Most men she'd known could talk for hours about themselves, but she hadn't managed to get a single iota of personal information out of Brennan beyond his revelation about his debt to Milt Freeman. When she questioned him, he just brushed her curiosity off with a clever quip or a teasing remark.
Perrie would hazard a guess that there hadn't been a woman on the planet who had managed to get inside Joe Brennan's head-or inside his heart. She wouldn't be the first-and she didn't want to be.
Chapter Seven
The woods were dark and silent when she returned home, the soft crunch of her boots echoing off the tall trees and disappearing into the night. Perrie had spent the entire day away from Bachelor Creek Lodge, simply to avoid seeing Joe again. Breakfast at Doyle's, lunch with the brides and practice for the games after that. She even spent an hour before dinner above Doyle's, reexamining what was left of the Muleshoe Monitor.
She wasn't really angry with Joe. But she wasn't ready to forgive him yet, either. One step toward a truce usually resulted in another step backward. Why couldn't they just get along? She was stuck here in Alaska for who knows how much longer, forced to see him every day, whether she wanted to or not. The least he could do was leave her in peace.