Winter Dreams Page 2

  Tracie shifted in his hold, hugging one arm around his neck and settling her tiny rump on his bent arm.

  "I'm sorry I got too close to your doggie," Tracie said to the woman. "Daddy's told me not to go close to strange doggies, but I was watchin' the birdie and didn't see him."

  "I'm just glad you weren't hurt," the woman replied with a relieved smile. "I'm Laura Goodman, but please, call me Laura, not Miss Goodman. And you are?"

  "Tracie." She patted Sandy on the cheek. "And my last name's same as my daddy's — Montdulac. This is my daddy, Sandy Montdulac."

  "Oh!" Laura pulled a mitten off and held out her hand. "You're my new trainer. I'm very glad to meet you. We have your quarters all ready for you out at Ladyslipper Landing."

  Sandy reluctantly shook her hand, taking note of the fragile bones and diminutive size. But his most prominent thought was that this woman had never had the word "homely" connected to her in her life. Frowning, he pushed that thought aside and concentrated on wondering at the incongruity of her wearing her mittens when she evidently didn't think it chilly enough to keep her cloak buttoned. His face must have given away his second thought, or maybe he stared a second too long at her hands. She dropped her grasp, laughing gaily and pulling off her other mitten.

  "If you're wondering about the mittens on this pretty day, it's because my hands chill very easily, as do my feet," she said. "I've found that as long as I keep those four things warm, the rest of my body is fine. From late fall, like this, until ice out in the late spring, I seldom bare my hands outside."

  Glancing down, she noticed her skirt hem and tugged it free. Sandy's eyes widened when he caught a glimpse of trousers beneath the hem. She giggled once again, tilting her head coquettishly as she waited for his reaction.

  "I can't very well travel behind a dog sled in a skirt now, can I?" she asked airily.

  Ignoring her levity, Sandy very abruptly stated his case. "There were a few things your father kept from me when he telegraphed me about this position. For one thing, he didn't tell me that I'd be training dogs for a woman to drive in an Alaskan race."

  In a quicksilver change of expression, Laura gazed at him arrogantly from those sea-green eyes, lifting a feathery auburn brow. "I assure you, Mr. Montdulac, I can handle a team. I've been driving sled dogs since I could walk. And if your rather denigrating reference to my gender means what I think it does, I can also assure you that I'm definitely a woman. In fact, I attained the age of majority — twenty-one — last January. I'll be twenty-two by the time I participate in the race."

  Sandy clenched his throat muscles, stemming the retort fighting for freedom from his beleaguered mind. Hell, he could do the job. That was the least of his worries. Not wanting to was the problem.

  Not wanting to do the job, though, wasn't a valid reason to allow his sister and daughter to starve to death while he looked for another position — something more suited to his damned excess of pride. Being responsible for a family was about the most humbling situation he could imagine. And if it meant teaching this slip of femininity some of the tricks of racing, he could gulp down a huge dash of pride with the best of men. She didn't need to know that his focus would be on showing her how totally ridiculous her idea of competing in that race was, should he accept the position her father offered.

  Besides the weather, which could in itself be a death threat, her other dangerous rivals would be a throng of cutthroat men. They would all be determined to win the race not only for the huge purse, but also to prove the superiority of their teams. A beautiful woman in their midst would further complicate matters, he thought, even while he chastised himself for admitting he'd noticed her beauty himself.

  He forced his thoughts away from that train. She damned sure didn't need the money. She probably only wanted to have a high old time talking to her grandchildren some day about how she'd been the first woman in history to run in an Alaskan race.

  "When I take on a position as a trainer," he said in a rough voice, "I'm the boss. My word is law. The first time a driver I'm training defies my orders, I'm gone."

  "Agreed," Laura responded immediately.

  "I told your father I'd let him know in a day or two."

  "Just what is it you have to think over, Mr. Montdulac? Both my father and my fiancé support me in this venture, and they're the only men in my life whom I have to opt to please. You'll be paid more than adequately for your services, you know."

  "Yeah," Sandy growled. "But your safety is a little more important than money, wouldn't you think?"

  "I see," Laura mused. "I believe my father has chosen well then, since you feel that way."

  "Hell, it wouldn't do my reputation as a trainer any good if you got hurt now, would it?" Sandy snarled. He expected Laura to flare back at him, but instead her face creased with concern. Whatever she was thinking, though, she kept to herself.

  "You'll need somewhere to stay while you're making your decision," Laura said. "And Father said you were bringing your own dogs with you, so they'll need a kennel. Everything is ready for you at Ladyslipper Landing, if you'd like to stay there. And you can look over the facilities, which I believe you'll find more than adequate."

  "The dogs will be fine in their cages on the dock, and I saw a place called the Lake Side Hotel as the ship pulled in. I very much doubt it's full, since the ship's captain told me that he seldom gets passengers for up here this late in the season."

  "Suit yourself, I guess. We'll wait to hear from you."

  Over Laura's shoulder Sandy caught a glimpse of a man crouched behind a bush. Enough dry leaves remained stuck on the branches to camouflage the man somewhat, but his red-plaid shirt gave him away. He dropped to his knees and inched toward Laura's sled dog, tied right behind her.

  Grabbing Laura, Sandy swung her away from the dog and thrust Tracie into her arms. He ordered Laura to stay — as he would have a sled dog under his control — swiveled, and launched himself at the skulking man. The next thing he knew, he was flat on the ground beneath the white Husky, a set of snarling teeth in his face and one brown, one blue eye, glaring at him. A vicious growl sounded in his ears.

  "Blancheur! No!" Laura yelled. "Buck, pull Blancheur off!"

  A red-plaid-sleeved arm reached for the dog's harness, and Sandy jerked his gaze away from the Husky, centering on the skulking man's rummy brown eyes. The man's lips pouted in his tobacco-stained beard, and he sniffed as though he had a cold. Astonished, Sandy realized the man was on the verge of crying.

  "Here Blancheur, old boy," he said. "Get offa that there man a'fore you get me in more trouble."

  "Trouble's right, Buck!" Leading Tracie by the hand, Laura stomped over beside the dog as Sandy rose to his feet. "Look, I know you like Blancheur, but I've told you before to ask permission from me when you want to say hello to him."

  Buck hung his head. Thin and wiry, he wasn't much taller than Laura. His hips were almost nonexistent, and Sandy figured if he hadn't worn a pair of bedraggled suspenders, Buck's trousers would have been down around his feet.

  "I know, Miss Laura," Buck said with a whimper. "But — "

  Laura took a step back. "You've been drinking, haven't you, Buck? I can smell it."

  "Yes, ma'am," Buck whispered. "And I knowed you wouldn't let me 'round Blancheur like that. Like you said, I just wanted to say hello to him."

  The dog made his own decision. He sidled up to Buck, whining and begging for attention. Buck knelt and laid an arm around the white neck, scratching behind a pointed ear with his other hand.

  "Hi, boy," he murmured.

  Laura heaved an exasperated sigh, then glanced at Sandy. "He used to work at my kennels. But he got drunk one afternoon, and I came out and found him asleep, with the dogs unfed and unwatered on a hot summer day. I've since hired Pete Tallwolf, who'll be your assistant."

  "I haven't agreed to take the job yet," Sandy reminded her. But though she couldn't have known it, his ending up beneath that snarling Husky had given Sandy another reason to
accept the position rather than walk away from it. As he strived to hide his humiliation that a rummy drunk could approach the Husky with no problem, while it turned vicious on him, he vowed silently to dominate that animal if it was the last thing he did.

  "I prefer Malamutes to Huskies," he informed Laura.

  "I used to myself. But be assured, I'm well aware a team of Huskies won the last Alaskan race."

  "Yeah," Tracie unfortunately put in. "Daddy was in that race. He only got second."

  Ignoring his daughter's comment, which threatened to bring on another spurt of humiliation, he abruptly motioned his head at Laura's sled dog. "That animal will have to be taught obedience around me if I come to work for your kennel."

  "Blancheur will learn who you are fairly quickly," Laura assured him. "Whether or not he learns to like you will be up to how you handle him. But he will obey you. I'll see to that."

  "No," Sandy corrected her. "If I take the job, I'll see to that."

  "Agreed," Laura said, yet again defusing his antagonism by simply refusing to rise to the bait. She told Buck she was leaving, and the little man rose, nodding to her and shuffling off. Pulling her snow anchor free, Laura up-tilted the sled. Before she stepped onto the runners, she replaced her mittens, then gathered her skirts around her waist and tied them in a knot, exposing her trousered legs.

  "I will be hearing from you shortly, I assume," she said, and Sandy responded with a curt nod. She slipped Tracie a wink. "Good-bye, Tracie, honey."

  "Bye-bye." Tracie lifted a hand, waving it back and forth.

  A soft "mush" was all it took for Laura to get Blancheur moving. She stopped and retrieved her scattered packages on the walkway and quickly stacked them on the sled. With another quick wave back at them, she remounted the runners.

  Sandy's expert eye told him that she handled the sled well, but driving one dog for a short distance was a world away from handling a full team of sled dogs day in and day out on a trail. Efficient functioning of the team could even depend on the personalities of the dogs harnessed as partners. He'd withhold his opinion until he saw her in action on a trail run.

  And see her in action he would, given the fact he already knew he had no choice right now other than to accept the position Tom Goodman offered. He'd also fallen more under the spell of this area of the States the further north he came, since it reminded him a lot of his beloved Alaska. He might be able to make it as far back south as Duluth if he were extremely careful with the money he had left, but he'd be safer up here from discovery. He'd make her and her father wait at least until tomorrow, but then he'd give them his affirmative answer. By the day after that, he'd probably be harnessing up his own team and making a run with her.

  She still had no damned business even thinking about participating in one of those dangerous Alaskan runs, but he very much doubted her father would let that happen. Surely Tom Goodman was just humoring his daughter, since he had plenty of money to be able to afford to do that. Surely.

  ***

  Chapter 2

  After a brief stop at her father's office, Laura headed Blancheur up the snow-covered trail from Grand Marais to Ladyslipper Landing.

  "What an arrogant — sad — man," she told the dog, whose ears swiveled to catch her words as he padded along silently.

  She'd lost track of how many conversations she'd had with her various dogs over the years. Her childhood girlfriends confided in their dolls, while Laura shared confidences with her favorite dog or puppy of the moment. She frequently had a dog or puppy in her room overnight — sometimes an entire litter of puppies, if necessary, due to some problem with the bitch.

  She hand-fed at least a dozen puppies over the years, a few of which the vet told her were hopeless cases. One by one, she'd proven him wrong, but Dr. Erik Sawbill still stubbornly thought he knew more about veterinarian medicine than Laura did. A cozy warmth stole over her at the memory of the bantering spit-spats she and the crusty old vet had engaged in over the years, and Laura smiled at the rambling turn her thoughts had taken. She supposed one of the first people Sandy Montdulac met after Pete Tallwolf should be Dr. Erik.

  If Sandy even accepted the position, she reminded herself.

  She didn't quite understand why on earth she focused on calling him Sandy in her mind, rather than Mr. Montdulac as she did to his face. It was a nice face. He wasn't quite six feet, but since she'd stopped growing at five foot one — one and a half if she stretched it — she had to crane her neck to look up at most people except children.

  He was definitely old enough to command the respect of the title before his name, since her father had told her Sandy was thirty and a widower. What her father couldn't have known, or probably hadn't even noticed when he met with Sandy, was what a rugged, handsome thirty the man was. Or how his blond hair, a little too long, curled and shone even in muted sunlight. How his teal eyes, a twin of his darling daughter's, held shadows of pain and secrets better left untold.

  He carried a reserve around him like a polar ice pack, though. Still she'd managed a glimpse of his pain, deciding to overlook his surliness at least for now. Later might be a different story, because she had an instinctive feeling she would be seeing more of Sandy Montdulac. She wasn't a person to exercise her authority over her employees, preferring to develop a working-together relationship with them, but she might have to shake this man up a little. She didn't like the idea of all the time they would be spending alone, with only each other for company, being filled with tense altercations — unlike the give-and-take she and Erik, and even Pete, shared.

  Fifteen minutes out of town, Blancheur headed through the line of sheltering blue spruce planted to protect Ladyslipper Landing from the winds off Lake Superior. All too soon what the locals called the Gales of November would hit, making shipping on the lake a deadly business, and the spruce would be a welcome shield. Later the pines would serve as a buffer against the blizzards moving in, as would another line planted north of the kennels. Here and there, however, a few open spots allowed them to enjoy the view of the lake, which was unsurpassed in good weather.

  Windy and snowy weather didn't much bother the sled dogs who, being insulated by their winter coats, actually preferred winter to the summer heat. Each animal had a wooden doghouse of its own, but they likely as not curled up outside the doorway, where snow covered them during the storms. Many winter nights Laura lay awake listening to the howling winds and forcing herself to remember the dogs wouldn't appreciate her protective feelings. She always found the concern useless, anyway. When she headed out to the kennels following a storm, sometimes after as long as two days of blowing winds, the dogs rose from snowy beds, yapping and barking their welcome.

  By habit Blancheur bypassed the rambling two-story log structure that was Laura's home and headed for the kennels around back. She "gee'd" him to the right, pausing at the rear steps to unload her packages, then mushing on to the kennels two hundred yards behind the house. A chorus of howls and yaps from two dozen dogs staked here and there welcomed her. The large log kennel building with dog runs and cages inside seldom held any animals until spring, when she planned her litters, unless a dog became injured. One side of it contained her office, which Pete Tallwolf shared.

  Tall and looking very Ojibwa Indian, as he was, Pete wandered out of the kennel office door. She very much doubted the frown on his face came from his being sorry to see her, and she giggled under her breath, trying to keep her amusement from showing. Pete must have been at the books again.

  They totally disagreed about whose job the books were, as well as how they should be kept. Laura did a slap-stick, hurry-up job, assuming her father's accounting clerk would straighten out the mess. Pete was more meticulous, and many times she found her own figures erased and penciled in more carefully. Yet they continued to share the job, both respecting the other's unspoken desire to be out on the trail instead, but knowing the dastardly deed had to be done to Tom Goodman's satisfaction.

  "Thought you might be brin
ging back our new trainer," Pete said as Laura "whoa'ed" Blancheur. "Your father said he was gonna get here today. That's why he took the wagon in this morning instead of riding his horse."

  "He's here," Laura replied. "But it seems Father neglected to inform him that I was the musher he was hired to train. He's holed up in the Lake Side Hotel pondering the matter."

  Planting his large hands on his hips, Pete laughed uproariously, his black hair shining in the sun as guffaws erupted from his broad chest. Laura's giggles joined his laughter, more subdued, since she couldn't shake the lingering recollection of Sandy Montdulac's shadowed eyes.

  When his laughter died, Pete asked, "You want me to go in and talk to him? I can tell him what a little hellion you really are, despite looking like a bit of fluff that could blow away in the wind when you ride on those sled runners. You can bet your snowshoes your being so tiny was as big a concern to him as your being a female."

  "You can if you want," Laura said with a easy shrug. "But he didn't look like the type of man who would be swayed by anything anyone else told him. I think he's the sort who makes up his own mind. And as far as I'm concerned, I really don't want a trainer who isn't totally dedicated to working with me, even if I am a woman."

  "Yeah, I agree with you there. So I think I'll just take a couple of the young dogs out for a training run. We can sort of wander on into town, and I'll have my dinner at Mrs. Sterling's restaurant in the Lake Side. Never know who you might run into there. I'll take a change of clothes and switch at my brother's house."

  "I'll tell Katie you won't be here for dinner. I won't be here, either, since David's picking me up so we can eat at Mrs. Sterling's too. After I talk to Katie, I'll get the new linens I picked up at the general store on the beds in the guest house."