to face him. He’d known she was beautiful; hell, the pictures he’d found of her online had been partly responsible for drawing him here. But no photograph, nothing he’d read about her, nor any of the childhood stories Jane Lakeland had unapologetically used to pique his interest could have prepared him for the flesh and blood woman. Even knowing Katy was six-foot-one, he’d still been stunned to find himself barely having to look down to see the vibrancy in her startled gray eyes.
No, not gray. Those long-lashed, fathomless eyes were the exact color of an Icelandic fogbank backlit by the morning sun. And when she’d spun to him in surprise, the whip of that long single braid of mahogany hair as thick as his wrist had sent him even further back in his youth, to when he would sit on a bluff overlooking the wind-whipped northern Atlantic and dream of escaping his island home on an ancient longship in a bid to conquer the world.
She hadn’t wanted to shake his hand, even though he had enough notches on his bedpost to know women didn’t exactly find him repulsive. And having met her three cousins, Gunnar figured Katy should be comfortable around large men. Hell, her chosen profession practically guaranteed she’d be surrounded by firefighters dwarfed only by their egos.
No, he figured her reluctance, and the skittish energy she emitted, had to do with the last two weeks of her life that he couldn’t account for—or at least hadn’t been able to, so far. Having tracked down the school she’d trained at in Colorado, he’d learned from one of the staff that Katy had surprised everyone by getting falling-down drunk when they’d all gone to a local bar on the last night to celebrate. Before that, no one had seen her have more than an occasional evening glass of wine. The head instructor had personally helped her into the van, taking several of the students to a motel near the small local airport, making sure one of the women promised to see Katy safely to her room.
Only instead of going to the airport the following morning and transferring the rest of her round-trip ticket for one to Shelkova like she’d promised, Katy had stayed at the motel for three days and then simply vanished.
Not that that had stopped Jane from naming her little bundle of joy after her BFF. Gunnar grinned at his reflection, figuring Princess Katherine Maine Lakeland—the first female born to a Lakeland male in twelve generations—was already ruling the palace. Hell, when he’d called two weeks ago to remind Jane how crucial it was, should she hear from Katy, that she not tell her that the guy she’d wanted her to meet was going to Maine to find her instead, Markov had said his lovestruck countrymen were still partying in the streets.
After assuring Jane he’d let her know what had sent her friend into hiding just as soon as he found out why, and after coming up several hundred palm-greasing dollars poorer from digging up more questions than answers in Colorado, Gunnar had reluctantly continued on to Maine to establish himself as one of the firefighters before Katy finally—hopefully—showed up to work. He’d swear it had been the longest two weeks of his life, with him not taking a decent breath until the computer hacker keeping watch texted him night before last, saying Miss MacBain’s cell phone had suddenly started pinging loud and clear in Boise, Idaho.
Gunnar couldn’t for the life of him figure out why the woman had headed north instead of pointing that rental truck east. But he hadn’t been all that surprised when a subsequent text said Miss MacBain placed two calls shortly after turning on her phone—the first one to the country of Shelkova that had lasted thirty-eight minutes, and a second call to Pine Creek, Maine, lasting exactly seven. Not surprising, given what Jane had shared about Katy’s rather creative rebellions against her overprotective family.
More texts came in throughout yesterday, saying the phone signal kept going off only to start up again in another city. His tech guru finally discovered that Miss MacBain was making her way to Maine by finally using her credit card to buy flights on standby.
Gunnar had known down to the minute when Katy had landed in Bangor, but he hadn’t let himself relax until learning her card had been used at the campground twenty miles south of town—at about the same time the skies opened up and he’d