Stars Over Alaska (Wild River #4) - Jennifer Snow Page 0,4

now. That house was well secured, so the possibility that someone on her team might be in on it was very real.

“Does anyone even know where we are?”

Shit. Leslie bit her lip.

Selena’s eyes widened. “What the fuck? No one knows where I am and you’ve taken away my cell phone?”

The cell phone was left behind on purpose. Selena was glued to the thing and it was easy enough to track, unlike Leslie’s, which had a ghost app. “It was the only way to make sure your stalker doesn’t find out where you are.”

“So, essentially, you’ve kidnapped me.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“Are you serious?”

“A hundred percent. You could be working with my stalker. This could all be a setup.” Frantic eyes darted around the room.

“Calm down.”

Selena threw off the blanket and struck a kung fu pose. “I’m a black belt.”

“And I have a gun.”

“Help! Someone help!” Selena whipped open the front door and started yelling into the void. Her voice echoed on the nothingness around them.

“Hey, shhh... Calm down!” Leslie said, closing the door. “I’m not kidnapping you or going to kill you.” As tempting as it was. “If I was going to do that, I would have done it already and dumped your body along the deserted stretch of highway, not wait until we were in my family’s cabin.”

Selena still didn’t let her guard down. “How do I know this is your family’s cabin?”

Leslie pointed to the picture of her and her siblings above the fireplace. “The one in the middle? That’s me.”

Selena peered at it, her arms lowering slowly to her sides. “The one with the boy’s haircut and braces?”

Leslie’s teeth clenched as she nodded. “Yes.”

Selena’s face gave way to a look of amusement. “Oh my God...talk about an awkward stage! Do you have any more photos like that?”

Leslie sighed. “In the ottoman, there’s a family photo album.” To further confirm that she wasn’t lying or to make fun of her some more, Leslie didn’t care.

As long as the pain-in-the-ass movie star stopped screaming for help.

CHAPTER TWO

Fairbanks, Alaska

LEVI STARED ACROSS his desk at the interviewee, Tyler Forrester. Ironic choice of name for someone wanting to become a smoke jumper in the Alaskan wilderness. The guy was well trained—volunteer firefighter for eight years. Lead rescue on the search and rescue team in Wild River. Avalanche training. Drone training. Definitely met the higher-level requirements. He looked physically fit and had passed all of the written applications. But Levi wasn’t convinced.

“I see you’ve recently relocated to Fairbanks from Wild River,” Levi said. This, he’d need to explore a little. Not many people left a ski resort town to move into a more remote area of Alaska unless they were running from something...or toward it.

“Yes, sir.” The guy’s face broke into a smile.

Toward it. Levi’s guess would be a woman was the motivating target. “Your girlfriend lives here.” Not a question. He’d seen it before.

“Yes, sir...fiancée, actually. Well, hopefully. I plan on proposing tomorrow night.” The smile faded slightly. “But, I’m fairly confident she’s going to say yes.” Tyler shifted in the seat. “We were high school sweethearts... Things got complicated...”

Levi sat back and listened to the guy ramble on about his relationship drama. As head of the Alaska smoke jumping team, he’d mastered the art of active listening to relationship ups and downs with his open-door policy—which the men on his team took to mean resident therapist. Hearing everyone else’s issues made him grateful that he was solidly single.

Funny enough, everyone in his life kept pushing him to date. Misery loved company, right? Life balance, everyone said. He knew relationships just complicated the hell out of things, but no one was listening to his protests.

The ping of his cell phone indicating a new Tinder match on the account his co-worker, Chad, had set up for him was evidence of that.

When Tyler stopped talking, Levi sat forward and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Tyler, I just don’t see this being a good fit.”

The guy’s face fell. “What? Why? I meet the requirements, right?”

All but a very important one: no serious attachments.

It wasn’t technically a job requirement, but it was a Levi Grayson prerequisite of sorts. The guys on his team liked to date; casual relationships that lasted several weeks at most, but they were essentially like him—single, no family, unattached. They all happily shared a canine at the station cabin, Smokester, a retired rescue German shepherd who was currently snoring loudly in his dog bed in the