“No way. It used to look like carrots, but now it looks like…beets.”
The expression on Ruthie’s face made Alastair stifle another laugh. Poor girl, this probably wasn’t going quite the way she’d imagined.
Ralphie continued. “But no one else around here has hair even close to yours. It looks great, Ruthie. You look great. It’s good to have you back in Lost Harbor.”
Ruthie lit up like an electric light that had just gotten plugged in. “That’s so nice of you, Ralphie.”
He came forward and they exchanged a hug. To Alastair’s eyes, it looked like a friendly embrace, but who knew how it seemed to Ruthie. Maybe she’d build some kind of fantasy around it that involved Ralphie dropping to his knees and proposing on the spot.
Should he stick around and try to protect her from her own self-delusions? For some reason, she’d talked herself into the hope that Ralphie Reed, who was essentially “community peen”—he’d just recently learned that American phrase—might be her soul-mate-in-waiting.
Odd that Ruthie Malone, who could be so brilliant in some areas, was so oblivious to Ralphie’s flaws.
On the other hand, maybe she knew him better than Alastair did. Maybe that childhood connection really did mean something. He wouldn’t know; his childhood had ended early and he’d left it behind long ago.
“Enjoy your dinner, you two.” He strode toward the door as they ended their embrace. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Ruthie’s face was flushed and her glasses askew. In lace-up boots and a hunter-green dress that hugged her generous figure, she looked sexy as hell. Ralphie would be a fool to dismiss her.
And she’d be a fool not to dismiss him. She could do so much better, in his opinion. But it was none of his business, so he kept on going through the door.
“Groovy sounds, Ruthie,” was the last thing he heard as he left. “Is that like, ancient Irish or something?”
Lifting his eyes toward the magnificent sunset sky, Alastair muttered under his breath, “Or something.” He trotted down the concrete steps to the grass, then took a short detour to one of the wooden benches Chrissie had installed along the bluff. Her vision—which he’d signed onto when he agreed to be her chef for the time being—was to mix frontier history with a deep appreciation of the stunning natural beauty of this area.
It had definitely stunned him from the very moment he’d first seen the craggy mountains and deep glaciers of Lost Souls Wilderness. Two years later, it still drew him, more powerfully than ever. He’d tried leaving a few times, but he kept returning. Something kept drawing him back here.
Which was strange, because his original reason for coming here didn’t exist anymore. He’d wanted answers about his sister Carole’s fatal plane crash. Carole, twelve years older than him, had become his guardian when their parents had died. She’d been his only family, so when a rich New Yorker had swept her off her feet at the pub where she worked, her little brother had been part of the deal.
After trying and failing to get pregnant, she and Anthony Berenson decided to adopt. Their search for a baby took them to Alaska—to the Aurora Lodge, where a newborn was awaiting them. But they’d never come home. Their twin-engine plane had disappeared in Lost Souls Wilderness. It was presumed to have crashed, with no survivors.
At seventeen, Alastair was alone in the world.
Tony’s brother Tate had taken the reins of the Berenson estate. None of the Berensons had ever accepted him; they saw him and Carole as a threat to their eventual inheritances. Within a month, Tate told him he was on his own.
With nowhere else to go and no money to get there, Alastair had stayed in New York and scrambled to find work. He’d done a bit of everything until he got hired at a four-star restaurant uptown. Busboy, then sous-chef, then chef. Job, apartment, girls…bit by bit, things had fallen into place.
He’d always assumed that someone would eventually find out exactly what happened to Carole and Anthony’s plane, but the years passed and he’d heard nothing. It haunted him. Carole had always been there for him, and it killed him to think that no one was solving her case. Was it an accident? Weather problem? Sabotage? The Berenson family was a snake pit, so in his darkest moments he’d wondered if one of them had something to do with it.
Finally, fifteen years after Carole disappeared, he’d decided to find out for himself. He’d taken some vacation time from the restaurant and flown to Lost Harbor and then on to the Aurora Lodge in Lost Souls Wilderness, the last place where Carole and Tony had been seen.
Finding the truth had taken more than his efforts alone. Maya Badger, the Lost Harbor police chief, had played a big part, as had Ethan James, a local investigator. They’d discovered that the real story was even wilder than any of his theories.
The Berensons’ plane had been shot down by a vengeful Russian crime boss. That man had been trying to reclaim his baby daughter, who happened to be the child that Carole and Tony were hoping to adopt.
It still sickened Alastair to think about. Loving, tenderhearted Carole, who’d always wanted a family, shot down from the sky while trying to adopt a baby—it was horrifying.
So why did he keep coming back to the place where Carole had died?
The locals had a saying—“Strange things happen around Lost Souls Wilderness.” It was as good an explanation as any.
He settled himself on the bench and stretched out his legs. Right over there, across the darkening waters of Misty Bay, lay the dense forests of Lost Souls Wilderness. Her plane had gone down deep inside the wilderness, in a spot he couldn’t see from here. But for some reason it comforted him to be close to where she’d died.
Carole’s death had turned him into a bit of a lost soul himself. She was the only person in the world who had loved him and supported him. After the crash, he’d been forced to grow up almost instantly. He’d learned to rely on himself and his own gut.
His gut had brought him here. He’d accomplished his mission. He’d gotten the answers he needed. But now his gut kept bringing him back. Was there another piece of the puzzle missing? Was there more to the mystery? Something Berenson-related? The question still haunted him.
Either way, New York was hot and sticky in the summer. It had a serious lack of glaciers and mountain ranges. So why not hang out in Lost Harbor for a while? He could relax here in a way that he couldn’t in New York.
Usually.
“You’ve been served.”
He jolted to attention as a voice spoke from behind him. In the next moment, Ethan James dropped onto the bench beside him and handed him a certified letter.
“What the hell?” he growled at the lanky private investigator. “What is this?”
“Someone’s been trying to reach you and they got fed up. Finally hired me.”
“I thought we were friends. Jay-sus.”
“I figured if it’s bad news, better to have a friend around, no?” Ethan grinned at him. He’d first met Ethan in Lost Souls Wilderness, when they’d been pursuing two different pathways to the same unsolved mystery.
“What if? Of course it’s got to be bad news. Nothing good comes in an envelope that looks like this.” He waved the certified letter in the air. “I’m tempted to toss it off the bluff.”