Starry Night: A Christmas Novel Read online

  After a while she returned to the main room to find Finn sitting at his desk. Right away he heard her and whirled around in his chair. He seemed surprised to find her awake.

  “I couldn’t sleep, either,” she confessed.

  He immediately closed the document on his computer, as if he didn’t want her to see what he was writing.

  “Another book?” she dared to ask.

  “If I admit it, will you put that in the article?” The question was more of an accusation.

  “I … I don’t know.”

  He closed the lid to the laptop.

  “If you’re writing a sequel, I can tell you your readers will be more than thrilled.”

  He ignored the comment and glanced at his wrist. “Sawyer should be here within the hour.”

  “Already?” It seemed far too soon. She wasn’t eager to leave. Finn’s father’s wedding band remained in her jeans pocket, and she thought to simply leave it in the cabin for him to find once she was gone. However, seeing his reaction to it earlier prompted her to keep it for now. She’d return the gold ring to his mother at Christmas.

  Sure enough, within the hour the sound of an approaching aircraft filled the house. The noise seemed to multiply, stirring up the atmosphere inside the cabin, building anticipation.

  “That must be Sawyer,” Finn said.

  Carrie nodded. Dragging her carry-on to the door, she checked the cabin to be sure she hadn’t left anything behind.

  Finn stood in the kitchen sipping coffee, as if, in these final moments, he wanted to keep as much distance between them as possible.

  Hennessey barked, and rushed to the door, wanting out. Finn opened it just as the float plane bounced against the solid ice and skidded for several feet in the surrounding moonlight.

  “The trip out here was my first experience in a single-engine plane,” she said, more to fill the silence than to make a statement.

  Without commenting, Finn reached for her suitcase and carried it outside. Carrie followed, a lump in her throat. That she should get all emotional over this farewell was an embarrassment. She was determined not to let Finn see how discombobulated she felt. It was ridiculous. She barely knew this man. He’d let it be known she was a nuisance and considered himself well rid of her.

  By the time she reached the plane, Finn had the passenger door open and her suitcase stored inside. He exchanged a few short sentences with Sawyer, but she couldn’t hear what he said over the roar of the engine.

  Carrie made sure she had a smile in place when he turned to face her. She hadn’t thought what her last words to him would be, and so she said what came instinctively.

  “Thank you for everything.”

  Cupping her shoulders, Finn looked down on her, his dark eyes as intense as she could ever remember seeing them.

  She met his gaze, wanting to tell him without words how much the last two days had meant to her, and how impressed she was with the man he was. She longed to thank him for opening her eyes to what it was to be with a man who was passionate about life and who had shared that passion through stories of life in Alaska.

  Staring down at her, his hands tightened. He murmured something she didn’t understand, and then he pulled her close as if he couldn’t help himself and lowered his mouth to hers.

  Carrie gave a small cry of welcome and gratitude and clung to him. Finn’s hands cupped her face as he tilted her head to receive his kiss, which felt urgent and needy, needs that mirrored her own.

  For a moment the sheer wonder of it nearly caused Carrie’s knees to collapse from under her. This was exactly what she wanted, what she’d hoped would happen. And his kiss was everything she could have imagined. More. Without fully being aware of what she was doing, Carrie locked her arms around his neck and kissed him back, wanting to return everything that he had given her.

  After a long moment, Finn gradually released her from the kiss, but he still hugged her close and tight against him, half lifting her from the frozen lakebed.

  “Good-bye, Finn,” she whispered close to his ear.

  He kissed her neck and then whispered back, “Good-bye.”

  She started to climb into the airplane but Finn stopped her by gripping hold of her hand. He looked deep into her eyes as if to gauge her reaction, and then leaned forward and said, “Carrie?”

  “Yes?” Her heart was in her eyes. Could it be possible that he would ask her to stay? Did it seem as wrong to him as it did to her that they should part now? Surely he felt the very things she did.

  Leaning in close, he kissed her one last time and then said, “Don’t write the article.”

  Chapter Seven

  The wheels of the Boeing 737 bounced against the O’Hare tarmac as the plane landed safely, jolting Carrie out of a light slumber. She hadn’t slept as much on the long flight back to Chicago as she’d hoped, which wasn’t surprising. She glanced at her watch and realized she was still on Alaska time.

  Finn time.

  He’d asked her not to write the article. Surely he understood what that meant. She’d explained to him what this piece could do for her career. It would change everything for her. As she boarded the flight in Seattle, Carrie was forced to ask herself if invading his privacy was worth the cost. Perhaps the answer should seem obvious, but she still wasn’t sure what she would do.

  The temptation to ignore his request was strong. In every likelihood she might never see or hear from the elusive Finn Dalton again. Surely he understood how unreasonable he was being, how selfish, but then … wasn’t she being selfish, too?

  Monday morning, after sleeping on it, Carrie had her answer. She wouldn’t finish her story about Finn Dalton. No matter what happened or didn’t happen between them, it wouldn’t be worth the price. Every woman Finn had ever known had betrayed him, and she was determined not to be one of them. If there was a chance he would ever learn to trust and love again, then the path would start with her. It meant sacrifice on her end, but all she could do was hope that someday he would thank her. Someone else was sure to find him, one day, and the author of Alone would be exposed to the world, but she wouldn’t be the reporter who did it.

  Carrie wasn’t at her desk two minutes before Sophie showed up, nearly bouncing with energy and excitement. “Well?” she asked expectantly. “How’d it go?”

  Glancing up at her friend, Carrie made sure her face didn’t give anything away. “Go?” she repeated, as though she didn’t understand the question.

  “Did you find him?”

  “You mean Finn Dalton?” Carrie’s mind scrambled with ways of answering without telling an outright lie. “It was a needle-in-a-haystack idea. I must have been out of my mind to think I could jet off to Alaska and stumble upon the one man half the world is dying to read about.”

  “Yeah, but did you find him?”

  Leave it to Sophie to press the point. “Honestly, would I be sitting here so glum if I had?” She was in a blue funk, but it was due to other reasons. Lack of sleep, for one; missing Finn, for another. Really missing Finn. Thinking back on their final minutes together, there’d been a hundred things she wished she’d said, and she hadn’t managed to get out even one coherent thought. Well, other than a generic “thank you for everything.” And “good-bye.” How lame was that! Nor had she said good-bye to Hennessey.

  Sawyer had certainly been curious, drilling her with questions much in the same way Sophie was just now.

  “Seems like you two got along just fine,” the bush pilot had commented.

  “Not at first.”

  He’d chuckled. “I can well imagine. You won him over, though, I see.”

  “Did I?” she asked Sawyer. She might never know the answer to that.

  “I thought for sure you had a chance,” Sophie said, dragging Carrie back into the dreary present. Monday mornings were bad enough, but this Monday was even worse, especially on only a few hours’ rest.

  Carrie couldn’t stop thinking about Finn, couldn’t stop dreaming about him. If any two
people were dissimilar, it was them, and yet the attraction had been magnetic and powerful. Now that she was gone, she wondered if she remained on his mind the way he did on hers.

  “How disappointing for you,” Sophie said, her eyes wide with sympathy.

  “I really thought I had a line on him, too,” Carrie confessed. Only she was the one who’d fallen—hook, line, and sinker.

  “You located his mother, though, right?” Sophie leaned against the side of Carrie’s desk and crossed her arms.

  “Yes, and that got me really excited, but mother and son have been estranged since Finn was ten years old. All she really knew was that he was living in Alaska, and that it was close to Fairbanks. Unfortunately, her directions were too vague to help.”

  “What happened when you got to Fairbanks?” Sophie hopped up onto the corner of Carrie’s desk as though she intended to stay awhile.

  “Well, for one thing, I discovered I wasn’t the only reporter who’d arrived out of the blue searching for the elusive Finn Dalton.”

  “Who did you ask?”

  “Bush pilots. From what I heard, Finn is a pilot himself.” Carrie had learned from Sawyer on their flight back that Finn owned a plane, which was currently in Fairbanks for a routine maintenance check.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Word of mouth.”

  “Whose word?”

  “Does it matter?” Carrie was growing irritated with Sophie’s questions. In retrospect, she wished she hadn’t said anything. At the time, she’d been too excited to keep the information to herself.

  “Did any of those pilots give you anything you could use?” Sophie seemed obsessed with this, and Carrie was finding it difficult to give her friend ambiguous answers.

  “Don’t you have work to do?” Carrie asked instead.

  “Yes, but it seems to me the bush pilots must know Finn and would tell you something, anything.”

  “Wrong. Finn has very loyal friends.”

  “You could have bribed them; did you think of that?”

  “Sophie, please, it’s my first day back and I’ve got a ton of stuff to catch up on.”

  “All right, all right. I just hope you aren’t too disappointed.”

  She sighed. “I’m not. I gave finding him my best shot and turned up empty. I can’t do anything more than that.”

  “So you’re going to give up just like that?” Sophie appeared stunned. “That doesn’t sound like you at all. When you left Chicago, you had that bloodhound look in your eyes, your nose to the ground with a determination to go above and beyond to find this guy. Now it seems like you hardly care at all.”

  “Maybe that’s because I’m looking to keep the job I already have. Now, please leave me alone, would you?” Carrie was fast losing her patience. Sophie made it nearly impossible to continue this charade.

  “It’s not like you to be so secretive.” Sophie leaped off the desk and stood staring at Carrie as though she no longer recognized her friend. Then she sadly shook her head and returned to her own cubicle.

  The tension between Carrie’s shoulder blades gradually relaxed. She’d passed the first test—at least she hoped she had. Now all she had to do was concentrate on putting her energy into the society page and making the most of her current position. She couldn’t help being disappointed. When it came to Finn, she’d made her decision, and right or wrong, she was sticking to it. She cared too much to betray him.

  Her morning was completely eaten up by answering emails. She worked straight through lunch and grabbed coffee and a muffin around two. Her phone rang just as she sat back down at her desk. She reached for her extension with one hand and her coffee with the other.

  “Carrie Slayton.”

  “Hi.” The lone word sounded as if it had come from the moon.

  Carrie nearly came out of her chair. It was Finn. “What are you doing calling me here?” she whispered in a near panic. She leaned halfway over her desk and kept her voice as low as possible.

  “I wanted to see if you got back okay.”

  “I did.” Carrie cupped her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “You shouldn’t phone me here; it’s dangerous.”

  “Do you want me to phone you?”

  “Yes, oh, yes.” She didn’t bother to hide her enthusiasm. The sound of his voice washed over her, warming her, filling her with a rush of joy.

  “Give me your cell number, then,” he suggested.

  She rattled it off and had him repeat it to be sure he’d written it down correctly. “Are you on the satellite phone?” she asked, her heart hammering wildly.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you said it was expensive.”

  “Very.”

  She smiled and closed her eyes at the happiness that settled over her. “Does that mean you miss me?”

  He grumbled a phrase she didn’t understand. “It must,” he muttered. “Does that make you happy?”

  “Very.”

  He chuckled. “Can I call you tonight?”

  “Yes,” she said automatically, then realized she was covering an art gallery opening. “No, sorry. I’ve got an assignment this evening.”

  “Will there be lots of men around?”

  “Tons.”

  He grumbled again in the same vague way he had earlier.

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Should I be?”

  Carrie smiled. “That depends. If you’re intimidated by clean-shaven, handsome men in slick black suits who hardly know which end of a car has the gas tank, then be my guest.”

  “Guess I’m in the clear after all.”

  “I’d say so,” she agreed.

  “What time will you be home?”

  Carrie wished she could give him a definite time. “Can’t say. Hopefully before eleven, but I can never predict how long these events will last.”

  “Which is one reason you dislike this society-page reporting as much as you do.”

  “You could say that.” She clung to the phone, not wanting to end the call, even if the cost was exorbitant. “How did you get my number?”

  “Not much of an investigative reporter if you need to ask that. I called the newspaper and asked to be connected to the society-page editor.”

  “Of course.” Plainly, she wasn’t thinking clearly. It came to her then the real reason behind his call. As much as she wanted to believe it was because he couldn’t live without hearing the sound of her voice, she knew otherwise. “You called because you want to know if I’ve reached a decision, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t answer right away. “It’s more than that, I …”

  “I know what I’m going to do.”

  The line went still and silent. “And what did you decide?”

  “Rest easy, Dr. Livingston, your secrets are safe with me.”

  “Doctor who?”

  “Livingston. All the world was on a search to find him, too, if you remember.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “You could email me.”

  “What’s your email address?”

  She gave him her private email address, unwilling to risk someone from the office stumbling upon their communication.

  “I should go,” he said.

  “I know.” As much as she wanted to talk to him, someone might overhear and connect the dots. Lowering her voice, she added, “Call me tonight, okay?” It probably wasn’t smart to let him know how eager she was to hear from him again, but she couldn’t stop herself. She was falling for this guy. And falling hard.

  “Okay. Eleven your time, eight mine.”

  “Perfect.” No matter what, she intended to leave the art show in plenty of time to be home for Finn’s call.

  Somehow Carrie got through the evening, smiling at all the right times, taking down names, and making the most of the event for the following day’s newspaper. Harry, the staff photographer, glanced her way suspiciously a couple of times.

  “What’s up?” he asked, as they hurriedly walked toward the parking ga
rage. She still had to write the story and get it in before the press deadline.

  “What do you mean?” She played innocent, although she was practically trotting in her eagerness to escape.

  “I’ve never seen you in such an all-fired hurry like this. You meeting someone later?”

  “No,” she said, in complete honesty.

  Harry shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

  Carrie arrived back at her condo fifteen minutes early. She kicked off her shoes, wiggled out of her dress, shimmied out of her pantyhose, and grabbed her warmest pjs. She tossed back the covers to her bed, climbed in, and sat cross-legged with her cell phone clasped in her hand, waiting for Finn’s call.

  Twice she caught herself falling asleep, so when the phone rang, it surprised her and she nearly dropped it.

  “Hi,” she said, and knew she sounded breathless. “You’re right on time.”

  “Hi, yourself.”

  Right away she noticed that the call had a different sound to it. “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Fairbanks. I figured it would make talking to you a whole lot more convenient.”

  “That explains why you sound as if you’re in the next room instead of outer space.”

  “The first call did come from outer space.”

  She grinned. “Exactly.”

  “So how did the art show opening go?”

  “Harry was suspicious.”

  “Who’s Harry?”

  He sounded worried, which thrilled her. “The staff photographer, who’s at least fifty and has a half-dozen kids.”

  “What do you mean he was suspicious?”

  This was a bit more difficult to explain. “He could tell I couldn’t wait to get out of the show; I kept glancing at my watch.”

  “Maybe it would be better if we emailed.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “You’re probably right.”

  “We won’t need to worry about the time difference, then.”

  “Agreed.”

  “You sound reluctant. Is there a reason?”

  To this point, she hadn’t done a decent job of hiding her feelings toward him, so now probably wasn’t a good time to start. “I like hearing the sound of your voice.”