smiles?” Sashi asked directly.
Kendra didn’t look at her. “Joe? Are we ready to go?”
“Yes, we are.”
“Great! Come on, Sashi,” Kendra called out as she climbed into the pontoon plane secured to the dock. “I’ll tell you inside.”
Sashi had a bad feeling. What had Freddy promised Kendra now? What had she gotten herself into?
The door closed and Joe climbed into the pilot’s seat. He told them to put on their seat belts along with headphones so they could talk. He started the engine and soon they were taxiing over the water, then lifting in the air. Both girls stared out the windows, caught up in the splendor of Prince of Wales Island. Sashi found this land, covered in a rain forest of ferns and pines, magical. Bears and bald eagles made their home there, and whales dotted the coastline.
Before they touched down at their first site, Kendra grabbed Sashi’s hand. “We have to talk.”
Sashi didn’t want to stop looking out the window. “So now you feel like talking?”
“I’m going to have Joe fly us up to a lake called Red Bay. Freddy, Bridgette, Natalie, Nick and George are going to fly out for a goodbye party at the cabin located right on the lake. It’s all been arranged.”
Sashi bit her lip. She didn’t really care for Nick or George. They were two local guys from Craig who worked the fishing boats and had big crushes on the two other girls. “Why? I thought you called it off with Freddy.”
“I did, but today he begged me for a second chance. I couldn’t say no.” Kendra’s eyes began to well up with tears.
Sashi could see her friend was still madly in love with him. “Okay, we’ll do it. I’m just glad Blake isn’t coming.”
“Me, too. I think Freddy is finally choosing me over Blake. She’s been my biggest competition all summer.” Kendra reached over and gave Sashi a hug.
Sashi hugged her back. “It’s all going to work out fine,” she said, but doubted it.
* * *
COLE SUTURED A NASTY CUT on his patient’s forehead. “Cid, my friend, you really need to listen. Take it easy and lay off the booze. They have to bring you in here way too often.”
“I feel your love for me right here in my heart, Doc.” The tough fisherman pounded his chest with his fist. The blue eyes of the bar-brawler met the no-nonsense of Cole’s rich amber eyes.
“Yeah, Cid. I’m thinking you must have a thing for me by now. Asking for me by name? It’s touching.” Cole shook his head. “Come on, let’s get more personal. I’ll even get you a bed here on the rehab floor.”
At that comment Cid’s fisherman buddies, who’d brought him in, started laughing. “Doc, Cid’s a good fisherman if he could ever stay out of a bar. More importantly, out of a bet!” His captain, Lee Jarvis, always vouched for him.
Cole turned back to his patient. “Cid’s got a drinking problem. I’m worried that one night he might walk off one of your crabbing boats in a drunken stupor straight into the ocean.”
“We all have a drinkin’ problem. Just sew him up,” Lee said, getting testy. “He’s too good of an engineer to lose for the season. I’ll look into his problem after we catch our quota.”
Cole turned around in his chair. “Is that a promise?”
“No. It’s a maybe.”
Cole got up and began to strip off his sterile gloves. “Cid, I truly hope to see you in the spring. It would make my Easter dreams come true.”
Lee jumped in. “We’ll do our best, Doc.”
With that Cole left the room and began the long walk from the patients’ rooms to the hub of the E.R. He stripped his long body of the rest of the protective clothing and turned his smile on one of the new nurses.
“Stacey? The patient in room three needs another round of meds. Take either Heather or Mildred in with you. The boys can be a rough crew.”
Stacey just stared at him.
Cole turned to Mildred, who said, “Come on, Stacey. Let’s get you used to the crabbers.” But she looked back at Cole and shook her head.
“What?” he said.
“You and that amazing smile of yours. If I were twenty years younger, you’d be mine, Cole.”
“I am yours, Mildred,” he said.
“Don’t flirt with me, big boy, even if it still works.”
Cole walked away, chuckling to himself. He was looking forward to tomorrow’s reunion with Sashi.
* * *
“WE’VE ARRIVED, LADIES,” Joe Running Bear exclaimed from the cockpit. Speaking into the enormous headphone, he began discussing landing procedures. The plane circled the lake one time, then made its descent toward the pristine waters of Red Bay. The landing was as smooth and soft as silk.
As the plane taxied the two women stared out the cabin windows. A bald eagle who’d stood proud on a tree took off, its magnificent wings spread in flight. Sashi spotted startled Sitka deer moving back from the shore, robins flying to and from their nests, squirrels scampering into the undergrowth. Ancient trees stood in various states of decay. Cedars and spruce covered in moss and lichen peeked out of the morning mist hovering just above the ground.
The sun poked through the clouds, casting a blanket of diamonds over the water. The diamonds shimmered as the plane drew closer to the dock of the Pan-Abode cabin, one of many prefab cabins dotting the Alaskan bush.
Sashi lifted her eyebrows, trying to decide if she dared ask their pilot-cum-tour guide the question on her mind: Had the trees been planted on purpose to look like a wreath around the lake, or had nature created its own perfection? But where questions about Alaska were concerned, she’d learned to keep her mouth shut in case she sounded too naive.
Over the past three months Sashi had learned Alaska was a land of mystery. It was hard to believe that it was just last March her best friend from childhood had begged her to come up here.
It had all sprung from Kendra’s falling in love with Freddy, which had happened when both she and Frank Marshall’s son had attended school together in Washington, D.C. Freddy had asked Kendra to come up to the resort and spend time with him. She went because she believed she had found the man she was going to marry, and this time with him would make for a perfect summer.
Kendra had asked Sashi to come because she knew her friend needed the money to make her dream become a reality.
Sashi took in Kendra’s silhouette up front. They’d been best friends since they were three years old. Sashi couldn’t believe the past twenty-five years had gone by so quickly. During that time Kendra had become a tall, striking woman, one just as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside. She was one of those rare types of people who would hold some fund-raiser or another for a cause no one had ever heard of just because she cared. Sashi never knew Kendra to be unkind to another soul.
If people thought Kendra was odd, it was only because she was so smart. Kendra had a different way of thinking from most people. Sometimes it made her seem snobby, but nothing could be further from the truth.
“My friends,” Joe said through the headphones in his deep, rich voice. “It appears Mother Nature has looked kindly on us this morning. We had the bald eagle to welcome us and the sun to shine on us. We will be docking momentarily. Since no one has arrived yet, we will prepare for a wet docking and hike to the cabin.”
“Uh, Joe?” said Kendra. “Can you elaborate on what a wet docking is?”
His eyes twinkled as he looked back. “The parks department hasn’t kept up the dock here at the lake. So we have to wade to shore.”
Kendra