Alaskan Sweethearts. Janet Tronstad

had to lean closer to hear. She half thought he’d said that about her being able to do it just to sweeten her up for the rest. His dark eyes looked serious in the shadow of his hat brim.

      He could be lying, though.

      “If your grandfather is such a cheat, why isn’t he in jail?” she asked.

      “One of these days he’s going to step over the line and I won’t be able to bail him out. Then he will be. I don’t know what we’ll do then.”

      Something about the tone of his voice made her suspect he was telling the truth. She heard his reluctance and his shame. This was hard for him.

      “It could even be today,” Hunter added.

      Scarlett pondered that for a moment. “I don’t see how. I’m not paying him anything for the land. I read the contract he sent. It sounded solid. I even had my baby sister, Carly, who’s a paralegal—well, almost a paralegal—take a look at it and she thought it was fine. My other sister, Fiona, thought it looked good, too. She’s taken over my wilderness guide business, so she knows contracts. It’s hard to cheat when everything is laid out in black-and-white. Besides, I don’t trust anyone these days, so I can’t be taken in.”

      He grunted. “You should have your attorney look at something like that. People can twist things and still be legal. You need to protect yourself.”

      She didn’t say anything.

      “You mentioned that you had an attorney,” he reminded her. “At least you said you’d sue.”

      “I was bluffing.”

      “You need to get one, then.”

      “Attorneys cost money.” Scarlett felt her cheeks warm. She hadn’t meant to tell him she was broke, but she supposed she had.

      “I don’t want you to be disappointed,” Hunter replied and then looked down. “Things like this never turn out good with my grandfather involved.”

      “He seems like a nice old man,” she said. “Looks a lot like Santa Claus.”

      “He could look like the Easter bunny,” Hunter agreed, his voice sounding tired, but at least he was making eye contact with her again. “Doesn’t mean he can hop worth beans. He is a nice man, but he should stay home and...and play solitaire or something. He’s past ninety. What’s he doing things like this for?”

      Scarlett suddenly felt a jolt of empathy for Hunter. He was worried about his grandfather doing himself harm. She knew how that felt after her concerns about her grandmother. The older woman no longer listened to reason, either, but Scarlett had to try. When children lost their parents and were raised by their grandparents, the older ones were everything to them. She would have reached over and touched Hunter’s arm in understanding, but he was staring past her, down the road again.

      “My granny told me to watch my step around your grandfather,” she said to comfort him. “That if he couldn’t sweet-talk me out of something, he’d trick me into giving it to him. But I’m not going to let him have a chance to do either. A person has to trust the con man before she can be swindled and I don’t trust anyone but my grandmother—and maybe my two sisters.”

      Hunter looked at her for a moment, his eyes changing from caution to astonishment.

      “You have to trust more people than that,” he finally said. “Believe me, I’ve tried—” He stopped and took a breath. “What I mean is that you have neighbors. Friends. A woman needs—”

      She shook her head. “Being a woman has nothing to do with it. I don’t see why I need to trust anyone.”

      “Being a mother means you do, though,” he said. Then he paused for a minute, just looking at her.

      “I’m surprised you don’t have Joey accompanied by more than a teddy bear,” he added finally, shaking his head. “I’d think you’d have guard dogs.”

      She acknowledged his words. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it.”

      “Surely your grandmother...” he began.

      “She’s the reason I haven’t gathered those guard dogs,” Scarlett said, relieved to tell the man what kind of a person he was up against. “She believes no one is so bad that they can’t change. It agitates her if I say otherwise.”

      “I know a woman who says the same—that with the good Lord’s help any of us can start over.”

      “Hallelujah,” Scarlett said drily. So he had a woman. She should have known.

      “She taught me in Sunday school when I was a boy,” Hunter added. “Mrs. Hargrove is her name. I stopped going to church for years, but I always remembered what she told me and a year ago I made my peace with God and started going again. My grandfather and I both did.”

      Scarlett tried hard not to be pleased that Mrs. Hargrove wasn’t a romantic interest. Still, she didn’t want any misunderstandings.

      “I’m not much on church myself,” she said. “I still believe in God, but it just doesn’t add up right. God does let people down. And, sometimes, He refuses to help those who ask. I know. It’s happened to me. What kind of God is that?”

      Hunter smiled wryly. “He’s not a celestial vending machine, if that’s what you mean. I know that much. You don’t just put in a prayer and wait for the request you ordered to come shooting out. Life is more difficult than that. God is more complex. We are more flawed.”

      He said the last in a whisper, as though it pained him.

      “What do you mean?”

      He shrugged. “Just that sometimes we mess up and there’s no going back to fix it.”

      “Oh.” Scarlett waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. “I’m just saying it would be nice to have help sometimes.”

      She still felt she was a Christian, which was the cruel part of all this. She couldn’t help believing in Him. But she no longer trusted that He was there to help when she needed Him. She wasn’t going to tell that to Hunter, though. Not if he wasn’t going to tell her what had happened to put that look on his face. Anyway, she had to live in the real world if she was going to protect her son. She couldn’t rely on anyone, and especially not a God who never seemed to show up.

      Hunter was silent for so long she wondered what he was thinking.

      “You’re not going to try to change my mind?” she finally asked. “My grandmother would be making her arguments by now.”

      “I’m not your grandmother,” he said mildly.

      “I see that.”

      “And I know it sometimes seems that God doesn’t care,” he added. “Like I said, I was away from God for a long time, too.”

      She was glad he wasn’t going to scold her. Maybe he even understood.

      A streak of lightning flashed between the clouds and seconds later a loud clap of thunder rattled the windows. Scarlett shivered as fat drops of rain fell from the sky. Hunter stepped close enough to shield her from the worst of it, but not all. She was grateful for that as the rain hid the tears streaming down her face. She hadn’t realized until now just how upset she’d been that God had let her down. Before she’d married Victor, she’d believed in a God who loved her. Because her father had left them when she was young, she’d felt particularly vulnerable. She’d prayed, specifically asking Him if she should marry Victor. He hadn’t sent any sign not to do it. He hadn’t even punished Victor for leaving, either. Bad people truly did win. Now all she had was a raw emptiness where her faith had once been.

      “We best get back inside.” Hunter put his arm around her shoulders and led her toward the door. “No point in standing out here and drowning in the rain.”

      She looked up at him, trying to regain her composure. “No one drowns in