Match Made In Paradise by Barbara Dunlop (black female authors TXT) 📕

high-end tourists destined for places like Wildflower Lake were shuttled straight from Fairbanks in plush, luxuriously appointed Barons or 310s.

Nice planes, but Silas couldn’t say he envied those pilots dealing with high-maintenance walk-on cargo. Case in point, Mia Westberg.

Silas and Brodie had parked themselves at one of three mismatched tables tucked in the room behind the front office to have a beer at the end of the day.

“What did you think of the cousin?” Brodie asked, opening the topic that was on a lot of guys’ minds after a few of them got a look at Mia down at the warehouse and spread the word.

Silas was honest. “Big-city, entitled, the antithesis of Raven. Raven’s got her hands full, that’s for sure.”

Brodie took a swig of his beer, Amber Ice from a local Alaskan brewery. “This ought to be interesting.”

“How long’s she planning to stay?” Silas pushed at the corner of the foil label with his thumb.

Brodie shrugged. “Raven only knew she was arriving today.”

“She won’t last long.” Silas would put a fair bit of money on that. “We stopped at Raven’s to drop her bags. I got the impression Paradise isn’t what she expected.”

“I told Raven a dozen times to move into staff housing.” Brodie had clearly missed the broader point.

“There’s nothing wrong with Raven’s cabin,” Silas said.

“The roof leaks,” Brodie pointed out. “And her solution is a bucket on the floor.”

“We can fix that. What I mean is Mia is obviously used to much finer things than what we have to offer here in Paradise.”

“Word is she’s a famous model,” Brodie said. “A couple of the guys were burning up the internet connection checking her out.”

“Well, I’ve never heard of her.”

Brodie chuckled. “Pay a lot of attention to Fashion Week, do you?”

Silas lifted his beer bottle in a silent touché. “Must have missed last season.”

Brodie rocked back and grinned. “I hope Raven doesn’t regret inviting her.”

“I’m willing to bet Mia invited herself. She seems like the type.”

The front door squeaked open and Cobra appeared. “I heard you flew in a supermodel,” he said as he grabbed himself a beer from the battered old fridge that was older than Silas.

“Is that what she calls herself?” Silas asked.

Cobra pulled up a wooden chair and plunked himself down. He’d stripped off his gray coveralls and now wore jeans and a T-shirt. “That’s what Xavier calls her. And he said the drillers were drooling all the way into camp.”

Silas hadn’t seen that. If it was true, he didn’t like it, no matter what his impression of Mia. “I hope she froze them into blocks of ice.”

Both Brodie and Cobra gave him a quizzical look.

“Because she’s a paying . . .” Silas realized he had that wrong. “She’s a WSA passenger. She deserves peace while she flies with us. No matter how entitled she acts.”

“A guy can look,” Cobra said.

“Blocks of ice?” Brodie asked with a lift of his brow.

“She’s got these glacier-blue eyes,” Silas said. “She tried it on me when I said her luggage was overweight.”

Cobra laughed.

“Who won?” Brodie asked.

“Please,” Silas said. Like he was going to let some spoiled city girl compromise the weight and balance of his aircraft.

Cobra twisted the cap off his bottle. “Xavier said she was smokin’.”

Both men looked to Silas for confirmation.

“Depends on your taste, I suppose.” Physical beauty wasn’t his problem with Mia.

“Tall, blond and gorgeous is pretty much everyone’s type,” Cobra said.

“She’s got it in the looks department,” Silas agreed.

“You didn’t like her?” Brodie asked, dropping his joking tone.

“I don’t know her.” Silas remembered her cutting remark that he thought he knew her character. In retrospect, it was a reasonable point. He might know her type, but he didn’t know her.

“First impression?” Cobra asked.

“Never used an outhouse.”

“I’d call that a plus,” Cobra said.

“I wonder how Raven’s holding up,” Brodie mused into his beer. “She’s such a loner.”

“You think?” Cobra asked.

Silas wondered the same thing as Cobra. Raven was perfectly friendly to the guys, not at all standoffish. She’d known a lot of them for years and could hold her own in any conversation.

“She likes her space,” Brodie said as if he knew.

“She told you that?” Silas asked.

Brodie shrugged. “She lives halfway out in the bush. She won’t move into staff housing even though her roof leaks. She burns ten cords of wood a year keeping that place warm. You’d think she’d prefer oil heat.”

“I suppose,” Cobra said, obviously accepting Brodie’s logic.

“She might not want to live with twenty pilots and all the rampies,” Silas ventured.

Staff housing was fine. The beds were comfortable, and the food was good. But it was close quarters, and in addition to the pilots—only one of whom was a woman—the ground crew was 90 percent men.

“Maybe,” Brodie agreed. “But would you want Mia the big-city high-maintenance cousin living with you?”

Cobra raised his hand. “I’m going with a yes on that.”

*   *   *

Raven’s screened-in sunporch made a whole lot of sense to Mia as the evening bugs arrived. They were giant-sized: wasps, mosquitoes, three species of fly and other spindly black buzzing things that she couldn’t identify.

Raven had grilled burgers on the sunporch, slathered a fresh-looking white bun with mustard, ketchup and mayo, then added a rather tragic-looking tomato and some wilted lettuce to create their dinner. She squirted them each a glass of merlot from a cardboard box, then they’d brought it all back out to the porch, where they settled into deep Adirondack chairs covered in faded plastic cushions.

The two chairs were angled toward each other but also facing a view of the forest at the side of the house. There was nothing but trees and blue sky in their view. And the only sounds were the insects and the faint rustle of the wind blowing through the poplar leaves.

Mia guessed it had been years since she’d eaten anything on white bread. And it was the first time she’d tried wine from a box. But she was starving, and Raven had worked hard in the kitchen, so she wasn’t about to complain.

“No phone