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

“Do you want to dance?” he asked, looking hopeful.

Mia looked around the rollicking room. There wasn’t a square inch of spare space. “Where?”

He cocked his head. “Out back on the deck. That’s where the music’s loudest.”

“Okay. Sure.” She couldn’t stop herself from looking Silas’s way, but he was occupied with Raven and a couple of other people who seemed to be congratulating Silas on his feat.

Mia came to her feet, and Silas looked at her then. Giving him a carefree little wave to show she was unaffected by his presence, she fell into step behind Zeke, following him through the crowd to an open set of double doors and a wooden patio surrounded by a low rail.

Several couples were already outside, cheerfully gyrating to the fast beat of the country tune. Mia and Zeke joined in. The music was definitely louder outside than in, and as the song ended, AJ asked her to dance.

It was a bit of a silly formality since people weren’t really dancing in couples. It was more of a free-for-all, but she was game, and AJ seemed to be having a great time. After AJ, another guy asked her, calling out that his name was Hank.

Soon she was lost in a whirl of dances and a whirl of partners, until she was exhausted.

She turned Zeke down when he asked her again, giving him a pat on the shoulder as she apologized. Then she turned and all but ran into Silas who was standing in the double doorway.

“Oh, hey,” she said, bringing herself to a screeching halt, telling herself to be cool and keep it together, and not, not think about the kiss.

He held up a glass of white wine. “Are you looking for this?”

“Is that mine?”

“It is.”

She drew a bracing breath and accepted the glass. “Thanks.”

He held a highball glass of something amber in his other hand. “Want to get out of the noise?”

“Sure.” She was still playing it cool, plus her eardrums could use a rest.

He led her to the edge of the deck and opened a little gate at one side.

She followed him three steps down to the wooden sidewalk and down a ways where the wall of the restaurant blocked the noise. The Bear and Bar was painted white with green trim, two stories high. The sidewalk was worn beneath her feet, built up from the gravel street.

The sidewalk was dry, so she sat down and planted her low-heeled boots on the gravel. They were the boots she’d worn the day she met Silas in Fairbanks, and she couldn’t help thinking so much had changed in such a short time.

He sat down beside her and took a sip of his drink. “I hear you started working at Galina.”

Mia nodded at the safe topic. “I think it’s going well.”

“Oh?”

“Except for the mini loader.” She took a drink. “That didn’t go so well. But I found a manual, and I’m going to study up and have another go.”

“There must be plenty of other things to do there besides drive a loader.”

“Sure, there are. But I don’t want to be defeated. I’m learning new things, taking new chances.”

“So long as you’re safe.”

She coughed out a laugh at that. “I’ve never seen a place more obsessed with safety.”

He fell silent and twisted his glass in his hands, staring down at it. “I hope you didn’t misunderstand me the other day.”

“Misunderstand what?” she asked, turning to take in his profile, tucking her hair behind one ear and pretending she didn’t have any idea what he meant.

He gave a self-conscious smile. “When I backed off.”

She gave a shrug. “It’s fine.”

“I was trying to be respectful.”

“Of Brodie.” She could understand that. Brodie was Silas’s boss after all.

“No.” Silas seemed surprised by her answer. “Of you. You’re only in town for five minutes, and you’ve just lost someone.”

“You mean Alastair.”

“Yes, Alastair, your husband.”

Mia thought about letting the subject drop, letting Silas feel noble and forgetting about the attraction she’d felt for him and the mind-blowing hormone rush she’d gotten from his kiss. It was the smart thing to do, the right thing to do.

Instead, she took a sip of her chardonnay. “I was eighteen when my parents died.” Nobody but Marnie knew the real story, but Mia wanted to tell it now.

She focused on the detail of the gravel road in front of her. “I’d been under contract to Lafayette for a couple of years by then and my career was flourishing. Alastair worried about me being left alone and took me under his wing. It might have been part self-interest, but he helped me through the grief. He was already divorced by then. He was steady, stable, smart and funny, with extravagant plans and brilliant ideas. The younger guys all paled in comparison.”

“You know you don’t have to explain to me.”

“I want you to have an accurate picture. I was more a protégé than a lover, more a companion than a wife, then more a caregiver in the end. It got even more complicated when—” A flash of movement in the intersection caught her eye.

It was a black shape moving. No, two black shapes. No, three black shapes lumbering across the street toward Blue Crescent. The biggest one put its nose in the air.

She grasped Silas’s arm. Her voice came out hoarse. “Bears.”

“Where?”

She pointed.

He turned his head to look, but his tone stayed astonishingly calm. “Good spotting.”

Adrenaline rushed through her, and her grip tightened. “Shouldn’t we do something?”

“Like what?”

“Go back inside?”

“Sure, if they come this way,” he said. “But the music will likely keep them at a distance. And they look like they’re heading out of town anyway.”

“Shouldn’t we warn people?”

“Mrs. France already did. Word’s spreading. Everyone will be on alert.”

“So, we’re just going to sit here and watch?” Mia tried to take another swallow of her wine and realized she’d finished the glass. That might be why she wasn’t flat-out panicking.

“They’re an impressive animal,” he said as the bears stopped under the sole streetlight. The sow turned her