“We don’t stand on ceremony here,” Emma said with the authority of a hostess in her own home. “Just grab a mug from the cupboard and Mikey will pour you some tea. Have you had supper?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Skyler answered, doing as he was told.

“Please drop the ‘Mr.,’” his brother-in-law added, joining them at the table. “It’s just Atwood and Skyler.”

“I will, if you stop calling me ‘ma’am,’” she told them, smiling at the table full of testosterone. Her kitchen looked like a convention of warlords.

“Are you feeling up to telling us what happened yesterday?” Ben asked, once they were all seated and sipping tea.

So the cease-fire was over, and the interrogation was about to begin. Emma shrugged, and immediately regretted it as pain shot down her arm and across her back. “You know about the coordinates I found in Wayne’s room.”

“Yes.”

“Well, Mikey and I decided to go see what they were.”

“What did you find?” Ben asked, leaning forward.

“Nothing.”

He stared at her.

“There wasn’t anything there, Dad,” Mikey added, sitting beside her—and away from Beaker.

“Are you sure you had the right spot?”

“Yes,” Emma answered. “We checked and double-checked. And I know I wrote them down right.”

“We think it was probably a drop site for running drugs,” Mikey said.

“You mentioned something about drugs last night, but I couldn’t make it all out.” Ben cleared his throat, again frowning at Emma before he looked back at his son. “You were bombarding me with all sorts of news.”

“There was just forest for miles and miles,” Emma said, drawing Ben’s attention again. “So we started guessing why Wayne would have kept those coordinates in his desk, and the only thing that made sense was a drug drop.”

“We found a road nearby,” Mikey said.

“And we found recent tire tracks,” Emma added. “That’s when we decided to come home.”

“And your plane had been vandalized?” Ben asked, his eyes darkening.

Emma nodded. “Someone had cut the fuel line and taken an ax to one of the floats.”

“I don’t get it,” Atwood suddenly interjected. “You may have been able to repair the fuel line, but you never could have gotten airborne with a punctured float. How did you do it?”

Mikey answered, “Nem had a tire tube in the plane. We put it in the float and pumped it up, displacing enough of the water to float the Cessna well enough to take off.”

“And land?” Ben asked.

“And land,” Emma confirmed. “But someone started shooting at us just as we got airborne. We clipped a few trees, and the tube got damaged. So we had to crash the plane.”

All three men looked as if she and Mikey were missing some rooms upstairs. Ben had gone completely white.

“You crashed the plane on purpose?” Skyler asked softly.

“Mikey did,” she told the three horrified men. “It’s common practice when the alternative is certain death.”

Ben stood up, pushing his chair back with enough force to tip it over. Skyler and Atwood winced at the sound. Beaker lifted his head off her lap.

“Oh, for the love of God,” Emma said with exhausted impatience. “I’m a bush pilot, Ben. It’s what I do for a living. Yesterday wasn’t the first time I’ve lost a plane, and it probably won’t be my last.”

“Yes, it damn well will be,” he gritted out, leaning his hands on the table and glaring at her.

Beaker growled low in his throat, and Emma instantly warmed to the dog.

Without even thinking, she patted his head to let him know she approved of his courage. Even if she had fangs the size of Beaker’s, Emma wasn’t sure she would have the nerve to growl at Ben.

Clearly startled, Ben looked at Atwood. “He can’t growl at me,” he told his “secretary.”

Atwood smiled. “He just did.”

Ben sat back down, glaring at Emma’s new protector. He cleared his throat again, and seemed to be trying to remember what they’d been talking about.

“Did you happen to see who was shooting at you?” Skyler asked.

“We were kind of busy trying not to litter the

mountainside,” Emma answered, idly petting her new

guardian.

“What about you, Mike? Did you see anything?” Atwood asked.

“I had my eyes closed.”

“How about a guess, then.” Ben looked at Emma. “Who do you thinkwas shooting at you?”

She shrugged her good shoulder. “If I had to guess, I would say it was Wayne Poulin.”

“Why?”

“Because he knew I had been snooping in his room. And if those coordinates are important to him, he was probably checking to see if I had been out there.”

All three men silently mulled over her theory. Emma stood up and grabbed the cane Mikey had hooked on the back of her chair and Beaker stood as well.

“I’m going to take a nap,” she said as she started hobbling out of the kitchen.

“I’ll carry you,” Ben said, moving to intercept her.

Beaker moved between them, the hair on his back raised, and growled.

Ben stopped and his face reddened. “Goddammit! Beaker!”

The dog advanced a step, his growl rising in volume.

“Maybe you should try feeding him cookies, boss,” Atwood suggested, sounding like he was strangling on a laugh.

“I’m going to feed him to the crows,” Ben said through gritted teeth. “Beaker. Sit!”

The dog ignored him.

Emma laid her hand on Beaker’s head. “It’s okay. Let’s go have a nap, and leave these men to contemplate the future.” Then she looked at Mikey. “Why don’t you call Stanley Bates and see if he’d be willing to haul our Cessna home.”

Mikey nodded, staring at the dog as if it had two heads and a forked tail.

Satisfied the remaining males could get on with their foolish little war without her, Emma led Beaker into her bedroom and softly closed the door. The dog stood looking up at her, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth and his eyes a soft liquid brown.

“If I let you up on the bed with me, do you promise not to hog it?” Emma gingerly sat down and patted a place beside her. “You promise not to eat me if I wake you up from a sound sleep?”

Beaker eagerly accepted her invitation, jumping up and plopping himself down right in the middle.

Emma carefully settled on what space was left, making sure she didn’t jar her throbbing shoulder.

Beaker immediately snuggled against her.

There was an advantage to having a big dog, Emma decided. Beaker radiated a pleasant heat down her entire back, supporting her at the same time.

Maybe, just maybe, she’d keep him.

Chapter Sixteen

F ive days. Five long, boring days of being treated like an invalid by five males, one of which had four legs and a cold nose.

She was totally sick of it. Her ankle was healed, her shoulder couldn’t move but it was out of the sling, and her beautiful house looked like a dust bowl. It was time to clean it out, and Emma started with her watchdogs—including the four-legged one.

“Are you headed into town again this morning?” she asked Ben over her cup of tea, sitting across the table from the man who could, with just a look, send her pulse into overdrive.

She’d been getting a lot of those looks lately—whenever he was home. Ben had been leaving the house every morning for the last five days, returning only for supper. He called her every noon to check on how she was feeling, but Emma knew he was really checking to make sure she was behaving herself.

“Yes,” he said, his piercing gray eyes sending another ripple of awareness down her spine as she tried to remember her question. “And what are your plans for the day?”

“I thought I would do some dusting.”