Breaking the Ice Read Online Free Page B

time…”
    The last time they were together, Geneva had surprised her with some new toys she’d purchased by mail order. Playing with them had been a lot of fun, until Geneva confessed that she was falling in love with her and wanted them to move in together.
    Lars’s return to the stage with two cold bottles of Black Fang saved Bryson from a detailed reminiscence of that particular evening. “Thought you looked like you needed saving,” he said, once Geneva was out of earshot. “Though for the life of me I don’t see why. Not like you two have a lot of other options at the moment.”
    “I get plenty of action, thank you very much.” Bryson’s outward appearance and glamorous occupation were an unbeatable combination. A high percentage of the town’s female visitors, even straight ones, flirted with her shamelessly. And if a ready partner wasn’t available locally, she simply got in her Cub and made the two-hour trip to Fairbanks, where she could arrange a quick rendezvous easily.
    “Don’t doubt that.” Lars grinned. “Still, she’s a sweet girl, and it seems a shame to turn down such pretty company.”
    “We have little in common, beyond…well, that. And while that may be plenty with someone I’ll never see again, it’s not enough. Besides, I’m not about to create hard feelings with one of the few women who live within a couple hundred miles.” Though she was buddies with a lot of the men she came in contact with, she craved female company, even if for a drink or a movie. “I don’t want to hurt her, and the spark I need just isn’t there. Simple as that.”
    In her twenties, Bryson had dreamed of having more than a series of brief affairs, of finding that special someone who twisted her insides and made her walk on air the way they described true love in the books she read. The kind of supportive partnership her parents had shared: two souls united in building a future together.
    But she needed the wild places, the truly wild places, as much as she needed air. When she looked out over her unspoiled mountains, she felt serene. Blissfully content and fully alive. And connected, somehow, to the primal and timeless nature of the universe itself.
    Her four years in Fairbanks attending the University of Alaska drove home how ill-suited she was for an urban lifestyle. She’d loathed the feel of concrete and pavement beneath her feet, the smell of exhaust fumes, and waking up to a view of steel and brick and billboards.
    No, she was different. She knew that. She didn’t need most of the modern conveniences others relied on, except her MP3 player and a small, battery-operated DVD player. She had a generator, but rarely used it, heating her home and cooking on a woodstove, washing her clothes and her body in a big steel tub, and reading voraciously by the light of kerosene lanterns.
    When tourists came to town, chatting about some hot new TV show or Internet gossip, she had no clue what they were talking about and didn’t care to know. She had chosen an earlier, primitive way of life in one of the most inhospitable and ruthless environments on the planet, and she’d long ago accepted that she’d probably never find a woman willing to embrace it as she did. Someone who could share her dream and thrive here.
    In her lonely moments, her close ties to her like-minded friends and neighbors comforted her. Of them, Lars and his wife Maggie were the closest she had to family.
    “Got some nice caribou steaks from the Teekons for running them up to Anaktuvuk, and they need to be eaten,” she told Lars. “When the weather clears, you two come over and I’ll fire up the grill.” Like most bush pilots, when Bryson wasn’t booked with a tourist, she was filling whatever needs arose in her community. Her plane had served as hearse and ambulance, mail and supply transport.
    She also frequently ferried the native peoples of Alaska, primarily Athabascan Indians and Nunamiut Eskimos, between the villages where they