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They tumbled into bed as if they’d been apart for months instead of only a few hours. Lila could feel the need trembling through Bear’s body. Those hours of thinking that she was angry with him had affected him deeply.

Bear had a vulnerable side, especially when it came to her. She saw that clearly now. And it made the taste of his skin, the slide of his flesh against hers, so much infinitely sweeter.

He took her deep this time, so deep. Long thrusts impaling her to the mattress, bringing moans and shrieks from her lips. During her time staying with him, they’d made love nearly every night, and it had been glorious.

But this…this was different. He’d shared something painful with her. And now their lovemaking had a raw edge to it that she’d never experienced before.

He knew her secrets. She knew his. There was nothing to hide from each other.

When he hiked her legs over his shoulders and delved into the soft wetness between her thighs, she let herself fly to a new place where freedom and joy reigned supreme. When he turned her over and took her from behind, on hands and knees, one hand clamped to her pussy, she surrendered without a touch of doubt.

When they got tired of the bed, he stood up to take a stretch, but the sight of his sculpted bronze body was too much for her. She jumped him like an oak tree and he speared her right there in the middle of the floor. He pumped his hips until he emptied into her. No more condoms for them; she was on the pill and he’d recently gotten a clean bill of health from a clinic.

They couldn’t get enough of each other. And we never will , she thought. This is it. Hunger, deep satisfaction, joy beyond words.

It was also nice to curl up next to him once they’d temporarily exhausted their lust for each other. Who needed blankets when you had a six foot five hunk of pure body heat next to you?

As they were falling asleep, he murmured, “Remind me to tell you what I found out during that damn brawl.” And then he conked out.

It was such an intriguing statement that it came back to her as soon as she opened her eyes in the morning. Bear was still asleep, so she climbed on top of him and gripped him between her thighs.

“Again?” He started awake. “I’m ready. I’m ready. Give me a minute.”

She laughed and pulled the top blanket over her shoulders to protect against the morning chill. He was so adorable with sleep creases in his right cheek and his hair a silky mess. “Relax, I think we at least need some coffee first. I want to know what you found out during the brawl. You said to remind you.”

That woke him up. He blinked the haze out of his eyes and focused on her. “Right. They were fighting because someone’s been staying in Bennie Thomas’s barn and eating eggs out of his chicken coop. He thought it was Jed Chilkoot because he’s the nearest neighbor and they’ve had issues in the past. After sorting it all out, we determined it couldn’t have been him. So some stranger is out there. Thought it was worth checking into. But then everything else happened and…” He trailed a finger down her chest, between her breasts. “I’m ready now.”

She laughed again and scooted off the bed. “We have work to do.”

He groaned loudly. “You know I’m not a morning person. That’s why I bought a bar.”

“Well, you know me. I always wake up like this, and you’re in my house so get used to it.” Laughing, she pulled off the top blanket and wrapped it around her. “I have to let Buttercup out. Her bladder must be about to burst.”

She sat on the bed to pull on her favorite warm socks and padded across the floor. At the door, she paused. Buttercup was still fast asleep on the couch. The fire in the woodstove was still going. Sunshine streamed through the old storefront. Bright, so bright. A foot of sparkling snow had fallen overnight.

She clapped her hands and jumped up and down with excitement. It was here—winter! Back in Barlow, Indiana, they’d gotten some snow every winter, but it usually quickly became a nuisance, something you scraped off your car or shoveled off your sidewalk. Here, a whole new world opened up when the snow came. Dog sleds. Snowshoeing. Skiing. Snowmobiles. She couldn’t wait to get out there and play.

As she stepped toward the storefront, the familiar dress form caught her eye and she froze. Something had happened last night. Another dream. Waking up with Bear had erased it from her thoughts, but now it came flooding back.

“Us women had to stick together out here,” Allison told her as she hovered near the bed. “It’s a man’s world, and we had to know how to take care of ourselves. We chopped our own wood, we always had a gun with us.”

“This is a private moment, do you mind?” Lila pulled the covers over Bear’s sleeping head. It felt so intrusive to have another person in the room with them, even a dead one, or rather, a not-real one.

Allison ignored Bear completely, as if she couldn’t see him. “You gotta remember, out here the world forgot about us. People thought the town was dead and gone with the mine. Forty years ago, we just fended for ourselves, like pioneer days. That’s how it felt. Like no one would know if anything happened to us. That kind of situation makes you stick together. It’s all for one. We shared everything with each other. The men always feuded, but mostly us women helped each other. I say mostly because there’s always a bad apple or two.”

“Does this bad apple have a name? Are you talking about Nancy?”

It was a stab in the dark. So to speak.

Hearing that name seemed to give the woman pain. “Of course not, Nancy was my good friend. I wish she was here now. The times we used to have…”

“Is she still alive? Can I find her?”

“If you find her, you tell her that I forgive her. I forgive her for everything. Oh, Nancy, you should never have gone up there with those people…”

Her image wavered and shimmered as Buttercup lifted his head from the foot of the bed and sniffed the air.

The dog growled, low in her throat, and the dead woman vanished.

Lila jerked back to the present moment and found herself staring at the dress displayed on the form. Allison had said, We shared everything.

Had that dress belonged to someone who wasn’t Allison Casey? For instance, Nancy? Allison’s husband had insisted the dress stay with the hardware store, that it be displayed like some kind of morbid memento of that tragic shooting. But did he have other reasons to want it kept front and center?

Was it a clue, in other words?

To get the door open, she had to push through the snow piled up against it. Buttercup sniffed at it, then plunged right in, nearly disappearing in the white fluff. The air smelled fresh and pure, as if the entire town had been washed with sparkling crystal water. A clean slate. A fresh start.

How many people had come to Firelight Ridge looking for exactly that, only to find that you couldn’t run and hide from your past or your secrets, or your fate?

Run and hide.

The repetition of that phrase made her shiver. She called for Buttercup, who trotted back through the snow. The dog took a moment to roll in it before she came back in. As Lila watched in dismay—she was going to make a mess!—she shook herself off and waltzed back into the house.

Where she met the immoveable object known as Bear—holding a towel. He bent to rub the water off the yellow collie, who squirmed throughout the process. Bear wore nothing but his underwear, but didn’t seem to notice that it was barely fifty degrees inside the house. Her stomach twisted with desire as she watched him handle Sam’s dog with so much gentleness and care.

“I had a visitor last night,” she told him.

He looked up sharply, clearly ready to search the hardware store for hidden entrances.

“In my dream. Allison Casey. She said something that made me wonder about that dress. She said she and the other women out here were very close and shared a lot of things with each other. Nancy was her good friend. It made me think of me and my friends, and how we used to share clothes and so forth when we were younger.”

Bear stood up, holding the damp towel, while Buttercup shook herself off and trotted over to the empty food bowl. “You think the dress belonged to Nancy after all?”

“Maybe it did.”

“Even so, what difference does that make? The gunman, whoever it was, shot several people that day, at random. He shot whoever happened to be in his line of sight.”

“Maybe, but maybe not. I’m starting to think there was more to it than it seems. What if Allison was shot deliberately? Except they got it wrong. What if she was shot because someone mistook her for Nancy ?”

“That’s a theory, all right.” Bear sounded skeptical.

Lila knew she was speculating out of thin air. No one had ever suggested it was anything but a random shooting. Even that podcaster had described the event as the result of one man’s angry stew of bitterness and rejection.

But did the podcaster really know the truth? He’d come into town as a stranger. How many people had told them everything they knew? Lila knew how Firelight Ridge worked. You had to put in the time, prove your authenticity, before people would open up to you. She was still a newcomer—a so-called “Cheechako”—but she’d been working at everyone’s favorite bar, so that gave her Alaska cred. And Bear—everyone knew and trusted Bear.

There was more to this story, a lot more.

“I have some ideas about our next steps,” she told Bear.

“You mean, besides getting dressed and getting some breakfast in us?”

She laughed. “First things first, of course. How do buttermilk pancakes sound? I have a mix.”

“Perfect snow day breakfast.” He went to her and cupped her face in his hands. The roughened skin of his palms sent more shivers through her. “Tell me about your ideas, I know you won’t relax until you do.”

True enough. “One, we need to find out if Nancy is still alive and where she might be. Two, I’d like to go to those cabins by Snow River, where that men’s retreat took place. Have you been there?”

“No, never had a reason to. I thought they were abandoned.”

“But you don’t know?”

He shrugged. “They’re on the other side of a ridge. Whatever goes on out there, we don’t see it.”

“Interesting.” There was one more idea she wanted to pursue. “I’m also curious about that son of the guy who became the Senator, Adam Hardwell. Where is he? Did he get clean? Did he ever come back to Firelight Ridge?”

“Good questions. But didn’t Officer Cromwell tell us to stay out of it?”

“But none of that is about Rita Casey, is it?” She blinked at him innocently. “It’s about the old Snow River murders. So we’re fine. Besides, this is Firelight Ridge. Aren’t we all rebels out here?”