Sophie's Dilemma by Lauraine Snelling Read Free Book Online

sail to the Bering Sea, where the fish were so thick that all the dories came back full twice a day and the men cleaned the cod and salted them down in the hold, silver in his pocket.
    Surely he could afford a home and a wife if fishing was so profitable. . . .
    ‘‘So how long are you gone?’’ she’d asked him.
    ‘‘There are two seasons, winter and summer. I came off the summer run and caught the train for here. I need to be back and ready to go in November.’’
    He would not be staying in Blessing? Her heart took a dive. Then why did you come back? But she was afraid to ask that question and instead asked what Seattle was like.
    ‘‘It rains all winter there but not much snow. There are mountains to the west and the east, and Mount Rainier sits like a king on a throne to the south. Sometimes you go for days without a sighting, but when the sky clears, there it is in all its snowy majesty.’’
    ‘‘I’m jealous. I’ve only seen pictures of mountains.’’ Ah, to see mountains, huge trees, the Pacific Ocean. Maybe I could even go to Alaska with him . She brought herself out of her daydreams. ‘‘How come there is so much water there?’’ She knew Seattle wasn’t on the coast because they had looked it up on a map once to see where he had gone to.
    Hamre took a stick and bent down to draw in the dirt. ‘‘Here’s the coastline, and here the ocean comes in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and flows south into an inland waterway like none other. Up here is Canada, Vancouver Island.’’ He drew more shoreline. ‘‘So many islands, I could have one of my own if I wanted. But Seattle is a growing city. Many of the provisions for the Yukon gold strike flowed through Seattle. There are forests with trees thick as the fur on Barney’s back. Like the north woods where Haakan was a lumberjack, the trees in Washington are being cut and shipped up and down the coast for lumber.’’
    Never would she have believed Hamre would say so many words, and without digging them out of him. Sophie watched his hand on the stick, leaning close enough to almost touch him. Rich blond hair curled slightly from behind his ear, circling the lobe. He was clean-shaven and his square jaw moved beneath his skin. If she leaned just a mite closer . . . She inhaled his scent of soap and . . . and . . . She sniffed again. Man. That’s what it was. Hamre’s own manly scent. Her knees threatened to quit on her.
    Surely he could hear her heart, it thundered so hard . . . as if it wanted to leap out of her chest and dance with his. If his wanted to dance, of course.
    He turned to look at her. His eyes, those Bjorklund eyes, blue as the deepest sky, eyes one could get lost in. She swallowed and tried to break away, but her eyelids refused to flutter in the way that enticed the boys she’d known. He held her gaze and straightened, rising so she had to tip her head back. Her legs turned to mush, and she feared she might fall against him. Even her fingertips tingled.
    He stepped back, breaking the mood and causing her to sniff.
    ‘‘Ah, Sophie, I . . .’’
    She had waited for him to continue, her breath catching. . . .
    Even the memory caused a like reaction. She cleared her throat, hoping Grace, already in bed, hadn’t seen her flush, and ordered her heart to get back to normal.
    Once in bed Sophie watched Grace’s face, outlined by the moonlight streaming in the window. She knew Grace was either praying or thinking hard, because her breathing had not slipped into the evenness of sleep. But talking in the dark was not easy, and she knew Grace didn’t want to hear what she wanted to talk about.
    Why couldn’t she tease Hamre like she did the others? Why did she not feel that power over him that she knew over the other boys? Down bone deep, she knew males of the species found her attractive, and what she could get away with, she did, always a breath from the edge that would incur a scolding from Mor, a look from Pa, and a lecture about