Two Cabins, One Lake: An Alaskan Romance by Shaye Marlow Read Free Book Online Page A

shot.
    Knowing I couldn’t write with all that racket, I decided to
take care of chores until he quieted the fuck down.  I changed the oil on the
generator—one of the only mechanical tasks I was capable of, and that only
because I’d been shown how about five times—and then started it up for the
daily charge.  I split some wood, washed some dishes, and even did my laundry
and hung my clothes out to dry.
    I had grilled cheese for lunch, and as I ate, I tried not to
wonder what my neighbor was shooting at.  I doubted it was a target; the shots
were too sporadic for that.  No, I was guessing he was shooting squirrels.
    Or, more likely, I thought, gritting my teeth, spruce hens. 
The chicken-sized birds were game fowl, and they were dumb as rocks.  They’d
let a person approach to within just a few feet before they scattered.  And
when they flew away, it was low and slow, and then usually into a nearby tree.
    It felt like taking advantage to go out and shoot them. 
Their meat was gamey and flavored heavily with spruce needles, so I honestly
didn’t see the point anyway.  And in the spring, their little chicks were so
damn cute…
    So yeah, the Law of Asshole Behavior said he was probably
out shooting my baby spruce hens.  The bastard.
    Fast forward to dinner time.
    The Rich Bastard had been shooting off and on all day.  I’d
gone back to my laptop mid-afternoon, but the noise kept jerking me out of my
headspace, and when I did manage to claw my way back inside, I found out my
heroine wanted to rip the hero’s dick off, rather than ride it.
    I tried going with it for a few hundred words, having them
wrestle around the bathroom with some angry, increasingly violent sex.  When
the hero lay dead, his back broken over the lip of the tub, blood dribbling
from his mouth, I was finally clued in that I needed to step away for a bit.
    I was pissed off by this point, and no amount of lavender
bubble bath was going to calm me down.
    Just a little after the light had gone out of my hero’s
green eyes, I realized my dog was missing.  This wasn’t like the Lower 48,
where dogs are confined to fenced yards or kept on leashes every moment of
every day.  No, here we just kick the dog out the door, and it comes back when
it wants to eat.
    Don’t get me wrong, though.  I love my dog.  And I don’t
actually kick her.  I keep pretty good tabs on her, and I feed her well.  I buy
her good dog food and supplement her diet frequently with actual wild salmon—believe
me, in Alaska, it overflows our damn freezers.
    Mocha loves to spend her days outside, and has been known to
disappear for hours on end.  Occasionally I hear reports from miles up or down
the river—sometimes even across it—that she went visiting.
    That said, I hadn’t seen her since sometime before lunch.  I’d
been out in the yard for fifteen minutes, calling her name.
    Coming around to the back of the cabin, still calling my
missing mutt, I noticed the clothes were dry.  Worried about my dog, but trying
not to worry, I started pulling my clothes off the line.
    That’s when I noticed the hole in my underwear.
    Now, I’m familiar with holes, especially the holes that
develop at the seams and along the waistband when you’ve worn a pair of underwear
for longer than you probably should have (over the life of the garment, not all
in one sitting).  This wasn’t like those holes.
    “What the…”  I reached up, fingering the little hole in the
coral-colored cotton.  It was about pencil eraser-sized, and for all of three
seconds I wondered if spruce beetles could or would put holes in cloth.  But
the hole penetrated both sides…
    And then, realization came.
    My neighbor had shot a hole in my underwear.  Let me just
say that again.  My neighbor.  Shot a hole.  In my underwear.  In my
coral-colored boy shorts.  My favorite pair, actually.
    And even more horrifying:  My neighbor had been shooting all
day.  My dog was missing.  And she looked