“You okay?” Kel asked.

“No, but why?”

“Because you just sort of moaned.”

“It was nothing.” Only the thought of melted butter…

“Why are you huffing and puffing?”

“Um, because I’m out of shape, thanks for asking.”

Kellan, the jerk, wasn’t huffing and puffing at all. Probably because for his job swimming with dolphins, he actually used physical exertion.

I ought to try that sometime.

Or not.

“This stuff is heavy,” I said, adjusting the straps of both my duffle bags.

“You packed too much.”

“Did not.”

“Really? Then why do you need two gigantic duffle bags for three days in the wilderness?”

“Because things might come up.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Things.”

“Tell me what you brought,” he said.

“Oh, you know. Just the essentials.”

“Bet you brought makeup and fingernail polish.”

“Neither of which is heavy,” I pointed out.

Laughing, he shook his head.

Actually, the whole makeup thing had been a quandary. I’d had no idea what I’d need for the great outdoors, so I’d packed it all.

And truthfully? It was a tad bit heavier than I’d imagined.

“And what about shoes?” he asked.

Now there was a discussion I most definitely didn’t want to have. “What about them?”

“How many pairs?”

“Six.”

“Jesus.”

“Okay, four.”

“Haven’t you ever roughed it, Rach. Ever?”

Hey, I rough it every day of my life in the mean, tough streets of Los Angeles. I didn’t see a need to rough it on vacation as well.

“How many pairs of shoes did you really bring?”

“I don’t know why it matters to you,” I said, sniffing. “I’m not asking you to carry my bag.”

“Bags. Plural.”

Damn it. I hated that he was right. “See, this is why I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t want to have to disclose certain matters.”

“You don’t have a boyfriend because you date guys who are allergic to commitment.”

Okay, maybe that was true, too.

“I’m sweating,” I said, looking for just a little sympathy.

“Sweat is good for you.”

I couldn’t have heard him right, because I sure hadn’t received an ounce of sympathy anywhere. “Excuse me?”

“It’s good for you,” he repeated patiently.

My eyes narrowed, and I stopped and faced him. “Are you saying I could stand to lose a few pounds?”

“What?” He shook his head. “Of course not. What I said was-”

“I’ll have you know, I’m only a few pounds over my goal weight.”

“I do know-Look, you’re fine-”

“And most of those five pounds are water weight.”

“Rach, I am speaking English, right?” He asked this in the baffled tone of men everywhere who’d stepped into uncharted territory: a woman’s psyche. “I said you look fine,” he said. “You heard that part?”

“Fine?” I made a snort that sounded like my head had just gotten a flat tire. “The word ‘fine’ should be erased from the English language!”

He blinked, and eyed me like an unstable rock wall. “What’s wrong with the word ‘fine’?”

“If you don’t know, I can’t help you.”

“Okay, clearly the excursion has gone to your head. Take a lighter box,” he said, sounding a bit desperate to change the subject.

Typical guy.

“Here, take the fruits-and-veggies box,” he said.

Great. Fruits and veggies. I hate fruits and veggies. “Fine.”

This made him frown. “Why do you get to use that word, and I don’t?”

I didn’t answer. I was still obsessing over my weight. I really did plan on losing those extra five pounds. Okay, ten. Honest. Just not right now. Not when I was wishing for some cookies.

Or the end of the quarter mile.

I was really wishing for that, but the woods had swallowed us up. I had a blister on my left heel and my stomach was still growling, but I couldn’t complain because I was with a guy whose arms could fall off and he wouldn’t say so, and I didn’t want to look bad.

I really hated to look bad.

“What do you suppose are the chances there’s a day spa at Hideaway?”

He let out a laugh between pants. “Only you, Rach.”

“Hey, it’s possible.”

Something buzzed. It was either my brain matter beginning to boil or the biggest fly on the planet. Wait. Not a fly, but-“Ack, bee!”

And it was after me. Like really after me. This was no simple flyby either, but a serious I’m-going-sting-your-ass attack by a dive-bombing, maniac bee. I lifted my box higher, trying to protect my face, while screaming like…like the girly girl I was.

“Stand still,” Kellan advised.

Stand still? This was a bee, the mother of all bees, out for my blood.

“Rach, your box.” Kel was trying to balance his own three boxes while watching me dance around like an idiot. “I’m telling you, you’re going to spill-”

Just as he said it, my box toppled right out of my hands and crashed to the ground.

Good news: The bee got the hint that I was crazy, and took off.

Bad news: The box imploded upon impact. Frozen ribs, steaks and ground meat all scattered across the ground, their plastic wrap loosened, becoming marinated in pine needles, dirt, ants and who-knew-what-else.

I dropped to my knees, looked at that New York strip steak I’d wanted and let out a pathetic sound. I think my eyes welled up, but I pretended it was from the dust.

Beside me, two battered tennis shoes appeared. One was untied. I have no idea why I noticed such a thing at a time of crisis like this.

With a sigh, Kellan lowered his knees to the dirt beside me.

“A little dirt never hurt anyone,” he said in way-too-kind voice.

And how pathetic was it that I actually wanted to believe him? I tried not to fall apart. “You think we can apply the thirty-second rule?” I asked in a weak voice. “You know, if we pick it up within thirty seconds, it’s like no-harm-no-foul?”

“I do,” he said solemnly.

“Good. Because we can’t just leave it all here, right? I mean, we might attract those bears Jack mentioned, and he did say don’t feed them. Right?”

“Right,” he said dryly as we reached for the fallen meats, dirt and all. “That’s what you’re most concerned about: the bears eating your steak.”

See, this was the problem with good friends. They knew you too well.

We shuffled the contents of the boxes around-meaning Kellan gave me an easier load.

“You know what I don’t get?” I asked, again breathless after only one minute, and also boggled by my thought. “Guests pay to come here. As in, they pull out their checkbooks and pay.”

“Maybe they like the great outdoors.”

“And kamikaze squirrels?”

“And kamikaze squirrels.”

I still didn’t get it. “Are you telling me they all walk this same trail?”

Kellan lifted a shoulder. “Maybe besides a love for the outdoors and kamikaze squirrels, they also get a thrill out of killer bees.”

I laughed. I always laughed with him, I realized, even when things sucked. “You’d think they’d have put that on their Web site. Warning: Alaska is not for sissies.”

“I’m pretty sure most people know that already,” he pointed out. “Besides, you saw the Web site. It’s…lacking.”

Yet another concern on my mind. Hideaway B &B was mine now-assets and liabilities and all. I had no idea how good or bad things were financially, but one thing I did know: Whatever state the place was in, I was responsible for it, for the people who worked for it, for the bills, for still making a living back in L.A.

Yikes, I was going to have to be a real grownup here, not just the farce of a grownup I’d been up until now.

Scary stuff.

And funny, considering I’d never so much as bothered with the responsibility of anything more troublesome than fish, and yet now I owned a business.

A business I knew too little about. From the outdated Web site, it’d been difficult, if not impossible, to get a sense of what I was up against. There’d been only two pictures of the tall, mysterious inn: one in summer, one in winter.

The summer pic had been taken at dusk and had been too dark to be effective, not showing any of the inn’s distinguishing features, nor anything of its surroundings. The winter shot revealed snow up to the windows, and had been taken at night.

Snow.

Up to the windows.

During a night so dark, it gave a whole new meaning to the color black.

Boggling.

The site did boast that Hideaway was a hundred years old, and as we turned a corner and suddenly came to the clearing in which the inn sat, I could believe it. It looked just like the pictures, though I don’t know why that surprised me. The place was bigger than I’d expected, and it looked a bit like an old Victorian, but without the warmth and charm. Four stories high, it had a sharply slanted roof, myriad dark windows and eaves that made it look…foreboding. No, that had to be my imagination, because not only was the sun out but, despite it being early afternoon, smoke was coming from the chimney. Those should both be calming, right? So why did I suddenly have goose bumps?

My mom had warned me many times that Great-Great-Aunt Gertrude had been somewhat of a loony toons, and that no doubt her staff would be just as crazy. But coming from my mother, that had been, like, Hello, Mrs. Pot, I’m Black…

“At least someone’s here,” Kellan murmured, and nudged me up the walk with the big load in his arms, reminding me of the weight we were carrying. Or that he mostly carried. “Hopefully they’re expecting us. You did call ahead, right?”

“I called,” I said, the front porch creaking ominously beneath our feet. I looked at the hanging sign that read HIDEAWAY B &B. “But no one answered, not even an answering machine.”