Free Restless in the Grave by Dana Stabenow Page B

said, forced into it.
    Mutt gave Gabe’s hand a tentative lick, and then another, more enthusiastic one. He had passed the taste test. Unfortunately.
    McGuire rubbed Mutt’s ears, and her tail hit overdrive. He rose to his feet. “Mutt, huh?”
    “She is one,” Kate said. He turned slightly, to get the sun out of his eyes, and something clicked. “You’re the actor.”
    McGuire did not look thrilled at the recognition. “Some say yes,” he said. “Some say no.”
    From the moment he’d stepped off the plane, she’d been a little off balance. She forced herself to examine him in an analytical light, as if he were a suspect she would later have to pick out of a lineup. He was tall, long-limbed, and muscular, moving with a confident kind of grace. His dark eyes were set deep beneath a broad shelf of a brow, his mouth was mobile and prone to humor over a very firm jaw, and he had eyebrows and cheekbones like George Harrison. He wasn’t handsome, but he was memorable. On camera, sneaking across the desert in camos with an RPG over his shoulder, he was rugged, rough-edged, and sexy as hell. His jeans were undoubtably designer, but they showed their miles without shame, and no Alaskan man would have been embarrassed to wear the faded red plaid shirt under the scruffy blue anorak.
    Their eyes met, and Kate was alarmed at the slight shock of recognition, almost familiarity.
    He reminded her of Jack.
    Not a lot, they weren’t twins or anything, but there was something about Gabe McGuire in person, in the rough angularity of his features and the directness of his gaze that brought Jack Morgan forcibly to mind, in a way it never had the times she’d seen him on-screen.
    She didn’t like it, not one bit. She felt herself teetering on the edge of taking a step back, and pulled herself together. He wasn’t Jack, of course, Jack was dead, had been dead for over four years.
    “What’s wrong?” he said.
    And he was observant, too, damn him. “Not a thing,” she said. “I’ve seen some of your films. You do good work.”
    “Thanks,” he said. “What do you do?”
    “I’m on my way to Newenham.”
    “You’re Alaskan?”
    “Born and bred.”
    He looked at the eyes that in shape were Asian but a changeable hazel in color; at the thick hair cut in a short cap that shone blue black in the sun; at the high flat cheekbones clad in clear, olive skin; at the wide, full-lipped mouth. He considered the now thin and much more faint white scar that crossed her throat almost from ear to ear, and moved on without so much as a raised brow. She was all of five feet tall, clad much as he was, in jeans, a battered down jacket over a T-shirt, and a pair of Rimrocks that had seen hard use. His eyes came back to her face. “Aleut?”
    She couldn’t hide her surprise. “How did you know?”
    He shrugged. “I’ve spent some time here. Put myself through college working at the processing plant in Akutan.”
    “Really,” Kate said, warming to the man in spite of herself. “Minimum wage?”
    He grinned. “Yep. But time and a half for anything over eight hours a day and forty hours a week, and double time for holidays. You, too?”
    “No, thank god,” she said, “I worked it from the other end, I deckhanded on a fish tender.”
    “Bristol Bay?”
    She shook her head. “Prince William Sound.”
    He nodded. “Gorgeous there.”
    “Not so bad here, either.”
    He followed her gaze to the Wood River Mountains looming on the northwestern horizon. “Not quite so in your face as they are in Prince William,” he said. “There, they’re always a reminder that you’ve got the sea at your back.”
    She looked at him, surprised again.
    He quirked an eyebrow, as if to say, What, you thought I was just another pretty face? For some unknown reason, Kate felt herself flush. She was relieved when they heard the approach of another aircraft. They both turned to watch it land and taxi up to the fuel pumps. It had no windows except for the