Across a Thousand Miles by Nadia Nichols

They have a shower, too, which Ellin forces me to use from time to time.”
    â€œThat must be hard to take.”
    â€œSheer torture. I can only stand it for about thirty minutes at a time.” He noticed that she almost smiled. “I have a sauna here and it’s great, my clients love it, but it’s just not the same.” She rose to her feet. “When I’m done feeding and watering, I’m going to run some dogs. I’ll bring you breakfast before getting started and I should be back by two. Will you be all right by yourself?”
    â€œI’ll be fine. I’m sorry to be such trouble.” Rebecca nodded and began to leave, taking her coffee mug with her. “Rebecca,” he said. She paused and turned. “You have to believe me when I tell you I’m not usually like this.”
    Her eyebrows raised slightly. “Like what? Half-naked and freezing to death?”
    Mac drew the wool blanket more tightly around hiswaist, and felt his color deepen. “I’m not usually such a nuisance. I’m actually a fairly intelligent, capable, self-reliant man, and I have good common sense.”
    â€œYou do?” she said.
    â€œYes, ma’am. I’m loaded with it.”
    This time the smile made it to her lips, and they curved in a most delicious way. “Well,” she said, “you certainly couldn’t prove it by me.”
    And then she was gone, taking her smile and its sunshine with her.

CHAPTER THREE
    R EBECCA WAS STILL SMILING three hours later, twenty miles down the trail. The dogs were trotting smoothly, moving through the fresh snow as if it wasn’t there. She had put Cookie and Raven up in lead, two young females with loads of drive and intelligence, and they were doing a great job. The sky was a deep vault of blue, the sunlight bright, the air very still and very cold. Her eight-dog team was covering ten miles an hour, not bad at all on an unbroken trail and pulling about a hundred pounds of weight in the toboggan sled.
    â€œRaven! Gee!” The main trail intersected with a cutoff that would loop around and take them home. Raven pulled to the right as ordered, taking Cookie and the rest of the dogs with her. “Good girl, Raven! Good girl.”
    Common sense? Hah! The man was hopeless. He would most certainly die out there in that trapper’s shack on the Flat this winter. He would starve to death trying to feed his dogs. He would freeze to death trying to keep a fire in the woodstove. Common sense, indeed! What on earth possessed him to think he could come into this wild land and survive?
    And now she was stuck with taking care of him and his dog team, all of which made her wonder just how much common sense she, herself, had. She laughed aloud, the noise startling her dogs and causing them to break their gait and glance back at her. “It’s okay, gang.Good dogs. All right.” They faced front again and their tug lines tightened as they forged ahead. She could still picture Mac sitting on the bunk with that old wool army blanket pulled around him, his broad shoulders bared to the chill of the room. She hated to admit it, but Sadie Hedda had been right. William MacKenzie was one long, tall, handsome man—even if he didn’t have one shred of common sense. He had something else, though, something she couldn’t quite fathom….
    Rebecca shifted her weight on the sled runners, bent her knees and bobbed up and down to warm up the backs of her calves. Her toes were cold even in her heavy boots. This was nothing new. Her toes and fingers were always cold from October until May. It came with the Territory.
    â€œOkay, you huskies, pick it up!” Cookie and Raven broke into a lope at her words, and moments later they were heading home. The trip back would be quicker on the broken trail, and she’d have time to run one more team before she had to start evening chores. The other dogs in the yard heralded her