Rogue's Revenge by Gail MacMillan

pace. She and Gramps had walked this trail so many times when she was a little girl. Sometimes she’d put her small hand in his large one and enjoy the sense of warmth and security. Other times she’d skip ahead of him, making him laugh at her antics.
    When she reached the boathouse, she pulled his jacket about her and sat down on the weathered old park bench near its open doorway. In spite of the sunlight bathing her in a soft pool of warmth, she recognized the cold nip in the air that characterized the early reluctance of spring in this country. With a sigh she turned up the woolly collar, stuffed cold fingers beneath her armpits, and cuddled into a corner. She needed time to think, time to straighten out the tangle of thoughts and emotions Heath Oakes had snarled about her mind.
    She gazed out at the river rushing past, glinting in the sun. Jack Adams had loved the North Passage and gloried in all its moods and caprices.
    “It was meant to continue forever,” he’d said, his arm about his granddaughter as they’d sat together on this same bench over a dozen years ago. “Like life through a family.”
    And she was all that was left to keep their family going. She and…Paul? Somehow she couldn’t bring him into focus as a viable current in the stream that was the Adams dynasty.
    A squirrel scampered down a tree trunk and sat up on its haunches in front of her. It stared at her with wide, inquisitive eyes. Memory rushed back…Sammy, the baby squirrel she’d spent hours nursing through babyhood during her last summer at the Chance.
    She’d been fourteen the summer she’d found Sammy lying helpless at the bottom of a tree. When she could find no nest to return him to, she’d carried him back to the Lodge. With her grandfather’s help, she’d made a tiny bed for him, a piece of blanket in an empty screwdriver box.
    At Jack’s instruction, she’d dug out a doll’s bottle from among her discarded toys and begun feeding the little creature. Three weeks later she and Jack had released a nearly adult Sammy back into the forest, fit and ready for his life on the Chance.
    The memory brought another into her mind. The memory of how she’d glanced up one day, as she sat feeding Sammy on the veranda steps, to see sixteen-year-old Heath slouched into a James Dean stance against a tree, hips thrust forward, thumbs hooked into the pockets of faded jeans as he watched her.
    Something in those intense eyes had sent her adolescent body into a whirl, awakening a myriad of sensations. He’d been the embodiment of every teenage girl’s romantic bad-boy image.
    I was one stupid kid . Dragging up memories isn’t any good. Heath Oakes was an inner-city hoodlum. All that changed is that now he’s a wilderness hoodlum. As soon as Gramps’ will is read and the Armstrongs are legally in possession of the Chance, I’ll kick him out of my life once and for all.
    She got up from the bench and headed back to the Lodge, her strides long and determined.
    At noon, dressed in the black suit she’d worn to the funeral, Allison placed a plate of sandwiches on the dining room table. She winced as she passed a mirror. Skirt and jacket looked as if she’d poured herself into them, thanks to that barbarian and his dryer. She’d had no choice. It was the only outfit she had that was suitable for a somber occasion like a will reading. The jeans and tops she’d brought and worn on the plane were far too casual, intended only for comfort after months of business suits and high heels.
    She glanced down at the jacket straining at its buttons. Thanks to that stupid savage, I look like some kind of kinky hooker.
    She headed back into the kitchen to check on the coffee. Giving the too-short skirt a downward tug, she pushed through the swinging door.
    “Good morning.” Heath stood leaning against the counter, arms crossed on his chest. Dressed in a charcoal suit, white shirt, gray silk tie, and shining black dress shoes, only the below-the-ears