Sharing Spaces by Nadia Nichols Page B

you have a friend or relative who might be interested in buying my grandfather’s share?”
    â€œNope.” He drew the floss through the harness, pulled the thread tight and cast a brief glance in her direction. “There aren’t that many people out there as crazy as the admiral and me. What about your brothers? You have two of them, don’t you?”
    â€œYes. Billy’s a computer programmer for a large engineering firm in Boston, and Bryce is a market analyst living in New York City.”
    â€œDo they fish?”
    â€œNo, nor are they or their wives particularly outdoorsy.”
    His shoulders slumped. “That explains it, then.”
    â€œExplains what?”
    â€œWhy the admiral named you as his executor. You were his last great hope.”
    Senna felt a flush of anger heat her blood. “Are you certain the banks won’t loan you the money?”
    â€œI’ve already looked into it. Even if the bank appraisal came in high enough, there’s no surety there. I don’t have a steady job, and the fishing lodge hasn’t generated any income yet. I’d have to have a co-signor to get any sort of mortgage, and I can’t think of a soul on earth who’d be crazy enough to co-sign a loan for me.” He paused for a moment, needle poised in mid-air, eyes fixed on a point somewhere between Senna and Baffin Island, then shook his head in a gesture of defeat and returned his attention to mending the harness.
    â€œWhy did my grandfather keep sled dogs?” Senna asked, abruptly changing the subject to avoid further jabs from Hanson.
    â€œHe liked them. He met a trapper from a village near Mud Lake who was selling his team. The admiral bought the dogs, the komatik and a bunch of traps. He decided he was going to make some money on furs.”
    Senna felt a twist of revulsion as she pictured the pained and frightened creatures caught in the steel leg-hold traps. “I think trapping’s cruel and awful and ought to be outlawed.”
    Jack uttered a short laugh. “So did he, after about a month of it. It was brutal work. The snow here is so damn deep and unpackable that the dogs had to swim through it hauling that heavy sled. The admiral would try to break the trail on snowshoes, but he couldn’t keep ahead of the team. The leaders would run up on the tails of his shoes and he’d pitch head first into the snow. So he recruited me as his trail breaker, but my trapping career spanned less than a day. I tell you what, it’s not easygetting out of deep snow when you fall facefirst into it. A couple of times I was sure I was going to suffocate.”
    â€œDid my grandfather ever catch anything?”
    â€œPneumonia, after one particularly grueling night out. Then he ran into some folks who were touring on snowmobiles. They asked if they could have a ride on the dogsled, so the admiral gave them a ride. They gave him a couple of hundred bucks for his efforts, and that was the end of his trapping adventures. He sold the traps, advertised dogsled rides at the airport and in some local stores at Goose Bay and pretty soon the phone began to ring. That’s why he kept the dogs.” Jack paused with a faint grin. “Well, that’s not the entire reason. He kept them because he came to love them, and believe it or not, that brutish pack felt the same way about him.”
    Senna tried to picture the admiral mushing a team of huskies down an arctic trail, clad in mukluks and a fur parka, but she couldn’t. Nor could she imagine him stroking the head of a dog with genuine affection. It was as if Jack were talking about a complete stranger. She was beginning to realize just how little she knew about her own grandfather. “Are there any pictures?”
    Jack paused. “Goody has some, I think, and I have a few. Mostly fishing pictures, a few winter shots of the dog teams. The pictures your grandfather took were of wildlife. Wolves, in