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"I'm here to do a study of wolves on Benedict Island. Have you forgotten what I do for a living?"

No, she hadn't. She'd just never expected him to show up here.

He looked around the combination gift-and-supplies store with interest. Leanna concealed a grin as she took in what he saw. The pilothouse portion of it jutted out onto the lake, reminding amazed customers like him that this extraordinary structure was actually a boat. Its other end stood grounded in the sands with cement pads poured around it, the sides enveloped in walls so that it was still possible to see a clear line where they met the wall.

"Doesn't seem high enough for a boat."

"That's because we had the bottom cut off with a commercial torch." Leanna smiled at his disbelief. "The whole thing is just separate metal slabs welded together. You can cut off as many pieces of it as you want."

She watched him absorb the whiff of fresh paint that still lingered and dart a glance at the red-and-white inside that gave the whole structure a merry ambience. The boat's anchor hung on the wall adjacent to the door, like a huge dangling pendant on a dowager's necklace. Behind the counter on the wall, a miniature oil painting depicted The Tug in its previous lifetime as a boat in more somber colors-gray and dark green-serenely at anchor on a placid Lake Superior. Bryce let out a subdued breath. "Isn't this just like you to open a store on a boat? In all the time I knew you, I never knew what you'd surprise me with next." He stared at an arrangement of a stylized fishing net and shells hanging on another wall, and a telescope, set up on a stand in front of the window, was angled
toward the lake.

"The idea wasn't mine. It was Dad's. He was captain of this boat. When he retired, The Tug retired with him." He looked around. "Small and compact." He strolled to the far side of the store, where an addition had been built, and peered into the inner recesses.

"It extends to a studio apartment my father constructed." She hung back and studied the man he'd become. The lanky, bleary-eyed student she'd loved had
done a chameleon-like change into a muscular, well-built man. He was tanned from the outdoors and a red cotton bandana encircled his strong neck. His
blond hair swept back from his forehead like an eagle's wings in repose, and the deep tan of his lean features set off his light gray eyes. Now he'd walked back into her life. "Why here, Bryce?"

He made a sharp half-turn at her question. "I beg your pardon?"

"Out of all the places you could have gone to, why did you come here?" She busied herself with folding tissue paper at the counter. She had to calm her nerves, and at the same time, appear unconcerned.

"You still manage to make your point. I'll give you that." He sounded amused. "To answer your question, I'm here for very professional reasons. We're doing an
ongoing study of wolves on Benedict Island. There's been a decline in the population."

"And you didn't know I was here."

"No, that's not quite true." Bryce traced the lines of a wooden, white-painted seagull set on one of the shelves alongside of him.