If Hudson’s grandmother walked into his office at the nursing station, she’d call him a glutton for punishment. Yep. That’s exactly what Kokum would say. She’d spoken her mind before her passing last year, and she’d have spoken it again if she’d witnessed him tuned in to Stephen Brandt’s radio show blaring from the computer speakers, instead of focusing on the pile of paperwork every nurse practitioner encountered. If he didn’t get his act together, he’d be here until midnight, hanging out with the night shift RN.

He glanced at the clock hanging on the wall covered in posters that offered various medical advice. At least Stephen’s show ended soon.

If not for the music, the building of four patient beds, two examining offices, a diabetic care room, small medical lab for RNs to take blood, and a reception area, would be deathly quiet at ten to ten.

“As always, I gotta do a cover. Since Jim Dandy is one of my favorite singers, I’m going to let you guess the song. If you think you know who originally wrote and recorded it, be sure to whisper it in my ear.” Stephen lightly laughed, a flirty chuckle ghosting the back of Hudson’s neck.

He shucked aside his pen. Nothing had changed. The only time Stephen found the courage to flirt was over the airwaves where nobody could stare into his eyes.

Still, Hudson’s fingers were about to betray him by sneaking a message through the radio show’s website. Nope, they wouldn’t, not after vowing to himself he’d never fall for Stephen again, so Hudson tucked his hands beneath his thighs before the hungry digits betrayed him.

His ears drank in the luscious voice coming from the pilot of the airwaves. Smooth. Fingertips skimming his spine. A massage to the shoulders capable of lulling him to sleep. In the past, it’d been Stephen’s steamy breaths brushing Hudson’s earlobe with horny declarations sexy enough to feel up every sensitive spot on his body.

He withdrew his hands from beneath his thighs and smacked the desk’s top. Oh man, he was doing it again—behaving like a lovesick, seventeen-year-old, insecure idiot. Time to take a well-prescribed pill of chill. There’d be no stinking thinking, not after he’d promised on the plane ride to Moose Lake back in September to give his personality an overhaul instead of behaving like a scorned ex-boyfriend.

Concentrate on the song. You know the riff. That wah wah is way too familiar. And groovy enough in a classic rock sense to get Hudson’s foot tapping and head bopping. When the growling voice kicked in with the funky lyrics, he snapped his fingers. Post Toastee by Tommy Bolin.

He scooted his rolling chair along the floor and stopped in front of the computer. His fingers almost hit the keyboard to type the answer to Stephen’s inbox, but Hudson stopped cold.

They weren’t teenagers or the best of friends anymore.

Hudson slumped and extended his legs, crossing them at the ankle, blankly staring until the song ended.

“I’ll leave you with a favorite of mine,” Stephen announced in the same breathy voice that had massaged Hudson’s shoulders earlier. “Have a great night and thanks for listening.”

If he played Back Where You Belong for the fifth time in the past two weeks, he’d end his show with that song.

Sure enough, the regret-filled tenor wailing from the computer’s speakers was the track Hudson had predicted. A man full of sorrow, after he’d turned away the one who truly loved him because he’d been unable to commit at the time, sang about his heartbreak. Following many failed relationships, the man understood he’d walked away from the best love he’d ever known. Now the guy begged for a second chance.

The old Hudson wouldn’t believe such a song was meant for him and had nothing to do with the past, when Stephen had volunteered at the reserve’s former radio station for Youth Night, ending each broadcast with a special song for Hudson. As for today? He’d bet his ration of firewood—to heat his house through the cold winter—this was Stephen’s way of saying he wanted a second chance.

Hudson tapped the pen against his mouth. Maybe he should cease the looking at you, looking at me game they’d engaged in whenever Stephen stopped by the nursing station to pick up his mother’s medications. With the ice road open and Hudson’s truck still stored at a garage six hours south in Red Lake, this was the perfect opportunity for them to reconnect, for him to feel out Stephen and see if he was still a shmuck or not.

They were sharing the same community and couldn’t keep up their game of I see you but I don’t. At least they could be friends, something Hudson had thought long and hard about on the plane ride back to the reserve, knowing when he landed, he’d have to face the man who’d crushed his heart fifteen years earlier.

No. He couldn’t ask for a ride into town. With his luck, Stephen would think Hudson was still carrying a torch.

Or maybe he should. The temperature was a good minus thirty Celsius, and he couldn’t continue asking his co-workers for rides.

During his confounding deliberation, line two rang, which was strange. The call should’ve automatically come in on line one. Someone who was purposely dialing the nursing station knew the secondary number.

Before the nighttime RN answered, he snatched up the receiver. “Nursing station. Hudson speaking.”

The person on the other end cleared his throat.

Hudson sat up straight. Whenever nervous, Stephen had done the same thing. He’d done so after Hudson had made the biggest mistake of his life by choking out those god-awful three words two weeks after high school graduation.

“Hey. It’s Stephen Brandt. I hope I’m not bothering you. I know how busy you are.”