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Moving to the window, she waved at the driver and took in the dust-covered flowers that were at eye level at the edge of the sidewalk. She’d felt like those flowers until the details for the trip had been cemented. No more coated with other people’s ideas. England, here I come. We come, she amended.
“Emma?” Chet Jensen’s deep voice floated over the line. He sounded old and tired, unusual for this vigorous bachelor, who was in love with her widowed grandmother. “Listen, E, honey, your grandma’s had a stroke. Will you come, even with the—the way things are between you?”
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_4e0488f5-7dda-5e8e-bba7-242d38fa97aa)
DOUG “SPARKS” TURNER GRUNTED, curling his lip. A gutless sedan. It wasn’t what he had envisioned for his hair-blowing, stereo-blasting drive up Bigelow Canyon to Heaven, his home for the summer. An hour and a half from the airport, Sparks had had enough of the crappy car and intermittent country music on a tinny-sounding radio.
As he reached over to silence the noise, the right wheels caught the dirt of the curving road’s shoulder. Only a narrow strip separated him from a long drop. He yelped and overcorrected, shooting the little blue car into the opposite lane—thankfully temporarily empty of cars, RVs and trucks towing boats.
Another thump on the brake and the car shuddered to a stop on the wrong side of the road. The woman at the car-rental desk had asked if he’d wanted insurance. Maybe he should have considered it. He shifted to Park, lifted his quivering foot off the brake and sat very still, breathing in pine and dust.
“Pull yourself together, Turner,” his pyrotechnics scheduler had said. “Running in every direction gets you nowhere.”
“Steady,” Sparks spoke aloud. “They can’t pay a dead man.” He needed this job more than he needed the vacation. His last two firework-design gigs had finished with fingers pointed at him, murmurs that he’d lost his touch.
On his most recent job all of the fireworks went off at once. A show that was supposed to last twenty minutes had lasted ninety seconds. One big grand finale with no build-up.
He put the car in gear, placed one hand at ten and the other at two on the steering wheel. Carefully returning to the correct lane, he forced his thoughts to remain on the twists and turns of the granite and evergreens, instead of his problems.
“Watch out for the last curve before heading down into Heaven,” the female clerk had said, brushing his hand with hers and giving him a smile. “I’ve heard it’s a killer.” Worse than the ones he’d already navigated? Ah, a sign heralding the summit. Downhill run. Good.
After meeting with Naomi Chambers in town to discuss business, he’d be able to officially start his vacation. Playing hard and long would retire the doubts he’d begun to have. It would push that yearning for something just out of reach back into the place where he wouldn’t think about it. Home.
Compared to his previous occupation—fighting isolated forest fires—and given his vast experience with pyrotechnic displays all over the world, this particular design for such a small town would be a piece of cake. Small towns were hometowns. He’d borrow this one for the summer. Maybe that would help him out.
He had to be getting close to that turn. He flexed one hand, then the other on the steering wheel. Good. He was tired of green trees, tired of the canyon, tired of thinking... He turned the blind corner in third gear, where, instead of the road continuing straight or even at a reasonable curve, a wall of rock appeared along with a ninety-degree angle.
He barely had time to stomp the brake, wrench the wheel all the way to the right and hope he would skirt the outcropping of granite.
* * *
SHE SHOULD HAVE seen it coming.
Kissing the edge of the speed limit on her way to Heaven, the phone call with Brad—made as soon as she’d ended the call from Chet—bounced around in her brain. Brad’s voice, breezy as always, had stunned Emma.
She smacked the old Omni’s steering wheel with a fist, remembering his words. “No problem, you have to go back home,” he’d said.
“It’s not home,” she’d snapped, apologized and, after his next words, wished she hadn’t.
“Given all those phone calls you ignored from Granny, I had a feeling family ties would come home to roost. I snagged Carmen a few nights ago. She can fly standby. You remember her.”
Carmen was hard to forget with bleached hair, bleached-white teeth...and a husband.
“Carmen? The married Carmen?” Despite wanting to keep her tone neutral, Emma couldn’t stop the sarcasm from catching the word married.
Emma heard the woman in the background call to Brad and ask him where he’d put the massage oil. Brad muffled the phone to answer. When he returned, he said, “We had some good times, Emma. Let’s leave it at that.”
Don’t hang up on me. Emma’s stomach started to grip like it did when she was going to be sick. Then he was gone.
In a swirl of hurt, she’d decided to confront her grandmother. Emma would firmly tell her only relative she was not falling for this ruse, that it was a shame she’d roped Chet into it and that Emma was turning around right now and heading for the airport.
She’d board that plane for England whether Brad and Carmen were on it or not. She could do this. She had to do this. She’d go with, with...a man moratorium in place. Yes, that was it.
Her brain cleared, and her foot pressed the accelerator firmly. No man for her until—well, until a very different type of guy showed up. One that made her see fireworks—or at least a spark. And who was trustworthy. Dependable. One who, when he said, “I’ll be there for you,” really was. Yet, from her perspective, it wasn’t going to happen any time soon.
Ninety minutes later, pulling off the interstate at Evanston, Wyoming, the venerable Omni rumbled along the two-lane highway toward Bigelow Canyon. Emma kept an eye out for deer, skunks and raccoons with their nonexistent road-safety habits. The speedometer climbed; every mile brought Emma closer to the place she had vowed never to return to.
Grumpa had referred to Heaven as the intersection between Are We There Yet and Nowhere. Tucked in a valley with steep canyon sides, it boasted maybe a thousand people, which swelled into many thousands as tourists flocked there for the summer, and especially for the town’s main moneymaker—the Fourth of July Jamboree.
The event lasted from Thursday till Monday. A celebration of a small Western town and America.
It was almost nine o’clock now. And as surely as she took her next breath, by the time she crossed the town limits, her grandmother would be fine, Emma reassured herself. Nomi would be formulating some powerful reason for making Chet her minion on a new project.
Emma remembered she would need both hands on the wheel for the final turn. Only idiots blew down this canyon.
No way would her grandmother actually allow herself to fall ill. Not with her riding herd over the upcoming Jamboree in July. When God created Naomi Chambers, He had given her a double shot of stamina, and on the way out, she had snatched another.
Recognizing a familiar landmark, Emma shifted down for the descent. No one else on the road at this hour. Though Memorial Day weekend, travelers would be up and at it quick tomorrow; the early birds were already in their RVs for the night, parked at the local campgrounds, ready for the kick-off of the town’s summer season.
The Omni’s headlights swept left and right, with Emma letting the engine hold the car back. Biting her lip, she tapped the brake around another curve, readying for the last one.
She recalled smelling tourists’ and semitrailer brakes burning clear through to the center of town, coming from this canyon. Others, who thought they knew better than to slow down, rode with the tow truck or in an ambulance. The slow signs meant slow.
After she downshifted to first for the final blind corner and hairpin turn, she lowered the window; cool canyon air poured in. Here came the turn. She tapped her brakes. What was that ahead? When her headlights illuminated a blue sedan, she squinted. Off into the dark, up against an outcropping of rock spray-painted every year by graduating high school students, was a car lying on its side, steam pouring out from the hood, which was bent at many angles. Emma hit the brakes.
Pulling carefully to a stop at the side of the road along faint double tracks, she eyed the car, heart rate ramping. Yanking up her parking brake, she prayed it would hold on the steep downgrade, shut off the car and regretted that she couldn’t use her cell phone. Everyone in Heaven knew precisely where the lack of signal coverage ended for cell phones, and she wasn’t anywhere near it.
Please don’t be dead. Chastising her short height once again, she ran toward the car, looking around for something to stand on to see into it. Stepping onto a large flat rock that was close—yet not close enough to be really useful—she flung herself toward the car door, hanging on by her fingertips. Now what, genius? She couldn’t go back and she couldn’t let go, so she stretched up and peered into the sedan. She could see him now, see the blue collar of a shirt, a man’s head against the seat. He was blond, he was bloody and he wasn’t moving.
Do something. What?
The figure stirred as her fingers cramped from clutching the car’s side. Any minute now she was going to have to fling herself backward to avoid falling under the car.
His eyes opened, and despite the blood seeping down from a cut on his forehead, she couldn’t help noticing the dark blue eyes. Eyes staring right at her. Eyes with—deep questions? Don’t be dumb, Emma. He has a question as to what happened, not some complicated existential need.
“You’re beautiful—an angel? Am I dead?” he asked, then groaned and put a hand to his head. “My head.”
That struck her as funny—both the beautiful comment and that he actually did have questions—and she giggled, albeit a trifle hysterically. “No, you’re in Bigelow Canyon. The last turn. We call it The Last Nasty.”
“Nasty. Sure. About...how...my luck has been going.” He squeezed out the words.
Her aching fingers reminded her that she needed to change positions. Bending her knees slightly, she edged to the rim of the rock on which she teetered, and then shoved off the car. Back she fell, rear end hitting the ground first. She rolled to the side quickly and stood up, legs shaking. Dramatic rescues had not been part of the itinerary for the England trip, nor were they a common occurrence in her life.
The car door squeaked and then swung open with a metallic groan. The bloody, blue-eyed guy gazed at her and took in the surrounding area with a fuzzy frown.
She stared up at him. Even bloodied he was a jaw dropper. Blond hair sticking out all over, strong cheekbones that rose above a carved chin. Those eyes. Those questions.
“I think we’re both in trouble,” he mumbled, and dragged himself toward the open car door.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_b86db9cc-61d6-534f-a7c0-a92e650f164e)
WHAT HAD THE angel girl just asked him? Thunderbolts banged around in Sparks’s head. The dampness and sting on his chin told him he’d have a souvenir of the Compact Car Crunch.
“I said, do you think you have a concussion?”
Minutes before, he’d started a slow pitch out of the car. Somehow—perhaps he’d recall later—she’d grabbed his long legs at the same moment he’d pushed off from the frame. It took him a few moments to realize he’d landed on his rescuer. She uttered gasping, grunting sounds from underneath him.
After he’d rolled off her, they’d both regained their breath, and she’d lugged his two suitcases out of the trunk and into her car. He focused on standing upright and making his legs move toward it, only to collapse onto the passenger seat. Oh, was his head throbbing.
She’d steered out onto the road, and they were on their way. Angel girl, Sparks thought. Short, dark haired and curvy in beige capris and a light-colored knit shirt, she was the prettiest part of the trip so far. And the prettiest thing to ever save him. Now, what was her name? It wasn’t like him to miss getting a name.
In the light of the dashboard, the skin over her knuckles was stretched taut, he noticed. Although in the midst of the rescue she’d kept saying, “What do I do? What do I do?” She’d been great.
He winced at the virtual bombs exploding in his head. “I’ve had concussions. This isn’t one.”
No response, yet her eyes widened at his comment.
“I’m kind of used to emergencies.” It would take more than a car crash to prevent Sparks Turner from getting a pretty girl to relax. She had a smudge of dirt on the cheek facing him. He raised his hand to wipe it off. She shrunk back. The car swerved.
“Man moratorium!” Her voice squeaked on the last part of moratorium.
He must have landed on her harder than he’d thought. “Did you hit your head?”
She ignored his question. “Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe I should take you to Regional for that cut on your chin. I’m...I’m headed in that direction.” Her voice sounded decidedly nervous.
He blamed himself for scaring her. Of course, taking a strange, bloody guy into your car was a risk. “No, ma’am. I’m a former smoke jumper and I’ve taken some pretty good bangs to the head before. I appreciate it, but a ride to the Safari Motel is good enough for me.”
Silence.
The knock on his head had opened a memory he’d slammed the door on five years ago. The tragedy that had driven him from a once-loved occupation and a part of his life that he was trying to forget.
A few more miles passed by, and the road flattened a bit before another plunge. She gestured to the left. “You can’t see much at night, but that’s the lake down there. Route 12 is Main Street.” So this was Heaven, his borrowed hometown for the summer.
This spurt of conversation seemed to empty her, and she once again fell silent.
Keeping his eyes on the darkness that was the lake, he leaned against the headrest and gave himself over to the pain. “Never expected such a big lake in the Rocky Mountains,” he muttered to himself. Talking to himself was a habit he’d had since he was a kid. Some counselor had told him he did it so he wouldn’t feel alone. He hadn’t wanted to think about that then, and he didn’t want to think about it tonight.
She didn’t respond.
“Heaven’s a different name for a town,” he said, this time louder.
The silence spread so long he thought she wasn’t going to answer, and then she shook herself slightly as though to rouse herself from troubling thoughts. “The original settlers had such a hard time coming down that canyon—” she flashed him a look “—as you can imagine, that when they came to this point and saw the bizarre blue of the lake, they figured they’d died and gone to heaven. Hence the name.”
Everyone had told Sparks he was crazy to take a cut-rate job designing fireworks in the middle of nowhere. When he’d been sitting with his feet dangling over the edge of the wrecked car door, he would have had to agree. Now, seeing the size of the lake and with a summer to play in it, he began to doubt his doubts. He could entertain himself watching the spin cycle in a Laundromat and make five new friends before he’d even folded his polo shirts. He would amuse himself in Heaven and get back into sync with his career. A win-win for him and the town.
In fact...he eyed the petite woman next to him. He’d get a summer girl. Summer girls didn’t need to know why he couldn’t stick around.
The uncomfortable niggling at the back of his mind, the keening loss that often surged within him, kicked in again. He’d been feeling it off and on for months now. A place to call home. A place to be from. Come back to. Sparks touched the cut on his forehead. It had stopped bleeding.
Shooting a sideways look at his angel girl, he wondered where she was from, where she was going. She’d said a hospital. Local girl with a sick husband? He sighed. He hoped not.
Minutes later, she braked at a four-way stop sign with a Qwik Stop in need of a paint job on one corner. The other three corners were the edges of fields that gave way to Main Street.
“It looks like...home,” he blurted as yet another crash sounded in his head.
“Don’t bet on it.” Her muttering landed so softly he wasn’t sure he’d actually heard her. After she stopped on Main Street in front of the Safari Motel and put the car in Park, she turned to look at him—or rather, the cut on his forehead. Then she smiled.
Her smile curved up wide, showing white teeth with a tiny overlap of the right incisor. The move pressed her eyes into a delightful squint. He was glad she’d been coming down the canyon when she had. In the reflected light from the motel’s office, he saw coppery highlights glinting in her dark hair. A pretty woman preoccupied with something. After her rescuing him, he wanted to make everything right for her. Keep that smile on her face.
Finally, she spoke. “Looks as if Lynette kept the light on for you. She’ll want to know why you look as though you got beat up. She’s not much on troublemakers staying at her motel.” The smile faded and the tone sharpened. “Or unreliable, undependable charmers.” She closed her lips in a thin line.
“You’re from here?” His spirits lifted; he’d choose to ignore the edge to her last words. Summer girl. For the summer, he could be anything she wanted. For the summer.
A look swept over her face. Revulsion? Regret? He couldn’t place it.
“Not really.”
He slid slowly out of the car, emitting a few spontaneous grunts as he pulled his suitcases out of the backseat. “Thanks for rescuing me.”
Her smile returned, lightening her expression. “You rescued me from rescuing you. We’re square.”
As he came around the front of the car, he spoke in the direction of her open window. “See you around, then?”
She leaned out the window. “I’ll call on my cell about your car. The garage will contact the rental company.”
“Hey, no problem. I’ll call from my room.”
Another transforming smile. “I’ll call.” She put the Omni in Drive.
“Thank you for saving my life!” he shouted belatedly as she left the parking lot. She didn’t look back. He knew because he watched her. She knew where he was, so maybe...
Digging a piece of paper out of his jeans’ pocket, Sparks gingerly felt around the scrape on his chin. He leaned over, stretching right and left to unravel the increasing kinks, while checking out his home for forty-six glorious days of vacation. To the right was a line of single-level motel units of cinder block with a metal, aqua-painted eaves running their length as they sloped down away to the lake. Probably built in the 1950s.
He pushed open the glass door of the office and the bell at the top of the door tinkled; the theme song for a late-night talk show sounded in a room behind the desk. He was hours past his guaranteed reservation time. As his hand hovered over the bell on the counter for a second time, a bouffant-haired older woman pushed through the bead curtain.
“Don’t be pounding that bell. At my age, it takes more time to get everything moving.” Of average height, a loose black pullover tunic and legs encased in black knit pants, she didn’t look as though she had an ounce of fat on her. Taking in his damaged face, her eyes narrowed. “You got a reservation? We don’t allow riffraff here.”
Sparks glanced at the confirmation number on his piece of paper and passed it over to her. She snatched it from his hand.
“You’re Lynette?” he said.
Looking up from the paper, she seemed satisfied with his right to be there. “I’m the owner, Lynette.” She peered at him over half glasses. “You’re that hotshot fireworks designer who’s going to put Heaven on the map this year.” She swung her head back and forth. Her hair never moved. “Why do you look as though you lost a fight at the Wayside Inn?”
“I had an accident coming down Bigelow Canyon.”
“The Last Nasty, no doubt. Going too fast, I imagine. Happens all the time.”
His head ached in cadence to the throbbing in his jaw. He hadn’t eaten anything for hours, and he was feeling that Heaven fell short of Naomi’s rhapsodizing about warm, friendly people. Forcing his split lips into a smile, he said, “Yes, ma’am. Fortunately, a woman from town stopped to help me. I didn’t get her name.”
