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He pulled up at the airstrip that cut its way through the tiny town of Foster and headed toward the two people in the shuttle-waiting area, a heavyset, dark-haired man with a mustache, and a small figure, bundled into a coat that wasn’t warm enough with a crumpled baseball hat pulled down low over the brim.
“Hello, folks. I understand you need a ride to the Delucchi Lodge.”
The heavyset man nodded and extended a hand. “Byron Lloyd.”
“Roman Carter. Good to meet you.” Roman noticed a price tag sticking out from the neck of the man’s jacket and hid a smile.
The man followed Roman’s look and detached the price tag with a chuckle. “Luggage got lost somewhere. All I have is my duffel bag—it’s a good thing I carry it everywhere. Had to buy this jacket at the airport, and it cost me a good chunk of change.”
Roman turned to the other figure, wondering at first if the person was hard of hearing. After a long moment, she lifted her chin so he got a good view of her face.
“We’ve already met,” she said.
He blinked in shock. Jackie Swann stood before him, strands of her copper hair trailing from underneath her hat, amber eyes looking at him with a mixture of surprise and anger. He couldn’t speak.
Jackie cleared her throat and straightened her small frame. “I didn’t know you worked for the Delucchis.”
He forced his mouth to start moving. “I don’t. I work for Wayne Fisk. I fly people to the lodge.” The fierce desire to ask why she was here burned in him. Why would she come back? He bit down on the words, forcibly stilling the barrage of feelings that whipped through him like a savage Alaskan storm. He moved to take her small bag.
She grabbed it before he could. “I’ll carry it.”
“Fine.” The two followed him out to the shuttle. Byron Lloyd filled the strained silence by peppering Roman with questions.
“I’m a freelance writer, you see. Covering this Winterfest deal. A festival to celebrate winter. Clever marketing. How many people are you expecting?”
“Hard to say. Not as many travelers these days.”
“Am I going to get cell phone coverage and Internet at the lodge?”
“Internet, yes. No cell unless you have a satellite phone.”
They arrived at the airstrip and loaded the plane. Roman hated to do it, but he asked Jackie to sit in the front to balance the weight properly. She reluctantly agreed. He offered an arm as she climbed up into the plane, but she ignored it.
He ducked into the office to check in with Wayne once more before he flew out.
Wayne looked up from his top-of-the-line computer and gave Roman a close look. “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“It’s nothing.” He walked to the plane feeling that Wayne was right. The ghost of his past, of his sins, of his longings, had come back to dredge up the horror he’d tried so hard to put behind him. Looking at Jackie’s delicate profile as she stared out the window, he wondered.
Why are you here?
TWO
Jackie stared out the window at the blinding white below. She felt it inside too—a stark, flat feeling, as though her heart was as frozen and untouchable as the tundra. Why hadn’t she seen it coming? Roman had always been interested in flying. He loved the outdoors. It was a logical leap that he would still be working in Alaska, but she never suspected he would be so closely connected to Delucchi Lodge. Not after what had happened, not after two long years.
Her stomach knotted and she kept her gaze as far away from Roman as possible. Dark hair, longish, falling into his face. A shadow of stubble on his strong chin, dimples when he’d smiled at Byron Lloyd, and the eyes, the familiar hazel eyes, self-assured, confident, cocky. In the two years they’d been apart, nothing had changed. He was the same Roman.
She could hear her father’s angry voice in her mind.
He killed your brother. I will never forgive him. Never.
They had had only one tortured conversation after the accident. It was the only time she’d seen Roman completely vulnerable, unable to even form a coherent sentence, his then twenty-three-year-old face twisted in agony. She closed her eyes at the awful memory.
Squeezing her hands together she forced herself to take a breath. She had more important matters to worry about than Roman. After he dropped her at the lodge she would put him out of her mind.
At the airport in San Francisco, she’d bought a satellite phone, though she’d almost choked at the thousand-dollar price tag. She had to be sure Asia could reach her, so she e-mailed her the phone number via her laptop just before the flight. It might be a risk if Reynolds’s people could hack into her e-mail, so she sent only the phone number and didn’t include any other details. She wished again that Asia and Asia’s boyfriend, Mick, had come along. But Asia was right—Mick needed medical attention for his injuries and it was probably smarter for them not to fly together, anyway. In the agonizing hours before the plane departed, she’d been lucky enough to find a place in the airport to charge her phone and to buy a duffel bag and some sundries. There were no messages from her friend through the Internet or on her home answering machine. Where was she? Jackie could still hear the panic in her friend’s voice.
Just get away somewhere, anywhere.
Under the pretense of studying the mountains, she shot a glance behind her at Byron Lloyd. She found him gazing at her intently.
“Where do you hail from?” he asked.
Jackie’s stomach knotted. “West Coast.”
“Whereabouts?”
She forced a smile. “Oh, you know. Here and there. How about you?”
“San Francisco area.”
Her gut twisted even further. “Well, you’ll love the Delucchi Lodge.” She realized she’d given herself away.
“Oh, you’ve been there before?”
She nodded, saved from a reply when Roman took the plane down toward the cleared strip of frozen ground. She saw Skip Delucchi waiting, his hair a little sparser than she remembered, his long face and prominent nose giving him a hound-dog look.
Skip wrapped her in a hug when she dropped down from the plane. “Jackie, it’s so good to see you. I was completely surprised when you called me from the airport. Thank goodness we had one cabin still vacant.” He shot an uneasy glance at Roman, who was pulling luggage out of the plane’s cargo hold. He lowered his voice. “Did you and Roman get a chance to catch up?”
“No. I’m not feeling chatty, I guess.”
He hesitated for a moment. “Yes, well, it doesn’t matter. June is so excited that you’re here. She hasn’t stopped baking since sunup.”
Skip introduced himself to Lloyd, who Jackie noticed had been taking in their conversation with interest. He helped them into a battered Range Rover and, with a final word to Roman, headed toward the distant lights of the lodge. Jackie glanced quickly into the side mirror. Roman stood tall and straight against an unforgiving glare of white. In the distance, above the snow-crusted bluff, she thought she could just make out the roofline of the still unfinished cabin, the place where everything had ended in the blink of an eye.
In spite of the circumstances, the sight of the Delucchi Lodge stirred a warm nostalgia in her. She savored the profile of the rugged mountains that backed the property and the thick stand of snow-topped pines that stood sentry around the main cabin. Smaller cabins were sprinkled along the property. A massive set of antlers festooned the doorway, and Jackie was greeted by the smell of roasting meat and apple pie.
June appeared in the tiled hallway, wiping her hands on a worn apron. Her dishwater-blond hair hung in a careless chop at her shoulders, her blue eyes accented by deep crow’s feet that Jackie had not noticed two years before.
“You look wonderful. I’m so glad you’re here.” She wrapped Jackie in a cinnamon-scented embrace. “Fallon will be glad too. I wonder where she is, anyway.”
Jackie was not so sure about Fallon’s reception. Fallon had only wanted to be around Jackie because of her brother. The girl had adored Danny with the deep passion of a love-struck teenager.
They exchanged more pleasantries until Skip offered to show Jackie and Byron to their cabins. “Be dark in a couple hours. Best get you settled in.” He turned to Jackie. “You’re staying in Riverrun. I thought you’d like that.”
Jackie nodded. “That’s perfect. I’ll go myself. You take care of Mr. Lloyd.” Jackie thanked him and watched the two march off into the snow. She was dismayed to discover when they stopped that Lloyd would have the cabin closest to hers. Just relax, Jackie. He’s a nosy reporter, that’s all.
She was about to head out herself when June stopped her. “Jackie, what were you thinking, coming here with that flimsy jacket? Did you forget we’re north of the Arctic Circle?” She fetched a heavy coat from the closet and helped her into it.
Making her way to her cabin, Jackie wondered if her abrupt arrival had inconvenienced Skip and June. Perhaps she should turn around and leave. But it was not the time to make such decisions so late in the day, not in Alaska, not this time of year when there was only a scant four hours of sunlight each day. She resolved to at least help June in the kitchen and ease any burdens she might have caused by showing up on short notice.
As she turned around to pick up her duffel, she saw Lloyd looking out his small cabin window, his dark eyes fixed on her. The curtain quickly fell into place as he stepped back out of sight.
With a surge of fear, she closed her cabin door.
Roman flew the plane past trees thoroughly crusted with ice, against the backdrop of rigid mountains. He was relieved to take off, glad to be alone with his thoughts.
The shock of seeing Jackie still tingled in every nerve. She looked different than the last time he’d seen her, the grief not as fresh in her face. An anger had taken its place and rooted itself deeply in her eyes.
The guilt swirled up like wind-whipped snow. Jackie still despised him, and he despised himself for what had happened those two years ago.
He tried to concentrate on the feeling of the plane as it banked smoothly. He had to remind himself that the beautiful de Havilland did not belong to him and never would, unless business picked up. He’d been saving every dime he made, but he was still fifty thousand dollars short. Fifty thousand roadblocks separated him and his dream, the only dream he had left.
He was admiring the spectacular dazzle of snow on the gray mountains, highlighted by the sun on its way to setting, when the radio crackled.
“Roman, June needs your help. Fallon’s gone. June’s half-frantic,” Wayne said.
Roman sighed. “Where’d she head this time?”
“Her mom isn’t sure. Went out to do some cross-country skiing.”
“By herself?” Roman checked his watch. Almost one-thirty. The sun would set in a little under an hour.
“She told her mom she was meeting friends, but all of them are home safe and sound where they belong. Skip is out right now on the snowmobile looking for her.”
“Give me her last location and I’ll check it out.”
Wayne filled him in. “Don’t stay out too long. There’s a low pressure building over the Gulf. We’re gonna get some snow.”
With a sense of rising urgency, he banked and turned the plane. It wasn’t a game this far north. If you got lost in the great white expanse you might survive, in the daytime. If you got lost in the dark, when temperatures plunged deep into the minus range, that was a whole other can of worms. Wayne had taught him early on to carry a survival kit. No exceptions. Picturing the stubborn, careless sixteen-year-old Fallon, he knew she hadn’t taken any such precautions.
Fallon was hard to like, harder to trust, and he should be mad about having to go bail her out. Instead he only felt the same lancing pain when he thought of the younger Fallon, barely a teen with a puppy-love crush on Danny, who loved her as if she were his own sister. He blinked away the image of Jackie that rose again in his thoughts, the strange mixture of pleasure and pain that her presence awakened in him. What was she doing at this very moment? Asleep in her cabin? Knowing her, she was probably out helping to look for Fallon.
He peered closer at the darkening ground. The sun was low on the horizon, painting the snow in silver and gray. Fallon would have worn the old green jacket she practically lived in, so he strained his eyes to see any flash of the color.
The temperature continued to drop steadily. A paltry three degrees Fahrenheit began to slide into the negative numbers. Wind vibrated the wings of the plane and rose along with Roman’s anxiety.
Darkness spread. Soon it would be difficult to land safely.
Wayne radioed him again. “Come back in now.”
“A few more minutes.”
“Now, Roman. Plenty of rescuers die trying to be the hero. Don’t be one of them.”
He got a glimpse of the unfinished cabin on the bluff and fought a shudder. “I know. I’ll be careful.”
“That’s not good enough.” Wayne’s voice became commanding.
Roman thought of Danny, foggy images of that dark, frigid night swirling up again, the frightening sounds of the car sliding over the embankment clear in his ears. No one else would die in this wintry abyss if he could help it, especially no one whom Danny had loved. “Sorry, Wayne.” Roman turned the radio down to mute Wayne’s anxious retort. “There’s no way I can turn my back now.”
He fought against the wind that buffeted the plane in the near darkness. At this latitude, night did not come gently. It arrived like a heavy fist-fall in a matter of minutes. Soon there would be no chance of finding her.
“Come on, Fallon. Where are you?”
As if on cue he caught sight of a green flash under the massive trunk of a pine. He immediately scanned the surface for the best place to land. There was no time to go through the tedious safety checks he’d done before. He had to put the plane down quickly. Praying he would not land in an overflow that would plunge him into water or freeze the skis so completely they would stay riveted there until the spring thaw, he took it down.
Engines still running, he jumped out, the snow against his legs taking his breath away. He hurried over to find Fallon, back against the tree, arms folded.
“Are you okay?”
She turned her long, thin face in his direction. “Yeah.”
“Yeah? That’s it? Your dad has been searching for you. What are you doing out here?”
She huffed. “Don’t give me a lecture. I wanted to cross-country, but one of my skis broke, so I quit. I figured someone would come along and here you are.”
He bit back the frustration and found his satellite phone. Skip Delucchi picked up on the first ring.
“Did you find her?”
“Yes, she’s fine.” Roman gave him the location.
“Can you fly her out?”
Roman looked at the sky. “No. I’m grounded for the night.”
Skip let out a long sigh. “Jackie and I are about a mile from there on the snowmobile. We’re having a little trouble with one of the vehicles, but we’ll be there soon.”
Jackie. He caught himself before he said the name aloud. He’d been right about her joining in the search. Roman clicked off the phone and turned to Fallon. “Why don’t you get in the plane and warm up?”
Fallon’s face still wore a sullen cast, but she climbed aboard. Roman joined her and they sat in silence watching the sun disappear behind the horizon.
Fallon’s voice startled him. “Why is she here?”
“Who?” he asked, though he knew exactly whom she referred to.
“You know. I heard Dad talking to her on the phone.”
He felt her staring at him in the gloom. He wanted to deny it, to steer the conversation elsewhere, but he couldn’t lie to the girl. “I’m not sure.”
Fallon folded her arms across her chest. “I didn’t think she’d ever come back. I wouldn’t, if I got out of here.”
He felt the rise of pain again, but didn’t answer.
“So she hates you.”
He nodded. “Pretty much.”
