Chapter 1 #2
This was horrifying.
This was not her fault.
“Why did I do this to myself? No work project is worth this.” A flash of her family hit her, her brother Tim’s announcement that after graduating from the Air Force Academy a year ago and going into pilot training, his newest achievement was finishing his master’s degree in math in one year.
He was on the road to becoming an astronaut, and that was a requirement. At twenty-two, he was on his way. Early graduation from high school? Check. Admission to one of the military academies? Check. Master’s degree in STEM? Check.
Tim’s life was a checklist to be conquered, moving him higher and higher toward actual outer space.
Their successful entertainment lawyer father had praised him on the Zoom call Tim had scheduled to deliver his news, the four quadrants of faces making Rachel hold her smile even as it killed her.
That call made her go back to her boss and ask for this project after all.
So, technically, this was all Tim’s fault, right?
In a family of powerhouse achievers, Rachel was the slacker. Her mom was impressed by the Kardashian project she worked on, but only because it got Rachel invited to an exclusive party and she brought Portia as her plus one.
Because Rachel had no plus one in her life.
Rustling sounds behind her made her turn, eyes scanning to pinpoint the location of the noise. A group of three deer in the distance looked right at her, big, black eyes staring back.
Deer weren’t carnivores, were they? Her pathetic memory of middle school biology made her think no.
No. Right? She wasn’t about to be attacked and eaten alive by a group of grown-up Bambis?
“You are losing it, Rach,” she muttered, her hushed voice enough to spook the beautiful creatures, who ran off and up a steep hill to her right.
Down below, where the road forked and her GPS had taken her up this barely plowed road, she saw a squirrel skitter across the dark asphalt of the numbered state route.
She would have better luck finding help there. Basic survival instinct told her to walk down the icy road and go where there was likely to be more traffic.
Until she began her descent and her high heels betrayed her.
The crack of her tailbone on a patch of ice underneath light snow made stars burst behind her eyes, and not the kind you get from a great night of sex.
Not that any of that was happening lately. Sex was a distant memory, her last relationship a friends-with-benefits deal that ended a year ago when her “friend” decided that stealing her emergency earthquake and wildfire money out of her nightstand was one of the benefits.
“Why?” she sniffled, not caring that she sounded like a whiny little princess. Who was going to judge her? A chipmunk?
One leg splayed to the left, the other was bent at the hip. She was lucky she could still walk. But the fall hurt, even if it didn’t break anything.
Except maybe a tiny piece of her will.
As she sat on the ice, a wet, cold feeling began to prickle where her jeans met the ground. She shifted her weight, trying to find a more comfortable position, but the ice was too cold for that.
Down below, the rumble of a car’s engine caught her ear.
“HERE!” she screamed, still on the ground and definitely out of sight. Scrambling to stand up fast, she grabbed the wheel well, but there was nothing she could lodge her fingers in to gain a little leverage.
By the time she was up to a shaky crouch, the car was gone.
Each limb ached and cracked, her heart throbbing. She leaned against a tree for a moment, hands on her knees.
“There will be more,” she assured herself, one eye on the fading light of day.
Her red-eye flight left L.A. last night at midnight.
She arrived at 8:30 this morning and went to the Markstone’s Boston office to say hello and do a little work.
Then she got on the road, and it was now three thirty p.m. Eastern Time, which meant she had been awake for…
Ever. She’d been awake for freaking ever.
On her feet but bent over, her slightly damp butt poking out as she clutched the car door handle, she gingerly took one step forward.
And began to slip down the hill.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Clawing at the tiny little pine trees that poked out from the piles of white snow, she finally grabbed one with deep enough roots that it held her weight, her boot heels sliding down as her body elongated, knees hitting the pressed-down snow, her body going belly-flat on the ground.
Just then, the rumble of a car engine cut through her consciousness. If the tiny branch she was clinging to didn’t hold, she would slide right under the car as it approached.
This was how Rachel was going to die. Stupidly, too young, and with really bad hair.
Head turned and cheek flat against the road, her arms were up above her head, both hands ice-cold now, gloveless and white knuckled. Her ski jacket pulled up, exposing her bare belly under her sweater, and she began to shiver as the front of her jeans pressed into the snow.
“HELP!” she yelled, relieved that a car had appeared, terrified that it might flatten her like a pancake.
The engine cut. A door opened, then slammed. Footsteps became louder.
“Hey, there. You need some assistance?” The gruff voice didn’t sound friendly at all but at this point, beggars couldn’t be choosers. Rachel was on her belly and couldn’t see him.
“Nope! I’m just fine!” she shouted back. “I like to hang onto tiny little pine trees and single-handedly melt the road with my stomach. It’s a hobby.”
“Oh. Okay.” The footsteps faded, then a car door opened and closed.
The engine roared to life.
Sarcasm. Rachel wasn’t going to die because of stupidity. She was going to die at the hands of her own sarcasm.
“HEY!” she screamed as loud as possible, rolling over onto one shoulder, trying to sit up.
Losing her grasp on the lifeline pine, she felt gravity begin to do its job.
Slowly, inch by inch, she slid downhill, one hip and shoulder pressed into the road.
What she wouldn’t give right now for Spiderman hands, because her fingertips were useless at stopping her descent.
The guy cut the engine again and opened his door just as Rachel slid under it. She grabbed the corner, but it began to shut with her movement.
And then it didn’t.
A bear looked down at her.
A bear in human form.
His beard was very thick, the dude wearing sunglasses and a hunter’s cap with flaps over his ears.
And he was enormous.
Super-broad shoulders covered in classic red-and-black checkerboard flannel, a black down vest, faded jeans and very abused tan leather boots made him look like an actual lumberjack.
The guy had the equanimity of someone who knew he belonged wherever he went.
The dude was a red-flannel bear.
“Come here often?” he cracked, shaking his head slowly. “The view is underrated.”
“This is a joke to you?” she shrieked. “I’m hanging onto the bottom of a car door to avoid sliding into a main road!”
He moved his feet so he was standing between her legs.
“There. That’ll stop you.”
Rachel felt the explosion build inside her, embarrassment mingling with something more. Something warmer. Something intriguing.
And something infuriating, too.
“Look, Mr. Dueling Banjos, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but your boots are the only thing keeping me from certain death. Would you do the decent thing and help me to my feet?”
“Preventing you from standing on ice in those stilts you call boots is doing the decent thing, lady.”
But he bent down and offered her a hand, his scent slamming through her, a mix of woodsmoke, spice, lime, and–
A very familiar feeling.
On her feet at last, she grabbed his truck’s hood, the metal still warm. As she pulled off her hat and smoothed her hair away from her face, she realized he was staring.
Hard.
“You’re not from around here.” Did his voice go lower? Weird.
“What gave me away?”
“Those.” He pointed at her designer boots. “And your condescension.”
“Oh, please. Don’t tell me small towns in Maine don’t have condescension. Especially fakey-fake places like Love You, Maine, where everything’s heart-shaped and love is a commodity.” She sniffed, glaring at him. “And I’m not condescending. If I were, I’d call you a maple redneck.”
He stiffened. “That’s a strange insult. Where are you from?”
“L.A.”
“And you call my town fake?”
“You’re from Luview?”
“I am a Luview.”
“Isn’t everyone around here?”
“No. We’ve got the Bilbees. The Chens. The Kendrills. The–”
“Got it.” Biting her lips and tucking her ungloved hands into her armpits, she stared at the guy, fighting a weird attraction. “Look, Mr…”
“Deke.”
“Mr. Deke, I–”
“Just Deke.”
“Deke Luview?”
“No. Deke Bilbee.”
“I thought you said you were part of the Luview family?”
“I am. Bilbees are Luviews. A Bilbee married a Luview a few generations back and–”
“That’s cute,” she said, cutting him off with a flat palm, “but I flew in on a red eye out of LAX, drove up from Boston, and had my car break down. I am freezing cold and I just want a nice hot shower at the inn my assistant booked for me, the one with heart-shaped hot tubs and honeymoon Champagne packages. It’s been a very long day. ”
“You’re here on your honeymoon?” He craned his neck around her, peering into the rental car, as if she were hiding a groom.
“What? No! I just had her book a honeymoon suite for me. Figured it would be the least offensive option for me here.”
“Mints on the pillow and all that?”
“Can you help me fix my car?” Rachel reached into her coat pocket and found her wallet, pulling out five twenties. “Here. Maybe this will expedite things.”
“Put that away.” He stared at the bills in her hand like she’d offered to pay him for something that could only be done at a motel that rented rooms by the hour.
“You want more? I have more.” Nervous shock hit her. What was she doing? All alone, broken down on a deserted road, and she was telling this huge dude who could snap her in two that she had more cash on her?