by Carly Keene
CHAPTER ONE
Front Matter
CAPTURED BY MOONLIGHT
Moonlight Ridge Mountain Men 1
CARLY KEENE
THISTLE KNOLL PUBLISHING
Copyright © 2020 Carly Keene. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author. The only exception is that short excerpts may be quoted in a review.
Cover designed by GraphicDiz at Fiverr.com.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
CHAPTER TWO
Chapter 1
Cassie
“So can you go?” My sister’s voice is shaky. Twelve hours of nonstop vomiting will have that effect. “Please, Cass? For me?”
I heave another silent sigh. “Corrie, I know you’re sick. I know Tom’s sick too. I get it. But why can’t you just reschedule?”
Corrine sighs out loud. “You weren’t listening, were you?”
“I was listening!” I pause the Bricks-n-Balls game on my laptop. “Explain it again.”
“This is the last time I’m telling you,” she warns. “So Tom won this all-expenses-paid ski resort package that the corporate office of his company was giving away at the Christmas party. And we were gonna go in January, but Ava had a stomach bug. And then we were gonna go for Valentine’s Day, but Jordan got an ear infection. So this is the last weekend it’s good for, and now Tom and I are both sick.”
It’s not like I had plans or anything. And a free resort weekend sounds nice, actually.
“I really wanted to go,” Corrie says wistfully. “Please, Cassie. I figured you could use a pick-me-up after you lost your job.”
“Thanks,” I say with sarcasm.
“And your boyfriend.”
“Thanks again.”
“Although he totally did not deserve you and he’s an idiot.”
“Please stop,” I say. “I’m over him, okay?”
“I know things have been tough,” Corrie says simply. “And I love you, and I want you to just enjoy this trip since I can’t.”
Nobody can say I don’t know when I’m beaten. This is just another of those times. “Okay, okay, okay. I will go on your ski resort vacation and we will call it my birthday present this year, deal?”
She sniffles again. “Thank you, baby sis. I’ll call the resort and tell them you’re coming in our place. And Cass? Better pack now or you won’t get there in time.”
So now I’m driving through West Virginia on the way to this supposed ski resort, and thinking it’s a damn good thing I don’t know how to ski, because it’s March and there’s not going to be any snow. I pull up the map on my phone to make sure I’m still on track to arrive before dark, and am annoyed to see that it’s showing the Spinning Circle of Insufficient Reception. “Great, I’m in Deliverance territory,” I say out loud. “And who the heck puts a ski resort in West-freakin’-Virginia?” Could this get any worse?
You know, I should really learn not to think things like that.
Because it gets worse.
I wind up having to navigate by road signs, and then I miss a turn and have to backtrack. And then I miss another turn, and the whole time my phone is blinking NO SIGNAL at me, great, so I stop at a gas station and buy a printed map. I keep going for another hour, and finally I see the sign for Moonlight Ridge Ski Resort.
By the time I get to the resort, it’s dark. I’m so late that I can’t get a reservation in any of the resort restaurants. “I’m so sorry about that,” the desk clerk says. “Room service is available, though.” She leans a little bit toward me. “The brick oven pizzas are really good.”
I confirm with her that meals are included with the gift package, as well as my choice of golf or horseback riding. Or skiing, not that it’s going to be possible. The spa service, which is what I really wanted, is extra. “We do have free WiFi and cell service in the immediate resort area,” the clerk says proudly.
I refrain from pointing out that every hotel in America has free WiFi; I’m too tired and annoyed and starving.
“Are you visiting the Observatory?” the clerk asks me. “You’re probably aware that the area within a twenty-mile radius of it is a national radio quiet zone—”
“Just my room key, please.” I’m not usually so rude, but then I’m not usually so hassled and hungry, either.
I dump my suitcase on the floor in the very-nice room and lunge for the room service menu. When my food comes, the waiter is barely out the door before I’m chowing down on pizza. When I become aware of the world again, my wine bottle is half gone and the pizza is too, and I’m close to succumbing to a carb coma. I flip on the TV and send Corrie a text with a few pics of the luxury I’m wallowing in, along with a wish for her to feel better. Gradually I suck down the rest of the wine mindlessly, only realizing that I’ve drunk the whole bottle when I start having trouble seeing well.
No more. I’m going to start eating healthy and exercising again. Because I deserve it, that’s why.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m going for a nice hike, and I’ll eat sensibly, and I’ll stop being a couch potato. I’ll be fit, I’ll have energy, I’ll get a new job and a better boyfriend.
Tomorrow, my life is going to start again.
So of course I oversleep.
I mean, I blame the Chianti, really, but when I finally pry my eyes open it’s lunchtime. I take a shower and enjoy all the fancy stuff in the fancy resort bathroom, and then I go eat a really fancy grilled-chicken salad in the restaurant downstairs. And then it’s time for a hike. I pull a couple of granola bars out of my suitcase and some water bottles out of the mini-fridge, make sure I’ve got a jacket, and set out in mid-afternoon.
It’s not exactly sunny outside, but it feels like March, all right: breezy but not cold. I debate going back to my room for a sweatshirt, but I figure I’ll just get hot in it. I’m only going to walk for about an hour anyway. When I look up the mountain behind the resort, I’m stunned to see snow. Huh. Okay, so people are actually skiing. They must have one of those snow-making machines.
Doesn’t matter, I’m hiking.
Even at the tail end of winter, it’s beautiful here. The mountains rise against the sky in imposing peaks, and yet it almost feels like they’re hugging me, too. I walk off into the woods, away from the resort and the ski area, following a marked trail that says it’s two miles long and loops back around to the resort on the other side.
I walk for an hour, not seeing anyone else—just a couple of squirrels and a rabbit. The farther I get into the woods, the chillier it seems to get. Maybe that’s because the trees overhead are blocking the clouded sunlight, but I would have thought I’d be hot by now from the exercise, and I’m not. I stop and look at the trees, seeing where they’re starting to bud out leaves, and I look for more animals. There are all kinds of interesting fungi, too.
I didn’t think I was this slow, but I should be around the other end of the loop by now. The trail started off going down, and then leveled off, and then it started going back up.
And up. Damn, this is steep.
I double-check to make sure I’m still on the trail, b
ut I can’t really tell. It doesn’t look any different than the other end, just a wide path through the trees . . . But now I’ve been walking for two hours. I pull out my phone.
No service. The first shiver of fear slides up my spine. What was that the clerk was saying about a radio quiet zone?
And now it’s getting dark. It shouldn’t be this dark this early. But the wind’s picked up, making me shiver even inside my jacket. I have no idea where I am, where the resort is, how to get back to it, and my effing phone doesn’t effing work. Second shiver.
I have to just keep walking. I just have to keep going. If I can get up high, maybe I can look down through the trees and see the resort. It’s big. No way I can miss it—if I can just see it.
I head up to the top of the ridge, pulling myself up by the trunks of trees. I’m truly sweating by the time I can stand at the top.
It’s twilight now. The ski resort should be well-lit, but I don’t see it, or lights, anywhere.
And it’s snowing.
Oh shit.
CHAPTER THREE
Chapter 2
Weston
“Think it’s gonna snow?” my brother Wyatt asks me.
I nod. Part of my job as a forest ranger is to be on top of the weather forecast, even though I’m scheduled off for the next three days. With a sudden storm coming, I might be called in. “Yeah, but everything’s battened down already. NOAA radar says 4-6 inches.”
“I was planning on taking Maybelline out tonight,” Wyatt says, and scratches his chin through his reddish beard.
“No moon,” I say.
“You don’t want moon for coon hunting, dumbass. Guess I’ll wait until next week.” My dog Max nudges Wyatt’s hand, and Wyatt smiles. “Hey there, Maxie, you keeping Wes on the straight and narrow?”
Pretty much my whole life is straight and narrow; it’s work-work-work all the time. I sign up for extra shifts to give the guys with families a break, but sometimes I need a break too. Like this weekend: I’m looking forward to sitting my butt down in front of the fireplace with a dram of whiskey and a historical-fiction novel pulled up on my e-reader. I don’t plan on moving from there except to eat the beef stew that I put in the crockpot this morning.
I reach over to pet Max’s droopy ears too. He got Maybelline’s ears and straight coonhound legs and her belling voice—you should hear him when he spots a squirrel in the trees near my cabin—but he got his longer fur and his deep chest and shoulders from George Hudson’s German shepherd, who jumped the fence into the kennel at Wyatt’s when Maybelline was in heat. After that, Wyatt got her spayed so he wouldn’t have to worry about her again.
Max is never going to be a coon dog like his mama, because his instincts are split between herding and protecting, and chasing prey up a tree and barking his head off at it. But he’s a good dog. Max is better company than most people.
It’s not that I’m antisocial. I like to drive down to the town of Green Bank (population under 200) for a beer every now and then, and I love getting together with my extended family. But Wyatt and I were raised in the mountains. We like hunting and fishing, chopping our own firewood, living without other people stacked up on top of us. I went to college in Southwest Virginia, which is not exactly a metropolis, but I couldn’t have been happier to come back home. I couldn’t breathe in all that mess of people.
I love it here.
Only trouble is, I’m lonely. There’s just nobody to date. Half the women around here are already taken, and the other half are kin. There’s no sense transplanting a city girl here, either, because these mountains demand a certain lifestyle. You have to be strong and self-reliant, look after you and yours, and you have to love it here or you’ll wither away.
Someday I’m going to find a girl who’ll love it here as much as I do.
Wyatt slings an arm around my neck and tells me to make sure I’ve got enough firewood, which is what passes for affection between us. I mess up his hair and tell him to check on Aunt Lacey, and then we head our separate ways in the twilight.
After my shower, I grab clean jeans and a flannel shirt because it’s getting colder every minute. The stew is hearty and good in this chilly weather. I give Max his kibble and poke up the fire, and settle in my favorite chair.
It starts snowing, and it’s cosy in my cabin, and the fire is a little too warm so I unbutton my shirt. I’m deep into The Last Kingdom, where Uhtred has just sworn an oath of a year’s sword-service to King Alfred of Wessex, when Max decides he has to go out. Like, right now. He’s pacing by the back door, making his houndy I-gotta-pee whine and staring intently at the door.
“All right, all right, I’m coming,” I tell him, and get out of the chair. The second I open the door, he flies out like he’s got wings, dashing across the yard and into the woods in the falling snow. There’s not that much on the ground yet, maybe a couple inches, but it’s cold.
Max is barking now, not his belling Hey-I-found-the-prey howl that he makes for raccoons and insolent squirrels, but his darker, rougher THERE’S-A-THREAT-OUT-HERE bark.
Shit. It’s early enough in spring that it might be a black bear, hungry after hibernation. Max is a stout dog, but he’d stand no chance against a bear. Black bears don’t much like people, but they’re not your most aggressive of bear species. Anyway, they tend to stay away from human habitations unless there’s available food, so I’ve always made sure to bear-proof my trashcans.
I shove my feet into fur-lined moccasins, get my big box flashlight, and grab my rifle from the case. If Max tangles with a hungry black bear, there’s no telling what might happen but I don’t want it to end with a fight.
Then his bark changes again, less threat-out-here and more like the bawl he gives when he’s chased a squirrel up a tree. Crap. I start running. Could be a skunk, and I don’t fancy sharing living space with a skunked dog.
I should’ve gotten my boots. It’s too cold for snakes yet, but my feet are slipping on old leaves as I dodge tree trunks, chasing Max’s I-treed-it bawl. I’m close, I’m closer, and then the beam from my flashlight hits Max’s wagging tail. He’s in a clearing, not up against a tree, and then I see he’s in his treed pose with front paws up on the shoulders of a person who seems to be trying to push him off.
“Hey!” I call. “Who’s there?”
There’s an answering sort of whimper from the person.
“He won’t hurt ya,” I say, and as I get up close I realize it’s a girl.
A nearly-frozen girl.
CHAPTER FOUR
Chapter 3
Cassie
I’m so cold that everything feels like a dream: the falling snow, the shushing noise of old leaves beneath my shuffling feet, the faint, far-away warm-yellow light I’ve been following through the woods. Even the noise of the dog and its stinky breath in my frozen face.
And when this gorgeous hunk of bearded mountain man shows up, flannel shirt unbuttoned, with a flashlight and the offer of help, that definitely feels like a dream.
“Just a little farther,” Hot Mountain Man says, encouraging me when my steps slow.
“M’les don wa wrk,” I slur out through chattering teeth.
“Oh, your legs don’t work? Well, then,” he says, and sets down the flashlight before picking me up and slinging me over his shoulder.
I’m no lightweight, but it feels so nice, so safe, I don’t warn him to be careful of his back.
It seems like no time before I’m inside a warm log cabin I could have dreamed, too: cozy, with braided rugs on the hardwood floors and a fire going. Hot Mountain Man carries me in and sits me right in front of the fireplace. “You’re gonna be okay,” he says. “We’ll get you warmed up.” He wraps a big crocheted afghan from the couch around me, puts another log on the fire, and says he’ll be right back.
I look into the flames, fascinated by the shapes that keep changing in front of my eyes. The dog comes over and sniffs my head, then swipes my cheek with a long slobbery tongue. “Ew,” I say, but
the dog sits down and looks at me, tongue out, for all the world like he’s smiling.
Hot Mountain Man comes back in wearing a green thermal shirt, and I can’t help but feel disappointed. He looked great without a shirt. “Here,” he says, handing me a shot glass with a teeny bit of amber liquid in the bottom. “Get that down you. It won’t really help you warm up, but it may make you feel like you’re not so frozen. I’ve got a hot bath running and water for tea heating in the kettle, but it’ll take a few minutes. I’m gonna go get my flashlight before the battery dies, and then we’ll get you back to feeling human again.”
I nod mushily, and try maneuvering the shot glass up. It tips, and he makes a clicking noise with his tongue. “Spilling good bourbon’s no way to get it down the gullet. Here, I’ll hold it.”
While he’s holding the glass for me to sip the very little bit that’s in there, I can’t look anywhere else but at him. Dark brown hair, not too shaggy. Dark brown beard, neatly trimmed. Dark brown eyes, soft but full of reflected light. Strong masculine planes to his face, a nose with character, a stern expression. A gentle mouth framed by that neat beard.
I could look at this face for a long time, I think, while I’m sipping bourbon. Which is a mistake, because I wind up nearly choking on the strong liquor.
“Slow,” he reminds me. “Sips.”
I reach over to his face and touch his mouth, wondering if it’s as soft as it looks. It is. A spark of warmth begins in my belly.
He clears his throat. “What’s your name?”
“Um.” What is it again? “Cass. Cassie Hudson.”
“Cass,” he says, like he’s tasting my name. “Cassie. I’m Weston Fields. I’m a ranger here in the Monongahela National Forest, and this is my cabin.”
“Hi,” I say, shy because he’s so damn good-looking.
“What were you doing out in the woods on a day like today?” he asks sharply, then shakes his head, closing his eyes. “Never mind. I have to go get my flashlight. You just . . . sit. Relax. We’ll talk later.”
