Mountain Angel (Northstar Angels, Book One)

by Suzie O'Connell

  “How long do you expect me to stay there?”

  “As long as necessary, on both counts, even if I have to pay you out of my own pocket.”

  Pat sat back in his chair, stunned. This was one hell of a favor and he wasn’t sure if he was up to the challenge. He glanced at Bill, saw the silent plea in the older man’s gaze, and considered it. He very briefly considered turning Bill down, but his boss—his friend—had done a lot for him over the years. The least Pat could do was repay a favor.

  “Do you need a day to think about it?”

  Pat shook his head. “I’ll do it. And I’m sure you’re right. I should get away for a while. Maybe it will help.”

  Bill sighed with relief that included not just his niece but Pat as well. He scribbled some notes on a piece of paper and stuffed it in the file. “All right then. It’s all here. We’ve notified the local Devyn law enforcement about the restraining order, so if you do find Adam, he can be dealt with legally. Aaron Hammond lives in the valley, and is a sheriff’s deputy, so if you need any help, call him. I’ve included his contact information in the file, as well as all the numbers for the Devyn Police Department and the county sheriff’s office. I really hope you won’t need any of it. I keep hoping Adam will come to his senses and just leave Aelissm alone.”

  Mary’s return with dinner brought an end to their head-spinning conversation. They talked about other things while they ate, but as Pat listened and talked and laughed with his friends, part of his thoughts were focused on what he might be facing and how he could best tackle the task. It was… refreshing.

  “I really appreciate this, Pat,” Bill said as Pat was leaving. “You have no idea what peace of mind I’ll have knowing you’re there with Aeli.”

  Pat nodded and tucked the file under his arm. He leaned down to embrace Mary and thank her for dinner and them both for the company. As he drove away, he began to wonder what he’d gotten himself into. When he got home, the first thing he did upon entering his house was pick up his road atlas. He glanced at the notes Bill had scribbled before he’d left and studied the map of Montana. There it was, a tiny dot in the southwest corner of the state, about five miles up a dirt road that bisected a narrow, wedge-shaped valley. The nearest town of any size was Devyn to the east with a population that nearly matched its elevation of just over five thousand feet. Beyond that, the closest city was Butte, many miles more to the north. His eyes traveled back to the little dot that would be his home for the next little while.

  “Northstar, here I come,” he sighed. Then he chuckled as he recalled the picture of Bill’s niece with her buck. “Looks like someday is just around the corner. It’ll be nice to finally meet you, Aelissm Davis.”

  Catching sight of the pan flute on top of the small television, he walked over and picked it up. When had he last played it? Not since his grandfather and namesake had passed away five years ago. He moved to set it down and hesitated. Maybe he should bring it with him. Who knew? Maybe he’d find the heart to play it again.

  As he climbed into bed and tucked the blankets around himself to ward off any lingering tensions of Sara, he discovered something. Three years ago, he’d gutted the one bedroom—the only place he’d lived in the ten years since moving out on his own—of everything and anything that reminded him of his ex. The place looked like he’d barely moved in and, for the first time on a bad day, he hadn’t dwelled on it. He hadn’t even noticed.

  * * *

  “Uncle Bill, I didn’t mean for you to send me a protector. That’s the last thing I need or want.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have called me.”

  Aelissm sighed. “You’re wasting his time.”

  “Am I? You’re calling from June’s, aren’t you?”

  Aeli glanced at her friend, rolled her eyes and sighed again. “Yes, Uncle Bill. It’s movie night. When I called you the other night, I only wanted to let you know Adam had called me again. That’s all.”

  “You’re not fooling anyone, Aelissm, except maybe yourself. You were in tears, my sweet niece.”

  “I don’t know how Adam got the phone number here. But he can’t find me. Hell, Unk, even you couldn’t find this place last summer and you’ve been here before.”

  “You thought Adam wouldn’t find you when you moved to a different apartment in Seattle, too, remember?”

  “Yes, but––”

  “Humor me, Aelissm.”

  “I don’t need someone to watch over me like I’m a child.”

  “I know you can take care of yourself, Aeli darling, but Adam won’t stop until he’s found you and when he does…. He’s not the same man he used to be.” Her uncle sighed and she pictured him sitting in his recliner at home, massaging his temples. “I chose Pat because I trust him and because I know he can protect you, if need be. Knowing he’s there will ease my old heart.”

  “Old? Ha!”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know you are. All right, fine. It might be nice to have a man around.”

  Bill laughed. “I know that tone. You’re a devil, you know that?”

  “Yep. Anything else?”

  “Yes, actually. Make sure Pat relaxes while he’s there.”

  “Will he be here on vacation or to protect me, Unk? Because that seems a little contradictory.”

  “Both. He went through a bad break up a few years ago and hasn’t given himself the chance to get past it, so I’m using one stone to kill two birds.”

  “A bad break up, huh? You’re not playing matchmaker again, are you?”

  “Absolutely not. But it certainly wouldn’t break my heart if the two of you got together.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Just make sure he gets some rest while he’s there, will you?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Well, I should probably get off this thing. I don’t want to run up June’s phone bill.”

  “All right. Love you, Aeli Girl.”

  “Love you, too, Unk. ‘Night.”

  Aeli set the cordless phone back in its cradle and glanced at her friend. She’d known June Montana for longer than she could really remember, since she’d been just six and June only five. Then she looked at June’s foster child, a scrawny twelve-year-old boy named Luke McKindel, who was curled up beside her on the navy blue couch, and was amazed by how their lives had changed in just the last year. June had taken on the responsibility of the recently orphaned boy and Aelissm’s engagement to Bryce Ellington had ended rather abruptly upon his death. And yet… here she and June were, as always, best friends. She was grateful for that constant in her life and knew that if she hadn’t had it in the past year, she probably would have gone insane.

  It was June’s off-handed comment about Luke’s reaction to first seeing the valley that had made her decide to come out here, and until she’d arrived six months ago, she hadn’t realized just how much she’d needed to come here. The utter peacefulness of the Northstar Valley was such a welcome relief to the constant pulse of Seattle. Besides, even though she’d grown up in Western Washington, she’d been born in Devyn and had spent the first three years of her life in the cabin. This was home. She flopped on June’s matching loveseat and exhaled.

  “I take it Uncle Bill is sending one of his detectives over?” June asked.

  “Yeah. Patrick O’Neil.”

  “O’Neil? As in…?”

  “The son of Uncle Bill and Aunt Mary’s friends from college, yes.”

  “Why do I get the feeling Uncle Bill is meddling again?”

  “Because he probably is. You know Unk.”

  June glanced at Luke and a fond smile curved her lips. “Yes, I do. When’s your bodyguard supposed to get here?”

  “Most likely in the next couple days. I don’t need someone to protect me.”

  “Maybe you do.”

  June’s tendency toward always being right was sometimes very aggravating, Aeli mused, but it was also nice to be slapped with the truth now and again. She’d thought that coming out here
, to Northstar, would end her problems with Adam, and for a pleasant six months, it had. But then, two days ago, he’d called her. She still remembered all too clearly how badly her hand had trembled as she held the phone against her ear, frightened beyond words at the sound of his voice. Just leave me alone, she’d finally told him. And then she’d hung up. Running away never seemed to solve the problem, she thought, only postponed it. Damn Adam and damn Bryce! Most of this was his fault. If he hadn’t tried to…. She shuddered and pushed the memories away.

  “You remember our first year of college?” June asked. “Sitting up in your cabin, reading and snacking on Spaghetti-O’s while it snowed?”

  Aelissm smiled and felt some of the tension she hadn’t realized was binding her shoulders slip away. “Those were good times.”

  “Grandma Davis told me about hearing you singing Christmas carols,” Luke said.

  “While we were out chopping wood,” Aeli remarked. She tried not to look surprised that he’d spoken, but the boy was usually so quiet that sometimes it was hard not to. “I guess we were making a bit of a racket.”

  “I like it up here,” the boy said.

  June smiled and pulled her fingers through the boy’s blond hair. Aelissm wondered, as she often did, what had possessed June to agree to Uncle Bill’s plea that she take him. He was a good kid, very quiet, well-behaved and disturbingly clean… and Aeli admitted that life on the mountainside seemed less lonely with Luke around, but June wasn’t even twenty-five yet. Aeli’s mind retorted rather coldly, What possessed you to say yes to Bryce? It wasn’t a question she was willing to ponder. Chalk it up to a disastrous lack of judgment, she told herself, and leave it at that.

  “I can’t believe he thought I was asking for help,” Aelissm muttered. “I should have known he’d do something like this. And poor Deputy O’Neil is in for a shock when he sees where I live.”

  June laughed. “It’ll be a bit of a jolt for a city boy. What will he do without his Starbucks?”

  “Suffer. I swear, if he complains about the lack of creature comforts, I’ll strip him down to his birthday suit and leave him out in the snow.”

  June smirked. “Now, Aeli, it’s not nice to judge people before you’ve even met them,” she said. When Aeli opened her mouth to object, June held a finger up for silence. “But if he complains, I’ll help.”

  “You’ve got a deal. Now, I don’t know about you, but watching a movie sounds dull. How about we go take a dip in the hot springs?”

  “Sounds like a plan to me. Luke, run upstairs and get your swim trunks.”

  The boy nodded and leapt off the couch. He raced across the living room, skidded around the snack bar and counter that divided the kitchen from the living room and bounded up the spiral stairs. Aeli shook her head and chuckled. “He’s a cute little monkey, I’ll give him that.”

  “Yes, he is. You know, Aeli, I’ve been thinking.”

  “That’s dangerous.”

  June frowned at her, but continued. “I want to adopt him.”

  The flood of maternal warmth surprised Aeli, but June’s admission didn’t. For a fleeting moment, Aelissm was jealous of the bond June and Luke had built in just eight months, so unbelievably like that of a mother and her child, despite the circumstances. It wasn’t just the blond hair and blue eyes. Luke looked like her son and had already shown a lot of the same characteristics, right down to June’s quirky sense of humor and uncanny insight. She shook off the feeling. What had happened to them, to their promise that neither of them would ever have kids or be dependent on a man? Life happened, Aeli thought. Yes, they were still young and though she often scorned girls her age who already had children, she found it harder and harder to deny that she envied the wives and the mothers. When she’d told Uncle Bill that it would be nice to have a man around, she hadn’t been entirely joking. Even after her last, fatal encounter with Bryce and despite the shivers of fear that coursed through her when Adam called or sent her letters or snooped through her life—she shuddered and told herself to stop thinking about him—she wanted someone to call her own.

  Living on the mountain with June just down the hill was wonderful, like old times when it was just two best friends having fun. But something was missing from her life. In the depth of night, when she was lying curled in her warm blankets, she could no longer dismiss the loneliness.

  “Hey, June, why don’t you call Aaron and Henry? They always like hanging out with us.”

  June rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because they still have the naive hope that a swim in the hot springs might lead to them getting laid.”

  “It’s not naive. It could happen.”

  “Please, Aelissm. If I were to go for one of the Hammond boys, it would have been Nick, but I don’t date married men.”

  “And sweet Beth is about to pop,” Aeli muttered. “Yeah, he’s the best of the three. Henry’s still too much of a partier. And Aaron… well, he’s just not my type.”

  “Do you even have a type?”

  “Not yet. Get your damned suit and I’ll call them. With Luke around, they won’t dare try anything scandalous.”

  She picked up the phone she’d abandoned moments ago and June’s Northstar directory. It was a list of all the residents of the Northstar Valley and included physical addresses, P. O. boxes, and phone numbers. She stared at her own name on the list, then at her phone number. Outside of the valley and its directory, only her parents, Uncle Bill, her father’s brother in Ohio and a friend or two in Washington knew the cabin number. Anyone else wishing to contact her had been given her grandparents’ number. They hadn’t mentioned any suspicious phone calls before they left for Ohio two weeks ago. What if Adam had somehow gotten hold of the directory? Panic raged like a blizzard through her veins. The only way he could have gotten one was from someone who lived in Northstar. What if he was in the valley right now, looking for her?

  Stubbornly, Aelissm straightened her spine and refused to give in to her wild thoughts. This valley was a very close community and anyone out of place quickly became the subject of the grape vine and Aaron was on the lookout as much as he could be in his free time between his job and his family’s ranch. If Adam were here, she would have heard about it. Taking a slow, deep breath and letting it out even more slowly, Aelissm reasoned that she was just jittery from his phone call the other night. He’d gotten it from someone else. That had to be it. After all, he knew all of her friends in Washington and breaking and entering didn’t faze him in the least.

  “Aeli, are you all right?” June asked, coming down the stairs. “You’re shaking.”

  “I’m all right now. I just had a scare. I thought maybe Adam had somehow gotten hold of one of these,” she replied, holding up the directory.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  She nodded, then dialed Aaron Hammond. He wasn’t home and his twin brother Henry wasn’t either. Then she remembered. It was their mother’s birthday today, so they were all probably down at the main house celebrating.

  “That’s okay. I didn’t really want their company, anyhow.”

  June wrapped her arms around Aelissm. Aeli drew a ragged breath and assured her friend that she would be all right.

  “Maybe Uncle Bill sending Mr. O’Neil will help,” Luke said, joining them in the living room. “You know, maybe he’ll be able to chase Adam away.”

  Aeli smiled. Sometimes Luke’s insightfulness, so like June’s, startled her. How could a boy so young know so much? She draped an arm around his shoulders and around June’s. “Let’s go take a dip, shall we? Just the three of us. You don’t mind two such gorgeous ladies as June and me hanging on your arms, do you Luke?”

  He grinned. “I’ll be the envy of the valley.”

  June reached over and ruffled his hair affectionately. She glanced at Aeli and asked, “So, what do you think?”

  After nineteen years of friendship, she didn’t have to ask what June was talking about. Aeli considered what June had said, about adopting Luke
, and gazed at the boy. In just the eight short months he’d been here, he’d already come a long ways from the shy little urchin who had jumped at shadows. She glanced at June and nodded. “I think you should.”

  They climbed in June’s new, sand-colored pickup and drove up to Aeli’s cabin so she could grab her bathing suit. When she opened the door to her cabin—which she rarely ever locked unless she was going to be out of the valley—she saw that there were two messages on her answering machine. She hit the play button. The first was from Bill, letting her know that Pat O’Neil was leaving early in the morning and planning to be in Northstar tomorrow evening. He reminded her to write down every time Adam called her so that when her phone bill came, Pat would be able to look to see from where Adam was calling. He also recommended that she sign up for caller ID. The moment the second message started playing, Aelissm froze.

  “You didn’t have to talk to me like that the other day, Aeli. It wasn’t very nice. I saved you from Bryce and to thank me, you got a restraining order on me and now you tell me to leave you alone. You’re a bitch, Aelissm.”

  The message ended and Aeli stared at the machine. He barely even sounded like the Adam she knew with that rough, venomous voice. “Piss off, asshole,” she muttered. She picked up the note pad beside the phone and jotted down the approximate time of the message, the date and what he’d said. Then she erased the messages, grabbed her swimsuit and a towel and trotted back out to June’s truck, locking the door behind her.

  “He called again,” she told her friend as they drove down the mountain.

  “Oh? What did he have to say?”

  “Well, he told me I was rude and then called me a bitch. Maybe I should prove him right and shoot his balls off with the ten gauge if I ever see him again.” Half of her was amused at the idea; the other was terrified that she might soon have the opportunity.