She flopped on June’s matching love seat 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 smiled fondly. “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 for 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. Then, two days ago, he’d called her parents’ cabin. She’d held the phone against her ear with a trembling hand, frightened beyond words at the sound of his voice. Just leave me alone, she’d finally told him. Then she’d hung up. Running away never solved the problem, she thought, only postponed it.
“It’s almost like old times, isn’t it?” June asked. “Back in college when we used to sit up in your cabin, reading and snacking on Spaghetti-O’s while it snowed.”
Aelissm smiled, and some of the tension she hadn’t realized was binding her shoulders slipped away. “Those were good times.”
“Grandma Davis told me about you singing Christmas carols at the top of your lungs,” 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 it was hard not to. “I guess we were making a bit of a racket.”
“I like it up here,” the boy said.
June 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. Luke was a good kid—very quiet, well behaved, and disturbingly tidy—but June wasn’t even twenty-five yet. A little voice in the back of Aeli’s mind retorted rather coldly, What possessed you to go out with Brent? 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 should have known Unk would do something like this,” Aelissm muttered. “Poor Deputy O’Neil is in for a shock when he sees where I live. 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.”
“Aeli, it’s really not nice to judge people before you’ve met them,” June said. When Aeli opened her mouth to object, her friend 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. She and Luke had built an incredible bond in just eight months, so unbelievably like that of a mother and her child despite the circumstances. It wasn’t just the golden 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 intuition.
Aelissm shook off the tingle of envy. What had happened to them, to their promise that neither of them would ever have kids until they were ready 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.
“Hey, June, why don’t you call Aaron and Henry? They always like hanging out with us.”
“Yeah, because they still have the naïve hope that we might yet go out with them.”
“It’s not naïve. 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. 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. With her thumb hovering over the buttons of the cordless handset, she stared at her own name, then at her phone number. Outside of the valley and the directory, only her parents, Uncle Bill, her father’s brother in Ohio, and June’s mother and stepfather knew the cabin number. Anyone else wishing to contact her were given her grandparents’ number. They hadn’t mentioned any suspicious phone calls before they’d 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 grapevine. If Adam was 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 the number 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. “But I’m sure he must’ve found it a while ago. Maybe he picked it up from my apartment in Seattle or something.”
“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 and draped an arm around his narrow 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 way. She glanced at June and nodded. “I think you should.”
They climbed in June’s pickup and drove up to A
eli’s cabin so she could grab her swimsuit. 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 with plans to be in Northstar tomorrow evening. He reminded her to keep detailed notes of Adam’s calls. He also recommended that she sign up for caller ID. The moment the second message started playing, Aelissm froze.
“What is your problem, Aelissm? You didn’t have to talk to me like that the other night. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, and I didn’t want Brent to die, but you don’t care about that. You think I’m a monster now, but you’re too much of a bitch to remember that he tried to hurt you, that I only hurt him to save you. Why can’t you see how much I love you?”
The message ended, and Aeli stared at the machine. With that rough, desperate voice, he barely sounded like the Adam she knew. Shuddering, she picked up the note pad beside the phone and jotted down the time of the message, the date, and exactly 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?”
“More or less the same things he always says.”
Twenty minutes later, Aelissm slid into the soothing embrace of hot water in the Ramshorn’s larger pool. She and June and Luke were the only people in the pools, and she was grateful for the solitude. With a sigh, she settled on the steps, submerged in blissfully warm water up to her neck. She tilted her head back and stared skyward. Steam rose in drifting clouds beneath the blue-white light of the lamps around the pools, randomly obscuring and revealing the glittering stars. The night was crisp and fresh with all her favorite scents of home—pine, sagebrush, and snow. There were still almost six inches of the latter in places on the boardwalk around the pools, and Aelissm grabbed a handful and held it under water, amused by how it tickled as it quickly melted.
June joined her on the stairs and they watched Luke swim around for a while, silent.
What’s happened to me? Aelissm wondered. She’d never run from anything in her life until that night. Yet, here she was, hiding in a remote valley in Montana, terrified that Adam would find her. She could argue that she’d come home to Northstar to help her grandparents, but the truth was that she probably wouldn’t have said yes to them if Adam wasn’t breathing down her neck. She probably would have muscled her way through the last of her master’s classes and continued on with her plan to teach at the college level. At least I’m sort of still on that path, she thought. But one class isn’t a full-time position, and I still have those classes to finish. When am I going to do that?
“I’m scared, June, and I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she admitted. “I’m staring into a blank future.”
Her friend looked at her with concern etched in her face. “Then maybe it really is good Bill is sending Pat. Having a big, strong man around might give you peace of mind or, if nothing else, a distraction.”
“Maybe.”
June smiled and returned her attention to her foster son. The boy was down at the deep end, hanging off the side to catch his breath.
“Let’s fling him,” Aeli said. “Hey! Luke! C’mere!”
Obediently, Luke swam back to the shallow end. June and Aelissm faced each other with their hands locked together underwater. The boy grinned and put his feet in the cradle, and they launched his small body skyward. He went in head first, then resurfaced, laughing.
Aelissm enjoyed herself, and slowly, the anxiety eased out of her. Everything would be all right. She had her best friend close by, good clean mountain air in her lungs, and two good jobs. Except for Brent’s death and Adam’s obsession with her, life was pretty good. She helped June launch Luke again and decided things could be a lot worse and would someday get better. Look at Luke. Eight months ago, after his father had been killed, Luke had been sickly, pale, and skittish, and now he was healthy and happy.
“He’s still skinny, though,” Aelissm murmured.
“Not because he doesn’t eat,” June remarked, watching the boy swim. “He’s tiny now, but I’ll bet he’s going to be tall.” She turned her eyes on her friend. “But that’s not what you were thinking.”
“No, I was just thinking that I’m glad I came back to Northstar. If I have to face Adam, I’d rather do it here.”
* * * * *
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About the Author
Suzie O’Connell is the USA Today bestselling author of the Northstar romances. The series is the product of a love affair with Southwestern Montana that began with a two-week adventure at her stepsister’s rustic cabin in her teens. That love affair shows no sign of abating.
She has been writing stories for as long as she can remember, and her love of writing and of Montana pushed her to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Literature and Writing from the University of Montana-Western. What else would you expect from a self-professed mountain-loving nerd?
When she isn’t writing, you’ll probably find Suzie in the mountains with a camera in hand and enjoying the beauty of Montana with her husband Mark, their daughter Maddie, and their golden retriever Reilly.
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For more information about Suzie and her books, find her online:
www.suzieoconnell.com
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