The Mountains Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by Phoebe Alexander

  The rocks are crying out to me, she smiled through the tears that had joined the first one, and I believe...no, I know...he hears them too. As she focused her eyes on the exact spot where James first professed his love, she felt his presence and a renewed hope coursing through her more strongly than anything she’d ever felt in her life. This isn’t over, she trembled at the thought, her heart feeling like it was about to explode with love.

  This mountain can still be climbed.

  THE END

  Phoebe Alexander’s

  Mountains Trilogy

  Continue Sarah and James’s story in Book 2 of the Mountains Trilogy, Mountains Climbed, available on Amazon.

  The Mountains Trilogy will conclude with Mountains Loved, expected to be released in Summer 2015.

  Also by Phoebe Alexander

  Fisher of Men

  Available on Amazon 6.5.14

  Leah Miller has come a long way from her ultra-religious upbringing in Wahoo, Nebraska. A graduate of Cornell, she's climbed the corporate ladder to the position of assistant general manager of The Pearl, a resort in Ocean City, Maryland. She dreams of falling in love again someday but isn't sure if her heart has healed from her last two rounds on the battlefield.

  Working a private party at The Pearl, she meets party guest Captain Chris Sheldon, an Ocean City born and bred charter fisherman with a colorful past and even more colorful present. She's shocked when he tells her what kind of party it is, but she can't seem to get him out of her mind. Although there is definite chemistry between the two, their lifestyles and beliefs are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Is there any way Leah can reconcile Cap's lifestyle with her faith? Is there any way Cap can give up the lifestyle he loves for the woman who's stolen his heart?

  Follow Phoebe Alexander on Facebook www.facebook.com/phoebealexanderauthor

  or Twitter @mountainswanted

  Mountains Climbed

  Phoebe Alexander

  Copyright © 2013, 2015 Phoebe Alexander

  All Rights Reserved

  Acknowledgments

  I don’t have enough words to express my gratitude to my friend Chris who read every single word as I wrote and offered a priceless bounty of feedback, support and encouragement. I also want to thank Jon, not only for his advice on military matters, but for his service to our country. And finally, thank you to Al, who gave me insight into the wonderful world of BDSM parties.

  Dedication

  To Mike with all my love...

  ....after two and a half years...I’m still climbing...

  hoping someday I’ll reach the peak

  and our story will have a happy ending too...

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: From the Desert to the Mountains

  Chapter Two: Casting

  Chapter Three: The Navigator

  Chapter Four: Skype

  Chapter Five: The Cave

  Chapter Six: Father Figure

  Chapter Seven: Distorted Message

  Chapter Eight: An Expanding Force

  Chapter Nine: Christmas

  Chapter Ten: Three Steps Back

  Chapter Eleven: Forgiveness

  Chapter Twelve: Valentine’s Baby

  Chapter Thirteen: Home

  Chapter Fourteen: Chess

  Chapter Fifteen: Reunions

  Chapter Sixteen: Triangulation

  Chapter Seventeen: Someone Else’s Story

  Chapter Eighteen: I Know Him So Well

  Chapter Nineteen: Heaven Help My Heart

  Chapter Twenty: A Tiny Golden Chance

  Chapter One

  From the Desert to the Mountains

  Six inches.

  That’s about how far away the blast felt as the sound rang in his ears and the impact rushed through his body. Of course, it was much, much farther away. Just arrived in Kabul and things are already fucking nuts. Nice welcome back. Memories from his past tours came hurtling down onto his shoulders all at once. Explosions. Fallen friends. The fear. The uncertainty. The longing for home.

  One day down and approximately 269 to go, James consoled himself. Then he remembered what a more seasoned buddy had told him during his first deployment: Don’t think about getting through the next nine months or even the next week. If you need to, just think about getting through the next hour.

  When it was finally all clear, he tried to scan the horizon to see if there were still explosions going off in the distance, but it was hard to distinguish the sky from the sand, the two stretching for miles and miles. It was wasteland without boundaries, a vacuum. He calculated the time difference between the base in Afghanistan and Ohio where Maggie was preparing to drive his car back to Maryland. She won’t be leaving for another eight hours, he estimated. He’d tried to convince her to wait till closer to the end of his deployment to leave her job and family, but she was so anxious, she didn’t want to wait to start her new life.

  Our new life, he corrected himself.

  His mind conjured up a clear image of her illuminated face, thick-lashed hazel eyes creased with a beaming smile as she happily accepted his proposal and slid the diamond ring down her long, thin finger. She pushed her golden blonde curls away from her forehead and held her hand out to admire the brilliant rock perched on top of her sun-kissed skin. “Oh my god, my sister is going to be so jealous,” she cooed, her first words after “Yes.”

  It struck James as odd. Not “I love you so much and can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you,” but “my sister will be jealous.” What the fuck is that? he wondered. He brushed it off because it was immediately followed by a tight embrace, a kiss, and a lengthy dissertation on how excited she was to be Mrs. James McAllister. Then she spewed out suggestions regarding dates, colors, venues, and cakes. That sounds more like it, he thought with relief.

  He turned the other direction, toward the foreboding mountains rising in the distance with their brown and gray striations. He could no longer look at mountains and not think of Dr. Sarah Lynde, the woman who had been his friend and lover for the last nine months he was in Maryland. He’d met her quite by chance...although she would say fate, he noted...at a panel discussion about the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” Policy on the campus where they both taught, he in the ROTC program and she in the sociology department. Funny how we got from Point A to Point B, he mused, reviewing the journey, which had ended the night he told her he was going to propose to his high school sweetheart, Maggie Carson.

  It suddenly occurred to him that Sarah was - at that moment - attending her best friend Rachel’s wedding in the Rockies. He wasn’t sure what time the ceremony began, but he knew how much she had wanted him to accompany her. He thought about the few days they’d spent in Colorado in March when she was there for a conference. He’d surprised her by showing up unannounced and uninvited at her hotel a week after she’d walked out on him after a fight. He had nearly sabotaged their relationship, and he wanted to convey how important she was to him, so he went after her. Impulsive...maybe...a calculated risk, definitely...but it paid off, he remembered.

  Among other things, they’d gone hiking in the Garden of the Gods. An image of Sarah, framed by the red rocks and twirling while the sun glinted in her dark hair, flashed into his mind, and he had a sudden pang of regret. He hated the way things had to end. If only we’d had a little more time, he thought, to transition to more of a friendship. I should write and let her know I’m safe. He squinted as he turned back to the sun. I wonder if she even wants to hear from me.

  He was beginning to get his bearings as he remembered what deployed life was all about. It never failed to amaze him how quickly he could transition, as if he flipped the switch from one way of life to the other. The guard goes up; you’re always on alert.

  This was a different Forward Operating Base than he’d been at in his prior deployments, so there was a new layout to learn. He’d jogged around the 4.23 mile perimeter a couple of times now. Nine months will be over before I know it, he promised h
imself. He envisioned Maggie walking down the aisle in a white dress...that image is going to pull me through. Just gotta keep moving.

  The entire base had calmed down from the earlier attack by dinnertime. Things returned to status quo and he’d gone to bed early, but he was restless and couldn’t sleep. He found himself trekking through the sand again to combat the insomnia. Still getting used to the time difference, he thought. And still a little keyed up from earlier. Nothing like being welcomed back to the Middle East with being fired upon.

  The night was dark and lonely with no stars and no moon. He could barely make out the outline of the mountains in the distance as he walked along the edge of the base close to the fences and barbed wire, his boots pressing firmly into the sandy soil. He thought he saw a bright flash of light in the distance toward the rocks, but when he squinted and blinked, only the darkness remained.

  Suddenly a sensation of warmth enveloped him, flushing his skin while simultaneously causing the follicles on his arms and neck to prickle in a spiny chill. He felt a tingle permeate his veins as if he’d just been injected with a sedative, like what he remembered before having his appendix taken out several years before. But instead of succumbing to the beckoning siren of sleep, he felt a sense of wakeful peace seep into him, as if it was filtrating through every cell in his body.

  What the hell was that about? he pondered, taking a few steps away from the mountains, still waiting for the sensation to dissipate. He suddenly felt a presence beside him and turned in all directions to see if he was still alone. I should have been put on edge by that, but I’m not, he observed, noting that his heart rate was steady, his adrenaline levels in check. It’s like I experienced some sort of cosmic event...but on a metaphysical level. He shook his head, laughing at the geek in him coming out, even if it was only to the dark, lonely night.

  He thought of Sarah and how she would have been eager to discuss the possible causes of his experience, anything ranging from the mundane to the supernatural: time travel or perhaps an encounter with an extraterrestrial entity. He imagined her dark eyes quizzically studying his expressions and body language and postulating a theory about what just happened.

  Little did he know Sarah would have been happy to contemplate potential explanations with him, but at that precise moment she was standing on a mountaintop watching her best friend get married, simultaneously experiencing a parallel metaphysical event.

  ***

  Immediately after watching her best friend walk down the aisle, Sarah felt the wound from her breakup with James exposed to air again, the scab that had been forming freshly peeled off. She wasn’t sure if she could return to Maryland. I don’t know if I can be there without him yet. I’m not ready, Sarah thought, her heart trembling with grief, her world turned upside down and inside out. I don’t know how not to be James and Sarah anymore. The wedding had just delayed the healing process rather than helping her forget like she’d hoped.

  She almost changed their flight at the last minute to Seattle to see her brother Adam, since he hadn’t been able to meet the family in Colorado for the wedding. Once Rachel was happily off on her honeymoon, she gave him a call. Adam shared the Lynde trait of intuition and she scarcely let any word escape out of her mouth before he knew her heart had been trampled upon. “I don’t understand what he sees in this Maggie woman,” he kept repeating after hearing the situation. “I mean, he barely knows her, right? I bet she has changed a lot since high school.” They shed a few tears together across the wire. Adam was no stranger to heartbreak and offered a strong, if distant, shoulder for his sister to lean on.

  But the day of their conversation, Sarah felt her tears dry up quickly and her pragmatic side take the reins. On a day like that, she easily justified James’s reasons for choosing Maggie, for choosing at all. “Well, they’ve spent some time together recently when he was in Ohio over Christmas,” she explained to her brother. “And then he went back again for his mother’s birthday. She came here for a week before he deployed, plus he saw her again in Ohio before leaving for Afghanistan. So they’ve spent lots of time together in the past six months or so. I don’t know much about her really. All I know is she’s a nurse. I don’t even know what she looks like.”

  She found that she was trapped in a pendulum, oscillating between optimism and rejection. One minute she felt like everything happened as it did for a reason, for her to learn something from it. Now her only choice was to wish James happiness. But the next moment, she wallowed in self-pity, her heart shattered into a million pieces. She didn’t understand why in the world he couldn’t see the magic they had together. Between the two extremes, she saw tiny specks of hope sprinkled in, wondering if someday he would change his mind and realize he wanted her after all. Does absence really make the heart grow fonder? she dared to ponder.

  “So you’re going to be alright?” Adam asked. Sarah could feel his love and concern wrapping around her even from hundreds of miles away.

  “Yes, of course,” she’d replied. “Not that I couldn’t use a hug from my little brother!”

  Adam erupted with his deep, golden bellow of a laugh. “I wish it would work out for you guys to come out right now, but things are just crazy this week. Brandon and I are going to come see you guys soon though, I promise. We both have some time off this fall.”

  “I can’t wait to see you and meet Brandon. You sound so happy,” Sarah observed. “That makes me happy too.”

  Adam was happy. Rachel was happy. I am in control of my happiness, Sarah reminded herself as the pilot came on to announce their approach into Baltimore. I am in control. I can choose to be happy. As the plane touched down, she had convinced herself that her future was worth fighting for, that happiness was not an intangible dream but right within her grasp. And for several hours afterwards, she even believed it.

  ***

  Just when she thought she was settling back into her safe little world in Maryland, beginning to heal, she made a miscalculation. The pragmatic was temporarily replaced with the irrational. She found herself in her little red Toyota racing toward Laurel, the town where James had lived before his deployment.

  She cringed as she passed the spot where she’d nearly lost her life to a drunk driver whom she later found out was one of her former students. She couldn’t believe it had only been three months since that fateful night. Her spine crawled with regret that she had been on that road late at night after fighting with James. If only I had gotten back into bed. If only I’d been in his arms, where I should have been. It didn’t seem to matter how much positive self-talk she spewed into the space between her ears, she couldn’t eradicate the guilt and regret she felt about being on the road that night. And here she was, retracing her steps, feeling it all consume her again.

  Except now she was also having regrets about James. She had thought, standing on the mountaintop, gazing at the silvery summit of Pikes Peak as her best friend Rachel recited her wedding vows, that she would never regret loving James. Even though in the end, her prophecy that her heart would be broken was fulfilled, she had thought, standing there in the mountains, that the experience and resulting growth was worth all the pain. But now that she was back home in Maryland and so far removed from her homeland, she had a persistent dull ache, the constant feeling that her body had been invaded and someone was holding a part of her ransom. At the moment, the only lesson I’ve learned is to keep my stupid fucking walls up, she decided.

  So why am I driving to his house? she wondered. What am I hoping to gain from this trip? She had no definitive answers, but yet pressed onward. Am I seeking closure, maybe? she theorized. It’s amazing how I can be simultaneously aware and analytical of my irrational actions, yet no less compelled to see it through.

  She had heard nothing from him since he left Maryland. She rounded the corner toward his street and flashed back to their last night together. Two and a half weeks had passed, but it felt like an eternity since they’d made love for the last time, since the morning she’d
walked through his empty house silently uttering her goodbyes. She’d taken an army jacket from his closet, which was neatly folded in her backseat. She wanted to leave it in his screened-in porch, which she was pretty sure was unlocked. She felt bad for taking it in the first place. And how am I supposed to move on if I still have his stuff around? she wondered, chastising herself all over again.

  But this train of thought only precipitated another conflict bubbling up inside her like boiling water. Should I have fought harder? she questioned. Should I have tried to make him see that what we have is special, worth preserving, worth fighting for? She remembered the speech she’d given him on the beach at Assateague the weekend they celebrated his 30th birthday, the speech where she offered to have his baby and promised to do virtually anything to be with him.

  What else could I have said? What else could I have done? She gripped the steering wheel as if it would help her fight the tears that threatened to flow. Or did I just come off as a desperate fool? Should I have played ambivalent...uninterested...uninvested? The what-ifs haunted her as much as the regret of staying. Why isn’t there a textbook for this?

  As she slowed to make the turn down his quiet, tree-lined street, her heart began to thump against her ribcage uncontrollably. Once again she found herself noting the physical effect he seemed to have on her. The weeks that had passed hadn’t lessened the effect; just nearing his house was making her heart race. I’m a crazy person, she lamented. Positively crazy. He makes me this way and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.