Memories of Paradise

by Tianna Xander

  When her plane crashes near Paradise, can two lion shifters convince Riana that in their arms is where she belongs?

  When Riana’s plane crashes in the mountains of Montana, she doesn’t expect to get rescued by two gorgeous men who sweep both her and her daughter off their feet…literally. Though she’d planned to move to a big city, Paradise has everything she could possibly need to make her new business thrive—spring water, plenty of sunshine to grow the herbs needed for her potions and most of all, kindness. Plagued by strange dreams as long as she can remember, Riana can now put a name to the town she dreams about so often.

  Gunter and Clay don’t take many things seriously until they meet the beauty who they rescue from a plane crash. What’s not to like when they meet the beautiful Riana? She’s their mate. However, they find they don’t like the fact that she’s new to the town, wary and suffering from something she refuses to talk about. Can their love and understanding heal her and keep her in Paradise or will she run yet again?

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  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 events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Memories of Paradise

  Copyright © 2013 Tianna Xander

  ISBN: 978-1-77111-529-2

  Cover art by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books

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  Memories of Paradise

  Paradise

  By

  Tianna Xander

  To sisters everywhere.

  Chapter One

  Riana sat next to her daughter, the teen’s hand gripped tightly in hers. The plane pitched and yawed as they bounced through the air. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she’d heard the pilot or navigator say something about ice on the wings. That wasn’t a good thing, was it?

  The flight attendant—there was only the one on such a small flight—rushed from the cockpit wearing a worried expression. She stumbled down the aisle, bumping into empty seats as she went.

  If Riana believed in superstitions, she probably wouldn’t have booked a seat on this flight. Her friend kept telling her that it just hadn’t seemed natural that the plane had forty seats, but only a handful was full. Still, she’d been desperate to get out of town and start new somewhere else. She had her things in storage and a friend to send them to her once she found a place to set up shop. She only hoped this would be the last time.

  “Put your seatbelts on, please,” the flight attendant said as she smiled down at them. She was doing her best not to look panicked, but failing miserably. “We’ve hit a bit of turbulence and the captain wants everyone and everything secure.” With one last glance toward Riana’s daughter Holly, the flight attendant stumbled off to tell the other ten or so passengers the same message.

  Turbulence wasn’t causing this horrible ride. Though she sat a good fifteen feet away from the cockpit, she’d always had exceptional hearing, and she could hear the captain and his cohorts on the radio calling a mayday. The plane was going down.

  Riana squeezed her eyes shut, held on to Holly’s hand in a death grip and, when most people would have prayed, she berated herself. Leave it to her to pick a flight that would crash. Leave it to her to run from whatever imagined terror she ran from every few years to get killed in an iced-over plane. She should have stayed in Boston. At least her feet had been on the ground.

  She felt Holly’s hand in hers and it gave her comfort to know they were together. As horrible as it seemed, having her daughter die with her was better than leaving her to a flawed system that would only tear what was left of her life apart. Riana regretted that her daughter would never have the opportunity to grow up and have a family of her own.

  Tears streamed down her face when she realized that now she would never find out who she was. The name on her tombstone would read Kelly O’Connor. She hadn’t wanted that. It wasn’t as though it was a bad name. It wasn’t. It just wasn’t hers. When they found her very cold, very alone and very pregnant sixteen years ago, the state of Maine gave her that name when she woke up with no memory

  The state had tried to name her Kelly. She wrinkled her nose. The name never fit. She had never liked it and it didn’t sit well with her. When she was no longer a ward of the court, she told everyone to call her Riana and never looked back.

  The plane pitched again. The jarring would have knocked them from their seats had they not been wearing their seatbelts as the flight attendant suggested. The one, remaining engine sputtered and she heard one of the pilots curse, then say, “Put your heads between your legs and kiss your asses’ goodbye, you two. Like it or not, we’re going down.” After that, was a series of frantic maydays presumably called over the radio as the plane hurtled toward the ground.

  “Relax, Holly. Try not to stiffen up. You get more injuries when you stiffen up.”

  “I know, Mom,” Holly said with a sigh. “They’ve been showing us stuff like that in school in health class.” She made a face. “They show the grossest movies with blood all over the place. They show us how drunks rarely get hurt in a collision because they’re passed out and limp. I’m trying to relax, but I don’t know how well I’ll do.”

  “You’ll do fine, baby. We’ll be all right. Remember we heal faster, for some reason. If the crash doesn’t kill us, we’ll be fine.”

  Riana knew Holly knew that bit of information. What scared her about that was, if they crashed in the middle of nowhere, which they most likely would, the two of them could freeze to death or starve before help arrived.

  It was amazing how quietly the plane went down. It skimmed over the tops of the trees for a while before it finally slowed enough to slip through the branches of the tall, old trees. Strong branches held them aloft for a bit before the plane began its not-so-slow descent.

  Four of the passengers that had been behind her, went tumbling forward toward the cockpit. Figures. She half snorted. The idiots wouldn’t listen to the attendant and wear their seatbelts, now they would die. Riana shook her head. A loud screeching noise accompanied a big jerk and she saw one of the wings pass by her window. Reflexively, Riana turned to look out through the uncovered glass across the aisle and saw nothing.

  After what seemed like forever, the plane came to a shuddering halt and she breathed a sigh of relief. For a plane crash, this wasn’t too bad. After all, she could hear the pilots talking and the idiots who hadn’t worn their seatbelts were a bit worse for wear, but they weren’t dead. Hell, Riana didn’t even think they were bleeding.

  “Shit! We’re headed over the cliff,” one of the pilots exclaimed just before the plane jolted abruptly.

  After a split second of what felt like weightlessness, the plane hurtled to the ground again. Riana couldn’t help it. She stiffened up.

  Chapter Two

  “What in the hell was that noise?” Gunter let the chainsaw die and set it on the downed tree. He looked around
the woods, trying to figure out where the horrendous noise came from.

  “Holy shit! It sounded like a plane just crashed.” Clay headed off toward the noise at a run. “We need to see if we can find survivors.”

  With a frown, Gunter tilted his head to the side and listened again. “I’m not sure it’s finished falling. I didn’t hear a loud crash at the end. I think the people lucked out and it’s hung up in the trees.”

  As though confirming his suspicions, a loud screech of metal on stone preceded the sound of the plane snapping limbs as it hurtled to the ground, giving them a sense of direction. They headed toward the crash site.

  “It sounds like they went over the cliff,” Clay said as he caught up with him.

  They reached the plane just after it made contact with the ground. Gunter looked up. The cliff the plane had fallen over was no worse for wear, but the trees that had grown near the edge were broken and bent.

  Turning his attention back to the plane, he noticed the cockpit was gone and, he assumed, the pilots dead. “The poor bastards.” He stood still for a moment, trying to figure out a way into the thing that wouldn’t kill him. He was a shape shifter, not a super hero.

  “Call the sheriff,” he said to Clay. “I’m going to try to find a way in and look for survivors.”

  Loud keening reached his ears as he circled the plane, looking for an opening. He had to climb a tree and shimmy across a branch to get to the door. After he pried the thing open, Gunter stuck his head inside and shook it. Bodies were everywhere.

  Why weren’t these idiots wearing their safety restraints? Carefully, Gunter eased his way inside, trying to find the source of the screams.

  Roughly five rows back from where he figured the cockpit should have been, he found the source of the noise. A young girl, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen, sat shaking a woman who must be her mother. “Wake up. You have to wake up!”

  She stared up at Gunter with red-rimmed eyes. “You have to help her. Make her wake up.” She turned her attention back to the woman. “Wake up, Mama. Please wake up. I won’t ever complain about moving again, just wake up. Please!”

  Gunter’s stomach clenched as he watched the child with her mother. Turning his head, he took a deep breath and froze. The scent was tantalizing and made tingles shimmy up his spine. Please, gods, don’t let my mate be a teenager I’ll have to wait for. He shook his head as he turned his attention back to the girl and her mother.

  “Get her out of here. Please. She’s still alive. I know it. Please get her out of here.”

  Gunter looked at the clear blue eyes of the child and sighed with relief. No, the scent that squeezed his balls to a dull ache hadn’t come from the girl, but from the woman next to her.

  With a sigh, he turned his attention to the woman that could have been his mate, had she survived the crash. He reached beneath the woman and released her restraint.

  “Stay here,” he said to the teen as he moved to carry her mother out of the wreckage. He didn’t have time to check to see if the woman was still alive or to fight her daughter. He had to hurry. He could smell fuel. It was only a matter of time before something sparked it.

  Blood oozed from a wound on the woman’s head and dripped down his shirt as he climbed his way up to the door. Maybe she wasn’t dead if she could still bleed so copiously.

  Making his way to the door, he found Clay on the limb about to climb through the opening. Gently, he pulled the woman from his shoulder and handed her off to his companion. “Take her. When you get her to the ground, put pressure on that head wound. She’s losing blood rapidly. I have to go back for her daughter.”

  He didn’t miss Clay’s swift intake of breath. He also didn’t miss the other man’s exclamation. “Oh, my gods! This woman is—”

  “I know,” Gunter interrupted him. The woman’s daughter didn’t wait for him at her seat as he’d told her to do. She had climbed up the seats and followed him out—a regular little monkey. His concern got the best of him. If this were the woman’s child, then he would automatically take her beneath his wing, so-to-speak. He supposed the correct analogy in his instance would be beneath his mane.

  “Do you think you can climb out here onto this limb?” If she couldn’t, he could easily carry her. However, the idea might frighten her.

  “I-I don’t know.” She looked at the limb, then down at the ground a good thirty feet below them.

  “Hurry up and make up your mind quickly, little one. I don’t know how stable this is and we must get out of here quickly.”

  “Aren’t you going back for the other lady?”

  His stomach clenched. “There’s another woman alive in there?” Why didn’t he sense it?

  “Yes. She was sitting almost across from us. She woke up and moaned as I was crawling up here.”

  Reaching out, he used his shifter strength, grabbed the girl, and yanked her onto the branch with him. “Be careful climbing down. If you don’t think you can manage it on your own, call for Clay. He will help you.”

  Carefully, he made his way back down the aisle of the plane to where he found his mate and the girl. Looking to his left, he saw another woman, her fair hair in her face, her leg bleeding from a compound fracture. She didn’t even see him next to her as she moaned from the pain.

  “I’m going to have to move you to get you out of here, lady.”

  She jerked at the sound of his voice and looked up at him through pain-filled whiskey-colored eyes. “Do whatever you have to do. Just get me out of here. I smell jet fuel. That can’t be good.”

  He smiled at her, though most of his attention was on trying to hear Clay tending to their mate outside the plane. “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “I won’t, if you don’t say that I didn’t warn you about the pitch of my scream when something hurts me. I’m liable to pierce your eardrums.” She smiled through her pain and Gunter could only smile in return. His people cherished strong women and she was one of the strongest he’d met so far.

  Hurry up and get your ass out here, Clay said through their mind link. The girl is here driving me insane.

  You’re an adult. Handle it.

  I might be an adult, but you’ve never had to deal with a teenager who’s afraid her mother is dying. I can’t do anything without the girl criticizing it.

  Gunter would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so serious. “I’m going to try to set your leg on the count of three. Brace yourself for the pain.”

  The woman took a deep breath and gave a sharp nod. Her fingers reflexively tightened on the seat in front of her.

  “One.”

  Her fingers tightened once again. Gunter shook his head. He’d really hurt her if she tightened up much more.

  “Two.” Without warning, he grabbed her by the knee and ankle and gave her leg a jerk. He had to try to get that bone back inside her leg. The woman gave an ear-piercing scream before she fainted from the pain. Taking advantage of her unconscious state, he tore the shirt off the dead man lying across the seat in front of her and used it to bind her leg.

  After he had her leg as secure as possible, he took a few moments and checked the other passengers. He would never forgive himself if he missed more survivors and the plane caught fire and burned them to death. Returning to the woman after he determined there were no more left alive, he jerked her from the seat and threw her over his shoulder, mindful of her wound.

  He’d set fractures before, but never one on a human. He only hoped he hadn’t done more damage than good. The only thing he did know was that if he hadn’t been able to get her bone back into her flesh, she would have bled to death before they could get her help.

  Chapter Three

  Clay left the girl holding his shirt over her mother’s head wound. She wouldn’t stop pummeling him with her slight fists until he did. He shook his head as he climbed the tree, to help Gunter once he made it back to the opening.

  If what the girl told him was true—and he couldn’
t see why she would lie—the woman Gunter went back for had a compound fracture. That wasn’t good. She had most likely lost a good portion of her blood. While they had a small amount of human blood in Paradise, they didn’t have much. There weren’t many humans in town to warrant storing large quantities.

  Clay called into town, as Gunter had ordered him to do on his way into the plane. The sheriff was on his way with the town’s rescue team. When he reached the limb, he moved forward, stopping just outside the aircraft. He didn’t want to add any more weight to the plane. One spark could set the thing aflame and there was no telling how much more weight it could hold before it shifted.

  Leaning over, he looked into the opening just in time to see Gunter heft the woman over his shoulder and start climbing. He used the seats like ladder rungs on his way up through the interior of the fuselage. Three survivors on a flight that held how many…forty, fifty?

  Steadying himself over the gap between the limb and the plane, he steadied Gunter as he climbed out and leapt to the limb.

  “We have to get out of here. If this plane catches fire we’re dead.” He looked around them. “The damned thing has left a fuel trail and the entire woods are going to go up.”

  “That’s unacceptable.”

  The fact that Paradise was surrounded by such dense forest was one of the reasons they were able to stay secluded. If they lost the forest, this massive power of nature would not be there to help seclude them from the world. While they didn’t mind associating with humans, they didn’t want humans constantly sticking their noses into Paradise where they didn’t belong.

  The last thing they needed was for someone to find out that most of the people who lived here in Paradise weren’t quite human.