“Follow my steps. I’ll direct you to the safest path down. Remember to rest your foot where my hand is once I move it.”
With a sharp nod, he and Gunter began the treacherous climb down out of the tree that was already wounded by the plane.
“Is Sheriff Hunter on his way?”
“Yes. He said he was going to swing by and bring Doc Parker as well.”
“I hope they bring one of the water trucks to help dilute this fuel,” Clay said as they reached the ground.
“Pick up the woman and follow me. We have to get the hell out of here before that fuel catches a spark.”
Clay looked back at the plane, glad that the surrounding forest was covered with snow. If a fire did start, perhaps the thick, blanket of snow would keep it from spreading to the entire forest. He could hope so, anyway.
They had gone less than a mile when they heard the sound of snowmobiles and a siren. Apparently, the sheriff was too impatient for them to carry the wounded out. Either that or he thought there were more survivors than they had found.
The lead machine skidded to a stop sideways as Hunter dismounted and threw off his helmet. He looked at the five of them and shook his head. “Only three survivors?”
“Only the three, though you’re welcome to go look for more,” Gunter replied as he looked down at the woman in his arms. “This woman has a compound fracture.” He looked at Clay and added, “The woman in Clay’s arms has a head wound. We aren’t sure what else. Normally, we wouldn’t have moved them, but the smell of jet fuel persuaded us to get them out of there before the thing caught fire.”
The sheriff nodded. “Good idea.” He jerked his thumb back to a few other machines that towed snow gurneys behind them. The snow gurneys were nothing more than beds on sleds with thermal blankets and heating devices beneath the mattresses to keep the injured party warm.
“Where’s Doc Parker?”
“He was out when I got there. Both he and his son were on a house call up on the mountain. With any luck at all, they’ll be home when we get there,” the sheriff replied.
“Then we’d better get them secured in a hurry.” Clay followed Gunter to the sleds behind the snowmobiles and gently laid his burden down on the narrow bed. Carefully, he belted her in and looked up at the driver. “Be careful.” Looking down, he gently brushed the blood-soaked, auburn hair out of her face before he looked back up at Matt Stewart, the sheriff’s truebond mate. “Be very careful. We don’t want her to sustain more injuries.”
“So that’s how it is, huh?” Matt grinned at him. “So now the great pride has its lioness?”
“Shut up, Stewart.” He flicked a glance toward the woman’s daughter who stared at the two of them, obviously confused. “This is the woman’s daughter. Do you think you can give her a ride in behind you? I don’t think she’ll want to leave her mother.”
“Sure.” He scooted forward on the seat and removed his helmet. “Put this on and climb on behind me.”
Taking the helmet, the girl put it on, fastened the clasps, and mounted the snowmobile as though she’d been doing so all of her life.
“Wait a minute!” Clay called as they began to move away. Taking off his coat, he gave it to the girl who didn’t waste any time putting it on.
“Thanks.” She frowned. “Aren’t you going to be cold?” She looked as though she didn’t want to be grateful. However, Clay couldn’t imagine why she could be upset with him. He had done nothing but help save her mother.
He pointed to Gunter. “He has a thermal blanket in a package in his pocket. I’ll be okay. You go on ahead.” He waved them off as she turned her attention back to Matt.
“Is my mom going to be okay?” Clay heard her ask as Matt put the machine in gear and throttled up.
“Sure she is, little one. Don’t worry. We have the best doc on this continent waiting for her back in town. I wanted to bring him out here with me, but he was on his way back from a house call up on the mountain. He should be back by the time we get to town.”
Clay watched as the two machines hauled the women toward the road. Turning to Gunter he rested his hands on his hips. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going into town right now. To hell with the wood.”
“In any case, we have to go back and get our gear. We can’t have kids finding it and cutting off important body parts.”
“That’s true.” He sighed, then prepared to shift into his lion. “Last one there has to split all of the wood when we get it home.”
Clay should have known better. Gunter had always been faster, but he didn’t care. He wanted to hurry to their mate and this was a good way to push both of them to their limits—as though their mate lying in a sick bed wasn’t reason enough.
They both shifted into their lions on the fly, racing toward their equipment. Snow flew about them as they leapt through the powdery flakes, their lions leaving deep troughs through the snow. Gunter, the larger of the two always managed to move faster, but this time, his size was a hindrance. His weight caused him to sink deeper in the snow as Clay managed almost to fly over it. When they reached the last leg of their race to their equipment, Clay threw himself down the slight downgrade, sliding on his belly to the chainsaw, axe, and their snowmobiles.
Shifting back into his human form, he concentrated on dressing himself using his magick as they unhitched the small trailer full of wood from the back. “We have to hurry. If she needs blood, I want it to be ours.”
When they reached the doctor’s home, which doubled as their hospital when needed, they rushed to the front door. Mrs. Parker held the door open for them as they ran up the porch steps. “Matt said to expect you.” She grinned up at them. “So, Gunter has finally found his mate and, as his turn, your mate as well?” Mrs. Parker asked, referring to the fact that Gunter had given him his blood, making him a lion shifter as well as being the other man’s responsibility.
“Yes, ma’am,” Clay replied as they followed her into the house.
The entire town would want to know the answer to that question. Clay and a group of rangers came to Paradise several years ago to help their friends, Matt Stewart and Merrick Hunter protect their mate. When the doctor discovered that the men on their teams were part shifter, most of them decided to stay in Paradise and become full-fledged shifters by accepting a transfusion from another.
Generally, the people of Paradise didn’t change humans unless they were mates, but the alpha, Adam Greer, was in accord with the idea of repopulating Paradise with shifters he could trust—especially those with military training. As retired Army Rangers, they were assets to the town and all of them, to a man, stood ready to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.
Gunter had provided the blood that brought Clay over to full shifter. It gave the other man a certain amount of control over him and it made Clay a lion, the same as Gunter. It was probably a good thing, since lion shifters were few and far between—that was true as far as anyone in Paradise could tell. For all he and Gunter knew, the lion shifters could have a town just like Paradise out there somewhere.
From what Clay could tell, every species had a shifter side—dogs, cats, bears, just name it and, according to the ancient records stored in the secret vault below Paradise, they were out there somewhere hiding, the same as the people in this town.
“Will she need a transfusion, Doc Parker?” It was the first thing out of Gunter’s mouth when they entered the examining room. Both of the beds were occupied. Each of the women already had an IV and the woman’s daughter sat by her side, holding her mother’s hand.
“What are they doing in here?” the girl asked as she grabbed the doctor’s lab coat. “We don’t even know these two and,” she paused to point at Clay, “that one doesn’t even understand the concept of field triage.”
“What?” Clay scowled at the girl. Of course he understood it. “I learned field triage from the best Army doctors in the service. Don’t you tell me I can’t hold my own.” How in the hell did the girl even k
now what triage was? She was a teenager, for Christ’s sake.
Turning away, he ran his fingers through his hair in an effort to calm down. Tempers flared because everyone was scared for the women. She wouldn’t understand their concern. In her eyes, they were nothing more than strangers. She couldn’t understand. The teenager was human. How could she?
Chapter Four
Riana woke up in a strange room. Sun streamed in through the curtained window and she heard arguing. Mainly, she heard Holly’s mouth. Turning her head toward her daughter’s voice, she saw her little girl standing between her and two very large men as if she were a mother protecting her young.
“Holly.” As she knew it would, the sound of her voice drew her daughter’s attention. “What happened?” She rested her hand on her forehead and groaned. “I have a headache from hell.”
“You should, young lady.” An older man stepped into view. By his appearance, Riana guessed his age to be around sixty, but something told her he was much older than that. “You have sixteen stitches in your scalp.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but we had to shave some of your hair to get to it.” He smiled at an older woman as she walked into the room. “However, my wife helped me and shaved it in a way that she hopes won’t show much.” He bent down and peered into first one eye, then the other. “I don’t like the way your pupils respond. You could have a concussion. I’d like to keep you here over night, but…” Pausing, he turned to Holly. “I can see that you have responsibilities. I could see my way clear to releasing you to these two men or the people at the hotel if they want to take on the responsibility of waking you up every few hours.”
“What happened?” Closing her eyes, she remembered. It came to her in a rush. The plane crashed, the pilots talking about losing the engines and ice coating the wings or something. There was something about ice. “Never mind. I remember. Plane crash.”
“Yes. You were lucky that Gunter and Clay here were out there.” He turned to them. “Gathering dead wood, I suppose?”
She looked at the two men who nodded at the doctor in way of an answer. Good grief, they were huge. Both of them had sun-kissed skin. One had blond hair, the other light brown. She could see the hard bodies beneath their clothes and it made her shiver. It surprised her that they didn’t make her shudder like most men did. Even the doctor, as gentle as he looked made her wary, but not these two men. Why?
If anything, she was attracted to them. For some reason they…intrigued her. Yes, that was it. But why?
Holly moved to her side and lifted her hand. Tears filled her daughter’s eyes as she looked down at her. “Mama, I was afraid—” Holly closed her eyes and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now. I’m just glad you’re okay.”
Reaching up, Riana cupped her daughter’s cheek and smiled. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily. I’m going to stick around long enough to see you graduate from college, at any rate.”
“Mom!” Holly narrowed her eyes. “I told you, I’m not going to college. I’m going into the military like Uncle Mel.”
“Even he doesn’t want you in the military.” Riana shook her head, grimacing when her headache spiked and her head spun. Uncle Mel wasn’t really her uncle. He was just the man who had lived upstairs from them. He had moved a few years before. He had moved to some utopian small town just after retiring from the Army. “We’ll talk about this later. Right now, we need to find a place to stay the night.”
“It’s already been settled, ma’am. You’ll have a room at the Paradise Inn lodge, to make you more comfortable. However, Clay and I will be staying in an adjoining room to make sure you’re okay. One of us will wake you every hour.”
She looked up at the blond man. “No.”
“You have no choice. Your daughter cannot stay here with you. If you don’t want to be separated, I would suggest you agree to the arrangements we’ve already made for you.”
“I don’t even know who you are.”
“We are the men who saved your lives. If we wished to harm you, we could have done so out in the wilderness instead of calling for help to rescue you.”
She looked at Holly who scowled at one of the men before she met her gaze. “He’s telling the truth.” She waved her arm at the larger of the two. “This is the one who climbed down into the airplane to haul you out. The other one,” she said with a scowl, “sat outside where it was safe and waited for a handoff.”
“So that’s what you’re problem is.” The smaller of the two men said. “Look, little girl, I have to follow his orders.” He jerked his thumb toward the man next to him. “He told me to wait, so wait I did. If you don’t like it, take it up with Gunter.” He waved his hand toward the other man.
“I’m Gunter,” the other man said as he stepped forward, “and yes, I did order him to stay outside. There was no way of knowing how much weight the plane would hold before it lost its precarious position.” He looked at Holly. “If that’s why you were giving Clay such a hard time, then you owe him an apology.”
“I don’t owe anyone crap.” She crossed her arms and stuck her chin in the air. “I reacted to what I saw as an unfair situation. Period.”
Leave it to Holly to give any adult a hard time. Riana was just glad that temper wasn’t directed at her for a change.
“I’m thirsty. Do you think I could—” Before Riana knew it, both men held a glass of water in front of her face. “Uh… thank you.” She took the closest glass, which just happened to have been the one that Gunter had held and tipped it up. “God that tasted good.” She handed the glass back and smiled at Clay. “Perhaps you can get me the next one. “
Riana didn’t like the idea that these two men would be in the local hotel in an adjoining room, but there was no way she would allow Holly to stay in a hotel room on her own. She was just a child.
Rolling to her side, she sat up gingerly. The two men rushed to help. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought she was their long lost…something. She looked up at their intense expressions. No. She definitely wasn’t their sister. The looks they gave her were anything but brotherly.
Gently, they helped her stand, holding her when she would have fallen on her face, then, when she found out she couldn’t walk, Gunter lifted her and carried her to the front room.
“I’m sorry. I—”
“Here you are, dear.” An older woman held up a coat for her to put on. “Yours is lost somewhere in that plane. It caught fire and they had a devil of a time putting it out with all of that jet fuel. It’s just a good thing they managed to get it put out before the thing exploded.”
“Thank you.” Riana accepted the coat. “I’ll return it as soon as I get another.”
“That old thing?” The woman waved her hand. “You can have it. It was mine, but I have a new one. If you still want to return it after you get another one, just bring it here. This is our home as well as our hospital.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Parker,” Clay said as he opened the door. “We’ll return it as soon as she gets a new one.” He smiled. “I know you use it when you go out to chop wood. We’ll see that you get it back.”
“Thank you,” Riana said as she reached out and touched the woman’s arm. “I’ll get this back to you as soon as I get to the hotel. I don’t want you to ruin your new coat chopping wood.”
Riana found it difficult to believe that this woman, who had to be near sixty, actually still chopped wood. Though, she supposed, living in the boonies must give people different priorities.
Against her better judgment, she left with the two strange men. The doctor and his wife didn’t see anything wrong with it, though people never knew when the people in their communities were axe murderers or gun toting nuts.
Though neither one of them had an axe or a gun at the moment, didn’t mean they couldn’t go out and get one.
They had gone only about five-hundred feet when she stumbled on a crack in the sidewalk and Gunter swept her up off her feet to carry her. “Put me down, please.
I can walk. I just stumbled over a crack.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t want you to slip and fall on the ice. You could open the stitches the doc set into your scalp.”
She wriggled a bit, then stopped and bit her lip. She wasn’t sure, but she was almost positive that her wriggles had given the man an erection. Riana looked at him from the corner of her eye. He looked at her and winked!
“Don’t worry. You aren’t heavy. I don’t mind carrying you. We carried all three of you out of that plane and down a thirty-foot tree. If we can do that, we certainly can carry you to the hotel.”
“See. It’s just down the street there,” Clay said, pointing to a sign about a half mile down the quaint-looking cobblestone road.
Crossing her arms, she sighed. “Fine.” The scent of French fries wafted over the breeze and her stomach grumbled.
“Can we stop and eat, Mom?” Holly asked, turning around to give her a pleading look.
“I don’t have my purse.” That was when her entire situation hit her. “Oh, my God! I don’t have my purse!” All of her money, her credit cards, identification, and her daughter’s birth certificate were in her wallet. What would they do? How would they survive without it?
“Don’t worry, Mom.” Holly reached into her overstuffed fanny pack and drew out Riana’s wallet. “I couldn’t carry your purse out of the plane because it was too heavy, but I knew you wouldn’t want me to leave your wallet there.”
“Thank goodness you thought to grab it. If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t have had a way to live.”
“Something tells me we wouldn’t have had to worry.” Holly spun around in a circle. “This kind of looks like a town you would see on one of those hokey programs on TV that you’re always making me watch. I’m sure the people here wouldn’t have let us starve to death.”
Chapter Five
Gunter felt the need to agree with the woman’s daughter. Hell, they didn’t even know either of their names yet. Shouldn’t they have asked by now? At Doc Parker’s house, he couldn’t help but stare at the woman in awe. One of them should have asked what her name was then, but like idiots, they forgot.
Memories of Paradise Page 2
