Claiming The One (Meadowview Heat 3; The Meadowview Series 3)

by Rochelle French

  “I’m Gerald Callahan, Elizabeth’s fiancé. And you are?” The man—Liz’s fiancé, Hunter reminded himself—stepped forward into the house, hand extended far before him, and walked straight toward Hunter, not waiting to be invited inside.

  What a jackass. The man had been inside the house for a fraction of a second and was already attempting to position himself as top dog. Hunter snapped his gaze to Liz, who stood motionless, her mouth slightly agape and her eyes trained on Gerald.

  With Liz standing there looking thunderstruck, he had little choice but to shake the man’s hand and introduce himself. “I’m Hunter Thorne. I’m Liz’s—”

  He struggled to come up with a definition. Liz’s old boyfriend? The father of her child? Her current lover? He looked to Liz. What did she expect him to say?

  “Hunter’s an old friend of mine from way, way back,” Liz said smoothly as she crossed the room.

  “You’ve skinned your knee,” the man said, staring at Liz’s legs, a frown etched across his forehead. Liz’s eyelids fluttered, then she held her eyes closed. Her nostrils flared. When had Liz become so complacent?

  Gerald wrapped an arm around Liz’s waist and pulled her close, as if supporting her. Like she couldn’t stand on her own. Hunter’s stomach tightened.

  What the hell? Pinpricks of red flashed before Hunter’s eyes. Two minutes ago, Liz had been all over him. Had most likely been ready to admit she was in love with him. Now she was letting some pansy-assed rich guy play Mister Protector?

  “He heard I was in town and stopped by to say hello,” Liz added.

  Fine. Hunter ground his jaw shut. If that’s the way she wanted to play the game, okay by him. “Yeah,” he said, tamping down the anger raging inside. “That’s right. Plus, I heard Liz was selling the old place, so I thought I’d come by and check it out.”

  Gerald’s eyes narrowed. “You’re thinking of buying?”

  “Yeah,” Hunter said.

  “You are?” Liz asked quickly, her voice rising.

  Hunter flicked a look at her. Her eyes, dulled by Gerald’s arrival, were now glittering and wide. She looked hopeful. Did she want him to buy her house? He tried to read her expression but couldn’t see past the shadows. He stuck his thumbs in his belt loops and leaned back against the wall, forcing himself to show a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “Yep,” he answered. “I am.”

  “Why? This place is a bit of a dump,” Gerald said, looking around.

  Hunter could see the light fade from Liz’s eyes. His anger waned, tempered by a twist of compassion. “This was Liz’s childhood home,” he said, a low warning in his tone. He kept his eyes trained on Liz. “Holds a lot of memories for Liz, both good and bad. I doubt she’d like to hear the place referred to as a ‘dump.’”

  Liz’s expression lightened. He flashed her a smile, one she didn’t return. Her body stood rigid and curved in, as if Gerald’s arm wrapped around her waist was a chain.

  Lightning flashed again. Hunter watched as Liz snapped her eyes shut and mouthed the words, “one, two,” before the roll of thunder hit with a heavy boom. Her eyelids flew open. She stared at Hunter with an expression of fear.

  Abbie. She was worried about their daughter out there, facing an impending lightning storm. As was he. “I’ll go—”

  “Run that errand you were talking about?” Liz interrupted him, rolling her eyes toward Gerald.

  So the topic of Abbie was off limits around Liz’s fiancé. Had she not told the man she had a long-lost daughter come to find her? Was she ashamed of her past?

  He narrowed his eyes, a thought nudging at the corners of his mind. Was this fiancé of hers the reason Liz hadn’t wanted anything to do with their daughter?

  Apparently finished with him, Gerald turned his back and let go of Liz, apparently satisfied her skinned knee wasn’t anything serious. “We should go, Elizabeth,” he said. “Lars has the plane waiting at your little airport, ready for me to take you home.”

  Behind the man’s back, Hunter tilted his head to the side, a non-verbal question for Liz. Could she be planning on returning with Gerald? Or would she stay in Meadowview with him? Would she wait for him to return with their daughter, making sure the girl came back safe and sound?

  Liz dropped her gaze to the floor, avoiding his eyes.

  He kicked off the wall and pushed past the couple, heading to the kitchen where his wallet and keys sat on the countertop. He controlled the urge to slam his fist into the wall. Liz had made her choice, and she hadn’t chosen him. Or their kid.

  Though, as angry as he was, he could hardly blame her. On one hand she had a rich, highly respected man offering her a lifetime of rubbing elbows with the social elite, and on the other hand, a man whose only claim to fame was a fifteen-thousand-dollar motorcycle, a quarter million in the bank, and a few commendations for heroic action.

  Behind him, he could hear Liz and that guy murmuring, words like “two-engine” and “pilot” scattered throughout their conversation.

  He couldn’t give Liz what a life with Gerald offered. Hell, he didn’t even have a home. He lived off the back of a BMW motorcycle, for chrissake, chasing forest fires, not in some fancy mansion on the California coast, rolling in dough.

  His gut twisted. He’d been serious, though, about applying for the firefighter position opening up in Meadowview. Serious about buying 35 Nightingale Lane. Serious about Liz and the life they could have. Serious about loving her. But he wouldn’t tell her now. She’d made her choice and he’d let her go.

  At least this time Liz had been allowed to choose her own path, unlike before when Tina had made all the choices for her. And for him.

  He swiped his keys off the counter, shoved his wallet in his back pocket, and walked back to the living room.

  Sometimes love just wasn’t enough.

  “Will you be back? After you….” Liz nibbled her lower lip. “After you find who you’re looking for?”

  Tight-lipped, he shook his head in the negative, striding to the door without casting a single glance back at Liz, not bothering to answer her question. He’d head down the creek, find Abbie, and take her back to the B&B and call Darrin McHale from there. And he’d leave Liz the hell alone.

  * * *

  The front door, left open when Hunter had stormed off, slammed against the wall, pushed in by the growing wind. With it, the wind brought the acrid scent of smoke. A forest fire, Liz knew. The smoke most likely came from the fire in the El Dorado National Forest, the one Michelle had told her about. With winds this heavy, smoke could travel for miles. She hoped Abbie didn’t have asthma.

  With a start, she realized she didn’t know anything about the girl to whom she’d given birth. The baby girl she’d carried for almost nine months and known for a day, that girl she knew. But this teenaged mirror image of herself was a stranger. She blew out a long breath and sank into the easy chair, thankful for the leather arms surrounding her. She knew Gerald was staring at her, but she couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye.

  She was pissed he’d arrived, but she couldn’t blame him for showing up this way, out of the blue and unannounced. After all, the note she’d left behind had been curt, simply stating that there’d been a problem with readying the house for sale that she needed to deal with in person. Her note said she’d return soon.

  “You know, I was worried about you. I tried your cell, but it went straight to voice mail.”

  She nodded. “Because we’re in the foothills, cell service in Meadowview can be splotchy. I never could get good reception.”

  “I’d like us to get out of here, and soon. That smoke is wreaking havoc on my lungs.” Gerald sniffed the air.

  “There’s a forest fire about fifty miles from here.”

  Gerald stopped pacing to stare at her. “Is it dangerous?”

  “If you’re in the path of the fire, sure. Deadly.” Adrenaline surged, sending a frisson of fear up her spine. Hunter went out in those fire storms all the time. She’d kept track o
f him over the years, watching as he made his way from working as a summer hire to managing several hotshot crews. She’d tracked him from address to address, too, chiding herself each time she plugged his name into the search engine.

  She knew Hunter had been angry with her earlier, when she hadn’t told Gerald about Abbie.

  She was angry with herself, too. When she had opened the door earlier, thinking she’d be opening the door to Abbie, relief had flooded her. But upon seeing Gerald instead of Abbie, her inner core froze. Panic had set in.

  Gerald deserved an explanation—deserved to know the truth about Abbie, and about Hunter—but he didn’t deserve to have the truth thrown at him in front of Hunter. Surely Hunter understood that, right? Even though she and Gerald had agreed not to go through with the sham marriage, she couldn’t simply announce to Gerald that she had a daughter she’d given up for adoption thirteen years earlier. A girl who’d tracked her down to the address in Meadowview and had run away to find her, only to run away again when Liz had blown their introduction. And that in learning about her daughter, she’d learned something new about the one man she’d always loved. That he’d loved her back.

  And she’d realized she couldn’t live a life without love.

  But Hunter had left angry, and hadn’t seemed to understand the furtive gesturing she’d attempted. She sighed. She’d have to wait for Hunter to return and explain everything. In the meantime, she needed to tell Gerald the truth.

  She held her hands in her lap. Now, she mentally whispered. Tell him now. But the thoughts in her mind seemed to drift about, flitting from one corner to the other. She couldn’t focus and the room went a little blurry. When had she last eaten?

  “Elizabeth,” Gerald said, coming to stand before her, his arm outstretched, waiting for her to take his hand in hers. “With the way this wind’s picking up, we won’t be able to get the plane off the runway soon. We need to hurry.”

  She struggled to get up off the couch.

  “No one’s flying anywhere,” a soft voice called from the front porch.

  Michelle? Liz swung her head around, only to grow dizzy at the motion.

  Gerald looked from Michelle to Liz, channels cutting horizontally across his furrowed brow. “Yet another friend from way, way back?” he asked.

  “Realtor,” Liz corrected. “Michelle is my…” The room swirled, going grey before her eyes.

  “I’m her friend,” Michelle said, stepping into the room, carrying a worried expression on her face. A hulk of a man walked in behind her.

  Dan? Michelle’s husband? What was he doing here? Why had Michelle introduced herself as her friend, not as her Realtor? Liz grew more dizzy, the edges of the room blurring around her.

  “ Liz, what’s wrong?” Michelle asked.

  “I’m—” Liz struggled to speak. There were snowflakes on Michelle’s clothes, and on Dan’s clothes too. Tiny little grey-white snowflakes that weren’t melting. How odd. It was the middle of summer. There shouldn’t be snow.

  “What do you mean, no one’s flying anywhere?” Gerald interrupted.

  “I’m just—” Liz said, the world growing darker.

  Gerald placed his hands on his hips and widened his stance, standing in front of Liz. “Is there a problem with the airport?”

  “Oh, zip it,” Michelle snapped, pushing an astonished Gerald aside. “ Liz, when’s the last time you ate?” She bent to kneel at Liz’s feet.

  “Um…” Liz worked to get her brain from feeling like mush. “I had coffee this morning. With loads of Holiday Bliss creamer.”

  “That was breakfast?” Gerald asked.

  Liz didn’t miss Michelle shooting Gerald a tight-lipped glance before turning her attention back to Liz. “Before then?”

  “Yesterday. Lunch, I think. I had a salad, no dressing. No croutons. Water with a lemon wedge.”

  Michelle squeezed Liz’s knees and stood up. “I have a candy bar out in the car. I’ll get that for you.”

  “You don’t need to concern yourself,” Gerald said quickly. “I’m taking care of Elizabeth.”

  Michelle whipped around and shot him a glare that would melt paint off walls. She slammed a hand on her hip, then jabbed a finger at Liz. “You don’t seem to be doing that very well—she’s starving.” She turned to Liz, anger written all over her face. “Who is this guy, anyway?”

  “He’s my…my…” My friend, was what Liz wanted to say, but instead the dizzy feeling in her head became problematic and she couldn’t get the words out over the roar in her ears. She saw the floor rush up toward her, and then the world went blissfully blank.

  “Shit,” Hunter muttered, then let loose with a flurry of additional cuss words as he slid down a slick bank of mud on the side of the creek. He’d been hiking for almost an hour now, and still hadn’t come across Abbie.

  But he’d seen plenty of evidence she’d left behind. Footprints on the sandy banks, broken branches, slide marks like he’d just made on the banks—all told him he was on the right track. And since those the footprints faced downstream, he felt certain she hadn’t come back this way yet. With the thick underbrush nearly impenetrable on either side of Elderberry Creek, he doubted Abbie would attempt to leave the creek bed. All he had to do was keep trudging forward and he’d find the girl.

  He ran a forearm across his brow, wiping off the sweat. The lightning ceased to crackle around him but the air hung heavy and humid and hot. He bet the girl was regretting her impetuous dash out the door and down the creek now. Would he be relieved to see her? Or angry, like a real parent, for scaring him and Liz by taking off during a thunderstorm?

  The air shifted, the breeze cooling the sweat on his skin, but carrying on it the strong scent of smoke. Probably from the wildfire the next county over, he assumed. He picked up his pace, sloshing though the creek, churning up mud as he went. As he rounded a bend, the smoke thickened, and with the smoke came the soft fall of ash.

  Worry twisted in his gut. He’d been in enough burning forests to know the signs. The lightning had sparked a new fire, and judging by the thickness of the smoke and ash, the fire must be close. But how close? He left the creek bed to scrabble up a steep rocky slope, slipping on the sharp slabs of shale until he reached the hill’s summit. He scanned the horizon.

  What he saw made his heart about jump out of his chest.

  There, not a half-mile upriver, fire enveloped the entire north face of the canyon. And with the wind blowing due south, flames were licking their way through the underbrush toward the confluence of the river. Toward Suicide Rock…and Abbie.

  * * *

  Liz indulged in the heady scent and taste of chocolate, peanuts, and caramel. How many years had it been since she’d eaten a Snickers bar? Chocolate flooded her taste buds and she moaned.

  “Good?” Michelle’s question came with a cocked eyebrow and a nod toward the candy bar.

  “Mmm…” she murmured, shoving the remaining bite in her mouth, feeling warmth rush back into her veins as the much-needed sugar rush hit. Who cared about fat grams and calories? She’d counted each and every calorie that had entered her body for far too long. Denied herself the simple pleasures of ice cream, candy bars, even popcorn, always afraid of gaining half, or even a quarter of a pound.

  She’d managed to maintain her post-pregnancy weight even into her late twenties. And for what? To gain a perfect husband? To be the envy of rich women who had nothing better to do than throw money around?

  She chewed, swallowed, then said to Michelle, “I don’t get why you’re here. And Dan, too.”

  “If you’re here to visit Elizabeth,” Gerald interrupted, “I’m afraid you’ll have to come back another time. She and I have a plane to catch.”

  “Like my wife said,” Dan interrupted, “the airport’s closed.”

  Gerald frowned. “I don’t understand. The damn thing was open an hour ago when my pilot landed the plane.”

  “You were here an hour ago?” Liz asked. The carbohydrates from the
candy bar had freed her mind from the blur and fog, but Gerald’s statement sent her mind back into a confused whirl. If Gerald had arrived in Meadowview an hour ago, why had he not arrived at the house earlier? The airport was a ten-minute drive. “What took you so long to get to my place?” she asked.

  Gerald crossed his hands over his chest. “It took forever for my assistant to find a rental car. Seems like your name has a bit of pull here, though,” he said, tipping his head in Liz’s direction. “One mention of your name and the fact that we’re getting married and a car showed up five minutes later.”

  “But…” Liz grew more confused. “There isn’t a car rental company in town.”

  Gerald shrugged. “Sure there is. I have a Lexus outside.”

  “A Lexus?” Dan interrupted. At Gerald’s nod, he asked, “Does the license plate read ‘I Heart Kids?’”

  “Why?” Gerald snapped his attention to the man.

  Michelle and Dan both chuckled. “That’s not a rental,” Dan said, “that’s a loan. Dr. Andrew, the town pediatrician, loaned you his car. The whole town was probably scrabbling around, trying to locate an extra car for Liz Pritchard’s fiancé, who inconveniently forgot to bring one of his own.”

  Gerald’s mouth slacked open, then his jaw slammed shut and he turned to look at Liz, an oddly warm expression on his face. “That was very kind. I’ll have to repay him later. But for now, we’re leaving.”

  “Not unless you want to drive Dr. Andrew’s car out of here, you’re not,” Michelle said. “Like I said, the airport’s closed. The county has shut down the airport to private use. They need the airstrip for the air tankers. Emergency use only.”

  Liz struggled to sit up, concern beginning to build. “Air tankers. Did the fire grow? Is it moving closer?”