Midnight Sons Volume 1 (19 page)

“I’ll change my shoes and be ready in a minute,” she said.

“I’ll run and tell Mom you’re going with us,” Scott offered.

Lanni had just laced up her boots when the boy returned. “Mom told me to tell you she appreciates it.”

“We’ll have fun. We’ll learn about wildflowers together, and we’ll get a beautiful bouquet of flowers for the wedding.” Refrigerated, they should last until then, she thought.

They walked, Lanni in the middle, until Hard Luck was out of sight. The snow-covered peaks of the Brooks Range were visible through the cloud layer to the north, and a cool breeze whistled across the tundra. The flowers bloomed all around them in colorful array.

They found several patches of alpine arnica along their route. The yellow, daisylike flower with its pointed leaves was one of Lanni’s favorites.

“We can’t get all the same kind,” Scott insisted.

“What’s the pink flower?” Lanni asked, leafing through the book, which was coded by color. She knelt down beside the plant. “It looks like it might be this one,” she said, pointing to a picture.

“Parry’s wallflower,” Susan read slowly.

“It’s a member of the mustard family.”

“I don’t think Mom and Sawyer want a mustard plant at their wedding!” Scott said scornfully.

“But it’s pretty,” Susan protested. “We don’t have to tell them it’s really some old mustard plant.”

“All right, we’ll cut some of those, too,” Scott agreed, but he didn’t sound happy about it.

They walked farther and gathered arctic daisies and calla as well as a handful of northern primroses.

“We aren’t supposed to go near the berry bushes,” Scott said. He seemed to consider it a silly warning. “I told Mom we wouldn’t pick any berries for her wedding, anyway.”

“She wasn’t worried about that,” Lanni explained, relieved that she’d remembered the can of pepper spray. “Brown bears love the berries, and they wouldn’t take kindly to sharing with us.”

“Bears?” Susan repeated. Her head jerked up and she looked frantically around.

“What’s this?” Scott asked, kneeling down on the tundra to point out a deep impression made in the soft, spongy grass.

Lanni crouched down and examined the large footprint. “I think a bear recently crossed here,” she said, making sure her voice was calm. “They’re probably all over this section of land, especially with so many berries getting ready to ripen.”

“A bear was here?” Susan asked.

“Yes, sweetheart, but you don’t need to worry. He isn’t here now.”

“You’re sure?”

“No,” Lanni said. “But I don’t see any bears, do you?”

Both children glanced around.

“Don’t worry,” Lanni said. “Their natural diet is about eighty percent vegetarian. Brown bears much prefer berries and roots to meat.”

“So one might kill us, but he probably wouldn’t eat us,” Scott suggested.

“I think we have enough wildflowers,” Susan said nervously, “don’t you?”

Scott nodded. “I think so, too.”

“We can go back to Hard Luck if you want,” Lanni said, sorry now that she’d mentioned the eating habits of bears. “We can have our picnic on my porch.”

“I want to,” Susan declared, and Scott nodded again.

Lanni gathered the wildflowers in her arms, and the three of them turned back toward town. Scott and Susan stayed close to her side.

“What’s that?” Scott asked suddenly, his voice cold with fear. He gestured across the tundra.

Lanni had to squint to make out the minuscule brown figure. Her heart thumped wildly. “It…looks like it might be a bear,” she whispered.

Charles couldn’t believe he’d actually invited Lanni to eat a meal he’d cooked himself. Who did he think he was—some gourmet chef? His expertise was limited to a small number of dishes, most of which went into a microwave. He was pretty handy with a camp stove, but he wasn’t going to impress Lanni if he poured their dinner out of a pouch.

It was either prepare the meal himself or take her to dinner at the Hard Luck Café. Charles was well aware that he had no culinary skills whatsoever. But serving his own limited fare was better than taking her to Ben’s. By morning, the entire population of Hard Luck would’ve heard about him and Lanni and would be speculating about their relationship.

He could see it now. If they went to the café, he wouldn’t have a moment’s peace with her tonight—or any other night. First Ben would be over to fill their water glasses. Then he’d hang around, sharing the latest gossip the way he always did.

When Ben left, one of the other patrons would pick up the conversation. Before Charles knew it, everyone in the diner would be asking them questions. And they’d all hurry home to spread the word….

More determined than ever to make dinner himself, Charles scanned his cupboards. He had a box of macaroni and cheese. He could whip that up and serve it with smoked salmon. For dessert there was always canned peaches. Or maybe dried fruit.

The freezer had several moose steaks left from last winter, but he didn’t know how Lanni felt about eating game.

After several minutes Charles slumped down on a kitchen chair. No wonder he was a bachelor. Macaroni and cheese just didn’t cut it—not for dinner with company.

He needed help. Tucking his pride in his back pocket, Charles hurried down to the Hard Luck Café. He found Ben writing out the day’s menu on a blackboard.

“It’s a little early for dinner, isn’t it?” Ben asked when he saw Charles reading over the specials.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Uh, how’s the Norwegian pot roast?”

“Excellent, if I do say so myself. I cook it in a Dutch oven with lots of garlic and bacon fat. Then I add a couple bay leaves and some ginger, and I make the gravy with plenty of sour cream.” He pressed his fingertips to his lips and made a loud smacking noise. “You haven’t tasted anything better this side of Fairbanks.”

Charles grinned. “What do you serve with it?”

“Mashed potatoes, green beans and a jellied salad.” Ben eyed him curiously. “Is there a reason for all these questions?”

“Yeah,” Charles said uncomfortably. “I don’t suppose you’d consider selling me a couple of those dinners as takeout.”

“Takeout? What’s the matter, have I got bad breath or something?”

Charles shook his head. “I’m having…a friend over for dinner.”

“Who?” Ben raised his eyebrows.

“None of your business.”

“I could make an intelligent guess. Obviously it’s someone you don’t want to bring here. Hmm, there’s got to be a reason for that.”

“Will you or will you not sell me two pot-roast dinners to go?” Charles demanded. Ben was as bad as Sawyer when it came to tramping all over his ego.

“I don’t suppose it’s Lanni Caldwell?” Ben asked.

“What if it is?”

“Then you got yourself two of the best Norwegian pot-roast dinners you’re ever going to taste, and at a bargain price to boot.”

Charles pulled out his wallet. “And you’ve got yourself a deal.” He set the cash on the counter. “I’ll be back in an hour to pick them up.”

“You want a little candlelight and romance to go with that?” Ben teased as he walked out the door.

Charles ignored him.

He was halfway back to the house when he ran into Sawyer.

“Have you seen Scott and Susan?”

“No.” Charles wondered at the urgency in his brother’s voice.

“What about Lanni?”

“Not since yesterday. Why?”

Sawyer frowned, rubbing his jaw with one hand. “Abbey just
told me the three of them went for a walk on the tundra. They were going to collect wildflowers for the wedding bouquet. I’d feel better if the dog was with them.”

“How long have they been gone?”

“Three hours. They were due back an hour ago. Something’s wrong. I can feel it in my gut.”

Charles stiffened, an unfamiliar fear gnawing at his composure. “Do you know which way they went?” he asked, trotting toward his truck.

“South, Abbey thinks.”

Within minutes the two men were out of Hard Luck, bumping and jolting over the tundra in Charles’s truck. Sawyer lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes and scanned the rolling landscape.

Nothing.

The tundra had already claimed one life in his family. An aunt had disappeared at age five without a trace. Neither man spoke, but Charles knew what Sawyer was thinking, because the same thoughts were crashing through his own mind.

Lanni with those two kids. Talk about the blind leading the blind!

Charles wasn’t a man who often prayed. But he did so now, seeking protection for three precious lives.

“There,” Sawyer shouted, pointing southwest. “It looks like Lanni’s carrying Susan piggyback.”

Although Charles couldn’t make out the figures yet, he steered in the direction Sawyer indicated. When he saw them, he murmured a silent prayer of thanksgiving.

Lanni and the kids stopped walking as soon as they saw the
truck. Susan slid off Lanni’s back, and they stood there waiting. The second Charles pulled to a stop Sawyer jumped out, and the children ran toward him.

When he crouched down, they scrambled into his arms.

“A bear came after us!” Scott cried, his voice trembling.

“Lanni saved us,” Susan sobbed, circling Sawyer’s neck with her arms and squeezing tightly.

Lanni stood no more than two feet from Charles. For an unguarded moment he simply absorbed the sight of her. Her hair was disheveled, her face red with perspiration and streaked with dirt. Nevertheless he was convinced he’d never seen anyone more beautiful.

“Are you all right?” he asked when he found his voice.

She nodded slowly. “We crossed paths with a bear.”

The hair rose on the back of Charles’s neck. “Were you hurt?” he asked frantically.

Lanni raised a shaking hand to her mouth. “Oh, God, I was so scared.”

Not caring that his brother was watching, Charles hauled her into his arms and hugged her as if he never intended to release her. She came without resistance, buried her face in his chest and wept.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “You’re safe now. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“At first the bear was a long ways away,” Scott was saying. “He was just a brown dot.”

“We could hardly see him,” Susan added.

“Then he started to run straight for us.”

“We ran, too,” Susan said, “as fast as we could.”

“Boy, can those bears run fast,” Scott said.

“Then I fell,” Susan cried, squeezing Sawyer’s neck even tighter.

“I thought she was gonna be dead meat, but Lanni stopped and helped her up. Then Lanni stood on top of a rock and waved her arms and told me and Susan to hide. Lanni shouted like crazy, and when the bear got close she sprayed him with pepper spray. At first it didn’t look like it was gonna work. We were afraid the bear was going to get Lanni, but he went away…and then Lanni started to shake real bad.”

“The pepper spray worked,” Susan said. “But if it hadn’t, Lanni’d be dead, and me and Scott next.”

“Oh, Lanni,” Charles groaned. Lanni would’ve sacrificed herself to save the children.

“The bear stood up, too, and he’s bigger’n a building!” Scott said.

“He was real, real big,” Susan put in.

Sawyer loaded Scott and Susan into the back of the pickup and climbed in after them. The three of them sat there while Charles assisted Lanni into the cab, then got in himself.

She leaned her head against his shoulder as if she no longer had the strength to hold it up. “Thank you for coming,” she whispered.

Emotion clogged his throat, and it was all he could do to keep from kissing her. To keep from thanking her for being alive.

He brushed the hair from her cheek, and she placed her hand over his fingers. At her touch, he shuddered with emotion.

“Lanni.”

She lifted her head from his shoulder. He didn’t know what
to say—how to say what was in his heart. Raising her hand to his lips, he planted tender, desperate kisses there.

He struggled for words. “Dear God, Lanni, you could’ve been killed.”

“I know…I know.”

Pulling her to him, he searched blindly for her lips. With his kiss he told her what he couldn’t communicate in any other way. They kissed with the urgency of two people who recognize how close they’ve come to losing each other, an urgency mingled with fear. They kissed until the tremors of apprehension were replaced with tremors of passion and need.

“I don’t know why we aren’t leaving,” Sawyer said to the kids. They were still waiting for Charles to switch on the ignition.

Scott got to his feet and clumped across the bed of the truck to the small window in back of the cab.

“I do,” the boy muttered. “Uncle Charles is kissing Lanni.”

“Has everyone around here gone crazy?” Charles asked as he walked into the Hard Luck Café two mornings later.

“I guess you’re talking about the wedding,” Ben commented, reaching automatically for the coffeepot. He filled a cup for Charles and one for himself.

“Is there anything else?” Charles grumbled under his breath, taking a seat at the counter. He’d never seen anything like it. The entire town was being spruced up for the event. Folks were mowing lawns and cleaning out flower beds. You’d think the president was stopping by for a visit.

The school gymnasium, which was generally used for town meetings and the get-together at Christmas, had never been more elaborately decorated. Even the basketball hoop was filled with silk flowers. He’d like to know what Larry Bird would say if he ever laid eyes on that!

Since Charles was standing up as best man for his brother,
he’d been informed that he’d need to rent a tuxedo. Tuxedos weren’t the only wedding paraphernalia that couldn’t be obtained in Hard Luck. Sawyer had kept his pilots busy for two days making runs to Fairbanks and beyond, collecting everything from tuxes to table napkins. The last he heard, Duke Porter had been sent on a wild-goose chase after a silver punch bowl. Charles wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t heard it with his own ears.

“Are you baking the wedding cake?” he asked Ben.

“Not me,” the café-owner said, raising both hands as if he wouldn’t touch that task with a ten-foot pole. “I’ve got enough on my mind worrying about the rehearsal dinner and the hors d’oeuvres for the reception.”

“Tell me,” Charles said, shaking his head, “just where does my brother intend to put everyone? Abbey’s parents arrive tomorrow, which is fine. Sawyer’s putting them up in his house, and he’s moving in with me. But there’s Abbey’s best friend and her husband, plus other family.”

Charles wasn’t keen on the idea of sharing his home with his brother, even if it
was
only for one night. Sawyer was an emotional wreck. The closer the wedding, the worse Sawyer got. Charles feared his brother would disintegrate into a hopeless idiot before noon tomorrow. He wasn’t far from it now.

“You think that’s bad,” Ben said, smiling ironically. “Abbey’s got every woman in town rolling these tiny scrolls and tying them with satin ribbons. Darned if I know what she intends to do with them.”

Charles merely nodded. “I have no idea,” he muttered.

“Thank goodness
you’re
levelheaded enough not to be gettin’ married.”

Charles’s eyes avoided Ben’s. He cleared his throat and glanced over his shoulder to be sure they were alone. “Actually that’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

Ben straightened. “Don’t tell me you’re next? You’ve gone and fallen in love with Lanni, haven’t you?”

“No!” Charles snapped. “Of course not.” But then, what did he know? If Sawyer’s state of mind was any indication, then Charles would have to compare love with a bad case of the flu.

“You’re protesting just a bit too loud for me to believe you,” Ben said. He walked around the counter and slid onto the stool next to Charles’s.

Charles didn’t argue. He wished he could find a way to explain away what was happening between him and Lanni. “Have you ever met a woman and known right from that precise moment that—I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Like someone kicked you in the gut?”

“Yes,” Charles said, grasping at his friend’s definition. It was the best way he’d come across to describe how he’d felt the night he’d passed Lanni walking with Duke Porter. It didn’t matter that she was with another man. It didn’t matter that he and Lanni hadn’t said more than a handful of words to each other. It felt as if God had sent a fist straight through the bright cloudless sky. A fist that connected—hard—and practically knocked him off his feet.

“It happened to me once,” Ben said hoarsely, cradling his mug with both hands. He stared into the distance, frowning.

“You know what I’m talking about, then?” Charles prodded.

“I think so,” Ben muttered. “But it was a long time ago. Longer than I care to admit.” He shrugged, then took a sip of
his coffee. “I was a kid, still wet behind the ears. I’d had a little college and kicked around for a while. Then I enlisted and when I finished boot camp, I was in San Francisco waiting for my orders to go to Vietnam.

“I met Marilyn at Golden Gate Park. She had long blond hair and was so damned pretty I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was going into her sophomore year in college. We had six weeks together.”

“You mean before you were shipped out?” Charles asked.

“Yeah. She didn’t want me to go, like I had a choice about it. Marilyn was against the war. But what college kid wasn’t? She seemed to believe that if I really loved her, I’d stay with her. We argued about it. I said some things I regretted later. I’d like to think she regretted what she said to me, too, but I have no way of knowing.”

“What happened after you left?”

“Nothing. She was the one in the wrong, I figured. It made me mad she’d been so narrow-minded. What about honor and duty? Apparently they meant nothing to her. What kind of man did she think I was, asking me to turn my back on a commitment I made to my country? The way I saw it, we had nothing in common.”

“So you broke it off?”

“Yeah,” Ben answered, but he didn’t sound happy about it. “She wrote me a couple times early on, but I never even opened the letters. Just sent them back.”

“What about after the war? Did you see her?” If Ben still had strong feelings for her this many years later, surely he’d made some effort to patch things up.

“I was ready to swallow my pride the next year. When I was stateside again, I phoned her. That was when I learned she’d gotten married. According to her mother, she didn’t let any grass grow under her feet, either. Four months after I left, she was engaged. I don’t mind telling you, it was a shock. We might’ve had only six weeks together, but they were the best weeks of my life. I loved her then, and even now I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for her.”

Charles didn’t know what to say. It seemed to him that Marilyn must not have loved Ben the way he loved her, otherwise she wouldn’t have married someone else.

“You know, I really loved her,” Ben was saying. “Thinking about Marilyn was what got me through the craziness in ’Nam. I’ve got plenty of regrets in this life, but the biggest one is what happened between me and her. I was a fool.”

Charles had a few regrets of his own.

“We were both too young, too idealistic in our different ways,” Ben continued. “I’ve paid for that.”

Once more Charles felt at a loss. He was surprised and saddened by Ben’s story. Although he considered Ben a good friend, the older man rarely spoke of his past.

“Are you offering me any advice?” Charles asked.

Ben pondered a moment. “For one thing you gotta trust your feelings.”

“My feelings?” He hardly knew what his feelings
were.
As for trusting them…

“Yeah. You’ve met Lanni, and you like her and she likes you. That’s great. It doesn’t mean you have to leap off the nearest bridge—or into marriage.”

Charles thought about Sawyer. Less than a month after meeting Abbey, his brother was taking on a wife and two children. If that didn’t constitute a major life change, Charles didn’t know what did.

“Tell you the truth, I’m surprised at you,” Ben said candidly.

“You mean because I made such a fuss about Sawyer and Christian bringing women to Hard Luck?”

“No.” Ben’s voice was thoughtful. “Until now, I’d always kind of figured the two of us were alike. Cast from the same mold, two peas in a pod, that sort of thing.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re pretty stubborn.”

“True.” Charles couldn’t deny it.

“And a bit of a loner.”

Charles nodded.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is, I never expected a woman to affect you like this.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Charles insisted. All he was doing was trying to sort out his thoughts—and emotions.

Ben swallowed the rest of his coffee and slid off the stool. “You asked for my advice, so I’ll give it to you. Quit analyzing your feelings to death. Like I said, you gotta trust ’em. No need to make any decisions right now. Nothing has to change this minute. Just enjoy being with her.”

“I do,” Charles mumbled. Too much. That was part of his problem. Soon he’d be back in the field, doing what he loved best. Surveying. He’d always thought of those months alone as necessary. It had always seemed to him that was when his soul caught up with his body. But for the first time, he wasn’t looking
forward to the solitude he normally craved. He wanted Lanni with him.

Worst of all, when he left for the field, Lanni would be here in Hard Luck with a bunch of love-starved bush pilots eager for her attention. Eager to have him out of the picture. And before long, Bill Landgrin and his pipeline crew would be making excuses to visit town.

Charles gritted his teeth. He didn’t want Lanni with any other man. He wanted her with
him.

“Abbey!” Sawyer burst into the library. “I forgot the mints.” He announced this as if the world were about to end.

Abbey looked up from the stack of books she was replacing on the shelves and blinked. “The mints?”

“You asked me to have John pick them up this afternoon, but I forgot.”

“Oh, the mints. Don’t worry about it. You had more than enough on your mind. Just remember to have someone pick up my parents in Fairbanks tomorrow afternoon.”

“Tomorrow,” he repeated. “I have the time on my schedule at the office. Right?”

“Right.” Abbey had given Sawyer the information a week earlier. “What about your mother and Robert?” Robert was Sawyer’s stepfather.

“She’s coming with Christian the morning of the wedding. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Robert won’t be with her. With his broken leg, he’s finding it too hard to travel. He phoned his regrets.”

“I’ll meet him later, I guess,” Abbey said.

Sawyer slowly lowered himself into a chair. The panicked expression on his face said that keeping track of everyone’s comings and goings had become more than he could manage. “I’ve never looked forward to getting something over with this much.”

Abbey shrugged. “You’re the one who insisted on putting together a wedding in two weeks’ time!”

“Don’t remind me. I have no one to blame but myself.”

Abbey was about to put an encyclopedia back on the shelf when Sawyer reached out and grabbed her around the waist.

She let out a small cry of surprise as he pulled her onto his lap. His arms brought her close.

“Why didn’t you just suggest we elope and be done with it?” he chided. “I’ve never gone through this before, and like a fool, I thought organizing a wedding was no big deal. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a wreck.”

“I’ve noticed,” she said seriously, resting her hands on his shoulders, “but I agreed with you that a formal wedding was a good idea.” She paused. “For me, for my children and parents, it’s a symbol of our love. Our marriage. It also marks the beginning of our new life. I happen to think symbols and ceremonies are important.” She dropped a kiss on his forehead. “I love you all the more for insisting on it.”

“I swear I’m going crazy.”

“It’ll all be over in two days,” she told him.

“I wish it was over now.”

“Patience, my love.”

He stroked her cheek with his callused palm. “I had no idea waiting to make love to you would be this difficult,” he said in a husky murmur.

The gentleness of his touch and the agony in his words pierced Abbey’s heart. She closed her eyes and buried her face in his shoulder. It was at her request that they’d decided to wait until their wedding night. And it moved her deeply that Sawyer had agreed. Emotion filled her chest, making it difficult to breathe.

“I love you, Sawyer O’Halloran,” she said after a moment.

“Good thing you do, because I’d hate to think I was putting on a cummerbund for nothing.”

Abbey giggled and kissed him with a thoroughness that left them both dizzy.

“I have a feeling,” Sawyer said, pausing to clear his throat, “that you’re going to be worth the wait.”

The new secretary still hadn’t arrived, so Lanni volunteered to answer the phones for Sawyer when Abbey’s parents got in early Friday afternoon. Sawyer introduced her to Wayne and Marie Murray, and Lanni liked the middle-aged couple immediately.

“Entertain your guests,” she urged Sawyer, “and don’t worry about anything here. I can take care of the phones.”

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” He looked apprehensive, as if he might be imposing. “You’ve been helping out almost every day this week.”

“I’m positive. In fact I appreciate the break. I spent the morning cleaning out my grandmother’s place, and it’s tedious work.”

Sawyer hesitated, glancing over his shoulder to check that he wasn’t keeping his future in-laws waiting. Scott and Susan were busy introducing them around.

“Speaking of your grandmother,” he began, “I don’t suppose you’ve mentioned her to Charles yet, have you?”

“No.” The answer was clipped. She avoided his gaze.

“I just wondered…”

“I thought you might have told him.”

“No, I figured you’d want to do it.”

She hadn’t told Charles because she was afraid of what would happen once he learned she was related to Catherine Fletcher. And the longer she avoided the issue, the more difficult it was to tell him. She almost wished Sawyer
had
said something.

“You’ll tell him?” Sawyer asked.

She nodded.

“When?”

“Soon,” she promised. After the wedding, when life in Hard Luck had returned to normal. She hadn’t purposely deceived him. Not any more than Sawyer had, or anyone else who knew her reason for being in Hard Luck.

“Good,” the groom-to-be said decisively, then disappeared out the door.

Sawyer’s desk was in a state of chaos. She was doing her best to straighten his papers, schedules and messages when the office door opened and Charles stepped inside. He stopped abruptly the instant he saw her.

Lanni stood up, her heartbeat thundering in her ears.