Page 1 of I'll Be There
CHAPTER ONE
Conner Young needed just one perfect weekend.
One perfect weekend free of drama. No grizzly maulings, no plane crashes, no firestorms, no criminal accusations, and he didn’t think it was too much to ask God for a little sunshine either.
After all, a guy only got married once.
And after everything his fiancée, Liza Beaumont, had gone through this year, she deserved perfect. A crowd of her friends and family showing up to celebrate with her, with them.
If it were up to him, he’d make sure she’d get it.
He flipped his wipers on high, the deluge just short of a biblical flood as it obscured the road. Around him, fog had descended, cutting his vision dangerously tight. He tapped his brakes, took the truck off cruise.
The brake lights of the semi ahead of him cut through the haze of the road, the driver clearly thinking the same thing.
Perfect. Add a few more hours to this trip. Conner’s hand tightened on the steering wheel as he turned the defrost on high. Minnesota—just when you thought you’d have a sunny day, the weather turned on you. Worse, the onslaught of rain created the perfect storm for a hydroplane, and Conner saw in his mind’s eye a bumper-car collision from the mess of cars traveling north for the long Memorial Day weekend.
Good thing Liza had booked their cabins for their wedding weekend at the Evergreen Cabins and Outfitters six months ago.
He would have preferred an elopement to Hawaii or Cancún. Had suggested the getaway too many times over the past few months as Liza changed from one reception venue to the next, trying to accommodate her swelling guest list.
Liza had friends from one end of the country to the other.
His side of the aisle consisted of the three groomsmen sitting in the truck with him, currently grousing about the early morning and woeful lack of breakfast.
“Seriously, Conner, just swing through a McDonald’s,” Jed Ransom said, sitting in the passenger seat. “I’m dyin’ here.”
Conner shot a look in the rearview mirror, where Reuben Marshall sat, arms folded, staring fixedly out at the horizon. Beside him, Pete Brooks was sound asleep, forehead pressed against his window. He wore his blond hair pulled back with a bandanna, a copper-gold grizzle on his chin. Reuben, at least, had showered and trimmed his dark beard, trying to be presentable.
Maybe he should have let the guys sleep longer this morning instead of rousing them before the gray hues of morning collapsed the night. Or maybe cut the trip from Montana into three sections instead of trying to make it in less than forty-eight hours.
“Why didn’t you pick up a donut at the gas station like Pete and Rube?” Conner said, switching into the slow lane, falling in behind the semi.
“I would have if I knew we were on war rations.”
“I can’t stop, Jed. I’m already a day late, thanks to your OCD equipment check.” Conner glanced at Jed, saw his mouth tighten.
“Really? After last summer, you think I’m being irrational?”
“We caught them, Jed. No one is trying to kill us anymore—”
“Except for every fire we jump into this summer.”
Right. Sure, they’d lived through last summer’s sabotage of their chutes, arson, and a deliberate crash of their jump plane, but that didn’t mean that some natural tragedy didn’t wait to ambush them.
Every time they leaped from the open door of their Twin Otter, a hundred-pound jump pack strapped to their back, arrowing down into the mouth of the dragon, they risked coming home in a body bag.
The death of Jock Burns and his crew two summers ago gave that truth legs. And put a fist in Conner’s chest.
Deep down inside, his gut said he shouldn’t be dragging a wife into that world.
Liza hadn’t said it in so many words, but the idea of spending the summer with him in his tiny fifth wheel, parked near the Ember Fire Base in western Montana, waiting for him to come home from his fire deployments...waiting, praying, and watching the mountains flame around her...
Yeah, neither one of them had wanted to dig into what that might look like for a woman who’d already lived through one life-threatening, harrowing event.
Frankly, he’d rather focus on simply holding onto Liza. Making sure her bigYesto his proposal hadn’t been a side effect of the pain pills, her frustration at her recuperation, and the inspiration of the view he’d given her of a glorious Glacier Mountain morning when he’d proposed.
Most of all, the closer the date crept, the more his brain couldn’t seem to sway from the honeymoon.
