Kitabı oku: «Treasure Creek Dad»
Jake met Casey’s gaze.
He gave a helpless gesture. He didn’t know how to make his daughter brave enough to cross the bridge. And wasn’t sure if he should force her to.
“How about this,” Casey said to Veronica. “You hold my hand and your dad’s hand while we all cross together.”
Casey held out her free hand to Jake. He slid his palm over hers, felt the strength in her fingers as she guided his hand to cover his daughter’s other hand. Slowly, Veronica released the rope and gripped his hand. With Casey in the lead, they walked single file across the gently rocking bridge. When they reached the other side, Jake caught Casey’s hand as she moved past him. Gratitude and affection filled his heart. “Thank you.”
Alaskan Bride Rush: Women are flocking to the Land of the Midnight Sun with marriage on their minds
Treasure Creek Dad—Terri Reed
August 2010
TERRI REED
At an early age Terri Reed discovered the wonderful world of fiction and declared she would one day write a book. Now she is fulfilling that dream and enjoys writing for Steeple Hill. Her second book, A Sheltering Love, was a 2006 RITA® Award Finalist and a 2005 National Readers’ Choice Award Finalist. Her book Strictly Confidential, book five of the Faith at the Crossroads continuity series, took third place in the 2007 American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year Award, and Her Christmas Protector took third place in 2008. She is an active member of both Romance Writers of America and American Christian Fiction Writers. She resides in the Pacific Northwest with her college-sweetheart husband, two wonderful children and an array of critters. When not writing, she enjoys spending time with her family and friends, gardening and playing with her dogs.
You can write to Terri at P.O. Box 19555 Portland, OR 97280. Visit her on the Web at www.loveinspiredauthors.com, leave comments on her blog at www.ladiesofsuspense.blogspot.com or e-mail her at terrireed@sterling.net.
Treasure Creek Dad
Terri Reed
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
—Philippians 1:6
Thank you to my fellow Alaskan Bride Rush authors Jill, Janet, Debra, Brenda and Linda.
It’s been a pleasure working with you.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
Letter to Reader
Questions for Discussion
Chapter One
“Tell me you’ve found him.” Jake Rodgers planted his palms on the Treasure Creek, Alaska, police chief’s desk and tried to keep the guilt and worry churning in his gut from spilling out. His friend Tucker Lawson was missing. And Jake should have done something to stop it.
Police Chief Reed Truscott’s haggard expression bore concern and patience. “Jake, you’d be the first to know if we had. We’ve got search-and-rescue out. There just doesn’t seem to be any trace of him.”
Jake pushed away from the desk. Aggravation and distress burned in his chest. He should have been a better friend to Tucker during his father’s passing. But Jake had been dealing with his own issues, and hadn’t taken the time to console his friend or talk him out of the crazy idea of renting a plane and flying it across Alaska in search of solitude at some remote cabin.
Regret lay heavy on Jake’s shoulders. He ran a hand through his hair, his short nails scraping along his scalp. “How can a plane just disappear? We’re not in the Bermuda Triangle. This is Alaska, for crying out loud. And it isn’t even snowing.”
“My best guess is he got disoriented in the thunderstorm we had just after he left, and he headed in the wrong direction.” Reed rubbed his jaw. “Thanks to your funding, we’ve expanded the search area. Even as we speak, Gage Parker is leading another search. All we can do now is wait.”
“No, what we can do is pray,” Jake countered, with a meaningful look at Reed, another friend he should have done better by.
Reed’s mouth tipped upward in a rueful grimace. “Right. Good luck with that.”
This was old ground—one Jake and Reed had covered before. Jake didn’t understand Reed’s ambivalence toward faith. For Jake, relying on his belief and trusting in God were the only things that had given him strength to survive the tumultuous years of his marriage, subsequent bitter divorce, and then later, struggling to balance his career and single parenthood after his ex-wife’s death.
Deftly changing the subject, Reed said, “So your dad is finally giving you both reins of the family oil rigs?”
Jake sighed with a mixture of acceptance and anticipation. He’d left home vowing not to be like his parents, and now here he was hoping to carve out a life similar to theirs. “Looks like I’m going to be an oilman after all. He left me in charge of the whole shebang.”
“How’s Veronica taking the move?”
Reed’s question layered more tension on Jake’s already tightly strung shoulder muscles. “She’s angry. We can barely have a civil conversation.”
Reed shrugged. “She’s twelve. And you moved her away from all her friends in Chicago—the only place she’s ever known—to Podunk little Treasure Creek, which doesn’t seem all that Podunk to you, because it was the only thing you knew growing up.”
Of course he was right, but knowing that didn’t help. “Mom tells me Veronica is acting like a typical preteen, but I don’t know.”
“She is. She’ll adjust.”
“Hopefully sooner, rather than later.” Jake pinched the bridge of his nose. “She’s so addicted to her electronics, she hardly even steps outside.”
“Why don’t you take Veronica on a wilderness tour, using Amy’s company?”
Amy James, one of Treasure Creek’s more prominent citizens, owned and operated a company called Alaska’s Treasures tour company. Hmm. A guided wilderness tour. The idea had merit.
Get Veronica out into the great outdoors, away from the television and the electronic gadgets she so loved. Some physical activity they could do together. Some father-daughter time away from all the distractions might be just the ticket to getting her to adjust to her new surroundings.
He’d have to confiscate her magazine stash. She’d fight him on it. Loudly. She’d start out hating the adventure, but maybe, by the end, she’d appreciate nature and come to accept their move. And he really wanted her to fall in love with the beauty and majesty of Alaska. It had taken him moving away to realize the specialness of this part of the world.
“Do you think Amy would be willing to take us out?” Jake asked, knowing that Reed and Amy had a relationship of sorts. He wasn’t sure of the particulars, but he knew Reed had proposed to the widow and was turned down.
Reed’s brows drew together. “Actually, I think you’d do better to ask for Casey Donner.”
“Why does that name ring a bell?”
“The Donner twins,” Reed prompted.
“Oh, yeah. I remember them.” Jake could picture the two girls, both with dark, curly hair, big blue eyes. One had been the prom queen while the other a tomboy. Each pretty in different ways.
Not that he’d ever dwelled on the fact. He’d been so set on leaving Treasure Creek that forming any ties, even with a pretty girl, was not something he allowed. He left town with a clear conscience. No broken hearts to come haunting him.
“I assume Casey is the tomboy?”
Reed grinned. “Yes. And she’s a great gal. She’d be a good influence on Veronica. Very capable and levelheaded, just like her uncle Patrick. He taught that girl everything there is to know about nature before he passed.”
Patrick Donner had been an icon in Treasure Creek when Jake was in high school. The original mountain man, tamed by two little girls. Jake remembered how scandalized the folks in town had been that Patrick would be caring for the orphaned twins when he spent so much time in the woods. But he’d surprised them all by taking in the girls and raising them right.
If Reed vouched for Casey, then that was good enough for Jake.
“You’ve sold me,” Jake said, as he rose from the chair. “Thanks. And please, let me know the minute you hear anything about Tucker.” His gut churned with anxiety and guilt. “I can’t help but feel like something bad has happened to him.”
Reed’s jaw tightened. “We’re doing our best to find him.”
Contrition for questioning Reed’s dedication arced through Jake. He knew they were both concerned about their friend. Jake couldn’t shake the unease nipping at his mind. “I know. And I appreciate it.”
Jake left the police station and headed up Treasure Creek Lane, the main thoroughfare. The weather was unseasonably warm for August, enough so that merchants had set up a few sidewalk displays for the flood of tourists, mostly female, that had recently descended upon Treasure Creek.
It wasn’t the beauty of the scenery—all green trees, lush mountains with snowcapped peaks, and stunning vistas—or the quaint and rustic ambience of the town that had once thrived during the a booming Yukon gold rush of the late 1800s that had women flocking to this out-of-the-way Alaskan paradise. An article had appeared in some women’s magazine, proclaiming that Treasure Creek men were looking for brides.
Ha! The last thing Jake was looking for was a bride. He’d done the marriage thing. No interest in going down that road again. All he wanted was to focus on raising Veronica and helping her become a productive human being, and then he wanted to live a quiet life, running the oil business his great-grandfather had started back in 1911.
He frowned and tried to analyze why that thought left him feeling hollow inside.
As he made his way toward the log cabin–style Alaska’s Treasures office, he decided self-examination wasn’t such a good thing. Not if the discontent rising to the surface was any indication.
He had to stay focused on what was important and within his control. His daughter and her well-being. He sent up a silent prayer that Casey Donner would be the answer.
Casey Donner fidgeted with the pencil as her boss, Amy James, a stunning, red-haired woman with a smattering of freckles and bright blue eyes, gave out the tour assignments for the month. So far, everyone had a tour planned.
Everyone except Casey. No one wanted a female guide. Not even the few men who’d come to town, hoping to cash in on the invasion of women.
Ever since that article came out in Now Woman magazine, Casey’s work life had taken a nosedive. Women had swarmed Treasure Creek, hoping to hook one of the many eligible bachelors purported by the exposé to reside in town. Several of whom were part of the Alaska Treasures tour company’s staff.
It didn’t help that the article also stated that the company’s lone female guide was not a threat to the converging women, because everyone in town—meaning said bachelors—considered Casey Donner to be “one of the guys”.
Casey blew out an exasperated breath. So what if she was a tomboy, more comfortable in hiking boots and traipsing through the woods than wearing heels and throwing parties, like her twin sister, Amelia? The two were as different as night and day. If her sister were here, no one would claim she was “one of the guys.”
God had made Casey this way. Who was she, or anyone else for that matter, to question the Almighty’s decision?
Not that she talked with God much these days. An uncomfortable tinge of longing hit her. She mentally snuffed it out.
Over the past ten years she’d become comfortable with her life. She had a family in the tour company’s staff and a mentor and friend in Amy. So really, what more could she ask for?
The door to the conference room opened and the receptionist, Rachel Adams, poked her blond head inside.
Amy paused and smiled at Rachel. “Yes?”
“There’s a gentleman here asking about a tour.”
“Tell him I’ll be right out,” Amy answered.
“Actually, he wants to talk with Casey,” Rachel replied, with a note of suppressed mirth.
Casey snapped to attention, as every set of eyes in the room zeroed in on her. Heat crept up her neck. “Who is it?”
Rachel flashed a grin. “Jake Rodgers.”
Casey couldn’t have heard right. Jake Rodgers was here asking for her? Of course she knew of the Rodgers family. They had started one of the first oil-drilling operations in the Treasure Creek area, back in the early nineteen hundreds.
She’d never had more than a passing conversation with Jake. He’d been two years ahead of her in high school, a star athlete and salutatorian of his class. He’d left Treasure Creek right after graduation, with a scholarship to some fancy college. He’d returned recently to take over his family’s business, or so she’d inadvertently heard one day, while dining at Lizbet’s Diner. She made it a personal rule not to be privy to the town gossip, most of which was inaccurate anyway. On that particular day, she’d been intrigued to hear Jake’s name, but almost immediately caught herself and left the diner.
And now he was requesting to see Casey about a tour? Why her specifically? How did he even know she existed?
“May I?” Casey asked, nodding toward the door.
“By all means,” Amy replied, with a smile that was both approving and encouraging.
Hastily, Casey left the conference room and halted in the hallway. Taking a few deep breaths to calm the sudden nervous jitters battering her stomach, she strove for a professional and detached demeanor. This was business, not personal. The man wanted a tour.
She paused in the waiting room doorway, aware that Rachel was avidly watching from behind her reception desk. Trying to keep her reaction from showing, Casey couldn’t stop her heart from jumping a bit at the sight of Jake Rodgers.
He stood with his back to the door, staring out the large picture window that overlooked the main thoroughfare running the length of Treasure Creek. Tall, wide-shouldered and dressed impeccably in a navy business suit that attractively hugged his physique, he made Casey’s breath catch.
Forcing her immediate reaction back to neutral, she cleared her throat before speaking. “Hello?”
He pivoted, making a stunning picture. The contrast of him in his business suit and the mountains rising in majestic peaks over the old gold-rush town, as his backdrop, somehow seemed right, like he was a man made to conquer the world. He’d been a heartthrob in high school, but now…a heartbreaker for sure.
His face had matured and become impossibly more striking, his jaw firmer, his cheekbones more pronounced. His dark, wavy hair was still thick and…so tempting.
Casey fought the sudden desire to run her fingers through his hair. Deep lines crinkled at the corners of his obsidian-colored eyes when he offered her a smile that knocked the air from her lungs.
He stepped closer and held hand out his hand. “Jake Rodgers. Not sure you remember me, but we went to high school together.”
“I remember,” she murmured. That was an under-statement, if ever there was one. She hadn’t realized how much of an impression he’d left on her.
Slipping her hand into his, she tried not to let the little shivers dancing up her arm go to her head. His hand was warm and smooth, his fingers strong, as they curled around her own. Yet, to her surprise, his hands weren’t sissy hands. Though the short nails were clean, they weren’t buffed by some manicurist, like some of the city men who visited Treasure Creek.
Keep it professional, Donner.
She extracted her hand. “What can I do for you, Mr. Rodgers?”
“Please, call me Jake. Reed Truscott suggested I hire you to take my daughter and me on a wilderness tour.”
“Your daughter?” How had she missed that? Obviously, if she’d listened longer to the town gossips, she’d have known he had a child. “Your wife doesn’t wish to come along?”
“I’m a single parent.”
Her heart gave a squeeze of compassion, to think he was raising a daughter alone. She wondered about his marriage but was too polite to ask such an intimate question. But knowing he was single sent a little spark through her system. She wondered if he dated, or if being a single dad kept him unavailable.
Inwardly, she frowned at the direction her thoughts were taking. Since when had she decided she was ready to date again? Her heart was still smarting from her last attempt. She had no desire to go there again. She refocused her mind back to business. “How old is your daughter?”
“Twelve going on thirty,” he said, with a rueful shake of his head.
She smiled at that assessment. “Did Reed suggest me specifically?”
Jake’s dark eyes held her gaze. “Yes. He said you were one of the best, just like your uncle.”
The mention of her late uncle caused a sharp pang of grief that never seemed to go away to hit her just below the breastbone. Absently, she rubbed the spot. Her uncle had been one of the original minds behind Alaska Treasures. Unfortunately, he never got to see the fruit of his ideas.
He succumbed to pancreatic cancer when Casey and Amelia were high school seniors. By becoming a guide herself, Casey honored her beloved uncle’s memory.
“I’ll have to thank Reed,” Casey murmured, flattered by the recommendation. Yet, a wayward suspicion slithered through her mind. Had Amy set this up because Casey hadn’t had any tours booked? She did not want anyone’s pity.
“So, are you available?” Jake asked, his gaze searching her face. In more ways than she’d care to admit.
“What type of tour are you looking for?”
“Something to get my daughter out into nature, and hopefully give her a better appreciation for Alaska. She’s not too happy that I moved us here from Chicago.”
“Treasure Creek must seem like Nowheresville after the big city, but she’ll come around. Our little part of the world is pretty awesome.”
“But there’s no mall or cool coffee shops,” he stated with a shake of his head. Clearly, he’d heard that refrain from his daughter.
“The Java Joint has great coffee and cushy chairs for hanging out in. As for stores, well, there is The General Store. Carries a bit of everything.” She shrugged. “I’m not too hip on big cities myself, so I can’t really relate.”
“Spoken like a true Alaskan,” he said, with a grin.
“A transplanted Alaskan,” she said, returning his smile.
She’d been born in San Francisco, where she’d lived until her parents died in a car accident. At the tender age of six, Casey and her twin were brought to live in Alaska with their late father’s younger brother.
Casey had vague memories of her parents. The soft touch of her mother’s hand, the melodic lullabies she would sing at night, and the excitement of daddy coming through the door at the end of the day. But mostly, Casey remembered the whizzing cars outside her bedroom window and the salty air of the bay.
She needed to change the subject before the overpowering sense of nostalgia building in her chest took root. She walked over to one of the side tables near the window and picked up a brochure. She flipped it open and held it out to him. “We have day hikes, backpacking trips ranging from two days to a week, water tours down the river, horseback-riding trips—”
He held up his hand. “Probably the backpacking, because Veronica’s never ridden a horse and I don’t do boats.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “No sea legs, huh?”
“None whatsoever. I tried a cruise on Lake Michigan once. Not pretty,” he stated, with a rueful shake of his head.
Casey liked how willing he was to accept his limitations. Not many men would admit to any weakness. “Okay, that narrows it down. How many days?”
He considered a moment. “A week?”
She eyed him a little closer. He looked in good shape, but that didn’t mean he’d be up for the rigors of a week-long backpacking trip. “Just so you are aware, my trips are…” She searched for the right word. “Rustic at best. My tours are geared toward a true wilderness experience. We eat what we can carry, we fish when we hit the river and everyone helps set up and take down camp each day. We’re up at sunrise and on the move all day until dusk. It’s a pretty physical trip.”
Raising an eyebrow in challenge, he said, “I think Veronica and I can handle that.”
She shrugged, not quite sure he was correct. But…his money, his call.
“How soon would you like to go?”
“As soon as we can.”
“Okay. We need to have time for orientation, when we’ll go over the gear needed, safety tips. And I can answer any questions she or you might have. This meeting usually takes about an hour. Let’s look at the calendar,” she said, and moved to Rachel’s desk. Rachel handed her the appointment book.
Casey flipped open to the month of August. Today was Wednesday, the fourth. “How about this coming Monday? Then we could do an orientation Friday evening, which would give you time over the weekend to get the supplies you and your daughter will require.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Great. My parents are leaving on Sunday after church for a week-long cruise, so this will work out perfect.”
The door to the tour company blasted open, and a tall, shapely woman bustled in, along with the cloying scent of liberally applied perfume. She wore a tailored pantsuit beneath a faux-fur long coat, stylish pumps with little rosesetts on the pointed tips and a Coach hand bag slung over her shoulder. Clearly not a native to the area.
The woman paused a moment, as if assessing the situation, before gliding across the reception room and halting beside Casey. Dark brown hair, styled attractively around her oval face, made her sultry brown eyes stand out. Or maybe it was the curiosity that subtly shifted in her gaze, as she looked from Casey to Jake and back again.
Casey blinked, hardly believing what she was seeing. “Amelia?”
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