That's Our Baby!. Pamela Browning
interrupted. She’d already lowered her guard. She saw no point in lying and, moreover, she thought Sam might as well know how things stood. “My lease on the Seattle house expired, and coming to Silverthorne gave me a place to stay over the summer. I’d already had the idea of opening the lodge to the public. I’m counting on this place to provide me with an income next year and I’m going to need every penny of it.”
After a long silence Sam cleared his throat and said slowly, “I advised Doug not to invest in that avocado farm near San Diego. He wouldn’t listen.”
Kerry managed a shrug. “Both of us trusted friends who painted a too-bright picture of how well it would pay off. By the time we pulled out of the venture, our money was gone.”
“I thought you’d managed to save some before he died.”
“We had other expenses,” Kerry said, thinking of the pricey fertility workup that she and Doug had undergone when she didn’t get pregnant on schedule as they had hoped and planned. All their remaining funds after the avocado-farm disaster had gone to pay the clinic.
She drew a deep breath. “Anyway, Doug and I thought we’d have time to rebuild a nest egg, but then he died. I paid off our debts with most of the insurance money, and there’s not much left over. Silverthorne Lodge is one of the few assets I have left. Either I make it pay or I sell it.”
“Opening it to tourists is another gamble,” Sam pointed out.
Kerry’s chin shot up. “I’ll make it work. I will!”
Sam grinned. “I’m not saying you won’t. But you can’t stay here now. It’s too late in the year to be up here in the wilderness.”
“I still have to strip the wax from the floors in the dining room, I wanted to put the finishing touches on the upstairs bedrooms so there won’t be anything to do but make the beds when I come back in June, and—”
“You’re leaving when I do. I thought I made it clear that you can’t count on Bert. How much work can you get done with a broken finger anyway?”
“A lot,” Kerry said hotly. As she spoke her finger began to throb again. “Anyway, I thought you said the Cessna’s not flyable.”
“I can fix it.”
“If you think I’m flying out of here in a plane that’s missing a strut and a float, you’ve got another think coming.”
“Is that so?” Sam leveled his fork at her. “Well, let me tell you this. I don’t want to be responsible for what happens to you if Bert doesn’t show up.”
“You could talk to him when you get to Anchorage, remind him to stop for me.”
“And what if the weather is so bad he can’t make it for weeks? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not any such thing!” Kerry shoved back from the table and winced when her finger hit the edge. She gripped her smarting finger and glared at him. “Why repair the plane at all? Someone’s got to come looking for you, don’t they? When you don’t show up back in Anchorage on time?”
Sam stood abruptly and stalked to the window. He stared out at the blackness beyond the pane; it rattled with the force of heavy gusts. Windblown snowdrifts furled around the tree trunks outside, and the view of the river was obscured by eddying snow.
“I didn’t file a flight plan, Kerry. Nobody knows that I left Vic’s camp and came here.”
Kerry froze. “And you think I do dumb things? Listen, Sam, everyone knows you’re supposed to file flight plans. Including you.” She paused as their situation sank in. “You’re telling me that no one is going to be looking for you. They’ll think you’re still at the camp.”
“For a while, at least. And the Cessna’s ELT isn’t working. Its battery is dead.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. “Aren’t ELTs supposed to be checked every so often to make sure they’re in operating condition?”
“Every two years. Vic keeps the plane at his camp and evidently hasn’t paid much attention to safety since he’s been going round and round with this illness of his. I didn’t know that when I agreed to fly the plane to Anchorage for him.”
“How about the radio?”
“It’s not much use with the mountains blocking transmission. I’ll try it again tomorrow.”
Kerry didn’t think Sam sounded too hopeful. “Well,” she said lamely, “maybe the radio’s signal will at least reach Athinopa. They could relay the message to the rescue people.”
Sam was silent. “Another thing we don’t know is what this weather will do,” he said after a time, his words carefully measured. “If the river freezes, no float plane will be able to get in or out of here until after the ice breaks up in the summer. The same thing goes for a boat.”
“The only way in and out of this place in the winter is by dogsled or helicopter, and those possibilities are closed to us until Search-and-Rescue gets on the case, right?”
“Right. As soon as the weather clears, I’ll start repairing the plane. It’s our best hope.”
“How much do you have to do to it?”
“I told you. Repair the strut, attach the float.”
“That sounds like more than you can do with two-inch duct tape.”
“Doug kept a good set of tools in the shed.”
“They’re still there, but repairing a strut and attaching a float sounds like a serious job.”
Sam turned back toward her, his gaze level. She thought she detected a glint of worry behind his eyes.
“The thing I’m most concerned about is the weather. There are ice crystals already forming along the riverbank. If the river freezes solid before we get airborne, we’re stuck here. Maybe for a long time.”
Kerry felt a sharp stab of foreboding. “How long does it usually take for the river to freeze?”
His short laugh was entirely without humor. He gestured with a curt nod at the blustery scene on the other side of the window, and his expression was grim.
“Depends. I’d say there’s a good possibility that within a day or so we’ll be able to stroll all the way to Anchorage right down the middle of the river, wouldn’t you?”
CHAPTER TWO
Sam hated the way Kerry’s face fell when he said that. She looked like a kid who’d just had her candy yanked away by a big, bad playground bully.
“Couldn’t you put skis on the plane? Take off from the river ice?”
“I don’t have skis for this plane. That was another of Vic’s oversights.”
“So what happens if we have to stay here?” She remained unruffled, but he sensed an underlying tension, as if she were hanging onto what he might say as a lifeline out of this situation. One part of him, the Sam he wanted to be, longed to touch her shoulder and tell her that everything was going to be all right. The other part of him, the Sam he was, knew that he didn’t dare touch her. And so he found a way to put space between them.
“Well now,” he said, moving away so that he could no longer see the silvery motes in her golden eyes, “I’d say we’d get to know each other a whole lot better than we do.” It was a statement meant to raise the barriers between them. And it worked.
“That,” she replied in a tone heavily infused with irony, “does not reassure me.”
She didn’t laugh, but he wished she had. He’d begun to sense that Kerry was different from the way she’d been in the past—more sober, more serious. Maybe it was because of her widowhood, maybe because of financial problems, maybe because of the