He interrupted her by pulling her to her feet and crushing her in his arms. “This is absolutely wonderful! I can hardly believe it. I promise you I’ll do everything I can to make you happy. I love you.”
She closed her eyes and held on to him. In a way, it was like he’d finally come home.
* * *
AFTER LAYING AWAKE for what seemed like hours, Alex got up quietly the next morning. He’d been rising with the sun and it felt unnatural to lie there when he could see daylight filtering through the curtains.
Besides, there was a lot on his mind.
Mentally he made a list. Call Nate. Make sure he still had a job on the Blunt Falls police force. Get checked out by the doctor.
He looked down at Jessica’s slumbering face and added the most important thing of all: win back his wife before his baby was born.
She was so beautiful with her hair spilling over her pillow like a billowing russet-colored cloud, her lashes sweeping her cheeks, her peachy lips soft and yielding. No wonder she glowed. She was having a baby, his baby, after eight years of trying. He knew what it meant to her, he knew what it meant to him. And the urge to protect her at all costs surged through his body.
He had to pull himself together. Just as he’d planned for and worked toward walking out of the mountains every single day of his exile, he now had to put that behind him and work at moving forward in his marriage, in his job, in his life. What’s done was done. He couldn’t erase the past, but he could learn from it.
His reflection in the mirror wasn’t particularly inspiring. The healed gashes across his cheek and forehead caused by the Cessna’s broken windshield hadn’t healed perfectly. But inside he knew he was stronger and more focused than he’d ever been and it was time to put all that energy to work.
The first thing he did was call Nate in Arizona. Again. The phone switched immediately to message and he wasn’t sure if there was any point in leaving one. Nate had a habit of disappearing into the wild with his horse and a dog or two for days on end, fishing and camping, no phone, no interruptions.
On the other hand, Alex knew his best friend would appreciate knowing he was back from the dead, so he left a message. Then he went downstairs to start a pot of coffee for Jessica, something he’d dreamed about doing over and over again, only this time it was for real. He found the bag of coffee beans where they’d always been, but they were labeled as decaf, he supposed in deference to her pregnancy. Still, the freshly ground beans smelled like heaven on earth and even the familiar perking sounds were like music. He didn’t like to drink the stuff, but he used to make her a cup and carry it upstairs to her bed every morning when they were first married. He wasn’t sure when that had stopped.
For himself, he dared hope he might find one of his favorite drinks in the back of the fridge where he left it months ago. Unless Jessica had thrown it out, of course. He opened the refrigerator quickly, wondering how long it would be before things like electricity would stop amazing him, dug behind a giant jar of pickles and came up with an icy bottle of Vita-Drink.
Happy days. It tasted great.
A light rapping on the glass kitchen door finally got through to him. Only friends and family came around the back like this and he braced himself for another homecoming as he went to see who it was.
He opened the door when he saw his partner on the police force, Detective Dylan Hobart. At the sight of Alex, Dylan’s rugged face split into a giant grin. He wasn’t wearing his usual jeans and T-shirt covered with an old military-looking vest adorned with patches and badges he’d earned as a former marine. Instead he wore a tight T-shirt and a leather jacket that fit him like a glove. He might be approaching forty-five, but he wasn’t going without a struggle.
“If you aren’t a sight for sore eyes,” Dylan cried as he wrapped Alex in a one-armed bear hug. Then he pushed him away and stared at his face. “Holy cow, what happened to you? Damn, man, you’ve lost weight!”
Alex laughed. “You try eating nothing but fish for three months straight and see if you maintain all that mass.” Dylan lived and breathed to lift weights and work out and he had the physique to prove it.
Dylan now produced the morning newspaper from where he’d apparently folded it into his rear pocket. “You’re all over the place, man,” he said, tapping the newsprint where Alex glimpsed a picture of himself and Jessica standing on the front lawn. He’d still had the beard when the picture was taken though he’d shaved it off later last night. He touched his smooth jaw and felt a little naked.
“I tried calling,” Dylan said, “and then I thought, what the hell, I’m going over there and see that loser with my own eyes. I can’t believe you walked out of those mountains. Are you really okay?”
Alex assured him he was fine. But Dylan’s next question was more difficult to answer.
“What happened? I mean, I imagine you are sick to death of being asked this question, but did you drive your plane into a mountain or something? The article didn’t really say.”
“I made some coffee for Jess,” Alex said, pouring his partner a mug. “Warning—it’s decaf.” They sat opposite each other at the counter. Alex drank the last of his water, and sighed. “I’m not sure what happened,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“A lot went down all at once. The oil leaked out of the engine somehow and then the engine froze and I’d been flying all over hell and breakfast trying to skirt a weather front. I landed on a lake and the plane sank. I was hurt, and so that confused the issue, too. Pretty much end of story.”
“Pretty much beginning of story you mean,” Dylan said with a knowing look in his light blue eyes.
“Whatever, the point is I survived.”
“Have you spoken with the FAA about it? Given what happened to your buddies in Shatterhorn, we had our share of speculation around here after you went missing. There were some who thought your plane was rigged to crash. It seems kind of far-fetched to me, though.”
“I just don’t know,” Alex said. “I made a few calls last night. Someone named Struthers from the FBI is coming today. I’ll listen to what he has to say.”
“Well,” Dylan added, “I guess the important thing is you’re home.”
“No kidding,” Alex said with feeling. “Especially now. I found out last night that Jess is going to have a baby.”
Dylan’s lips curled into a smile. “That’s great news. Are you and she...well, I know things were rocky—”
“We’re going to work things out,” Alex said with no equivocation in his voice. He would do what he had to do. He would figure out how to show Jessica she was the center of his universe.
“That’s great. You’re going to be a daddy! That must be why she posted that comment on Facebook. I wondered. Wow, man, she must be so excited.”
“We both are,” Alex said, then asked, “What comment?” Hadn’t she mentioned something about Facebook the night before?
“She didn’t tell you?” He took out his phone and spent a minute getting to the site he wanted. “This is her page, but the comment is gone.”
“What did it say?” Alex asked.
“No big deal. Just asked you to contact her if you could.”
“What?”
“It just said that if you were reading what she’d written, would you contact her because there was something important you needed to know. It must have been the baby, don’t you think?”
Alex nodded as he adjusted his expression to hide how shocked he was by this revelation. Was that what she’d meant when she told him that she’d thought he was something worse than dead? That he was what—hiding?