Match Made In Paradise

by Barbara Dunlop

  “That would be best,” Mia added.

  Brodie’s expression didn’t change. “Is this a joke?”

  Mia and Raven glanced at each other.

  “No,” Raven said.

  “Because if it’s a joke, it’s a good one.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  Silas couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “What did I miss?”

  They all looked his way.

  “What?” he repeated.

  “No,” Brodie said to Raven.

  “If you’ll just think about—” she began.

  “It’s asinine.”

  “It’s just a meet-and-greet.”

  “Is there something in particular—” Mia began, but Brodie shut her up with a glare.

  Silas felt his hackles rise in Mia’s defense. “What are we talking about?”

  “Tell him,” Brodie said, jutting his chin in Silas’s direction.

  Cobra’s impact gun continued to punctuate the air.

  “We want to invite some women to town,” Raven said.

  Silas looked at Mia, but she still wasn’t making eye contact.

  “A sort of meet-and-greet,” Raven continued. “Just a few women from California. Mia has a lot of contacts down there, and we thought—”

  “The poker game on steroids,” Brodie interjected.

  Raven slid him a look of frustration. “It’s hard for the men up here to meet new women, and it’s hard for women down south to meet good men.”

  Silas was catching on to the general concept. What he didn’t understand was Mia’s interest in it. He tried to catch her eye again.

  “We thought a group event would be more relaxed, low-key, give people a chance to mix and mingle without some of the awkwardness of a date,” Raven said.

  Brodie’s tone was snide. “I can’t even count the ways that could go wrong.”

  Silas didn’t want to argue with his boss, but he wanted to support Mia. Plus, he didn’t see what gave Brodie a veto.

  “If they’re just bringing a few friends to town,” he ventured to Brodie.

  “A few?” Brodie asked.

  Silas looked to Mia. When that didn’t get him anything, he looked to Raven instead.

  “Twenty, twenty-five,” Raven said.

  The number astounded Silas. “Where are they going to—”

  “Go ahead.” Brodie gave a cold laugh. “Tell him where you want them to stay.”

  “WSA housing,” Raven said.

  Well, that explained Brodie’s veto.

  “With upgrades courtesy of Mia.”

  “Mia?” Silas asked, trying to force her to engage.

  She looked at him, but her eyes were cold.

  “If it’s a no, it’s a no,” Raven said, her tone tight. “We’ll figure out something else.”

  “Maybe that something could not include bringing twenty-five giggling city girls to Paradise to mess with business,” Brodie said.

  “You,” Raven said, pointing to his chest, “are a killjoy.”

  “Somebody’s got to keep this town in check. The idea is ridiculous.”

  Silas had to admit, he could see Brodie’s point. Were they supposed to evict the WSA staff and fill up the town for a party?

  “We’re doing this,” Raven said, raising her chin in the air. “You can help us or not, but you can’t stop us.”

  “How’re you going to get them here?” Brodie asked mildly. “Who’ll fly them in from Fairbanks?”

  The question stumped Raven for a minute, but then she rallied. “I just made a deal on a refurbished haul road.”

  A muscle ticked in Brodie’s cheek, but he didn’t respond.

  “There are other air charter companies,” Mia said.

  Even Raven looked surprised by that level of audacity. But again, she rallied. “Yeah.”

  Silas had to admire her self-assuredness. Then again, hostility between Brodie and Raven was a very bad thing for the town.

  “Maybe we can come to a compromise,” Silas offered.

  “You mean, half the women?” Raven asked.

  “Why would we do that?” Mia asked over top of Raven.

  “To keep the peace,” Silas said.

  Mia didn’t look remotely interested in keeping the peace.

  He couldn’t help feeling like he’d missed something more.

  “I remain opposed,” Brodie said.

  “I remain supportive,” Raven countered.

  “Brodie?” Shannon called to him from the office doorway. “Fairbanks air operations is on the line.”

  “On my way.” Brodie gave Raven a last stern look as he walked away.

  Silas took the moment to move close to Mia. “Hey. What’s going on?”

  She looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  He searched her expression. Gone were the bedroom eyes and the sly smile.

  She was an ice-princess’s ice princess.

  “I mean what’s going on?” he repeated. “Is something wrong?”

  “No. What would be wrong? Other than Brodie’s attitude.”

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  She gave a slightly brittle laugh. “I’m just busy. You know how it is.”

  He didn’t.

  “Ready to go, Raven?” she asked around him.

  “Ready when you are,” Raven said.

  “Catch you later,” Mia said to Silas and began walking away.

  Oh no. It wasn’t going to be that easy. He strode after her, touching her shoulder. “What the hell?”

  She shrugged him off. “I really do have to go.”

  “Why are you mad?”

  “I’m not mad.”

  Raven pulled ahead, walking toward her pickup.

  “Something’s clearly happened,” he said to Mia.

  “We’re in different worlds, Silas.”

  “We were in different worlds two days ago, too.” Neither of them had seemed to care then.

  “We obviously had different expectations.”

  Maybe they had, but he still didn’t understand. “Mia, what happened?”

  She stopped and turned to face him. “Do I really need to spell it out?”

  “Yes.”

  “You lied.”

  “About what?”

  “The radio, the lessons. You remember, the ones you told Brodie were just for fun.” Her eyes blazed, and regret cascaded over him. “Do you know how hard I worked? Was this just a joke to you?”

  “Mia.” He reached for her, but she recoiled.

  “You swore you had faith in me.”

  “It wasn’t like—”

  “It was exactly like that,” she snapped. Lips pressed together, she pivoted and marched away.

  Raven was watching them from the truck, and Silas could only imagine what she thought of him.

  “That’s not good,” Brodie said, coming up behind Silas.

  “You told Raven?”

  “I tried, but you heard her. She didn’t exactly listen to my objections.”

  “I meant about the radio lessons.”

  “What about them?” Brodie asked, looking puzzled as he watched Raven’s truck pull away in a spray of gravel and a cloud of dust.

  “Did you tell Raven they were just for fun?”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to tell her they were only to keep Mia busy and out of her way.”

  “They weren’t.” That was part of it but not all of it.

  Brodie frowned in obvious exasperation as he stared where the dust had settled on the driveway. “That’s not really our biggest problem.”

  It was Silas’s biggest problem. At least, it felt like Silas’s biggest problem. He hadn’t lied to Mia, but he wouldn’t be able to convince her of that now. />
  “Twenty-five more city women,” Brodie muttered.

  “It might not—” Silas clamped his jaw. Things were far enough off the rails already.

  “Spit it out,” Brodie said.

  “It might not be the worst idea in the world.”

  Brodie gave a curt nod. “Yes, yes, it might.”

  “The guys would love it. You’d be their hero.”

  “They love that fifth shot of whiskey, too.”

  Silas stifled his amusement at the comparison.

  “And it always seems like a good idea at the time,” Brodie continued in a resolute tone. “But it never ends well.”

  “Whatever,” Silas said, realizing he was fighting for a cause he didn’t even care about.

  What he cared about was losing Mia. As the thought formed, he ruthlessly shut it down. He had it all wrong. He couldn’t lose Mia because he’d never had Mia.

  His dad had learned the hard way that women like her didn’t stay with guys like him. Silas usually remembered that lesson. He remembered it now, and it had never been truer. But, man, it felt like a knife to the gut.

  “I gotta get out of here,” he said to Brodie.

  “You and me both.”

  “I mean it. You mind if I swap trips with Xavier?”

  “You want to stay up at Mile High Research camp for three days?” Brodie was clearly baffled.

  “That’s exactly what I want.” The farther Silas could get away from Mia right now, the better. He had to work her out of his system, and cold turkey was his best shot.

  Brodie shrugged. “No skin off my nose. Xavier will jump at the offer.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Silas had been gone now for more than two days.

  Mia tried to convince herself it was a good thing. She didn’t want to miss him. He didn’t deserve to be missed.

  He’d pretended to respect her, but he was just like all the rest—humoring her without having any real faith in her abilities.

  “You sure you don’t want to drop me off today and keep the truck?” Raven asked as she laced up her work boots.

  Mia was sipping a strong pick-me-up coffee at the breakfast table. The sky was blue, the sun already high, and the robins were twittering happily in the trees outside. The world seemed to be fighting back against her sullen mood.

  She wasn’t going to buy into the world’s cheerful outlook, but she would force herself into event-planning mode. “Breena finished the graphics on our information page. I promised her I’d put together the text today.”

  “You sure you want to keep working so hard on this? I hate to see you waste your effort.”

  “It won’t be a waste.” Mia lifted her chin, determination kicking in along with the caffeine.

  “I can talk to him again,” Raven said. “But you know Brodie’s not a mind-changing kind of guy.”

  “Maybe you could lead with a kiss this time.” It was clearer than ever that Brodie was vulnerable to his attraction to Raven.

  But Raven gave her a stern frown. “The kiss was irrelevant. And he’s not bribable.”

  Mia wasn’t convinced the kiss was irrelevant, but she wasn’t about to push. “If it has to be glamping, we’ll make it glamping. I found a service that’ll set up super-nice wall tents with wood floors.”

  “Expensive?” Raven polished off her coffee, set her mug in the sink and moved toward the door.

  “Stop worrying about the money. My expenses this month have been negligible. I barely even pay for groceries.”

  “There’s the wine.”

  “The most expensive bottle in town is thirty-eight dollars.”

  Raven shook her head and smiled as she stepped outside. “You’re spoiling me.”

  “I have not yet begun to spoil,” Mia said in a dramatic voice as Raven closed the door behind her.

  The sun abruptly disappeared, dimming the sky and finally matching Mia’s mood.

  She topped up her coffee cup and moved to the screened porch with Breena’s laptop. The birds were still gamely singing, while the air was warm and fragrant from the pine trees.

  As she settled into a chair, raindrops began clattering on the corrugated plastic roof. The sound was calming, and the ozone combined with the fresh scent of the forest.

  Still determined to distract herself from memories of Silas, she opened the draft web page, gazing at the clean graphics and the beautiful scenery and Paradise photos Breena had put together. Impressed, Mia turned her mind to the questionnaire. They were looking for women with an adventurous spirit, possibly at a pivot point in their lives, open to a relationship, and with job skills or at least an aptitude they could use in Paradise. She didn’t want anyone to end up with a repeat of her experience trying to work here.

  She began typing then, framing, revising, moving text around. The rain gradually slowed and stopped, and the atmosphere brightened again.

  Suddenly, a giant groaning roaring crash reverberated through the air. It jolted her upright as the earth vibrated beneath her. Her first thought was an earthquake, but she’d experienced plenty of those in LA.

  But it was too loud for an earthquake. Plus, the vibrations felt wrong. Her next thought was more horrible—a plane crash. She leapt from her chair, dropping the laptop to rush outside.

  She scanned the sky and the surrounding hills but didn’t see any smoke rising up.

  She went back inside and put on her shoes, trotting out to the road to look up and down. The clouds against the distant mountains were dark purple and black. She could see lightning flashing through them, but she couldn’t hear the thunder. It wasn’t thunder that shook the ground like that. But something had happened, and it was something big.

  She had a choice. She could go south to town or north to the airstrip. The airstrip was a lot closer, and her phone would work on their Wi-Fi. Plus, Silas was due back today. If there’d been a plane crash, it could have happened at the airstrip while someone was trying to land a plane. It could have been Silas.

  Trying desperately not to consider that scenario, she ran back to the cabin for proper shoes and a few essentials then took off at a fast jog toward the airstrip. She hoped someone would drive up on the road. They’d likely have news and could give her a ride the rest of the way.

  The creek beside the road was roaring high. She’d never seen it so high. In a few places, it lapped onto the roadbed and she had to detour around.

  It hit her then. The bridge. A flash flood could have taken out the bridge. That would explain the strikingly high creek and the noise. She paused and considered turning back. Had Raven’s cabin been cut off from town? What if someone had been on the bridge when it washed out? Did they need help?

  The airstrip was less than a mile away. The bridge nearly four miles back. And Silas. She couldn’t help thinking about Silas. Going toward the airstrip felt like she was going toward him.

  She went with her instinct and started running again. The air was seeped with moisture. Rain trickled down on her, mingling with her sweat. The creek disappeared from the roadside and wound back into the bush, leaving only a puddle-strewn road.

  She thought she spotted movement ahead, something just beyond the bend. Her heart lifted and her pace increased, looking for a pickup truck or an ATV to come zipping around the corner.

  She swiped the dampness from her eyes and stared harder. Then her heart tripped, and panic flooded her system.

  It was the bear. The bears. All three of them were staring straight at her.

  She stopped, and they started toward her. Her instinct was to turn and run away, but Silas had told her in no uncertain terms to stand her ground.

  But terror prickled her skin. It made her pulse race and her chest harden in pain.

  She had to leave.

  She had to get out
of here before they got any closer.

  She looked over her shoulder at the road stretching away. The brush was impenetrably thick in the forest. There was nowhere to run or hide.

  The sow lowered her head. Her ears went back, and the cubs stopped still.

  In a blinding moment of clarity, Mia remembered her bear spray. She reached to the back of her belt, past the water bottle to the mesh pouch. The Velcro sounded loud and she pulled the tab. The bear loped faster, its big paws eating up the ground between them. Time seemed to slow down as Mia jerked out the spray canister, peeled off the orange tab, double-checked the nozzle direction.

  When she looked back up, the bear was at a full-on run. It was close, almost on her.

  “No!” she shouted instinctively, but it didn’t even break stride.

  “Stay back!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.

  It kept right on coming.

  She guessed the distance, fifteen feet, ten, eight. She pointed the nozzle and pressed the trigger as hard as she could, holding it there.

  The bear roared in anger, terrifyingly loud. It reared up.

  Mia screamed and braced herself for impact.

  But then the bear turned. It bolted into the forest, and the two cubs galloped after it.

  Mia ran too. It was a sprint this time, definitely not a jog; but it was almost easy with the adrenaline running through her body.

  She was afraid to look back over her shoulder. She told herself to keep going, going, through the puddles in the straightest line possible until she spotted the parking lot.

  That was the worst part, the hundred yards she had to run with safety in her sights and danger behind her. There were pickups in the parking lot, but most of the planes were gone.

  She made it to the office door and threw it open, slamming it shut behind her and leaning back, gulping in breaths, holding back tears.

  “Hello?” she finally managed. Her voice trembled, echoing back to her in the dim building. She tried again. “Hello?”

  * * *

  * * *

  The office was empty, and she didn’t find Cobra out in the hangar. It was eerily quiet with no one else around. She’d tried calling Raven, but her phone had gone to voice mail. Mia didn’t know the main number for Galina.