“It's me, Harper,” the woman on the other end of the line said. So many people in town knew Harper worked as a dispatcher at the police station that it was easy for them to expect she’d recognize their voice immediately. Harper knew it was Tara Mitchell, who owned a novelty shop and bakery in town. She catered to the tourists who were abundant in Sweet during the rodeo season.
She smiled after recognizing Tara’s voice. “Please state your name and emergency for the record,” Harper said.
“Tara Mitchell. I don’t exactly know if it’s an emergency or not. But the argument out front is getting pretty loud,” Tara said. Her voice was muffled for a moment. When she came back on the line, she added, “Apparently a car with Alabama license plates took a liking to Jeff Stanley's front fence, which is now toast. Jeff’s not too happy about it.”
“The Stanley place is the one that's next to your store?”
“A few doors down.” Tara recited her address for the record and Harper recorded it into the computer.
Harper knew where it was and didn’t need the details from Tara. But she’d been trained to have the caller give her the information and then record it exactly as spoken.
“It doesn't look like anyone's hurt except for maybe a bruised ego.”
Harper smiled. “We seem to get a lot of those in the spring, especially during a late storm. I’ll send an officer. Do they need a tow truck?”
“Jamison was already across the street at the diner with his tow truck and saw the accident. If the car needs towing, he's already here.”
“Okay, I’ll have Officer Samuel head out there.”
Harper hung up the call and logged the rest of the details in the computer system. Then she pressed the button to radio all the officers in the area, giving the details of the accident. As she’d suspected, Caleb was the closest officer and immediately radioed in that he was on his way.
Harper hung up the call and leaned back in her chair. Then she nearly jumped out of it in fear.
“Are you Ms. Madison?” The man with a deep voice standing close to her desk asked.
Harper glanced at the door to the dispatch room that was always locked. “How did you get in here?”
“Someone said that you'd been waiting for me.” The man turned around and pointed to the police chief’s door. “He let me in. Sorry, I’m late.”
Harper glanced over at the chief’s closed office door.
“Oh, he did, did he? You nearly give you a heart attack.”
The man glanced around as if questioning whether she was actually talking to him.
“I was supposed to meet Harper Madison here to get the key to a cabin I’m renting,” he said. “Right?”
“Yes. I thought you were coming in around noon.” She reached down and opened her bottom drawer where she kept her purse. After rifling through it for a few seconds, she found the key to the cabin that she kept in an envelope with instructions from her grandmother on the various things renters needed to know while staying at the cabin.
Her grandmother had owned the cabin for as long as Harper could remember. There were memories, good and bad. Harper and her sister no longer visited the cabin, and neither did her grandmother now that her grandfather passed away, but her grandmother couldn’t let go.
“I hope I didn't cause you any trouble,” he said apologetically as she handed him the envelope with the keys.
“No trouble. I was here all day.” She hadn't eaten a decent lunch, unless you considered a banana while she sat at her desk waiting for him to be decent. But she wasn't going to let him know that. There was no reason to make him feel bad. She forced a smile that was oddly easy.
She looked up at him. Scientist, huh? Nash Webber didn't fit the image of the nerdy scientist she'd had in her mind all day either. He wasn’t Hollywood. Wasn’t scientist. He was just strikingly buff in all the right places that made her take notice.
She knew better than to ogle over the man, especially here at work. But the man was incredibly handsome in a rugged sort of way. She'd seen many men come and go through the police station doors for various reasons. Most of them she paid little attention to. It was almost embarrassing how taken she was with the nerdy scientist who wasn’t nerdy at all.
“So you're going to rent the cabin for the whole summer?” Harper asked, already knowing the answer. Her grandmother told her. He wasn't just a scientist, he was a survivalist of some sort, too, her grandmother had said, and the cabin would serve as a base camp for the work he was doing deep into the mountain range. It explained why the man looked like a Greek god in form. If he planned on doing a lot of hiking and climbing, he’d need to be fit.
“The plan right now is to stay the summer. Maybe a little beyond that if the project changes.”
Harper continued to stare at him until she had to shake her head.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
“Fine. Whatever arrangements you made with my grandmother is fine. I don't use the cabin myself. Not anymore. But we do occasionally get renters. Later in the season, you might find hikers wandering up there. When that happens, the police department or rangers will use the road leading up to the cabin to search if someone goes missing. It happens about once or twice a season.”
“Good to know. I'll be working. But if there is a problem, let me know.”
“Sure.” And then she felt like an idiot. Small talk wasn't exactly something that made her tongue-tied. She had no problem talking to people. But this man…
“There's no cell-service up there. I’m sure my grandmother told you that, right? You’ll have to come down the mountain a ways to place any calls.”
“That won't be a problem. I have a radio in my truck.”
She made a face that made him smile. Oh, yeah, what a smile!
“That can be a little spotty up on the mountain as well. The positioning of the cabin makes it difficult. But again, coming down the mountain a bit will give you a signal. As long as you have one in the truck, there shouldn't be a problem in case you have an emergency. I've already told the chief you’ll be up there, so they’ll check on you occasionally,” she said.
“You told them? Why? I’ll be fine up there,” he asked with a frown.
“Because…” She shrugged with his question. “That's what I do.”
A slow smile played on his lips. “Right. Good to know.”
He turned to walk away and then stopped and turned back. “It was good to meet you, Harper Madison.”
“Same here.”
She watched him walk out the door. The whole way. She couldn’t remember the last time she did something stupid like that. She was not going to make a habit of it now even if the man was insanely handsome.
* * *
Harper was stuck on a dispatch call with someone when her shift ended. Someone had witnessed another accident off one of the winding roads in town. Lookout Ridge was never a good spot for tourists who didn't know how dangerous slippery roads could be. Just like the accident earlier, this accident involved someone from out of state who lived down South.
It was second nature for most everyone who lived in snow country to drive on snow and icy roads, not that Sweet didn't have its share of accidents from the locals. But it seemed to be an epidemic today with people from out of town since a massive spring snowstorm, something that normally happened at the higher elevations in the spring, was forecasted today and was proving to pick up strength as the hours went by.
Two officers filed in to the police station wearing their winter gear. Both pulled off their hats and shook them leaving a spray of snow on the rug which had turned to a sopping wet mess as the afternoon wore on. Harper smiled but only because it unearthed a memory of how her mother hated it when she, her sister, and their father would do this at home when she was younger.
“You better get on the road soon,” Zeb Lincoln, one of the officers who’d just come in, said to Harper. “The roads are already getting slick. This storm is worse than we expected.”
“I have to wait for Scarlett to come in before I leave.” Harper glanced at the ugly wagon wheel clock on the wall again. “She's already fifteen minutes late.”
The chief came out of his office and headed over to Harper's desk. “Scarlett just called in. Her car won't start for some reason.” Chief Lucas sounded a little disgusted, most likely because it put them in a pickle with coverage for dispatch on what would surely be a busy night. “I’d ask you to stay but I know you want to get home to your grandmother.”
“The twins are sick with the flu,” Zeb said.
The chief shrugged. “She told me. That still leaves the dispatch desk empty until Don comes in. He wasn’t on the schedule, but there’s nothing keeping him home.”
Harper didn’t know Scarlett that well since their shifts crossed each other. But she knew that Scarlett was a single mother with two small children to take care of. Harper was single and didn’t need to worry about such things as babysitters or sickness. She had to worry about her grandmother who got around using a walker and was getting on in years. But that wasn’t the same as being responsible for two small children.
“I can stay if you need me to,” Harper offered.
The chief shook his head. “I fear if you stay any longer, you'll be stuck here through the night,” he said. “Don’s coming in and he’ll bunk in my office on the sofa if the storm continues into tomorrow. We’ll be fine.”
“The storm is going to be that bad?”
“That’s what the weather service says. Supposed to be the worst spring storm Sweet has had in over twenty years. Why don’t you clean up your desk so you can get out of here? I'll cover until Don comes in.”
“Thank you.”
Harper quickly gathered her things and said goodbye to everyone. She was holding her scarf in her hand as she walked out the door and quickly took it and wrapped it around her head and her neck. Snowflakes were coming down fast and hard now and there was already a few inches of snow in the parking lot, even though she knew Jamison’s crew had already plowed earlier. She rummaged through her purse for her keys while she walked to the car and then unlocked and opened it so she could retrieve her snowbrush. As soon as she opened the trunk and saw the bag of linens, she groaned. “I can't believe I forgot to give him the linens.”
Sweet Montana Rescue: Chapter Two
One of the things that her grandmother included in renting the cabin was the use of towels, sheets, and blankets. No one had been in the cabin all winter, so Harper hadn't had a chance to bring the freshly laundered linens up to the cabin before Nash Webber had arrived. She had intended to give him all the things he needed when he'd stopped by the station during lunch. But he hadn't come during lunch. And when he had come, the phones had been ringing off the hook and she'd forgotten.
“Wouldn’t you know the storm is going to be a twenty-year storm,” she said to herself.
She grabbed her snowbrush and slammed the trunk shut. As she began clearing the snow off her car, she thought about the time and the amount of accumulation that had already fallen.
The temperature was dropping and Nash was going to need a good blanket even if he managed to get the woodstove going. Surely she had time to take a quick drive up the mountain to drop off all the linens he needed and then drive back down before the storm got any worse. Her car had all-wheel drive. It wasn't as if she was an out-of-town virgin driver on these roads either. She knew them well, and she knew that mountain road.
Not bothering to open the trunk again, she took the wet brush and tossed it on the floor in the back seat of her car. Then she climbed inside and turned on the engine.
She quickly called home. When her grandmother answered, she said, “Grandma, I have an errand to run before I head home.”
“Now? In this weather?”
“It shouldn’t take too long. Is everything okay there?”
“Of course. I’m fine. You be careful driving.”
“I will. I’ll see you soon.”
She hung up the phone and put the car into reverse. Then she glanced behind her as she pulled out of her parking space. She’d take it slow.
But when she got to the mountain road leading to the cabin, Harper was kicking herself for forgetting to give Nash the linens and having to do it now. The main roads were plowed. But the mountain road still had a layer of snow that was getting deeper by the minute. She saw the fresh ruts in the snow most likely caused when Nash headed up to the cabin. By the look of the tracks, he’d been hauling something. A trailer of some sort by the way it was fishtailing on the road. It was most likely filled with supplies and equipment Nash needed for his research.
Harper thought more than a few times about turning back. Nash had all the info he needed to run the water and for using the solar system for the cabin. He was a scientist. A good-looking scientist at that. He could figure it out.
Her grandmother told Harper that he’d spent a good deal of time overseas working as a survivalist in some remote part of the world. Montana was probably nothing for someone like him. Certainly not as exotic or interesting as a jungle or a remote island. He’d probably be fine.
As she tried to her convince herself turning back was the smartest thing she could do, she decided she couldn’t leave him there without a blanket. Say he managed to get the solar system going, it didn’t provide heat. He’d need the wood stove for that and given the amount of snow they had, she couldn’t guarantee the wood would light, if he even had a set of matches to light it with.
No, she couldn’t take the chance. The weather report she’d heard on the drive over was already talking about bad weather that could knock them all off the grid for days. If the storm got that bad, it meant it would be days before anyone could get up the mountain to help him.
It wasn't unheard of for Montana to have a sudden snowstorm late in the season, sometimes even into June. The people in town had provisions for this and neighbors always helped neighbors in times of crisis.
But Nash wasn't from this area. He wasn't from Montana. He knew no one in town except for her and her grandmother. She couldn’t leave him stranded up on the mountain even if he was a survivalist.
The back tires slid for a second, but she corrected herself. She was even glad for the ruts in the snow that Nash’s truck had created because it made it easier to see where she was going. But she’d be losing light soon, so she had to hurry. The drive down would be faster than going up, but it would be more treacherous.
The snow was beautiful. But just last week, she and Hattie, one of her friends in town, had been talking about how blue that big Montana sky was and how they were waiting for the first signs of wildflowers and huckleberry. The annual Fire and Police Department’s potluck was in just a few weeks and they’d always had good weather for that.
She was about two thirds of the way up the mountain road when a thought occurred to her. What if he wasn’t even there when she reached the cabin? Maybe he’d seen the forecast and decided to stay in town for the night so he wouldn’t be stranded.
“You think too much, Harper,” she said to herself. “If he’s not there, leave the bag with linens and a note by the door and he’ll get it when he returns. Simple.”
Her mind wandered as she drove. She’d forgotten to tell her grandmother to put the flashlight next to her and take the extra batteries out of the cabinet in case she needed them before she got home.
She sighed and leaned forward in her seat to see the road better through all the snow. Her wiper blades were swooshing back and forth, but they couldn’t keep up.
Her grandfather had bought this cabin years before her mother was born. She’d visited it many times when she was a child with her grandparents and then her mother and father. Her grandmother used to say that the cabin was a little piece of heaven where her grandpa could be a little devil if he needed to be.
She barely remembered her grandpa. He’d died of a heart attack when Harper was very young. Her grandmother had never remarried because she said that he wa
s her one and only. And she couldn’t go back to the cabin because the memories were too painful. But she couldn’t let it go either.
It had been painful for her mother to see the cabin remain empty and become rundown. So Harper's father and mother worked on it and brought Harper and her sister, Gail, up to the cabin a couple of times during the summer. The rest of the time her grandmother used her business skills to rent out the property so she could keep up the taxes and have a little bit of extra income to supplement her retirement.
Her sister had moved to Great Falls a few years ago and rarely came to visit. Their parents were now gone, something that was hard to ignore as she drove the road up to the cabin they’d spent so much time at as a family. That left Harper to take care of her invalid grandmother, which Harper didn't mind. She loved her grandmother. It was just a worry and left little time for other things. Especially on days like this.
The higher up the mountain she got, the more snow covered the road and it became hard to navigate her car. Her car usually performed well in the snow. She turned off the radio and turned on the dispatch scanner. She was off work and didn't need to hear the calls coming in regarding accidents and police dispatch. On days like this, all of the police officers were called in for duty or least put on call in case something big happened that needed attention. Harper had learned a long time ago that if she wanted to know what was going on in town, the best way to find out was to listen to the police scanner.
She took her eyes off the road to adjust the buttons for just a second and when she looked back up, an elk was standing in the middle of the road. She’d been going slow enough, but given the road conditions, she was no match for an elk who had stopped dead right in front of her.
Her reflexes took over logic. She slammed on her brakes to avoid hitting the elk head on and slid sideways on the road. She overcompensated, directing the car until she started to fishtail and go sideways again, moving dangerously close to the side of the road where she knew there was a big drop off.
Sweet Montana Boxed Set 1-5 Page 22