Something in his expression contained a dare. Always did, in a way. She could never ignore it.
“Who were you fighting, Ben?”
He shook his head slowly. Took a breath. Met her eyes.
His blue-eyed gaze always had the power to sweep her breath away, to make her heart stop, to still the world around her and center it on just him.
The wind shrilled, whipping between them.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he finally said. “But your dad came down to the jail and told me that you never wanted to see me again. That you were going to put the baby up for adoption and that I should leave.”
He turned back up the trail, striding hard. “He said I had nothing to give you and that I should make something out of my life and let you do the same. And, if I didn’t leave town, he’d make sure I ended up in prison.”
She ran up next to him. “My dad would never do that.”
He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Ask him.” He topped the ridge, stopped, and pointed to a building a mile ahead. “There’s the lookout.”
Not an impressive building, save for its view overlooking the Swiftcurrent Basin all the way to Grinnell Glacier to the southeast and Iceberg Lake to the north. But with windows on each side, the fire lookout could spot smoke for hundreds of miles into East Glacier.
The perfect place for a teenage boy to take a girl if he wanted to impress her.
Kacey’s mouth tightened.
Ask him.
“I don’t care what my dad said to you. You shouldn’t have left.”
“I’m thinking that very thing right now,” he said quietly as he moved up the trail. “But I was seventeen, scared, hurt, and frankly you weren’t taking my calls.”
“I’d just had the most traumatic experience of my life—giving birth—without the father of my child. I was angry. But then you left . . . you just . . . left.”
He said nothing as he climbed over another ridge, set down the trail.
“I hated you,” she said, a sort of confession that took the edge off her anger.
“I guessed that.”
“I told her you’d abandoned us.”
She’d caught up to him and now saw his jaw had tightened.
“I suppose there’s truth in that.” His voice was tight, calm.
It only sparked her ire. “What is your deal?”
He rounded again on her so fast she slammed right into him. He caught her by the arms, and she realized how much he’d grown, taller by at least a couple inches, and he had a fierceness to his features she hadn’t seen before. His beard had filled out, and his eyes nearly glowed with something unnamed. She stepped back, a little unnerved.
His voice was whisper-low, steel-edged. “I’m so angry at you right now, I can’t breathe, okay? I can’t believe that you didn’t write to me, didn’t take my calls, and didn’t even think that I would want to know that I had a daughter. I can’t believe that after all these years you never once let me into her life. Frankly, I’m trying to keep myself from throwing you off this mountain.”
She stared at him, trying not to be undone, rattled.
Then he turned and headed again up the trail.
Shoot.
“Ben!”
But he didn’t stop.
“Ben, listen, here’s the thing. I know you’re angry—okay, I get that. You’re right, I should have contacted you. But you left—”
“We’ll just go round and round on that, Kacey. It’s not going to help.”
“Fine. But I had to go on. To do something. So I got a job.”
“You joined the army.” He caught his breath then, glanced over his shoulder. “Which effectively means you abandoned her. Our daughter. What kind of mom does that?”
She recoiled, his words a slap. “The kind who is serving her country.”
“Your country shouldn’t come before your family.”
“Tell that to the over 1.3 million active-duty soldiers out there protecting your freedom!”
His voice turned lethal. “Tell that to your daughter, who is lost out there, cold, maybe hypothermic—”
She didn’t think, her arm moving nearly on its own as she reached out to slap him.
As if on reflex, he caught her wrist, jerked back.
But the movement shocked them both as he recoiled. He clenched his jaw, his chest rising and falling.
She swallowed, jerked her arm from his grip, shaking. “Sorry, but—”
“No. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sure she’s fine.”
She looked away, her eyes blurring.
Then, quietly, “You could have called me. I would have come home, taken care of her—”
“And sacrificed your brilliant, amazing, star-studded country music career?” Oh, she didn’t mean for all the derision to fill her voice. Really. “Don’t tell me you would have given up your dreams to come home and babysit.” She turned back to him, didn’t mask the accusing expression.
His eyes narrowed, but maybe she’d finally landed a blow in truth. He turned away, striding again down the path.
She stalked after him. “I know what you said, but let’s just get really honest here. Admit it—the idea of a child and a wife depending on you probably scared the stuffing out of you. You didn’t want the responsibility, the burden of providing for a family. You wanted your freedom and were all too happy to let my dad give it to you.”
And that was when he whirled around again, his expression black.
His fists balled at his sides, released, tightened again. “I loved you. I wanted you. And yeah, I might have been scared, but I meant it when I asked you to marry me.”
Oh.
His gaze held hers. And, shoot, if her eyes didn’t start to burn. Stupid wind, whipping over the tundra, cutting through the rocks.
“Ben.” Her voice trembled, so she schooled it, tried again. “I have to ask you not to tell her.”
He blinked then, the fury on his face dissipating to what she guessed was disbelief.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” He turned away. “Not on your life.”
“Ben!” She put a hand to his arm, tugged, and with something that sounded like a stifled curse, he relented.
“What?”
“She’s going through puberty. And she’s . . . well, clearly she’s not thinking straight because why else would she run away with this boy?”
He raised an eyebrow. Then bit the inside of his mouth, considering her. “Huh.”
“You know what I mean. It’ll just confuse her. And I haven’t even seen her yet—”
“Doesn’t she know you’re coming home?”
She made a face, and he rolled his eyes, looked away. “Nice. Wow, Kacey. So, the first time she’s seen you in, how long . . . ?”
“Six months—”
“And you’re tracking her down while she’s on a romantic escape with her boyfriend.”
“He’s not her boyfriend, and by the way, you might consider being a little protective here. She is your daughter, after all.”
His eyes widened. “Make up your mind. Is she or isn’t she?”
She licked her lips, then caught her bottom one between her teeth. “I—”
“Geez, Kacey. What do you want from me? Do I get to be her dad or not?”
“I don’t know, okay? I never thought this day would come.”
“You thought I wouldn’t ever find out? Sheesh. I live in Mercy Falls too. Which is weird. Why did my dad not—wait, does he know?” A hand went up around the back of his neck. “Oh my gosh—”
“I don’t know, Ben. My parents moved to Whitefish right after Audrey was born. I always thought your folks knew and didn’t care but . . . maybe not.”
The look he gave her could have turned her to ash. “My mother died without knowing she had a granddaughter.”
Kacey winced. “I’m sorry.”
“Mmmhmm.”
“Please, Ben. I know you’re angry, but this isn’t about you. It’s about Aud
rey. If you tell her, she’ll just get attached, and then when you leave, go back to your life in Nashville, it’ll destroy her.”
She didn’t know how to interpret his grim look, the tightening around his eyes.
And that’s when she heard it, a voice, light and crisp, hanging on the wind. “Mom? Mom!”
She searched for it, and there—thirty feet below, on an outcropping of rock—Audrey stood waving, jumping up and down, then yelling as she scrambled up toward the trail.
Kacey headed down to her, over tundra and rock, trampling wildflowers and climbing over boulders as Audrey worked her way up to her.
An ugly scrape reddened her chin, her chestnut hair lay in tangles, and she’d been crying, evidenced by the swelling around her beautiful blue eyes. “I knew you’d come—I knew it. I know it was crazy, but I prayed and asked God to send you and he did.” She flung herself into Kacey’s arms.
Kacey didn’t know what she’d done to curry God’s favor, but she agreed her beautiful daughter deserved all the breaks she could get. She pulled the girl to herself, tucking her head over her daughter’s, trying not to cry, failing.
Audrey looked up at her, ran a hand under her runny nose. “We were walking back from the lookout in the dark, and it started to rain and snow, and then Nate fell—”
“Fell?” Ben, of course. “How far?”
“He’s down below the ledge. I think he broke something. He’s in so much pain, I was afraid to leave him. And then . . .” Her gaze had turned to Ben, and she frowned, blinking.
“Do I—wait. Do I know you?”
Kacey froze, looked at Ben, her eyes wide.
Ben seemed unable to respond because his mouth opened, closed.
Kacey silently begged him. Please.
“Wait, I do know you.”
Audrey stepped out of Kacey’s embrace, her hand over her mouth.
Oh no, no. “Honey, I can explain—”
“Oh, Mom. I can’t believe it!” Audrey’s hand trembled as she grabbed Kacey’s arm. “This is, this is . . . Benjamin King!”
Ben had experienced awkward fan moments in his life, but nothing compared to having his own daughter list her favorite songs off his albums, rattle on about the concert she’d attended last summer at Countryfest in Kalispell, and ask to take a picture with him once they got Nate off the mountain.
Nate, too, seemed to recover a smidgen when Ben scrambled down behind Audrey to his resting place. He’d fallen some forty feet from the ridgeline—not a straight drop but steep enough for him to tumble hard, until he finally landed on an outcropping about ten feet wide.
Beyond his perch, the mountain dropped fast another two hundred feet or so to another hilly descent of razor-sharp ledge rock, spires of black pine, and tangles of blueberry brier.
Ben hated to think what might have happened had Nate’s ankle not caught on the rocks. It was broken, but it had saved his life.
Apparently, Audrey had chased him down the hill, tried to make him comfortable. “Then the sun set and it started to snow, and I couldn’t leave him,” she said. “This morning, he didn’t want me to leave, but I finally decided that I had to if I wanted to save us both.”
Audrey had led them to their bunker, where she’d managed to pile rocks around them for a windbreak. She’d also scraped up tundra and spread it out for a bed and warmth and ripped up scrub branches for a meager ceiling.
By huddling together in the shelter, they’d survived the chilly night.
Now, Nate sat with his back to the hillside, his ankle grotesquely swollen, his face ashen. But he managed a smile, a flash of interest when Audrey announced that country music star Benjamin King had shown up to rescue him.
Not exactly, but the facts still fit.
Ben noticed that Kacey watched it all with a wary, gimlet expression. He still couldn’t believe she’d nearly slapped him. Her impulsive violence had probably shaken her as much as him, given her expression.
It had also, for a second, jerked him back to reality. To his stinging words. “What kind of mom does that?”
He might have deserved a slap.
But she gave back in kind. “You wanted your freedom and were all too happy to let my dad give it to you.”
He refused to let those words rattle around his brain, unseat his anger.
For thirteen years, she hadn’t reached out to him. He’d missed seeing his child take her first steps, lose her first tooth, read her first book, and call him Daddy.
“I have to ask you not to tell her.”
No. It wasn’t fair—and she knew it.
Kacey hunkered down next to Nate, probing his ankle after cutting open his pants leg. “I’m not an EMT, but I think you did more than sprain this. It clearly looks broken.” She tugged off his sock, and Nate let out a moan, but even Ben could see the gray, mottled skin. Bruised, and perhaps a lack of blood supply.
Ben reached out to touch the ankle, hearkening back to his first-responder training that SAR summer three years ago, and found the appendage icy cold.
“We’re going to need a stretcher,” he said, and got up. They’d already tried to contact Jess, but the mountains had turned their coms to static. “I’ll take Audrey back to the chalet, get the litter from the chopper, and be back as soon as I can.” He glanced at the gathering clouds and saw the gunmetal sheen of rain over the far western mountains.
Kacey seemed to read his mind. “Hopefully it’ll head south, but if we don’t move fast, we could get trapped here.”
Ben handed her his water bottle, glanced at Audrey. “Ready for a hike?”
For the first time, her fan glow faded and she glanced at her mother. “I want to stay with you.”
He knew the debate on Kacey’s face had nothing to do with her daughter’s pleading tone. No, as she flashed Ben a tight-mouthed glance, he knew she heard his words: “What do you want from me? Do I get to be her dad or not?”
He met her gaze, and then, despite the roar inside, gave her a quick shake of his head.
Okay. Fine. I won’t tell her. For now.
She turned back to Audrey, took her hand. “It’s okay, honey. I promise to take good care of Nate. You go back to the cabin with Ben and let us focus on rescuing Nate.”
Audrey nodded despite the tears edging her eyes. Smart girl.
Ben had the crazy urge to pull her close, to hold her and tell her everything would be okay.
That Daddy would take care of her.
He shook that thought away before it bubbled out.
Instead, he held out his hand. “C’mon. Let’s get going before we lose the sun.”
She took his grip, and he closed his hand around hers, so small and delicate in his. He pulled her up the hill, then put her in front of him as they hiked back to the chalet.
He made contact with Jess halfway there, and she was waiting for them, pacing outside as he came down the trail, the sun at his back, a sweat under his jacket. Willow came out to enclose Audrey in a hug, then draw her inside the chalet, listening to the story.
Ben updated Jess on Nate.
“Nate isn’t the only one who needs medical attention. I have one of the girls here who is insulin dependent. She just used her last shot. She’d packed extras, just in case, but that what-if is here, and she won’t last until tomorrow. We need to get her out tonight.”
But with the ceiling falling and the sun fading . . .
Jess had already assembled her first aid pack and hiked/ran to the chopper with Willow to retrieve the litter. Together, they climbed back to the pass, and he and Jess hiked to Kacey and injured Nate.
Kacey had already splinted his ankle, applied body warmers to his core, and cleared the area for the litter. He and Kacey lifted Nate into the basket, then covered him in blankets. Jess took his blood pressure, gave him a quick assessment.
“Okay, we’re ready.”
Ben didn’t like the pallor on the kid’s face. He grabbed the back of the litter. “I’ll try and keep him as level as possible�
�you just keep climbing.”
Kacey and Jess took the head and they worked their way up the hill, silent, breathing hard as Nate groaned and cried out as they jostled him.
By the time they reached the chalet, the wind had turned Ben’s fingers numb as flurries pecked at his cheeks and neck.
A fire blazed in the stove of the chalet dining area, the room cozy and safe from the elements. Still, the aura of fatigue and not a little fear bullied the mood as they set Nate on the floor.
Audrey and the rest of the youth group gathered around him as Ben drew Kacey and Jess aside.
“I’m not sure it’s safe to fly out of here.”
“The ceiling is dropping, but I don’t see what choice we have,” Kacey said. “I can fly us out, but not if we wait much longer. His ankle is bad. It has a scant blood supply, but he could lose his foot.”
“Then I think you and Jess should fly out with Nate and the diabetic girl. I’ll stay the night with the kids and we’ll hike down the Loop Trail in the morning.”
Kacey frowned at him. “I’m not leaving without Audrey.”
“She’s fine, Kacey,” Jess said. “A little banged up, but I checked her out. She’s not hypothermic, and she’s safe here with the kids. There’s really no room for her in the chopper.”
Kacey’s mouth formed a bud of disagreement.
“I promise, she’ll be fine, Kacey.” Ben didn’t exactly know how else to say it without giving her away. No, Kacey, I won’t tell our daughter, who seems to think I hung the moon, that I’m her father.
“We’re running out of daylight,” Jess said quietly.
Kacey shook her head. “I don’t like it.”
“I promise,” Ben said again quietly.
The words seemed to register, and Kacey finally nodded. She stepped away from him. “Audrey, c’mere, honey.”
Whatever she said to her daughter as she pulled her away from the group had Audrey shaking her head, throwing her arms around her mother. Hanging on.
And the sight of it did crazy, unbidden things inside him. He couldn’t place the emotions that churned up. Jealousy? Compassion? Frustration?
Then, Kacey looked his direction and back to Audrey, and Audrey’s eyes widened.
His breath caught. Kacey didn’t . . .
Wild Montana Skies Page 6