New York was a lot of things, but picturesque wasn’t one of them. How she missed the simple beauty of old areas, not marred by commercialism and human madness. Clean, simple, open. You missed things like that in the cities where everything was loud, run by money and no matter what anyone said about going green, cities were primarily dirty.
Perhaps she had just been on the road too much lately. Perhaps all this thought of home, of Mama’s cooking, of the place she grew up, was just her tired mind and body telling Valerie that it was time to recharge. She should complete this job and then put in for leave. She had vacation days so why not take them? She could go home. Home. The word hung in her mind and ached in her heart.
Valerie came to realize that she was lost. Google Maps had been telling her this fact for the last how long? She didn’t know, she’d tuned out the noise of the robotic, annoying voice telling her it was recalculating.
“Shit!” she said and pulled the car over onto the verge.
The road ahead was heading into trees, a lot of them and then up into the mountains. Was this the right way to Sun Valley? All the signs so far had insisted that she was going the right way. She looked at her phone and sighed. Google was completely lost. It suddenly thought she was in California and not Colorado. She turned the GPS off, what was the point of keeping it on?
So the last sign had been about a mile back? Maybe more?
“Dammit Val, why the hell were you daydreaming?” she berated herself, loudly thumping the wheel.
Maybe she should drive a little way down the road. There was bound to be another sign soon, right? There had to be. Surely people came to Sun Valley all the time. Right?
Valerie slowly depressed the accelerator and the rental eased back onto the road. She drove along for another twenty minutes as the trees grew up around her. Suddenly the road just ended in a wall of green branches and leaves. To her right she could see something that looked like a little dirt track that was cleared of branches, and to her left nothing but forest.
On the right a very small, hand painted sign proclaimed that it was the way to Sun Valley.
“Oh, but of course it is,” Valerie said aloud to herself and sighed. It was clearly going to be one of those days. The vampire pool at HQ, Valerie’s pet name for the sisterhood of personal assistants and secretaries, that stood guard on all the floors of the massive skyscraper Petersen-Snow called home, had rented her a sedan, not an SUV. So this was going to be a bumpy ride the car would never forget.
She drove slowly along the track. It was very pretty under the leafy canopy. All around her leaves tinted in red, yellow and orange tumbled lazily to the ground. Under different circumstances it would even be lovely. But Valerie was wound up. She was out here in the middle of nowhere and now she had no cellphone signal.
The light in the shadow of the mountain under the trees was a little dim, and Valerie was contemplating turning on her head lamps, when suddenly something ran across the road. It was a small something; a flash of fur and then it was gone. But it was enough to make her wrench the wheel and send the car off on a bumpy, uncontrolled ride down the embankment and into the trees.
The car came to rest, nose first in a heap of leaves and dirt about ten yards from the track. Valerie hit her head on the steering wheel. It was just a bump, so only hard enough to daze not to concuss. The engine died and, for a moment, Valerie was at peace slumped over the wheel. Then she pulled herself upright, brushed back her mass of dark, curly hair and looked around. Her hands were shaking.
She fumbled with the door mechanism. After a moment the door swung open and shuddered on its hinges. Valerie slid out of the car on weak legs and staggered back a few paces. The car was resting comfortably with its nose in the dirt. It was okay. After all, the secretarial vampires would have taken the insurance option on the rental, so all she had to do was find some signal and call a tow truck. A brief search of the pockets of her jeans reminded her that the phone was still in the car. Gingerly she touched the sore part of her forehead, checking in that stupid human way to see if it hurt, and knowing as her finger depressed the already blooming lump, that it did.
Finding the phone took a moment. It had fallen from its cradle stuck to the windshield onto the floor on the passenger side. Valerie was in no mood to move around the car and open that side, so she simply leaned into the car and leaving her booted feet hanging out of the open front door, she stretched to reach the phone.
With her head under the glove box she grabbed the phone and a sound filtered in from outside. It was a snuffling sound. Valerie pushed herself up but she couldn’t see anything, being too low to see out the window much beyond the branches above.
Suddenly the window became dark, as a snout, followed by the big shaggy head of a black bear, filled the space. Valerie blinked at the bear. The bear sniffed the glass and then set one oddly golden eye on her.
Oh crap!
Valerie panicked.
Valerie moved like lightning. She angled her body so she could tumble into the back of the sedan, and went for it. She landed mostly upside down but righted herself enough to be lying on her back in a fetal position on the sedan’s carpet between the front passenger and back seats.
Was this a good idea?
Probably not, she conceded since now she couldn’t move. Oh well, perhaps the bear would move on and not come in through the open driver’s door. Did bears even like to eat people? Valerie had never really been an Animal Planet junkie and now she was wishing she had been. Should she try to run for the road?
Oh sure, genius, and then what?
There was more snuffling, this time right outside the passenger door. Then there was a terrible sound, something horribly organic that conjured gross, frightening images in her head. Valerie felt her bladder want to let go. She clenched her muscles and closed her eyes and waited for whatever was going to happen next.
Silence.
More silence.
“Hi!”
The voice came from right inside the car and Valerie, already twanging with tightly pulled nerves screamed and lashed out. Her hand hit something, as with a burst of athleticism, courtesy of her new friend adrenaline, Valerie righted herself and attacked the noise all in one confused motion. She ended up hitting her head on the roof of the car and sliding back down into her hiding place.
A voice, male and quite well modulated, spoke to her from the front driver’s seat.
“Hey! Take it easy!”
Valerie felt a wave of relief, followed by a new wave of fear hitting her. So she’d swapped a bear for a hillbilly yokel.
“What are you doing in my car?” Valerie yelled. “I have a gun by the way. And! There’s a bear out there!”
Uh huh? Well done genius! Now what’s going to happen when he realizes you don’t?
And then a head rose around the headrest. Topped with dark blonde curly hair, a face rose in the space between the headrest and the roof. Golden eyes regarded her above a smile that had clearly been made to break hearts. Her creole grandmother, Sophie (Fifi for short) would have said it was, “The smile of an angel touched by the devil.” Valerie had never known what she meant until now.
“Okay,” the man said slowly. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
Valerie was silent. Her blue eyes kept returning to that hypnotic golden stare and then looking away hurriedly.
“My name is Kyle, Kyle Pierce,” he said. “You look like you need some help.”
“I’m fine, really,” she said folding her arms across her chest. “I like hanging out in the back of my car like this. Did I mention the bear?”
“With the nose in a ditch?” he said, ignoring the question.
“Look, I don’t know you,” Valerie said, “We’re out here in God-knows-where, and you could be a psychopath for all I know.”
“I’m really not going to hurt you,” Kyle said.
“Yeah, you and the bear,” Valerie said chancing a brief look out the window.
Kyle sighed and backed out
of the car. From outside he said, “Will you come out now? The bear is gone.”
He was dressed in jeans and a flannel blue and white shirt. He was broad shouldered and tall. She looked at him and bit her lip.
“Oh, you’re gonna get in so much trouble with this one,” she said to herself, but she opened the back door and climbed out.
Kyle smiled at her and said, “Right, so I’m Kyle and you are?”
“Valerie Rousseau,” she said. What harm could there be in telling him her name? At least when he chopped her to bits he would be able to say who she had been.
“Pleased to meet you,” Kyle said. He shook her unresisting hand and then turned to the car. “Well there’s no driving it out of that.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she said a little testily. “Look, I’ll just call a tow or something. Must be a number on the papers for the rental.”
“No need,” Kyle said, “We get this more often than you might think out here. I’ll just pull you out with my truck.”
Valerie smiled weakly. He has a truck.
“Oh, you really don’t have to worry,” she said, “I’ll be just fine. I’ll call someone… or not. How can there be no signal?”
“This is Sun Valley, sweetheart,” Kyle said jovially, “There’s no signal out here. Hell, we’re lucky we have power.” And he laughed.
Valerie smiled weakly. She really was in the middle of nowhere. So with a great amount of trepidation she let Kyle help her pull the car out of the ditch. By then the shadows were lengthening and the world was turning golden as time slipped away. How long had it taken her to get out here? It was already late afternoon. Valerie realized that her hotel was all the way back in town.
But then the dying sunlight lit Kyle up with a heavenly glow and he shone with a beautiful halo that she couldn’t pull her eyes away from.
“Well there we go,” he said when the little rental was on the road again. “Still think I’m out to kill you or something? Or have you realized that my intensions are honorable?”
Valerie had to admit that the vibe she was getting from him was anything but creepy, and her granny Fifi always said to trust your gut with people. “It can see their hearts, honey child.”
Perhaps it was New York that was making her so mistrustful of people, so eager to think the worst of them. Valerie decided that when this job was done, she was actually going home. Not just thinking about it, but really going to do it this time, and neither Mr. Petersen nor Mr. Snow would be able to dissuade her. Not this time. This time it was a matter of life and death. She needed her roots, her people and she needed to feel grounded again.
Kyle was staring at her when she resurfaced.
“Where did you go?” he asked her peering into her blue eyes.
“I went home,” Valerie said before she could stop herself.
“And where would that be?” he asked. He was leaning casually on the rental. She had the keys, all she had to do was get in the car, put them in the ignition and drive off. But she couldn’t, because she wanted to stay here in the heavenly light and look at Kyle.
“New Orleans, but I work in New York,” Valerie said.
“Now that sounds like a story,” Kyle said. “Let me take you to an early dinner. I know this absolutely fabulous place down by the river. It’s the most beautiful place in the world, you’ll love it.”
“How do you know?” Valerie asked.
“You’re from New Orleans, so you like good food, good music and great ambiance, and this place has all three.” Kyle was smiling again. “Where you staying by the way?”
“Grandma’s Inn,” she said.
He shook his head, “Wow, that’s all the way back in town. What are you doing out here?”
“It’s a long story, but the short version is that my boss is thinking of investing out here, so he sends me to get the ley of the land,” she said knowing it wasn’t the whole truth. Valerie had discovered that locals could get really upset if they heard that her company was moving in, so she generally kept the shop talk to a minimum outside of those she had to speak to. “Anyway I got lost,” she ended somewhat lamely.
“So let me take you to dinner, and afterwards I’ll make sure you get to Grandma’s,” Kyle said. “I’m the best GPS you’ll get in this part of the world.”
Valerie considered her options. Drive on back into town alone and possibly get lost or…
The “or” sounded way better.
“Okay,” she said.
They left the rental on the side of the road, Kyle assuring her that it would be perfectly safe, and he drove them off through the trees.
Valerie sat in the front of Kyle’s big truck and listened to the radio. He seemed to have the most eclectic taste in music ever. They had listened to Yellow Submarine by the Beatles, something from Taylor Swift, Hello Dolly by Louis Armstrong and then something loud by someone called Linkin Park (she was pretty sure they were not from Santa Monica), which Kyle quickly skipped over.
But bar the jarring array of music, the drive was really pleasant. The colorful trees with their fall leaves gave way to spruces and pines as they rose up a series of small hills. Then they dipped down the other side on what, to Valerie looked like an animal track, charged through a dry river bed and almost collided with a massive boulder. But at the last second Kyle wrenched the wheel and they skirted around it into what had to be a parking lot. There were other cars there, standing between the tree trunks that were all hung with faerie lights.
“This is Honey’s,” Kyle said smiling, indicating what to Valerie looked like a hedge. “Best place anywhere.”
At first she thought he was joking, but then she stepped out of the truck and saw it.
“That’s a caravan stuck in a hedge,” Valerie said pointing.
“Yeah it is, but don’t let that fool you,” Kyle said ushering her up the steps and in through the bright red door.
On the other side was a room that was open to the sky, except around the very edge where a small roof was held up with wooden poles. In the center of the space was a dug out section of blackened earth, where some men were clearing away what looked like ashes and half burnt logs. Others were bringing more wood.
“Well, it’s certainly rustic,” Valerie said looking around.
All the tables and chairs were log made and sturdy, but then judging by the size of the men around the place, they would have to be. Every last one of them was tall and broad shouldered whether their hair was grey or not. They all looked a bit like Kyle too and smiled when they saw him.
Kyle spotted two old men in a corner playing chess. He lifted a hand and waved.
“That’s my grandpa,’ he said, “Let’s go say hi.”
So Valerie tagged along while Kyle went to the old man and greeted him. Kyle’s grandfather was slightly wrinkled. His skin had taken on a leathery look, as skin does when its owner has spent a lifetime outdoors. His hair was snow white and still thick and curly and hung around his shoulders. He was strong and alert and thinking hard. His opponent was just as white haired, big and strong as he was and the two were in a fierce battle over the chess board. It looked as though the other man was winning.
“You ol’ son-of-a-gun!” Kyle’s grandpa exclaimed. “I want a rematch! I’ll swear you cheated, Paul Barkley!”
“I did no such thing, you old goat!” Paul Barkley shouted in reply, “You’re just so old you forgot how to play good.”
Then the two of them laughed and shook hands.
Winston (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 3) Page 81