“I held Myron’s hand,” she said. “He tried to wait for you. He tried to hold on.”
Cole’s eyes shone.
“He had a smile,” she said very softly.
Cole’s mouth quivered, and he put his arm around Tori’s shoulders. “Come,” he said, voice thick. “It’s getting cold and dark out.”
And they walked together, the three of them and Ace, Cole with one arm around Olivia’s shoulders, and one around Tori’s, a tentative family forged by fate. They walked toward the big old Broken Bar lodge house, warm, golden light spilling out from the windows into the cool dusk and snow.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
At least once each summer my husband, Paul, and I load up our truck, camper, and trailer and head north with our Black Beast of a labradog, up into the interior to Cariboo country, where we spend days, sometimes weeks at Big Bar Lake—a slice right out of paradise.
Occasionally we stay in the campsite at the far end of the aquamarine waters, colored by white marl shoals, where we fish for darting rainbow trout. More often we stay on a very special piece of land graciously shared with us by Tom and Jennifer Cole. It was there, under big sky, surrounded by endless forests, the Marble range in the distance, the haunting cry of coyotes echoing at dusk, that Olivia and Cole’s story was born. A very big thank-you for this novel’s inspiration is thus due to Tom and Jenn, who introduced us to the place. And to my Paul, for helping me land my first trout on a fly line, and for drawing me into the esoteric art of fly tying and the magic of watching nature in order to learn what might make a fish bite (any errors are my own).
Thank you also to Deborah Nemeth for early editorial insight. To JoVon Sotak for bringing this book under the Montlake umbrella, to Kelli Martin for editorial shaping and polishing, and to the rest of the Amazon Publishing team who make books possible. A big thanks, too, to Joanne White for some wonderful artwork and promotional material. And as always, to my writing comrade, Mica Stone, for always kicking me in the butt (or head) when I need it most!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2013 Paul Beswetherick
Loreth Anne White is an award-winning author of romantic suspense, thriller, and mystery novels. A double RITA finalist, she has won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Readers’ Crown, and is a Booksellers’ Best Award finalist, a double Daphne Du Maurier finalist, and a multiple CataRomance Reviewers’ Choice winner.
Loreth hails from South Africa but now lives with her family in a ski resort in the moody Coast Mountains of North America’s Pacific Northwest. It’s a place of vast, wild, and often dangerous mountains, larger-than-life characters, epic adventure, and romance—the perfect place to escape reality. It’s no wonder it was here that she was inspired to abandon her sixteen-year newspaper career to escape into a world of romantic fiction filled with dangerous men and adventurous women.
When she’s not writing, you will find her open-water distance swimming, skiing, biking, hiking, or running the trails with her Black Dog, and generally trying to avoid the bears—albeit not always successfully. In the summer she will often be on the road, searching out remote camping and fly fishing spots with her husband or participating in tracking and air-scent courses with her Black Beast. She calls this work, because it’s when the best ideas come.
Loreth loves to hear from readers. You can contact her through her website at www.lorethannewhite.com, or you can find her on www.facebook.com/Loreth.Anne.White or twitter.com/Loreth
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