The Marriage Risk Read online

  Abbey grinned, raising her head to look into Sawyer’s eyes. “Charles vulnerable to a woman—my, my. I can’t imagine who that sounds like, can you?” she asked, her voice warm with teasing.

  “As far as I’m concerned, falling in love could only do Charles good. But I wish…”

  “You wish the woman was someone who isn’t related to Catherine Fletcher.”

  “Exactly,” Sawyer muttered.

  * * *

  Although it was past midnight, Lanni couldn’t sleep. She would’ve blamed the light if she hadn’t been born and raised in Anchorage. The midnight sun was nothing new to her.

  Filled with nervous energy, she showered and changed into her favorite loose-fitting pajamas. After that, she brewed herself a small pot of tea. She moved into her grandmother’s living room and sat on the couch with her legs folded beneath her, then took a tentative sip of the steaming tea. Across from her, on top of the ancient television, sat two framed photographs. High school graduation photos. One was of Matt, her older brother, and the other was of herself.

  Seeing the photographs comforted Lanni. It made her feel less…guilty about moving into her grandmother’s house. Less as if she were invading her privacy. Catherine had suffered a slight stroke several months earlier. She hadn’t wanted to move into the Anchorage nursing facility and had always intended to return home to Hard Luck. Even now, she considered her stay in Anchorage temporary. Grammy didn’t seem to realize she wasn’t getting better. Perhaps that was a blessing.

  Lanni glanced at the photograph again. Her grandmother loved her and Matt enough to display their pictures to anyone who came into her home. But that fact led to a hundred other questions. Why had Catherine never shown any real pride or interest in her grandchildren? Why had she hidden her feelings from them? Lanni found it incredibly sad that Catherine had such a difficult time showing affection. She knew her own mother had often felt cheated and hurt by the things Catherine had said and done. Yet Kate Caldwell had cared tenderly for her mother during the months after Catherine’s stroke.

  Not wanting to dwell on the problems confronting her mother and grandmother in Anchorage, Lanni studied her brother’s youthful face. She was worried about him, especially since his divorce from Karen.

  Lanni longed to shake some sense into both her brother and his ex-wife. She refused to believe that two people who loved each other so deeply would allow their marriage to fall apart.

  But if she was going to blame anyone, it would be Matt. At thirty, he was five years older than Lanni—and about five years younger in attitude. Matt still hadn’t made a decision about what he wanted to do with his life. Throughout his marriage, he’d drifted from one area of interest to another, uprooting Karen every time. He’d tried his hand at accounting, commercial fishing, and perhaps most interesting, he’d attended cooking school.

  Six months into each venture, just when Karen had readjusted her life, Matt decided this new interest wasn’t what he wanted, after all.

  Lanni didn’t think her brother was irresponsible or reckless, but his driving need for change and his general dissatisfaction with life had led to the breakup of his marriage.

  Lanni forced her thoughts away from Matt. It was after midnight—she should be asleep. Her day had started in the wee hours of the previous morning, and she was exhausted.

  Suddenly, the image of Charles O’Halloran’s face entered her mind. Their meeting on the road that evening had been the oddest thing. Attraction—an attraction unlike any she’d ever experienced—had charged the air between them.

  Somehow Lanni had known what Charles was feeling, because she’d felt the same bewildering sensations herself.

  Had she not been with Duke, Lanni feared she would have closed the distance that separated them and walked straight into Charles’s arms.

  He would have welcomed her, too. Of that Lanni was certain.

  Perhaps it was the lure of the forbidden. The grass-is-greener syndrome. Wanting what you know you can’t have. Lanni wished she’d paid more attention in her psychology classes. Charles was an O’Halloran. An enemy of the Fletchers—except that Lanni didn’t know the reasons for their enmity. Perhaps she was doing something terribly disloyal by dining with members of his family.

  But Charles hadn’t been there for dinner.

  Technically Sawyer hadn’t invited her, either. It was Abbey who’d insisted she come. Over the meal and the conversation that followed, no mention was made of the problems between the O’Hallorans and the Fletchers.

  She would phone her mother, Lanni decided, and this time she’d insist on some answers. She had a right to know. A right to make her own decisions and choices.

  It didn’t help that she was so strongly attracted to Charles O’Halloran. She didn’t understand why, but she felt what she could only describe as a sense of destiny, of fate, when she was near him—and that was something she wasn’t even sure she believed in!

  Lanni stayed awake until her head felt heavy and her eyelids stung. She slipped between the clean sheets and cradled the thick feather pillow. Closing her eyes, she walked mentally through each room of the house. It should take a couple of weeks to pack everything and arrange to have it delivered to Anchorage. She planned to start with Catherine’s bedroom. Perhaps she’d find something there that would help her figure out why the O’Hallorans so adamantly disliked her family…and why her family felt the same way.

  * * *

  Charles spent the first part of his morning on the phone trying to keep busy. He didn’t want to think about his brothers’ new secretary. Yet time and again his mind wandered down to the mobile office next to the runway. Lanni was bound to stir up interest among the pilots. His jaw tensed at the thought that John, Ralph, Duke and the rest would be falling all over each other in an effort to impress her.

  He could picture them gathering around her desk, disturbing her while she worked. They’d be telling her stories and making her laugh, and generally acting like fools.

  Well, Charles wasn’t going to join them. He wasn’t willing to play the fool over a woman, no matter who she was. At least that was what he repeatedly told himself.

  By ten o’clock he’d had a change of heart. He left his house and headed briskly down the road.

  “Morning,” Pete Livengood, the proprietor of the grocery store, called out as he walked past.

  “Morning,” Charles returned, wondering if Pete had heard about Lanni’s arrival. From Sawyer’s stories, he knew that Pete had taken an instant liking to Abbey and proposed almost within the first five minutes of meeting her. He smiled at the memory of Sawyer’s outrage over their friend’s interest.

  Then Charles thought of Lanni and wondered if the old coot had proposed marriage—or anything else—to her. Involuntarily his hands tightened into fists.

  The green-eyed monster had struck again, Charles realized. And this time he was the victim.

  As he stepped up to the mobile, he felt his heart kick into high gear. He didn’t have much of an excuse for stopping by. Although he was a partner in the air service with Sawyer and Christian, his role wasn’t an active one. They rarely consulted him on business decisions—and they sure hadn’t consulted him before embarking on this latest scheme!

  He went into the office to discover Lanni sitting behind a desk typing. Her long hair was pulled back from her face, fastened with a clip at the base of her neck. Her eyes widened when she saw him and her hands froze over the keyboard.

  “Hello again,” he said, attempting to look as though he had an important reason for being there. “Is Sawyer around?”

  “He took a flight this morning. One of the pilots—John, I think he said his name is—came down with the flu. Sawyer said he’d be back around one.”

  Charles immediately wondered if John’s flu had been a way to get Sawyer out of the office so he could spend time with Lanni. John Henderson had made a point of letting Charles know where he stood on the issue of bringing women to Hard Luck. Either women came to
live here or he was moving on to another air service.

  This was a familiar complaint among the pilots, especially in the bleak, dark months of winter. Charles didn’t understand why Christian and Sawyer had given in to what amounted to blackmail, but then, he reminded himself, he wasn’t making the decisions. Obviously.

  “Is there anything you’d like me to tell Sawyer?” Lanni asked, picking up a pad and pen. For the life of him, Charles couldn’t come up with a single thing to say to his brother.

  “I’ll talk to him later,” he said on a decisive note. “Thanks, anyway.”

  “I’ll leave a message for Sawyer that you stopped by.”

  Charles shoved his hands into his pockets. “Great.”

  He hesitated. His heart seemed to be leaping and dancing inside his chest. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever gone panning for gold, have you?”

  Her eyes revealed her interest. “No. No, I haven’t.”

  “My grandfather’s claim is still active, and I was thinking I’d take a trip up there this afternoon. I was wondering if you’d, uh, like to come along and see how it’s done, that is, of course, if, uh—”

  She nodded even before he’d finished. “I’d love to. What time are you leaving?”

  Charles had to think fast. “Any time is fine. Whenever you can get away from here, just let me know.”

  “I’ll ask Sawyer as soon as he’s back.”

  “Good,” he said, doing his best to hide his delight. “Give me a call when you’re ready.”

  Charles thought her smile could melt ice. “Thank you for asking me, Charles.”

  Thank you for asking me. Charles hardly dared to believe she’d actually agreed. It was all he could do to keep from clicking his heels as he walked out of the office.

  Whatever it was, he had it bad. Real bad.

  Charles hurried to the house and gathered together his supplies. Within half an hour he’d loaded the back of his pickup. Now all he had to do was wait for Lanni’s call.

  “Where are you going?” Scott asked as he rode up on his bicycle.

  “To the gold claim my grandfather used to mine,” Charles explained. He placed a second shovel in the bed of his truck. There were probably any number of shovels at the site, but he wanted to be sure. He’d also packed things that had nothing to do with gold mining: a bottle of wine, a loaf of sourdough bread and a hunk of cheddar cheese.

  “Can I come?”

  “Another time, Scott,” Charles replied absently, checking to see if he’d forgotten anything.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise,” Charles said, smiling. “We’ll bring your sister, too.”

  “No girls,” Scott protested. “Why do women have to ruin everything?”

  A day earlier, Charles would have agreed with him, but not now. In an hour or two, Lanni would be joining him, and frankly nothing could have pleased Charles more.

  “Susan wants to ride my bike,” Scott complained. “I don’t want her to, ’cause if I let her and she learns how, she’ll want it all the time.” He glanced over his shoulder and groaned. “Here she comes now.”

  The little girl raced toward Scott. “You said I could ride your bike,” she said in an accusing voice, as if daring her older brother to refuse her.

  “You don’t know how,” Scott muttered.

  “Everyone has to learn sometime. Mom said you had to let me, remember?”

  “All right, all right,” Scott muttered, climbing off with a decided lack of enthusiasm. He cast Charles a forlorn look as he handed over the bike.

  “Besides, I know how to ride a bike,” Susan said righteously. “A little, anyway.”

  “The seat’s too high and you can’t reach the pedals and—”

  “I can too reach the pedals.”

  The argument sounded like one that had been repeated often. Charles grinned as he watched the brother and sister engage in verbal battle. It didn’t seem all that many years ago that he and Sawyer had fought over whose turn it was to ride the bike. Their parents had settled the issue by buying Sawyer his own bike for Christmas. The very one Scott had reluctantly passed over to his sister.

  The boy climbed onto the back of Charles’s truck and sat on the tailgate. “I don’t want to watch,” he said. “She’s probably going to wreck the best bike I ever had, and all because she’s a girl.”

  “Be patient,” Charles advised the boy. “The harder you resist, the more attractive the bike will be to her. Women always want what they can’t have.”

  “What about men?”

  “Well, we’re the same—but not as bad.” Then, in afterthought, he added, “Don’t tell your mother I said that. She might not understand. Okay?” He didn’t want a war with his soon-to-be sister-in-law.

  “Okay,” Scott whispered.

  With Charles’s help, Susan climbed onto the bicycle. Her toes barely reached the pedals, even after Charles had lowered the seat as far as it would go. She looked up and beamed him a radiant smile of triumph.

  “Thanks, Uncle Charles.”

  Being called uncle would take some getting used to, but as Charles had realized the day before, he rather liked it.

  “I’ll walk beside you until you get going,” Charles said.

  Scott got to his feet. “Just make sure she doesn’t crash!” he shouted.

  Susan started peddling, and the bike wobbled precariously from side to side. Charles trotted along beside her until she found her balance, then he stopped and waited for Susan to ride away on her own.

  “She’s doing all right,” Scott mumbled, “for a girl.”

  “She’s doing great.” Charles felt a surge of pride as if he alone was responsible for Susan’s success. He continued to watch as the seven-year-old turned the bike around and rode back.

  “She shouldn’t get so close to the side of the road,” Scott warned. “There’s all kinds of rocks there.”

  Charles was about to call out a warning when Susan made the unpleasant discovery for herself. The bicycle wobbled, then crashed into the bushes. Almost immediately they heard her howl of pain.

  Scott leapt out of the truck and darted down the road toward his sister, with Charles following. When they reached Susan, Charles carefully pulled the bike away and handed it to Scott, who inspected the wheel to make sure it wasn’t bent.

  “Are you okay?” Charles asked as he gently helped her stand up. Tears streaked her face, and her shoulders jerked as she struggled to hold in her sobs.

  Susan sat by the side of the road and twisted her arm so she could look at her elbow. “Here,” she said, showing him the scraped skin. “Here, too.” She pushed up the leg of her pants to examine her knee.

  “You’d better let me wash that off and put on some disinfectant.”

  “It’s not the kind that stings, is it?” Scott asked, sounding concerned. He stood over Charles and studied his sister’s injuries.

  “No,” Charles said. “It isn’t the kind that stings.”

  He carried Susan back and sat her on the tailgate, then hurried into the house for the necessary first-aid supplies. Although she didn’t really need them, he brought out a couple of Band-Aids.

  The little girl grimaced as he cleaned the scrapes. She gritted her teeth when he sprayed on the disinfectant. Then she released a slow smile and announced, “It didn’t hurt.”

  “I told you it wouldn’t,” Charles said with an answering smile. He carefully placed the two small adhesive strips on her knee and elbow, then helped her down.

  Before Susan’s feet touched the ground, she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. “Thank you, Uncle Charles.” With that, she was off like a shot, running toward the library. Scott hopped on his bike and rode after her, with a wave and a “See you later” for Charles.

  Watching them go, Charles felt his heart constrict. Sawyer was a lucky man, he thought. Not only had he fallen in love with Abbey, but she was bringing the priceless gift of her children to their marriage.

  Back in t
he house, the phone rang. It was Lanni. Sawyer had returned and she was free to leave the office. Charles picked her up at Catherine Fletcher’s house, and before long, she was sitting beside him in the cab of his truck. Feeling more lighthearted than he had in years, he headed north on the maintenance road out of Hard Luck.

  “You said your grandfather used to mine this claim?” she asked conversationally.

  He was pleased to note that she’d changed clothes and was dressed appropriately in blue jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and ankle-high boots. He’d brought some bug spray to ward off the mosquitoes, but unfortunately that went only so far in keeping the pesky critters away.

  “My grandfather, Adam, and his wife, Anna, settled Hard Luck in the early 1930s. Like thousands of men and women before them, they came in search of a dream.” He didn’t mean to sound poetic, but he’d heard the story so often he found himself repeating it just the way his grandmother used to tell it. “The gold dredges working near Fairbanks were digging up huge quantities of gold. I don’t recall the precise amount,” he said, “but in a four-or five-year span one dredge was responsible for more than ten million dollars’ worth of gold, and that was when the price was thirty-five dollars an ounce.”

  “Did your grandfather work on a dredge originally?”

  “Yeah. That’s when he got hit with gold fever. But he was convinced the real motherlode lay north. He planned to strike it rich someday.”

  “Did he?”

  Charles sighed. “Not in the way he wanted or expected. He discovered some gold but never the huge vein he sought. He found something else, something far more valuable, though. He built a town and settled a land. He created a community that’s grown and thrived. Without meaning to, my grandfather shaped the lives of several generations.” Charles paused, wondering how much more he should say. “I believe the gold’s there—the major strike he was hoping to discover. But now it might be one of Adam’s descendants who finds it.”