Page 1 of Love By a Landslide

Prologue

Then

The steps were easy, performed so many times that they’d become automatic: (1) flip the raft, (2) get everyone back on board, (3) assess possible damage, then (4) high-five because they’d survived the unbridled power of Mother Nature.

They shouldn’t have gotten stuck on number two.

When he finally saw her, the absence of her helmet struck him first. It must have come loose when they capsized and everyone flew into the drink.

“There!”

The team paddled furiously, digging in with the well-trained synchronicity only years of experience could afford. Adrenaline and sweeping panic hummed collectively between them. Voices quiet, heaving breaths deafening. The urethane bottom of the boat scraped up on shore, and he leaped from the side back into the churning drift.

She was face down. Caught in a strainer of fallen trees and branches. Unmoving except for a crown of muted gold. The river’s greedy fingers combed through her hair, swirling and snarling the strands into a mat of dirty tangles.

His heart thundered in his head, a frenzied tempo by which he followed as he scrambled to her side. He grabbed her vest. Waterlogged clothes and the pull of surrounding rapids made her weight unreal, and he struggled with his remaining strength to free her from the petulant river. Her body broke loose from thecurrent, and he managed to drag her to the bank with the help of two others.

How had it all gone so wrong?

But there was no place for delusion there on the sandy edge. The hard, wet rocks dug into his knees as he gave her his breath. He knew who was to blame.

It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.

Chapter one

Four years later, A Thursday night in May: Lucy

When she’d agreed to let him plan her dirty thirty birthday, she had assumed he’d be there to help her celebrate the milestone. Yet, there Lucy sat, perched awkwardly on one of four wobbly barstools around a bistro table that likely hadn’t been wiped down all night. Alone.

Practically.

“When’s he going to get here?” Victor shouted over the thump of chest-rattling base, courtesy of the speakers strapped just above their heads. Lucy hadn’t complained about snagging a table in the back—though the others had, vehemently—because they were lucky enough to get any seats this late in the evening without a reservation.

She glanced at her phone for the hundredth time that night and reread the last few texts they’d exchanged.

Lucy:

Where are you?

Brodan:

Almost done, babe. Still finishing the prep for my pitch on Monday.

Lucy:

Cool. We’ll stay here a little longer.

Moving on to The Tackle Boxx. Meet us there?

Got a table in the back! Woo! ETA?

Lucy’s reassuring grin slipped slightly before she flexed it back in place. There were enough scowls at this table that she didn’t need to add another one to the mix. Her fingers scuttled across the screen as she pinged her tardy boyfriend again.

Lucy:

Hello?

Brodan:

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