Page 133 of One Last Stand

He stood and grabbed her up and spun her around. Then,wait—he put her down. “You didn’t say yes. Please say yes.”

She parked her arms around his neck, smiled up at him. “Yes. Absolutely. Forever. I’ll stand with you, Moose, and trust you, even try to hold you up if the world falls apart. I promise.”

He kissed her, his hands cradling her face, keeping it chaste but still savoring her.

“Mom! The pie! The pie!”

He lifted his head and Hazel pointed at the oven, where smoke had gathered around the edges.

And as Tillie ran to the oven, opened it, and pulled out the pie—not burnt but deliciously done—he knew.

Nothing could hold him back from his happily ever after.

CHAPTER13

The snowmobilers had made the disastrous mistake of splitting up.

Shep sat in the bed of the Air One chopper, the night falling around them, the belly lights illuminating the white forested earth as he scanned for a man hiking the remote snow trail.

“Any sign of him?” Moose, through Shep’s headphones.

“Just a bunch of caribou,” he said. Their dark brown bodies spotted a field they’d passed. With caribou, there had to be wolves, and a guy walking alone in the Alaskan forest had about as much chance against them as . . .

Well, as Shep had of trying to shake London out of his heart.

Yeah, bad analogy, but frankly, he had London on the brain, so everything in the past five days since returning from Montelena had been about her. About beingwithouther, about walking away from her, about finding footing in a life without her.

About his stupidity.

“He shouldn’t have left her,” he said now of the man, Willis James, who’d abandoned his wife and their ten-year-old son on the trail after a snowmobile crash that had broken the woman’s leg and left both machines tangled.

They’d gotten the call from Winter Starr, a bush pilot who’d flown overhead earlier today and spotted the red jackets of the woman and her son. When they’d waved at her, she’d searched for a put-down place. When she couldn’t find one, she’d done the next best thing.

Called Air One Rescue.

Shep had been dressed and out the door before Moose ended the call, five days of hanging out in his condo turning him antsy. He’d even tried to call his parents again. He could use words from his father, but again, the call went to voicemail. Figured. They were probably out on a slope somewhere.

He taught Caspian a few new tricks. He liked the dog, and after a call to the shelter, where they confirmed that the owner hadn’t responded, he’d decided to keep him. Jasmine had done a decent job of taking care of him while Shep was gone. Apparently wanted to make that known to Shep, too, once he returned. He had a veritable smorgasbord of food in his fridge, each day a new offering.

Maybe he shouldn’t have taken the listing down. But . . . he wasn’t going to run. He had built a life here. Even without London.

Still, the place felt almost emptier than before, when he’d thought her gone forever.

Shep had driven into the Tooth almost on autopilot, and Moose took the crew out in the chopper—Boo, Shep, Axel. They found the mother and son shivering and nearly hypothermic in a partial snow cave that Shep had to admit wasn’t a terrible construction. Better to have closed it off from the elements, but he made no criticism as Boo and Axel went down on a line, splinted the leg of the woman, then brought them both up in baskets.

Moose had flown them to the Copper Mountain clinic, then returned to search the trail for the husband.

Now, as twilight pressed in, shadows lengthening from the purple mountains in the north and west, the ground turning hazy, the chances of finding him before bingo on Moose’s gas tanks . . .

And tonight’s temps would drop to lethal below-zero digits.

“Put me on the ground, Moose. I have snowshoes—let me at least see if I can track him.”

Moose said nothing.

“We can’t even see footprints from up here. It hasn’t snowed in the last twenty-four hours—if he went this way, I’ll be able to see it. Besides, the trail diverges up ahead—maybe he took the other path.”

“Fine. Sit tight—let me find a place to land.”

---