Page 35 of 15 Summers Later

The two girls had poured out an unbelievable story of imprisonment, beatings, abuse.

He and his father had easily set aside their argument, both of them aghast at what they were hearing. Dan Gentry had a satellite phone that he always carried with him into the backcountry. He quickly called for help, and Luke could remember how his father had tried to explain what was happening to a confused dispatcher. His father had finally snapped out that they had found two kidnapped girls and needed an immediate rescue.

Luke had provided their GPS location and they had been pulling down their provisions from the bear-safe food bags hung in the trees when they first heard the dogs and the shouting of men on the hunt.

He pushed the memory away now. He had enough nightmares about what came next. He didn’t need to focus on it.

“You and Ava could not have known what would happen,” he said now to Madi.

“We should have,” she argued. “We had been running for our own lives for d-days. We had traveled through miles of wilderness to try to get them off our trail. Up and down mountains, crossing rivers again and again, knowing they couldn’t be far behind us. That they would never stop until they found us. We knew what they would do to us and anybody who helped us. We should never have stopped at your camp.”

He took her hand, the one that curled slightly and could never straighten completely because of all that had happened to her. His heart broke a little as it trembled in his.

“Madi. Stop. My dad would not have done a single thing differently. You have to know that. He never would have turned his back on the two of you, even if he had known that it would ultimately cost him his life.”

That was yet another way Luke could never measure up to his father, yet he had spent every day since then trying his best. He failed most of the time, but that would only spur him to try harder the next day.

“I wish none of it had ever happened,” she mumbled, her mouth twisted.

“I know, honey. I’m sorry.” He hated that she had paid such a bitter price, and would for the rest of her life.

She sniffled but didn’t cry. She was tough, even in this. Still, he handed her a tissue from the box he kept in the door of his pickup. She wiped at her nose. He studied her, fierce and brave and lovely, and couldn’t help himself. He pulled her across the bench seat and into a hug.

She sagged into him, resting her cheek against his chest. They sat in silence for a long time, both of them lost in the past. This wasn’t the first time he had held her in an embrace. They were friends, almost like family, and she was always generous with her hugs.

They had danced the night before, and he had been caught by the softness of her skin and the strawberries-and-cream smell of her shampoo, wondering why he had never noticed how perfectly she fit against him before.

Something felt...different between them. A deeper connection tugging them together.

He wanted to kiss her.

The desire blossomed in his chest like her grandmother’s big, lush peonies. He wanted to lower his mouth to hers and taste her.

He couldn’t do that. Madi was like a sister to him. She had been since she and Ava had burst into their lives. He had no business thinking of her in any other way.

His father would have been furious with him.

A decent man would never even consider taking advantage of a vulnerable woman.

Dan had drilled that advice into his and Owen’s heads from the time they were old enough to start thinking about the opposite sex.

He tamped down on his desire and lowered his arms, easing back into his own seat.

“You okay now?”

She gave him a wary look, much like those lambs did when he came at them with the needle. “I... Yes. I think so.”

Had she felt that heat shiver to life between them, as if something long-buried had begun to awaken?

She shifted her gaze out the windows, toward the wild, jagged mountains.

“I’ve kept you much longer than I intended. You told me you had a big to-do list.”

“I do. Yes.”

“Any concerns with any of your residents?” he asked. “How’s the kitten? Do you need me to check her?”

She didn’t answer him immediately, as if her mind had been elsewhere and it was taking her time to catch up.

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