Page 23 of An Alaskan Twin Surprise (Home to Owl Creek 2)

“No. You didn’t. I would remember if my fiancée expressed concerns about marrying me due to my being a pilot.”

“Don’t you remember how rattled I was after you crashed your plane? How I begged you not to fly again?” she pressed. Although she knew the fault was hers for leaving, Gabriel’s denial had always been an issue. He’d never enjoyed tackling the tough subjects. It was clear to her he hadn’t wanted to deal with her discomfort about the plane crash.

Gabriel frowned. “I just chalked it up to you having the jitters about me being in harm’s way.”

“You crashed your plane! That was terrifying to me.”

He was staring at her with shock radiating from his eyes. It was almost as if she was speaking a foreign language to him.

“I crash-landed on Kachemak Bay. It was a textbook emergency landing. I only ended up with a few scrapes and bumps.” He scratched his chin, his expression contemplative. “I do recall you being upset, but I never thought it was a deal breaker for us.”

Rachel shivered and wrapped her arms around her middle. “Your accident traumatized me. It gave me flashbacks to the plane crash that killed my father. I couldn’t let go of the idea that history was going to repeat itself all over again with you.”

“I’m sorry you felt that way, but the situations were totally different,” he said, shaking his head.

“Not to me they weren’t!” Rachel said in a raised voice. “Don’t you get it? I’ve never gotten over losing my dad in that way. And I’ve never forgotten what it felt like to watch the father I loved so much crash and die right before my very eyes.”

* * *

Gabriel felt shock ricochet through him. He wanted to ask her to repeat herself, but he was fairly certain he hadn’t misunderstood. “What do you mean watch?” he asked, moving toward her so their bodies were only inches away from each other.

Rachel closed her eyes and raised her hand to her mouth. She shook her head back and forth, letting out a distressed sound.

Gabriel reached out and gently took her hands in his own. “Rachel, what are you talking about? You weren’t at the hangar that day, were you?”

She looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. “Yes, I was,” she admitted. “I wasn’t supposed to be. I was on punishment and Mama told me I had to stay at home, but I snuck out when she went into town. All I wanted to do was to see Daddy and to tell him about how unfair she was being to me. I needed him to hug me and tell me everything was going to be all right. Instead I ran head-on into a scene out of my worst nightmares.”

Disbelief washed over him. “You saw the crash?”

Tears slid down her cheeks. She let out an anguished sob. “Yes. I saw him coming in for the landing and I knew right away something wasn’t right. I’d watched him land dozens of times and this was different. The left side of the plane was tilting at a strange angle and it was coming in too fast before it crashed. I saw it go up in flames on impact about one thousand feet from the landing strip.” She was shaking uncontrollably. “I can almost smell the fire and ash. It’s stayed with me ever since.”

Her voice sounded flat as she continued. “A fire truck arrived on the scene, but I knew it was too late to save him. He was gone the moment the plane crashed. And I knew nothing in my life would ever be the same again.”

At the moment all Gabriel wanted to do was hold Rachel in his arms and soothe away her pain. The details were so vivid it was as if she was describing a recent event and not something from more than ten years earlier. Clearly, the tragedy was seared into her memory.

“I can’t imagine how traumatic it must’ve been.”

A shudder ran through her body. “I was in shock and filled with unbearable grief. I went straight home and didn’t tell a soul I’d seen my father crash his plane.”

“Not even Neil or your mother?” he asked, stunned by her confession. He couldn’t imagine bearing such pain and devastation all alone. Enduring such a horrific experience would scar a person.

“Not until years later. Mama had a tough time dealing with her grief. As a family we just pushed it down and never really dealt with it. There was this tremendous void in our lives and we couldn’t even talk about it or give each other comfort. It was our coping mechanism, but it splintered us apart in the end. We lost the heart of our family and we couldn’t even cling to each other for comfort.”

Gabriel knew the Marshall family had struggled to come to terms with losing Lance, but he hadn’t fully realized the torment lurking under the surface. There had been so many things left unsaid between him and Rachel. Even though they’d planned to spend their lives together he hadn’t truly known her, inside and out. Clearly, she’d hidden a huge part of herself from him. And he’d been utterly clueless.

“So are you saying you walked away from me because of the way your father died?” He wanted to make sure he fully understood the reasons she’d torn their lives apart. After all this time it was still important to him.

“What I’m saying is that I realized I couldn’t marry someone who took such risks as you do, Gabriel. What you do is even more dangerous than what my dad did. He flew tourists around our little corner of Alaska on a seaplane. You’re a bush pilot in addition to being a charter pilot. You fly dangerous routes all the time.”

Gabriel bristled. “And I’m a pretty good one at that. I’ve never been involved in a crash other than that single one. If you’d stuck around Owl Creek long enough you would have found out it was due to mechanical failure and not pilot error. I wasn’t at fault.”

“I wasn’t implying otherwise,” Rachel said,

her voice full of contrition. “I’m not trying to upset you or place blame on you for anything I felt at the time. I’m simply trying to come clean to you about my feelings and the reasons I left town and called off the wedding.” She winced. “I’ve spent the last few years coming to terms with my unresolved trauma from my father’s plane crash. Becoming a woman of faith has helped me more than I can put into words, along with speaking to a therapist. Being a mother showed me how to be strong and face up to my fears. But back then I was too frightened to go ahead with the wedding.”

Gabriel shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground. This conversation made him feel vulnerable. It brought to the surface all the pent-up emotions he’d spent years trying to stuff down.

“I do appreciate you coming clean with me, Rachel, but I wish you’d been able to talk to me back then. It could have spared us both a lot of agony.” He was struggling with feelings of resentment. After the plane crash Rachel had been a bit distant, but he’d chalked it up to nervousness due to their impending wedding. Why hadn’t he realized she’d been pulling away from him? Why hadn’t she confided in him about her struggles?

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