A Match Made In Alaska

“I think you can let go of me now,” he said in a strangled voice. She was gripping him so fiercely, she was cutting off his air supply. Although she was as light as a feather, her choke hold on his neck made it hard for him to breathe.

“I’m so sorry. I think it was all the adrenaline rushing through me,” she said as she released her grip on his neck. He set her down on the snow-covered ground. She looked up at him with big brown eyes that were full of apology.

Declan cast a quick glance around him. They had landed smack dab in the middle of the Chugach National Forest. It was a vast area comprised of almost seven million acres of land. His heart lurched painfully inside his chest. Being in a plane crash was bad enough. But surviving in a no-man’s-land without food or supplies was another story altogether.

He wasn’t a man prone to panic, but if there was ever a moment to give in to that state of being, it was now. They were going to have to do something drastic to help themselves get rescued in this vast, thickly forested area. Although he was putting on a brave front with Annie, he couldn’t help but feel that locating them might be akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

* * *

So far, Annie’s grand adventure had been one big bust. As stressful as her delayed flight had been, it was nothing compared to being a passenger in a plane that had dropped out of the sky and crash-landed in the Alaskan wilderness. Everything had happened so quickly, as if in fast motion. She’d barely had any time to react. Shock had settled in the moment the pilot had announced the upcoming crash landing. All she had been able to do was pray. And wish she had never left the coziness of Maine.

In the moments after the plane touched down, the pilot had helped her out of her seat and toward safety, and although his manner had been a tad gruff, he’d mobilized with an urgency she respected. Clearly time had been of the essence.

As Annie exited the plane, a cold blast of November air hit her squarely in the face. Her eyes teared up. She shivered and drew her cloak tighter around her throat. It was much colder here than back in Maine. She stumbled as her booted feet slid on the snow. Before she could fall on her face, she managed to steady herself.

“Easy there,” he warned from behind her. “Watch your step.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just getting my bearings.” She looked around her as a feeling of dread coursed through her. They had crashed in the Alaskan wilderness. They were in the middle of a forested area on the last frontier. Otherwise known as the middle of nowhere. Common sense told her that rescue might not come right away. How in the world were they going to manage to make it through this? It was already freezing outside, and they had neither shelter nor a fire to keep themselves warm.

She felt her arm being tugged again. “Miss Murray. We need to stay a safe distance from the plane because it might explode. The inside is on fire.”

Explode? Her heart began to thunder in her chest as the threat of danger hung in the air. A burning scent singed her nostrils. Mr. O’Rourke didn’t seem the type who would be prone to exaggeration. He was a pilot, after all. Full of knowledge and wisdom and skill. She felt helpless as he pulled her away from the plane.

Suddenly she stopped in her tracks. “Wait! My bags are still inside. Everything of sentimental value I have in the world is in there!” she cried out.

“Things can be replaced. Our lives cannot,” he said in a stern voice that brooked no argument.

He was wrong! Gram’s diary was inside her suitcase, along with a blanket Gram had knitted for her as a sixteenth birthday present. Her most cherished keepsake—a picture of her mother cradling her in her arms as a newborn—was also in her luggage. If she lost these precious items, it would be like she’d been severed from her upbringing. She had already lost so much. This would be unbearable.

“No!” she screamed as she lunged toward the plane. For most of her life, she had sat on the sidelines without uttering a peep. She would never forgive herself if she didn’t take action in this moment.

Strong arms gripped her shoulders. “What do you think you’re doing? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Annie felt the hot splash of tears on her cheeks. “I can’t stand by and watch it all go up in smoke. My whole life is in there!” She let out a plaintive howl. She saw his ice-blue eyes widen. A muscle in his jaw began to twitch. A low growl escaped his lips. He released her shoulders and pivoted around so that he was facing the plane.

Turning back toward her, he yelled out, “Get out of this area as fast as you can. Run as far as you can upwind. Now!” She watched as he rushed toward the plane, wrenched open the cargo hold and yanked her suitcases out in one fluid motion. With an amazing display of agility, he ran back toward her at breakneck speed. One look at his expression and Annie began to run in the opposite direction as fast as she could.

A thunderous noise interrupted the silence, followed by a crackling sound rending the air. Unable to stop herself, she turned around and glanced back at the plane. The sight of the fireball caused her knees to buckle. She sank to the ground, giving way to fear and anxiety and shock. If they had lingered a few minutes longer inside the plane, they might not have made it out alive. And because of her, the pilot had almost been blown to smithereens. For all she knew, he could have been injured.

Dear Lord, protect Mr. O’Rourke from harm. I didn’t mean to put him in danger. I just didn’t want my mementos to be destroyed. Under the circumstances, that might have been selfish. I promise to do better in the future.

She couldn’t look away as titian flames licked at the sides of the plane. An acrid odor filled the air. Within seconds, most of the plane had been consumed by the relentless blaze.

Chapter Two

Declan stopped moving in the direction of safety shortly after he heard the massive boom and Lucy went up in a blaze. He stood at a safe distance and stared at his plane as orange flames turned her into a blackened shell of her former self. Pain scorched through him. Lucy was a complete and utter loss! His client’s words rang in his ears. My whole life is in there. It rang true for him as well. His whole life was O’Rourke Charters, and the planes he owned were essential to the operation of his company. Losing one of his two planes was catastrophic. Although he was thankful that his life and that of his passenger had been spared, there was no escaping the grim reality of his current situation.

He shoved his hand through his hair and muttered angrily. This wasn’t fair! With the town of Love having suffered a recession in recent years, his company had already taken some hard financial hits. Because money had been tight and he had never had a single accident, he had opted to lower his insurance premiums. In light of the accident and his destroyed plane, the ramifications were mind-boggling. With limited insurance and a lowered payout for the accident, he had no idea how he would be able to replace Lucy. And without a replacement for his beloved seaplane, he wouldn’t be able to run O’Rourke Charters and make a decent living. Not with just one plane left. Everything would be in shambles.

The very thought of it was unfathomable! Who was Declan O’Rourke without his company? Nobody. Nothing. The son of a convict. A tiny voice buzzed in his ears. Flying planes was the only thing he’d ever been good at. It was the only vocation he’d ever known.

“Mr. O’Rourke. Are you all right?” The feminine voice splashed over him like a bucket of ice-cold water. It was jarring to be intruded upon at a moment like this. He felt her tugging on his sleeve with an insistence that grated on his nerves.

“Just dandy,” he said through gritted teeth. He had almost forgotten about his client. His focus had been wholly consumed by Lucy’s destruction. Miss Murray had come up beside him without him even realizing it.

“I called your name three times. You didn’t seem to hear me.”

He swung his gaze toward her as a numb feeling swept over him. “I didn’t,” he said in a curt tone. He jutted his chin in the direction of the charred, still-smoking seaplane. “I was a little preoccupied with my life going up in flames.”

A little squeak slipped past her lips, and she raised her hand to her throat. “Oh no! Your plane is gone. I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how awful you feel about it.” He looked away from her, startled by the raw emotion emanating from her warm brown eyes. She barely knew him, but here she stood, full of concern and sympathy.

Something about her reaction served as a domino effect. The sting of tears blurred his eyes, and he sniffed them away. He never cried. Tears were a sign of weakness. He had learned that lesson as a child at his grandfather’s knee. Stiff upper lip. Never let them see you cry. Declan O’Rourke wasn’t a weak man. Not by a long shot!

As he always did, he would use humor to diffuse the tension. He was a master at stuffing things down that he didn’t want the world to see. He’d been doing it ever since he was a kid. It had always served him well.

“This too shall pass,” he murmured, knowing he had been through worse losses in his thirty years. “Honestly, I’m more concerned about my aviator sunglasses. I spent a lot of money on those,” he cracked. “Wish I had grabbed them before we exited the plane.”

Silence greeted him. Miss Murray’s expression was dubious. She raised an eyebrow and twisted her mouth. If he had to guess, he’d say she didn’t buy his act.

“If you say so,” she said. She held up her cell phone. “There’s no cell service. Is there a way to radio for help?”

“We’re going to have to wait for rescue. The only radio went up in flames with the plane. I have my cell phone, also, but it’s pretty useless without a signal.” He shook his head as all the possible avenues for communication with the outside world seemed to evaporate. “I can’t imagine they would be able to ping our location in this forest. This area is too remote. When we don’t make it back to Love by nightfall, a red flag will be raised. A search and rescue will be put into motion.” His chest tightened at the thought of his best friend, Boone Prescott, and his entire family worrying about his demise. Even his brother, Finn, would be put through the ringer by the news, he imagined. Finn, who never took anything seriously, would be forced to face the grim news head-on. “At least for a little bit, there wouldn’t be an escape route from the pain and fear and loss, Miss Murray.”

“Annie. My name is Annie,” she corrected him. “And considering the circumstances we find ourselves in, I think we can use first names when addressing each other.”

Declan nodded. “Annie it is. Feel free to call me Declan.”

“So, Declan, do you have any idea how long we’ll have to wait for rescue?”

He scratched his jaw. “I imagine until morning. By the time the alarm is rung by the FAA and my friends in town, it will be nightfall. They don’t routinely send out planes at night to look for crash sites.”

“And you registered your flight plan?” she asked, her expression somber.

Her question made him want to grin. Annie Murray knew a little something about planes, he surmised. “Yes, I did, which means they’ll be scouring the route we took. Are you an aviation buff?”

“Not exactly. I’m a town librarian. Reading is my superpower,” she said with a smile.

Annie’s smile packed quite a punch. It reached all the way into his chest cavity and tugged with a mighty force. He shook off the feelings her smile elicited. Annie wasn’t his type. The sort of women who appealed to him were classic beauties—tall, elegant, refined. Annie had small town written all over her. Not that there was anything wrong with small towns, but as the product of one, he knew he needed something different in a romantic relationship. Perhaps that was why he hadn’t been tempted by any of the women who had arrived in Love to participate in the town’s matchmaking enterprise. Although a few of them had made their interest in him known all over town, he hadn’t reciprocated their feelings. It was just as well, he realized. The women who had moved to Love were interested in settling down and finding husbands. Declan wasn’t the marrying kind, and it would have been cruel to make any woman believe otherwise.

“Well, flying planes is my superpower,” he said. He twisted his mouth. Doubt crept in. “Or at least, it was until today.”

He scratched his jaw as his mind wandered to the events leading up to the plane’s malfunctioning. What had happened? He wasn’t entirely sure, which shook him. Everything had happened so quickly. All his attention had been focused on landing the plane safely and ensuring that he and Annie walked away from the plane in one piece. He didn’t like all the unanswered questions that were bouncing around in his mind. Had the crash somehow been his fault?

“That’s a wonderful superpower to have,” Annie said. “I’m very grateful that you were my pilot today. What you did...safely landing the plane...it’s rather incredible.”

Incredible? He wasn’t sure he agreed with Annie, although he appreciated the sentiment. As an experienced pilot, it was his job to avert disaster and to skillfully maneuver all aspects of aviation.

In his opinion, a crash landing should never have been necessary in the first place. It bothered him deeply that something had gone so catastrophically wrong on his watch.

“Thanks for saying so. I wish that I could have kept us up there in the wild blue yonder. If all had gone well, we’d be getting ready to make our final descent into Love right about now.” He shook his head ruefully. As soon as they made it back to Love, he would begin putting the pieces together in an effort to find out what had gone so terribly wrong with Lucy. He wouldn’t rest until he had those answers!

Annie began to shiver right before his eyes. She folded her arms across her chest and rubbed her arms over her cloak in an effort to get warm. He wished he had a blanket to throw over her shoulders. He’d been so preoccupied with their location and the events leading up to the crash that he had allowed his mind to wander from the pressing matters at hand.

“We need to find shelter and hunker down for the night before it gets dark.” And he needed to build a fire before they froze to death out here. The fire from the plane had petered out, no doubt due to the snow and ice on the ground as well as the low fuel supply. There had been only enough fuel in Lucy to get them back to Love, which might have been a blessing. If conditions had been different, the blaze from the plane could have spread to the forest and led to a wildfire.

Hmm. He hadn’t built a fire since he was a kid on a school wilderness field trip. And even then, Boone had actually been the one to get it going. He let out a sigh. Boone had been stepping in to rescue him ever since.

“If you’re cold, you should pull something from your luggage and add another layer,” he suggested. “It may take a bit to get a fire going.”

Annie nodded and dug around in her bag until she produced a knitted blanket. She wrapped it around her shoulders and let out a contented sigh.

“Where exactly are we?” she asked, looking around her surroundings with big eyes.

“Midway between Anchorage and Love. We’re in the Chugach National Forest. I spotted it as we flew overhead. Although this area is sparsely populated and heavily forested, I seem to recall a campground in these parts.”

He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his trusty compass. It was his habit to carry it around with him. It was the only earthly keepsake his grandfather had been attached to during his lifetime. When he had passed away, Killian O’Rourke had made sure to hand it off to his favorite grandson. Declan had kept it in his shirt pocket close to his heart ever since.

And under different circumstances, he might have been able to use the compass to lead them toward rescue. But there was no way they could navigate their way out of the forest. And the likelihood of stumbling across the campground was remote. Surviving in the wilderness meant making smart choices. He owed it to both of them to make wise moves from this point forward.

Now that the shock of the plane crash was beginning to wear off, he had a better viewpoint on their situation. It was a blessing they had been traveling over land at the time of the plane trouble rather than Kachemak Bay, where he would have been forced to crash-land on the water. They would have been in the middle of nowhere out on the water with no means of rescue or saving themselves. Hypothermia would have set in shortly. In all likelihood, they would have perished.

Declan began scouting out their immediate area. Knowing it wasn’t wise to stray too far from the crash site, he began surveying for the driest area that was protected from the elements. By tonight it would be much colder, with a fierce wind to accompany the temperature drop. There was a copse of pine trees about one hundred feet from the wreckage. Declan walked over to check it out. When he reached the pine trees, he bent down and noticed that there was a relatively dry area between the trees where Annie might be able to make a pallet for sleep. He would stay up tonight to watch out for any signs of rescue or predators. Although it was unlikely that planes would be searching at night, he didn’t want to miss any window for rescue.

There was no need to scare Annie by telling her about bears or wolves that roamed the Alaskan wilderness. The last thing he needed was for her to panic. As it was, he was slightly amazed she’d been holding it together. He hadn’t pegged her for the calm, cool and collected type.

He walked back over to Annie. She was sitting on a rock and rummaging through her bags with a determined expression plastered on her face. She let out a cry of glee as she pulled out a pair of thick red mittens. “Score! I found them. These will be a game changer. My fingers are frozen.”

He nodded approvingly. “Those will definitely help, especially as the temperature drops in a few hours.”

She looked up at him with her brows knitted together. “Where are yours?”

Declan shrugged. “I didn’t bring any. This was supposed to be only a short flight from Love to Anchorage and then back home.” He grinned at her. “I’m not in the habit of bringing mittens on my flights.”

She ducked her head and dug back into her bag. A look of triumph flitted across her face as she held up a pair of black mittens with a pink heart on each. “Ta-da! I found another pair. You’re welcome to borrow them.”

Declan frowned. He wasn’t exactly the type of guy who sported mittens with hearts on them. They were super girly. But his hands were getting cold. Annie was holding out the mittens to him with an expectant look on her face. Suddenly he didn’t want her to feel bad about his refusing her sweet little mittens. There was something about Annie Murray—eccentricities and all—that reeked of pure goodness.

He reached out and took the mittens from her. “Thanks,” he said as he slid them on, letting out a contented sigh as his hands began to warm up from the cold. “You might have just saved my fingers from frostbite.”

“Just returning the favor,” she said with a huge grin. “After all, you saved both of us with your skilled crash landing. Something tells me not every pilot could have pulled that off.” She held out her hands toward the forest. “With all these trees, you had to be dead-on with that landing.”

“It’s a first for me, Annie. I’ve never had to make an emergency landing like this, but I’m thankful for years of flying experience. I learned to fly a plane when most kids are dreaming of getting their first kiss.” Declan felt a rush of joy rising up inside him at the memory of his first flying lesson with his grandfather. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget the thrill of soaring up above the clouds into the clear blue skies of Alaska. He had felt invincible up in the air, as if none of the heartache and pain of his early years could touch him. And the praise his grandfather had heaped on him had truly made him feel a sense of accomplishment, one he’d never experienced before in his life. For the first time, he’d felt as if he was good at something.

And he was a good pilot. A great one, according to most of his clients. How he wished his grandfather could have seen it all come to fruition. He’d passed away before Declan had gotten his pilot’s license. Now O’Rourke Charters had gotten off the ground. The old man would have been so proud and tickled that Declan had made a business out of flying planes, the thing his grandfather had always loved most of all. It hadn’t been fair to lose his grandfather to the ravages of diabetes before he’d had the opportunity to give the old man a glimpse of his aviation enterprise. But the one thing life had taught him was that fair hardly ever entered into the equation.

He shook his head in an effort to drag himself out of the past. Those memories could do nothing but hurt him. At the moment, he needed to focus on survival and making it through this ordeal. Night was quickly approaching, and being able to get a fire going would be a huge advantage for them.

He pointed at the area he had just checked out. “That spot over there is probably the best shelter we’re going to find. It’ll give us a little protection from the elements, and if we can get a fire going, we’ll be able to stay warm through the night.”

Annie rubbed her hands together. “A fire sounds good. It will save us from hypothermia. I’m sure you’re aware of it, but hypothermia sets in when your body core temperature is below ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. Signs of hypothermia can be drowsiness, confusion, shivering and a slowed-down heart rate.”

He nodded his head. As a native Alaskan, he had known about hypothermia before he’d learned to tie his shoes. “Good to know, Annie. I for one do not intend to find that out firsthand,” Declan said. “I’m going to make haste and look for some tinder to get the fire going.”

Declan began to root around in the brush. He picked up pine needles, shredded bark and a few twigs. When he returned to the makeshift shelter with an armful of tinder, he deposited it in a heap on the ground. He noticed that Annie had moved her belongings over to the site. She had made a little pile of things in front of her seat on a log. With a cheeky grin on her face, Annie held up a granola bar.

“Voilà! It’s not a five-course meal, but it should tide us over until tomorrow.” She pointed at the pile of snacks set out in front of her.

Declan’s stomach grumbled with appreciation at the sight of chocolate, trail mix, beef jerky, peanut butter and crackers. And a bottle of water. For someone who hadn’t eaten since this morning, it was a veritable feast. God was good!

“It’s a divine meal as far as I’m concerned,” Declan said as he accepted the granola bar she held out to him. “It was brilliant of you to bring all these snacks on the flight.”

A smile lit up her face. “Not brilliant. Just practical. I sometimes get low blood sugar, so I always make sure I have a bunch of snacks on hand to give me a boost in case I need it. And some of these I stuffed in my luggage. I wasn’t sure if peanut butter was big in Alaska. Call me a snack hoarder,” she said with a laugh.

“Snack hoard all you want. It’s a lifesaver,” Declan said, taking a huge bite of a granola bar. He closed his eyes as the morsel slid down his throat. A granola bar had never tasted so good in his life! As hungry as he was, it almost tasted like steak and potatoes.

Annie Murray was shaping up to be quite a woman. She was smart and resourceful and plucky. Right about now he’d expected her to be a sobbing, frightened mess. He really needed to stop making rash and unfair judgments about people. Just because she was wearing fuzzy leopard pants didn’t mean she was an airhead. On the contrary, Love’s newest transplant was shaping up to be a keeper. Her stash of rations was going to save them from hunger pangs. Thanks to Annie, one of their major problems was solved. Now it was up to him to tackle another issue. Fire.