Back to Eden

“Rachel, wake up.”

Her eyelids fluttered and she gasped as if in pain.

“She’s alive.” Cole extended one arm through the windshield, but he couldn’t reach her. Too many branches were in the way, one of which—a thick, splintered shaft about eight inches in diameter—seemed to have pinned Rachel to her seat.

“There are supposed to be two,” the helicopter copilot reminded him.

“Can’t see anyone else. The cockpit is covered with branches.” Maybe the other pilot had been thrown out the window. Damn. Not the most pleasant way to go.

“We’re sending down a second harness.”

Cole inched to the edge of the cockpit, but his lifeline prevented him from reaching Rachel. He couldn’t unbuckle her safety restraints from outside the plane.

“Come on, honey. Help me out here. Can you release your harness and scoot forward?”

Rachel didn’t move a muscle. In fact, she seemed to have stopped breathing. Hell! If she needed CPR, he needed to be in there. Now!

Cole unsnapped his lifeline and slid into the cockpit headfirst. The plane groaned as Cole struggled to get his feet beneath him through a thick mess of branches.

“What the hell are you doing? That plane could drop at any moment. Is he crazy?” The helicopter copilot was as shocked as Cole was.

Cole wouldn’t be surprised if Doc did puke this time.

The plane continued to sway and something snapped beneath him. Crap, bad idea. His feet finally found something solid to stand on. He stood between the two seats, knee-high in branches.

“Rachel.” Cole put his gloved hands on her cheeks. “Don’t give up now. We’ve got to get out.”

Her eyes opened a crack. Her lips moved. All Cole caught was, “Danny?”

“Your copilot? I don’t see him.” Cole glanced around again. The other side of the cockpit was covered in limbs. No one could be under there, could they? He recalled the slight, stooped old man he’d seen Rachel with in the chow line last night. A guy that size could be buried beneath all that nature. Cole swore and tried shifting the debris, which only made bad sounds happen as both trees and metal protested his movements.

And yet there was someone under there. Cole touched an arm, fought revulsion at its lifelessness, followed the arm to a wrist and searched for a pulse.

Nothing.

“He’s dead, Rachel. I’m sorry.”

Rachel moaned. “Did he get us back to the landing strip?”

“No. Do you feel the plane moving? We’re sitting in a couple of trees.” Something clattered on the plane. Another harness.

Her eyelids drifted closed again.

“No, no, no. I’ve got to move you.” If only he could be sure she hadn’t injured her spine. “Can you move your neck or your toes?”

“I hurt everywhere.”

Not good. He began yanking off the branches that pinned her to her seat.

“Are you checking in for the night or coming out?” The helicopter copilot snapped.

Pulling away as many branches from Rachel as he could, Cole confirmed, “We’re coming out.” Finally there was just the big branch wedging her in. No wonder she seemed to struggle for each breath.

With one hand on Rachel’s shoulder and one on the branch, Cole pulled the shattered limb away from her ribs.

Whimpering, Rachel slumped forward and then shot back in her seat, her face white.

Shit. He’d practically killed her. And there was blood in her hair. Lots of blood. He released the catch on his harness and yanked it off. “Are you all right?”

“I can wiggle my toes,” Rachel answered with her eyes closed as he unbuckled her seat restraints.

“Good.” As gently as possible, Cole slipped Rachel’s feet into his harness and tugged it up her body. She was in no shape to climb through the windshield. Cole hauled her to her feet, pulling the remaining straps over her arms and clicking the four-point clasp home. She was no help at all.

The plane dropped a foot, sending them sprawling onto the branches covering the copilot. Branches poked Cole everywhere, as he scrambled to get them both standing again.

With rolling eyes Rachel awakened. Then her gaze steadied, caught by something on the control panel.

“You’ll need that,” she gestured toward the debris-covered gauges where a bit of yellow peeked out…a picture.

Without looking at the photo, Cole plucked it from the panel and pocketed it. Anything to get Rachel to move faster.

The plane tilted sideways.

“Get the hell out of there!” the copilot shouted.

JENNA WOULD HAVE GOT to the phone before Pop if she hadn’t been washing dishes.

Aunt Rachel called at the end of every day, and the sun was now setting. Aunt Rachel didn’t fly after dark when she fought fires unless the fire was really bad. It had to be her.

“Hello.” Pop winked at Jenna. He knew it was Aunt Rachel, too. Then his voice got real serious. “This is Mr. Quinlan.”

Not Aunt Rachel. Jenna bit her lip in disappointment and handed Matt a plate to dry. Pop ran the house when Aunt Rachel was gone, which was all the time. Aunt Rachel was never home anymore.

Jenna frowned.

She wanted Aunt Rachel to give up flying her airplane and stay at home. She worried about her aunt. Every October, Aunt Rachel brought back scary pictures and told wild stories about flying that made Jenna want to hug her aunt so tight she’d never go up there again.

Still on the phone, Pop turned his back to Jenna and sank down in a chair really quickly.

Bad news.

Even though she was only ten, Jenna had seen enough bad news to recognize it when it was delivered.

“Where?” Pop stood on his shaky, toothpick legs and scribbled something on a piece of scrap paper on the counter. He couldn’t see very well and wrote letters and numbers bigger than Matt did. Jenna sounded out the big word from where she stood.

Hospital.

Pop looked in the direction of the sink and then away. A big knot tied up Jenna’s stomach.

Not Aunt Rachel.

Jenna’s hands drifted down in the soapy water as she stared out the kitchen window at the blue-and-pink sky. Aunt Rachel meant everything to Jenna.

“Are we done with dishes?” Matt asked, standing on the stool next to her, totally clueless about what was going on.

First she’d lost her mom and now Aunt Rachel. Her family was cursed.

With a sob, Jenna ran out the back door, stopping only to pull on her boots. She was halfway to the hangar when she heard the screen door creak open behind her. Ignoring Pop calling to her, Jenna continued on to the hangar. Only then did she stop. And that was just to stick her soapy fingers in her mouth and whistle.

Once. Twice.

Tears spilled down her cheeks.

Not Aunt Rachel.

God had taken everyone Jenna cared about.

Her breath came in ragged gasps as she tried to whistle a third time, only nothing came out.

Jenna sank to the ground, hugging herself tight.

Even Shadow had left her.

Stupid, stupid horse.

She whistled again. This time, there was an answering whistle, clear and strong above the sound of thundering hooves.

A dark horse stopped nearly on top of Jenna. Jumping up, she grabbed a handful of thick mane, then swung herself onto Shadow’s back and guided her one true friend out across the open prairie at a full gallop.

“YOU SHOULD GET some rest,” Jackson advised Cole, having driven the Silver Bend’s van and crew to the hospital to meet Cole and Doc. They were planning to leave as soon as they heard if Rachel was okay. “You don’t know how long the exam will take.”

“I’ll wait until we see the doctor,” Cole said, stretching his legs out in front of him as he slouched deeper into the waiting room seat.

Doc suspected Rachel had a couple of bruised or broken ribs, as well as a severe concussion. But she was alive, which was a much better fate than her copilot.

“I still can’t believe you took off your harness and crawled into that wreck. I had no idea you were so crazy,” Doc said, reclining across three waiting room chairs.

Jackson frowned, spinning his wedding band. “He’s not that crazy.”

Not anymore. Cole had been wild in his youth, but joining the Hot Shots had made him realize that crazy stunts like that led to early retirement…or death.

“He just lost his mind.” Logan came in with four cups of coffee balanced in his hands. “Even my kids know Cole’s as predictable as a rock.”

“We didn’t think you were coming out,” Doc said almost cheerfully, sitting up and reaching for a coffee. “It was like some action movie watching you click your lifeline on her and grab the second rope just before the plane fell.”

“Rachel was injured.” And in a daze from her head wound. And then… “But she was alert enough to make me grab a picture from the instrument panel.”

“A picture? Of what? Her boyfriend?” Doc perked up.

“It would have to be important,” Logan agreed. “More than just a photo of her faithful dog, Shep.”

“Maybe it was of her copilot, poor bastard,” Jackson said.

His three friends looked at Cole expectantly. What would be so important to Rachel that she’d stop during their escape? He didn’t know, and yet—

Cole pulled the crumpled photo out of his pocket. It was a snapshot of two kids—a little boy and an older girl. It was the image of the girl that sent Cole’s heart pounding. She looked like his sister, Sally, in the fourth or fifth grade. He squinted at the face. No. Not his sister, but the same blue eyes, the same white-blond hair, the same dimpled smile.

Rachel’s daughter? Not unless she’d had a high-school pregnancy with a boy having the same Nordic coloring as Cole’s family. With her dark eyes and hair, Rachel had taken after her father, while Missy had been the spitting image of their blond bombshell mother.

Cole focused again on the glossy picture. The boy was younger, maybe five or six, with dark coloring and chubby cheeks. Cole’s attention turned back to the girl. There was something about the slant of the child’s eyes that was familiar.

Missy’s eyes.

“Someday, we’ll have kids together and live happily ever after.” With one bare toe, Missy sent the porch swing moving and snuggled deeper into Cole’s arms, sliding a hand beneath his waistband.

Cole tried to remember the face of the guy Missy had foolishly wanted to marry. Lyle had been tall with brown hair and eyes.

Something cold and unpleasant stole Cole’s breath. At least part of Missy’s promise had come true.

This was his daughter.

Doc snatched the picture from his fingers. “Hey, it’s just a couple of kids.” His voice was filled with disappointment.

Jackson and Logan crowded in to see for themselves. After a moment, Jackson gave Cole a knowing look.

“Are you waiting for Rachel Quinlan?” A doctor in green scrubs stood in the doorway.

“Is she awake?” Cole asked. Because he needed answers to questions he hadn’t even thought of yet.

RACHEL FLEW LOW through the forest. Branches whipped past her face too quickly for her to fend off. The wind was cold and there was snow on the ground. She was freezing. And scared.

“There’s nothing like soaring far above the earth.” Danny’s voice, distant yet nearby.

Only, they weren’t soaring far above the earth.

A fleeting memory of smoke-filled sky, and then Rachel was plunging into a green darkness with no end. Plunging—

“Rachel.” Cole’s voice this time, stern but comforting in the darkness.

She forced open heavy lids only to squeeze them shut against the bright sunshine.

Someone walked by, shoes squeaking. And voices were everywhere—urgent, loud, whispering, commanding, fearful.

Not sunshine, then. She was inside. So, why was she so cold? Her toes. Her left hand. Her head hurt. A lot. Where was she?

She pried her eyes open, determined to keep them open this time.

“Rachel.” Cole stood beside her looking grim.

She was in a hospital bed surrounded by machines. Scary machines. Tubes ran into her left hand. Curtained partitions surrounded her on three sides.

“Was there…” Her voice was rough. “Was I in an accident?” She tried not to panic, but this didn’t look good. And Rachel couldn’t remember, could barely draw breath herself.

Cole nodded.

“You’re in the emergency room. Do you know this man?” a nurse asked, leaning closer to look deep into Rachel’s eyes with a small flashlight, making Rachel dizzy.

The need to vomit was intense, then faded as the nurse drew back.

“He’s my sister’s boyfriend.” Missy. Where was Missy? She couldn’t see any of the other beds around her. But Cole wouldn’t be with Rachel if Missy was hurt, unless…

Cole’s frown was no help, filled as it was with worry and something like disapproval. Rachel shied away from the thought that Missy was gone. But if something bad had happened, he’d look like that, wouldn’t he? Like the time he’d caught her snitching a bag of M&M’s from Marney’s general store.

“Where’s Missy?” Rachel had to gasp the words out. It felt as if someone were sitting on her right side.

The nurse looked at Cole, who stared down at a small picture in his hand.

“Was I driving to the wedding?” She didn’t have her license yet, but she was a safe driver. Why couldn’t she remember what had happened? What had she done this morning? And the wedding. Missy was getting married today.

Worry threatened to overwhelm her. “Please. Somebody say something.”

Cole didn’t look so good. That’s when Rachel remembered that Missy wasn’t marrying him today. She was marrying Lyle.

“You’ve been in an accident.” The nurse stated the obvious. “A little disorientation is normal. Just try to relax and I’ll get the doctor.” She patted Rachel’s arm before moving away.

“Cole? Is Missy…” Dead? She couldn’t say the word even though she knew with cold certainty that Missy was gone.

Cole’s clothes were filthy. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth to say something, then glanced at the picture in his hand.

The nurse returned with a man wearing green scrubs, a white coat and a stethoscope around his neck. He came to stand on her right side with a friendly smile.

“Miss Quinlan, how are you feeling? I thought it might help to wake up with a familiar face after that crash, but I hear that bump on your head has you a bit disoriented. Concussions can sometimes do that. How long do you think she was out?” He directed the question to Cole.

Crash.

The sharp, staccato images of green branches whipping past returned. Cockpit. She’d been in a cockpit, but the wind had been brutal, and something pressed against her ribs, making it hard to breathe, hard to move, impossible to handle anything other than the stick.

“Keep the nose up!” Danny yelled as they went down.

He hadn’t sounded afraid, even at the end when they’d plowed through the treetops, while Rachel had been certain they were going to die.

She wasn’t fifteen. She hadn’t been in a car accident. She was twenty-six and had been flying over a fire with Danny. People were trapped, and she’d made that pass through the smoke to save them.

“Danny?” she whispered in a half croak.

“He didn’t make it,” Cole said quietly. “He was gone when we got there.”

Rachel didn’t remember. But she knew that Danny would have wanted it that way. Quick. In the air. While saving others.

That didn’t stop Rachel’s eyes from tearing up, or her nose from stinging as she tried not to cry. Danny wouldn’t want her to cry. He’d want her to remember his hair-raising tales about one of the wars he’d served in, or the way he could skim the Privateer mere feet above a lake without popping a drop of sweat. He probably wouldn’t want her to remember how he loved to visit local parks to feed the ducks, or the way he could read Matt a bedtime story with an arsenal of funny voices. But Rachel would remember it all.

Rachel wiped a tear away with her right hand.

“We’re back in the present. Good.” The doctor pulled up a chair. “You’ve been here at St. Patrick’s in Missoula for several hours. I don’t know how much you know about concussions, but it’s an injury that attacks your equilibrium and takes a long time to heal. When those bruised ribs of yours are better, you’ll still have some residual effects from the head wound.”

“So I’ll live to fly again.” Fear, not her aching ribs, kept her lungs from filling with air.

Rachel turned her face away from Cole as more images of the crash threatened to shatter what little calm she had left. She’d faced death. How would she ever enjoy the freedom and beauty of an airplane again?

She had to fly. That’s how she made her living. Yet, for the first time in her life, she didn’t want to take to the air.

Not fly? As quickly as it surfaced, Rachel buried the thought. She was simply having a reaction to being in a cold, sterile hospital. She’d go back home to Eden, to Jenna and Matt, and try to salvage Fire Angels.

Rachel blinked heavily, suddenly worn-out.

“Are you drowsy?” the doctor asked.

“Yes.” She was incredibly sleepy. Now that she knew more about what had happened, it was hard to keep her eyes open.

The doctor patted her hand. “We’ll be taking you to X-ray soon. And you’ll have to bear with us if we wake you up a lot. We don’t want to lose you after such a daring rescue. You have this gentleman to thank for that.” He gestured to Cole.

Cole had rescued her?

Her knight in shining armor.

Rachel sucked in a shuddering breath. She’d thought that’s who Cole was once. She’d since learned that knights in shining armor didn’t exist.

“I need to call home,” she said, blinking back the tears again. She didn’t like hearing how badly she was hurt or how close she’d come to not making it. At least if she talked to Jenna and Matt, she’d be able to pretend everything was okay.

“I called the ranch and talked to your dad,” Cole said, his voice unaccountably cool. “And base camp would have notified the next of kin for your copilot by now.”

Rachel mumbled her thanks, though she knew Danny had no next of kin.

She wanted to call home, wanted to talk to Pop and Matt, wanted to reassure Jenna. Rachel didn’t like the idea of her niece worrying, but she couldn’t press for the call now, not in front of Cole.

She gave in to the exhaustion and closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, Cole was gone.

CHAPTER THREE

“THE DOCTOR SAYS you can go home tomorrow.” Cole stood in the doorway of Rachel’s hospital room looking tired. But at least he’d showered, shaved and changed into clean, comfortable clothes, while Rachel had been wrapped for days in the same paper-thin hospital gown, confined to a bed.

Rachel hadn’t seen Cole since she’d woken up in the hospital three days ago. During those days, she’d had to deal with bandages and bedpans, bossy nurses, X-rays and MRIs. She’d even had to listen to the doctor tell her they might have to drill a hole in her skull to relieve the pressure from the swelling around her wound.

It hadn’t come to that, thank God.

She was ready to go home, and a bit irritated that Cole had found out about her release before she had.

“I thought I’d make sure you got home all right,” Cole announced.

No! He’d see right off that Jenna was his. He’d try to take her niece away from her. The pain and discomfort Rachel had been through in the past few days was nothing in comparison to the threat of Cole taking Jenna away.

“That’s very kind of you, but I’ve made other plans.” Like pestering the nurse until she called the bus station for the time of the next bus to Wyoming.

Cole lifted one eyebrow before coming into the room and settling his large frame in the small plastic chair next to her bed. “I went home to Silver Bend with my crew in the van and came back in my own truck just to get you.” He’d always barged right into her life without asking or apologizing.

Frowning created a stab of pain in her head. “You didn’t have to do that.” He’d driven from Montana to Idaho and back just for her? The gesture pleased Rachel, and yet she didn’t want him to do that. How could she turn him down, now?

Easy. Because she had to.

“Cole, I—”

“I insist. I haven’t been back to Eden in years.” He was looking at his hands as if he were uncomfortable with the memory of his last visit to Eden. And why wouldn’t he be? That’s when he’d broken Missy’s heart.

And most likely his own, as well, Rachel realized, feeling an unwanted sympathy for him. On the day she’d died, Missy had left a note saying she was returning to Cole, and that she was leaving the kids in Rachel’s care. Then, on her way to reunite with her lost love, Missy’s truck had plunged into an icy river. And Cole had never even bothered to call. Many of Rachel’s illusions had been shattered that night.

“It hasn’t changed much,” Rachel admitted. “Though most of your old friends have moved away.” Thank God for that. If they’d stayed around, it wouldn’t only have been Missy’s husband, Lyle, who’d realized that Jenna wasn’t his child.

“Sounds like you’re trying to change my mind about going.” Cole gave her a probing glance. How quickly he’d turned from remorseful to suspicious.

Apprehension scurried around her belly. What did Cole have to be suspicious of except the secret Rachel had so ardently guarded all these years?

“Is there some reason you don’t want me to come back to Eden, Rach?”

“No. Not at all.” God, she sounded desperate. With effort she held his gaze. “I appreciate the offer. It’s just that you probably have a million things to do at home, what with fire season over and all.” She raised a hand weakly. “You go on. I’ll be fine on my own.”

“I do have a lot of loose ends to tie up.” His gaze was almost intolerable with its directness. Rachel resisted the urge to squirm. “Starting in Eden.”

Something chilled Rachel’s blood. She couldn’t speak. Her heart began to pound in her chest.

Cole pulled out a bent photograph from his pocket and stared down at it for several seconds of strained silence while Rachel agonized, feeling as if someone had strapped her down so that she couldn’t escape the truth.

“I was wondering…” He turned the photo around so that it was facing her. Matt’s cherubic cheeks and Jenna’s bright smile couldn’t keep Rachel’s skin from feeling clammy or slow the beat of her heart. “…Whose daughter is this?”

Cole’s hard gaze demanded she stop the lie. With silent intensity, he dared her to deny Jenna was his.

Her sister’s words came back to Rachel in a rush: “Don’t tell Cole about Jenna. It’s not as if he wants her. You know how he’s always searching for the next big thrill. Settling down is the last thing on his mind. It would just create one more disappointment for Jenna.”

Don’t tell Cole.

Easy enough to say when Cole wasn’t staring at you as if he already knew the truth. But Missy had been right in one respect. Jenna certainly didn’t need another disappointment. Cole was still a Hot Shot, involved in a profession requiring a nomadic life—the kind of life that tore families apart. His track record with Missy confirmed that.

Cornered, Rachel announced in a weak voice, “She’s my daughter.”

Cole’s jaw dropped. But before he could say anything, the nurse came in to check the tubes and machines connected to Rachel and take her pulse. “You’re upsetting her.” She glared at Cole.

He glared right back. “She’s upsetting me.”

“If this continues, I’ll have to ask you to leave.” She made a note on a chart and then walked away on her squeaky shoes.

“I don’t remember you being such a liar.” Cole glared at Rachel. “The truth,” he demanded. He’d never talked to her with such disdain.

Of course, she’d never lied to him before. When they were kids, she’d worshipped the ground Cole walked on because he was brave and daring and handsome. Only later had she figured out he wasn’t all he seemed.