Free Midnight Sons Volume 1 by Debbie Macomber Page B

rivers and they need to freeze before you can drive over them.”
    “Oh.”
    “I’m sorry, Abbey, but your furniture won’t go any farther than Fairbanks.”
    She took this latest bit of information with a resigned grimace. “Then I’ll wait until winter. It’s not like I have any place to put a love seat, do I?” she asked, gesturing at the cabin.
    “No, I guess you don’t.” He eased himself off the tailgate, then gave her a hand down. “I need to get back to the airfield.”
    “Thanks for bringing our luggage.”
    “No problem.”
    “Mom. Mom.” Scott came racing toward her. Keeping pace with him was a large husky. “I found a dog! Look.” He fell to his knees and enthusiastically wrapped his arms around the dog’s neck. “I wonder who he belongs to.”
    “That’s Eagle Catcher,” Sawyer said as his eyes widened in shock. “My dog. What’s he doing here? He should be locked in his pen!”
     
    That evening, Sawyer sat in front of a gentle fire, a book propped in his hands. Eagle Catcher rested on the braided rug by the fireplace. The book didn’t hold his attention. He doubted that anything could distract him from Abbey and her two children.
    In all the years he’d lived in Hard Luck, Sawyer had only known intense fear once, and that had been the day his father died.
    He never worried, but he did this June night. He worried that Susan or Scott might encounter a bear on their way to the outhouse. He worried that they’d face any number of unforeseen dangers.
    He couldn’t help recalling that Emily O’Halloran, an aunt he’d never known, had been lost on the tundra at the age of five. She’d been playing outside his grandparents’ cabin one minute and was gone the next. Without a sound. Without a trace.
    For years his grandmother had been distraught and inconsolable over the loss of her youngest child and only daughter. In fact, Anna O’Halloran had named the town. She’d called it Hard Luck because of her husband’s failure to find the rich vein of gold he’d been looking for; with the tragedy of Emily’s death, the name took on new significance.
    Worrying about Abbey and her children was enough to ruin Sawyer’s evening. Surely by morning she’d see reason and decide to return to Seattle!
    Eagle Catcher rose and walked over to Sawyer’s chair. He placed his head on his master’s knee.
    “You surprised me, boy,” Sawyer said, scratching his dog’s ears. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. Eagle Catcher and Scott had acted as if they’d been raised together. The rapport between them had been strong and immediate. The first shock had been that the dog had escaped his pen and followed Sawyer’s truck; the second, that he’d so quickly accepted the boy.
    “You like Scott, don’t you?”
    Eagle Catcher whined as if he understood and was responding to the question.
    “You don’t need to explain anything to me, boy. I feel the same way.” About Abbey. About her children.
    He tensed. The only solution was for Abbey to leave—for more reasons than he wanted to think about. He prayed she’d use common sense and hightail it out of Hard Luck come morning.
     
    The cabin wasn’t so bad, Abbey decided after her first two days. It was a lot like camping, only inside. She could almost pretend it was fun, but she longed for a real shower and a meal that wasn’t limited to sandwiches.
    Other than their complaints about having to use an outhouse, her children had adjusted surprisingly well.
    The summer months would be tolerable, Abbey thought, but she couldn’t ignore Sawyer’s warning about the winter.
    As for her work at the library, Abbey loved it. Sawyer had seen to the delivery of the bookcases from his mother’s house, along with a solid wood desk and chair for her.
    The day after her arrival, Abbey had set about categorizing the books and creating a filing system. Someday she planned to have everything on a computer, but first things