Free The Hopechest Bride by Kasey Michaels Page B

blocked by a freshly fallen limb. “Damn,” Emily muttered, wondering how she’d get Molly over that branch and into the cave.
    She braced the flashlight against a small rock, aiming the light toward the cave entrance. “Where’s a good forklift when you need one?” she asked herself, already reaching for the coiled rope on her saddle, planning to tie one end around the branch, the other around Molly’s saddle horn. She might not be able to move the heavy limb, but Molly could.
    Emily’s fingers were stiff inside her leather gloves,icy cold and clumsy as she tried to tie the rope around the heaviest part of the limb. Then the sky lit, bright as noon, and the heavens broke in two with a crack of thunder that shook the hillside.
    â€œMolly, no!”
    Emily dropped the length of rope and ran toward her mount, who was already badly spooked, her eyes rolling in her head. Before Emily could reach her, there was another blinding flash of light, another clap of thunder, and Molly reared, wheeled and took off down the hillside.
    Emily watched the mare run off, taking with her the sleeping bag, the food, the water, and even the backpack Emily had shrugged out of, hanging it around the saddle horn by one strap. The flashlight had also come to grief, and lay smashed where Molly’s hoof had crushed it. Gone, everything was gone, either broken or heading back down the hill on Molly’s back, and Emily was very much alone on the hillside with nothing but the clothes she stood up in and the stupid length of rope.
    The rain, which had already been falling in earnest, doubled in intensity so that, Emily knew, a sheep standing out in such a downpour, and stupid enough to look up, would drown—or so she’d been told. Emily did lift her head to take one look at the black sky, but quickly lowered it again. She was dumb to be out here, but she wasn’t as dumb as a sheep!
    Clawing her way, Emily half stepped, half crawled over the sharp branches of the limb, and left the rainbehind her as she all but fell onto the floor of the cave.
    So dark. She had to crawl, feel her way, until at last her fingers touched the plastic container holding her camp stove. Her handy-dandy automatic fire starter was in her backpack, but she was sure she’d left a box of kitchen matches in the container. Please God, let her have matches.
    Teeth chattering, fingers stiff with cold, she flipped open the lid of the container, grateful she’d not seen the use of putting a lock on plastic, which could be cut open by anyone who really, really wanted to see what was inside. Not that she could have cut it open, because her knife was in her backpack and her backpack was heading downhill on Molly, but then being grateful for small favors was, it seemed, going to be all she had right now.
    It took minutes, felt like hours, for Emily to pull out the small camp stove, rummage in the bottom of the container and find the box of kitchen matches that would light the propane in the portable tank. Once it was lit, she could use the flame to ignite some small bits of dry shrub, then light the wood fire she always left ready to go before she broke camp.
    She might be hungry, she might be on foot, stranded until the storm was past her, but at least she could be dry and warm.
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    So much for Josh’s tracking skills. The woman was gone, lost in the artificial night and rain so fierce thathis vision was limited to only a few feet in front of him.
    He should have followed her more closely, shortened the gap between them before she turned her horse into that thick stand of trees at the base of the hill. But he hadn’t, and now she was gone, out of sight, and he was slowly drowning as he sat his horse, wondering where to go next, what to do.
    And then he heard it. Off to his right. A noise. A crashing. The sound of an animal in pain.
    He guided his horse toward the noise, now a screaming that sickened him in his gut. His own