A Dark Lure (43 page)

Tori walked slowly to the edge of the porch.

Cole and Olivia started toward the lodge, Cole’s arm still around Olivia’s shoulders. Tori’s heart tightened, and a spurt of tears came into her eyes. She ran down the steps and raced through the snow toward them. Olivia crouched down. She had bandages on her face. Tori hesitated. Their eyes met.

A long shivering moment of indecision seemed to trap them on the spot, all the questions about the future shimmering and multiplying silently between them.

Olivia held open her good arm. “Tori,” she said softly. “Come here.”

Tears streamed suddenly down Tori’s face.

Olivia hugged her tightly with her good arm. So tight Tori could hardly breathe. She wouldn’t let go, and she pressed her face against Tori’s hair, drinking her in.

“Tori,” she murmured against her hair, “the social worker told me that you know who I am.”

Tori went still inside, nodded.

Olivia moved back, still crouched down in the snow. Their eyes met, and it struck Tori that they were the exact same color. A funny little quiver ran through her chest. This was her mother, her biological mother. She really was a genetic part of this brave woman who she’d read about in her mom’s book. On the back of that quiver came a soft burst of pride. Olivia was a survivor. She was very cool that way.

“My mom, Melody, she loved you,” Tori said quietly. “It was in her book.”

Olivia’s mouth tightened, and she seemed unable to speak for a moment.

“She wrote that book for when I was ready,” Tori said. “I . . .” Her voice choked on a surge of thickness in her throat. “ I . . . don’t know what to do now.”

Olivia reached for her hand. “We phoned your Aunt Louise,” she said gently. “She’s flying out to see you. She’ll be here tomorrow morning. If the weather is really bad Cole will go and meet her at the highway pullout on snowmobile.”

“Aunt Lou on a snowmobile?”

Olivia nodded. “She insisted. Come hell or blizzard, she’s getting here.”

“My dad . . . he would have thought it was funny. Aunt Lou on a snow machine. She’s quite fat, you know. And bossy.”

Olivia smiled, and her eyes gleamed with moisture.

“I don’t want to go to Ontario,” Tori said. “I . . . I don’t want to live with Aunt Lou.” Tears, hot ones, filled her eyes again, and she fought to hold them in.

“We’re going to work this all out. All of us.” Olivia glanced up at Cole. “Step by baby step. It’s going to be your choice, Tori, all of it, but I want you to know that my heart, my home, this place, it’s yours, too. If you wanted to stay . . .” Her voice caught. She swallowed, struggling with her own emotions. “But I’d really like it if you stayed. Cole would, too. Myron would also have wanted it that way, his ranch, the old house, full with a family.”

And something whispered through Tori’s mind, through her heart and body and soul, and it was, she realized with shock, her mother’s voice, as if whispering through from the other side:
You’re going to be okay, Tori. You’re going to find a new home. Here. With these two people. I want it this way, too. We looked after you until you and your mom were ready to meet, until your father could be certain you were both safe
. . .

On impulse she hugged Olivia.

Olivia gave a sob, wiped her nose with her sleeve. She seemed unable to speak further, but Tori saw it in her eyes. Love. Raw, whole, consuming, the unquestionable love of a mother for her child.

Tori glanced up at Cole. He had a dark, intense look on his face, his features tight.

“Myron’s gone,” she said quietly.

Cole nodded. He placed his big hand, warm, on her shoulder. “I’m sorry about your dad, too,” he said.

“I held Myron’s hand,” she said. “He tried to wait for you. He tried to hold on.”

Cole’s eyes shone.

“He had a smile,” she said very softly.

Cole’s mouth quivered, and he put his arm around Tori’s shoulders. “Come,” he said, voice thick. “It’s getting cold and dark out.”

And they walked together, the three of them and Ace, Cole with one arm around Olivia’s shoulders, and one around Tori’s, a tentative family forged by fate. They walked toward the big old Broken Bar lodge house, warm, golden light spilling out from the windows into the cool dusk and snow.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

At least once each summer my husband, Paul, and I load up our truck, camper, and trailer and head north with our Black Beast of a labradog, up into the interior to Cariboo country, where we spend days, sometimes weeks at Big Bar Lake—a slice right out of paradise.

Occasionally we stay in the campsite at the far end of the aquamarine waters, colored by white marl shoals, where we fish for darting rainbow trout. More often we stay on a very special piece of land graciously shared with us by Tom and Jennifer Cole. It was there, under big sky, surrounded by endless forests, the Marble range in the distance, the haunting cry of coyotes echoing at dusk, that Olivia and Cole’s story was born. A very big thank-you for this novel’s inspiration is thus due to Tom and Jenn, who introduced us to the place. And to my Paul, for helping me land my first trout on a fly line, and for drawing me into the esoteric art of fly tying and the magic of watching nature in order to learn what might make a fish bite (any errors are my own).

Thank you also to Deborah Nemeth for early editorial insight. To JoVon Sotak for bringing this book under the Montlake umbrella, to Kelli Martin for editorial shaping and polishing, and to the rest of the Amazon Publishing team who make books possible. A big thanks, too, to Joanne White for some wonderful artwork and promotional material. And as always, to my writing comrade, Mica Stone, for always kicking me in the butt (or head) when I need it most!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © 2013 Paul Beswetherick

Loreth Anne White is an award-winning author of romantic suspense, thriller, and mystery novels. A double RITA finalist, she has won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Readers’ Crown, and is a Booksellers’ Best Award finalist, a double Daphne Du Maurier finalist, and a multiple CataRomance Reviewers’ Choice winner.

Loreth hails from South Africa but now lives with her family in a ski resort in the moody Coast Mountains of North America’s Pacific Northwest. It’s a place of vast, wild, and often dangerous mountains, larger-than-life characters, epic adventure, and romance—the perfect place to escape reality. It’s no wonder it was here that she was inspired to abandon her sixteen-year newspaper career to escape into a world of romantic fiction filled with dangerous men and adventurous women.

When she’s not writing, you will find her open-water distance swimming, skiing, biking, hiking, or running the trails with her Black Dog, and generally trying to avoid the bears—albeit not always successfully. In the summer she will often be on the road, searching out remote camping and fly fishing spots with her husband or participating in tracking and air-scent courses with her Black Beast. She calls this work, because it’s when the best ideas come.

Loreth loves to hear from readers. You can contact her through her website at
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