Bobby Hutchinson - Past Lies

The one guy in a long while who really turned her on would be someone who wanted to disappear into the bush on some wild-goose chase. Ivy started the helicopter’s rotors and went through the preflight routine. They were airborne before she looked at Alex again.

His face was chalky and he was sweating, swallowing repeatedly. With the force of a blow it dawned on her that the man was terrified. He was afraid of flying. She should have recognized the signs earlier that day, but she’d been preoccupied with pointing out the landscape. She’d just expected him to love the experience as much as she did.

He didn’t have his earphones on, so she couldn’t reassure him. She reached over and touched his knee to get his attention and get him to put on the headset.

But he only pointed at the control panel, where smoke was curling out in slow wispy streams.

Dear Reader,

A Valentine’s gift of a helicopter ride over the snowy mountains of Vancouver became the inspiration for this story. The pilot was a gorgeous young woman, and I knew I had the makings for a complex and interesting heroine. Then my brother and I decided to run away for a few weeks. We went north to Alaska on a long, meandering journey by car, and I fell in love with the vast countryside and the unique and generous people we met along the way.

This is the story of a search for personal freedom, which in the end is never satisfied by anything external. I believe that true freedom comes only when we understand that there’s just one of us here, that learning to trust and to love one another on every level brings peace. And if along the way we find one special someone with whom to watch the northern lights—then we are truly blessed.

Please pay me a visit at www.bobbyhutchinson.com.

Much love, always,

Bobby

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Huge thanks to Bree McMurchy, who helped me understand the whys and hows of flight, and who nearly convinced me

I should learn to fly a copter. So Bree, this one’s for you.

Wheel and soar high, my friend, and come back safe.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Well, here I am at last, the Final Frontier. The boat just dumped me off in Valdez—which, by the way, the natives here call Valldeeze. A dude with a beard and an attitude corrected my pronunciation. Tell the sprout his old man’s about to start off on the adventure of a lifetime.

From letters written by Roy Nolan,

April, 1972

Valdez, Alaska

Present Day

BE THE HELICOPTER, and keep an eye on the torque gauge.

Ivy’s dad had drilled those axioms into her head while teaching her to fly. Like a soundless litany, his rules flitted through her mind as the altimeter needle dropped and she expertly guided the Bell Jet Ranger toward her targeted landing spot high on La Grave Mountain.

Sure, she’d flown the Bell innumerable times. And yeah, she’d attended professional flight school. But it was still Tom’s voice she heard as she systematically ticked off the details of her landing procedure.

Pay attention to the wind, watch your approach speed, beware a right crosswind—and never get cocky. Safety never takes a holiday.

The Ranger hovered and then settled with a gentle bump exactly where Ivy had planned to bring it down, the rotors kicking up clouds of snow. As the blades slowed and the white storm settled, Ivy squinted through her sunglasses against the blinding sunshine glinting off glaciers, sending up prisms of color.

Mid-April in Alaska meant that the temperature on La Grave was a chilly twenty below. There’d been thirty centimeters of new snow this week in the higher altitudes, and the skiing was reportedly fantastic.

Ivy didn’t know that from personal experience. She skied cross-country and conservatively downhill, but there was no way she’d strap boards on and attempt the heart-stopping crevasses and perpendicular drops of these sheer mountain cliffs. Extreme sports struck her as ridiculously foolhardy, although of course she’d never say any such thing to these ski bums and their guide who’d paid her top dollar to ferry them up here.

“Okay, gentlemen, last stop. Everybody out.” Ivy’s voice sounded loud in her ears as the rotors slowed. She opened her door and balanced on a strut to help unload the men’s equipment.

“Great flight, skipper. You free for dinner tonight, by any chance?”

Ivy smiled at Glen as the muscular giant from Lake Tahoe strapped on his skis. He’d been hitting on her the past couple of days. He was probably in his early thirties. She was only twenty-seven, but she’d already outgrown him. Glen was looking for the next thrill. He wanted new ranges, new mountains. New lovers.

She understood that, because she used to be just like Glen. But somewhere along the line, she’d changed. Now she was looking for—what?

Stability? Long-term? No simple answer came to mind. How come it was always easier to know what you didn’t want than what you did?

“Sorry,” she said as he looked at her hopefully over the top of his expensive sunglasses. “I have a standing date with my steady tonight, and for some reason he doesn’t believe in sharing.”

It was a white lie. Well, maybe it was more like a whopper. She did have a dinner date, but there was no steady guy. Definitely not. Although Dylan was starting to make assumptions about that, and it was time to set him straight.

Glen pretended he’d been stabbed in the heart and had to slowly pull out the knife. There was laughter and good-natured ribbing from the other two guys.

“I’ll be waiting at the pickup point around three this aft. Try to keep the slippy side down, troopers.”

The package they paid for through Raven Lodge included instruction from a certified Heli-Ski guide, drop-off by helicopter at the top of the mountain and pickup at a designated spot at the bottom.

With a flourish and a final wave, they were off, gliding through the powder like dancers. Ivy climbed back into the Ranger and began her preparations for takeoff, a smile on her lips.

This was always the best part of her job, this time alone in the copter after the customers were safely delivered to their destination. Now she could relax as she lifted off and skimmed over the breathtaking Chugach terrain, catching glimpses of sparkling lakes, soaring over row after row of tall glaciers. Ivy had been born in Alaska, and sometimes she imagined there was still an invisible umbilical cord stretching from her heart down to the soul of this wild and magical land.

“It’s born in us, love of the land and the air,” her father had once told her. “It’s an addiction, but it’s a good one.”

She lifted the Bell up and over the final peak and began the descent to Valdez. As the ground came up to meet her, she could see her father standing outside the mobile trailer that served as an office for their company, Up And Away Adventures. Tall and barrel-chested, Tom Pierce was still ruggedly handsome and incredibly fit for a man nearly sixty years old.

She set the chopper down precisely in the center of the cement landing pad and shut the engine off. The rotors thwacked as they slowed, before finally stopping. Ivy pressed the flight idle stop button and rolled the twist grip to full closed position. Light switches, off. Battery switch, off.