Past Lies

Wouldn’t you know it?

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

Past Lies

Bobby Hutchinson

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.

CONTENTS

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

CHAPTER ONE

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.

Another mission accomplished, Captain.

HE WATCHED AS HIS daughter expertly landed the copter on the pad. When the rotors stilled and the motor died, Ivy opened the door and jumped down, her long, lean body as toned as any athlete’s. She waved her blue-billed cap at him in greeting, then ran her fingers through the short, thick copper curls cut boyishly close to her scalp.

Ivy’s mother had had hair that same color when he first met her, although now Frances had let hers go snowy-white. She wore her hair long, down past her shoulders. She styled it every morning with an artist’s precision and an arsenal of equipment. Tom had always liked watching her.

Lately, though, she closed her bedroom door.

Ivy, now, she wasn’t interested in gilding the lily, not that she needed to. She, too, was beautiful, although in a very different way than Frances.

Ivy didn’t accentuate her looks or even seem to be aware of them, which of course drove her mother nuts. Under his mustache, Tom’s narrow mouth curled into a small, enigmatic smile. Frances’s makeup case was bigger than most suitcases, and all Ivy carried with her was a tube of stuff that kept her lips from chapping.

“Hey, Captain.” Ivy smiled at him, her high, Slavic cheekbones an inheritance from his father’s side of the family. Tom’s sister, Caitlin, had them, too. But Ivy’s hair and her wide-set apple-green eyes were gifts from her mother, reminding him, as always, of Frances when they’d first met.

Tom rubbed a hand absently across his chest, where the familiar tightness lodged whenever he thought about his wife.

“So what’s happening?” Ivy looped a hand through his arm, and with an affectionate squeeze he trapped it against his side. She was only a couple inches shorter than his six-two. He’d long ago stopped caring that she automatically shortened her stride to accommodate his limp. The old leg injury was bothering him more than usual today, maybe a storm coming.

“We got any more charters lined up?”

“Nope, not for today. Might be some last-minute tourists, you never know.” Tom shook his head. “Just got back myself, I took that load of supplies up and dropped it where those damn fool climbers wanted. No sign of them, although their tent was there. I buzzed around a few times, place was deserted.”

“Probably halfway up the mountain,” Ivy speculated. “Climbers wouldn’t waste a morning like this waiting for their supplies to arrive.”

“Maniacs, the lot of them.”

“Yeah, well, as long as we keep our radical opinions to ourselves, Captain, they’ll go on hiring us. And that’s good for our bank balance.”

“I can play nice guy with the best of them,” he snorted. “Never pissed off a client yet.”

“What a track record, keep up the good work.”

Tom knew that visitors to Alaska often viewed him as an eccentric local character. He figured it didn’t hurt their business at all.

She playfully punched his arm. “You’re such a phony. Everybody knows there’s a soft gummy center under that prickly surface.”

Not everybody. He knew for a fact Frances didn’t think so. Tom squeezed Ivy’s arm a little tighter and changed the subject.

“I’ve got that lumber and insulation Theo ordered loaded on the boat.”

Raven Lodge was in a remote bay accessible only by boat or plane. “I’ll take it up to the lodge this afternoon if we don’t get any last-minute business,” Tom declared. “Theo really wants to get going on those new cabins. I hear he’s hired some damned yahoo from down south to help him.”

“Oh, yeah? And how’d he meet this yahoo?”

“Jerry down at the Anchor introduced them when Theo was in town a couple days ago. Perfectly fine carpenters right around here—you’d think Theo would hire local.”

“Everybody’s working on the new hotel,” she reminded him.

“Well, I hope this dude has more going for him than that so-called fishing guide from San Francisco Theo hired last year.”

The idiot hadn’t known his elbow from his ass. He’d somehow foundered a boat with four tourists out in the Sound. Just luck that another boat was nearby, or the lot of them would have died from hypothermia.

“Uncle Theo must have liked this current yahoo or he wouldn’t have hired him.”

Tom knew she was teasing him. He grunted. “Theo likes everybody, that’s his biggest problem.” It wasn’t a criticism of his brother-in-law so much as a statement of fact.

Ivy laughed. “You’ll get to judge the guy for yourself if you’re taking the stuff out. I have to pick up my skiers around three, so I’ll probably see you up there. You want a lift back with me?”

“If you’re staying for supper. Caitlin told me to ask you. You open to that?”

“Darn, I can’t tonight. I’ve got a date.” Ivy wrinkled her nose.

“Then I’ll stay over, bring the boat back in the morning.” Tom grinned at her expression. “Date’s that bad, huh? Would this be Doc Fredricks you’re not excited about?” There were always men buzzing around Ivy, too many of them useless vagabonds from God only knew where. More than once he’d been tempted to scare them off, one way or the other. But the doc rated higher than most on Tom’s private scale.

Fredricks was steady, he had a damned good job at the hospital. And it looked like he was going to settle in Valdez. Most telling of all, he’d managed to survive more than a few weeks with Ivy. Tom had to admit his daughter was fickle.

“Dylan, yeah.”

“He’s good people, Ivy. I hear he’s buying property. Has plans to build a house in that fancy subdivision just outside town, somebody said.”

She frowned and pretended to think about that. “I think he mentioned something about it.”

“He’s solid. You could do lots worse.” He worried about her. He knew from personal experience that the world could be tough on women.

Ivy shrugged nonchalantly. “We’re just friends.”

“Friends, eh?” Tom gave her a look. “Sounds to me like it’s one more case of nice guys finish last with you.”

“You trying to marry me off, Captain?” He heard the mild reproof in her tone. He’d learned long ago that his daughter had a full share of her old man’s stubbornness, and more than a touch of his quick temper.

“Nope, just want you to be happy, honey. Sometimes I figure you’re confusing good guys with bad. You’ve got a hell of a trail of broken hearts underneath those boots of yours.”

“These boots are made for breaking hearts,” she growled, and he smiled beneath his mustache. “Is Mom going with you to the lodge?”

Tom shook his head and the smile vanished. “Can’t. She’s teaching her night-school class tonight.” Besides, Ivy should know by now that her mother never visited the lodge. Frances did have a class tonight, makeup technique, wardrobe choices, hairstyling. Things she was good at.

All the things that bored Ivy cross-eyed.

Aeronautics, now, that got his daughter’s attention.

He reached past her to open the door of the office, and the short, dark-haired young man behind the desk smiled and waved a hand.

“Hey, Bert, how’s it going,” Ivy signed.

Bert Ambrose was Tom’s protégé. A naturally gifted mechanic, his dream was to learn to fly. But Bert had been born deaf, and he’d been told it was impossible for him to be a pilot. Tom knew better. With help from the Association of Deaf Pilots, Tom was teaching Bert to fly.

“Where’s Kisha?” Ivy had learned rudimentary signs from the mechanic.

“Went to get us pizza.” Bert’s smile was so big, his narrow eyes almost disappeared. “Kisha loves pizza.”

And Bert loves Kisha, poor sod. These girls nowadays, too independent for their own good. Ivy included.

Kisha Harris manned the phones and the radio, dealt with paperwork and was great on the computer. She’d set up a Web site for Up And Away, and talked Tom and Ivy into advertising on the Web. She was a wonderful employee, but she’d made it clear from the beginning that the job was strictly temporary for her. She’d watched The Snow Walker about two hundred times, and she was convinced she had what it took to be an actress.

Tom figured there weren’t that many acting jobs for short, very round girls with absolutely no experience, but he’d been smart enough not to tell Kisha so. In the meantime, she flirted outrageously with poor Bert.

“Any calls since she left?” Ivy asked.

“Three,” Bert said in his deep, atonal voice, signing the answer simultaneously. He kept track by watching the light on the phone’s base. The messages would be on the machine.

Tom had worked out his own version of sign language, a combination of some of Bert’s and a lot of what seemed logical to him. And he spoke up around the kid. Too many people mumbled.

“Come and have a look at temp gauge on the Beaver,” Tom bellowed. “The engine’s been running high.”

IVY WATCHED THEM LEAVE, shaking her head and grinning to herself at the fact that Captain still figured if he talked loud enough, Bert would hear him. She pushed the button to replay the messages.

There was a request for helicopter transport from a group of Seattle skiers, and another from a German tourist for an aerial tour by floatplane. Ivy scribbled down the numbers.

The third call was from her mother, asking if Ivy could join her for lunch at Mike’s Palace. Ivy spent a puzzled moment wondering what was up. She and Frances weren’t exactly in the habit of lunching together.

She made the business calls first, arranging dates and deposits, recommending her aunt and uncle’s remote fishing lodge, when asked for advice on ac commodation. Usually June, July and August were the busiest tourist months, but lately there’d been increased volume in the less crowded shoulder seasons—late April, May and September. Up And Away was having the best April ever. At this rate, their dream of owning the Bell instead of leasing it would soon be a reality.

At last Ivy dialed her mother’s number.

“Frances Pierce.”

Ivy was accustomed to her mother’s businesslike manner on the phone. “Hey, Mom, it’s me.”

“Ivy, hi. Are you free for lunch? I thought Mike’s Palace, but if you’d rather go somewhere else—?”

“No, that sounds fine. See you there in fifteen, okay?”

Ivy hung up, wondering why she hadn’t just come right out and asked Frances what she wanted. That way maybe they could have skipped lunch altogether.

She took a moment to wash her hands and face in the cramped bathroom. Dampening her fingers, she ran them through her hair to freshen the short curls that had been flattened under her hat. She was wearing her usual work uniform: blue jeans, sturdy Frye boots, a white button-down shirt under a navy pullover. She caught herself fussing and turned away from the mirror.

Why was it that the only time she was even marginally aware of how she looked was when she was around her mother? It was time she got over that.

Before she headed out the door she shrugged into the black Gore-Tex jacket with the company logo she and Tom had designed—the outline of a stylized plane with a U and an A superimposed on it. The cap had the same logo, and she plunked it on, remembering too late her efforts with her hair.

Oh, well. Around Frances, it was a lost cause anyway.

CHAPTER TWO

It seems a lot longer than a week since I left Bellingham. I miss you and the sprout a lot, I keep thinking about that night he was born. I figured for sure you were going to die, Linda. I never dreamed how much pain a woman goes through having a baby.

From letters written by Roy Nolan,

April, 1972

IT WAS A TYPICAL SPRING day for Valdez, sunny but chill with a sharp, brisk breeze blowing off the harbor. The huge snowbanks were gradually disappearing. Ivy drove her battered red pickup with the window down, breathing in the smell of the ocean.

Mike’s Palace was just a short drive from the office, and Ivy pulled into a parking spot right beside her mother’s SUV and headed into the cozy little restaurant. Mike’s was popular with locals and tourists because it had the best lasagna around.

It also had a view of the harbor. The walls were covered with old newspapers that told the story of Valdez all the way from the gold-rush days through the oil boom, including the earthquake, the disastrous oil spill and the more recent tourist boom.

“Hey, Ivy, how ya doin’?” Mike, the proprietor, was tall, bearded and sinister-looking because of a crooked nose and a jagged scar that angled across his cheekbone and nose. He liked to let people think it was from a brawl, but Ivy knew he’d gone headfirst through the windshield of a snowmobile.

He jerked a thumb at a table by the window. “Your mom’s over there.”

The room was way too small to miss anyone—as if anyone with even one eye in their head would ever miss Frances. Her wild halo of long, snowy-white hair gleamed like a beacon, curling out from her skull as if it had been electrified. The brilliant turquoise sweater she wore stood out like a jewel among the drab browns and grays of the other patrons. Frances looked like a peacock trapped by a crowd of seagulls, Ivy decided, as she wound her way among the crowded tables and sank into a chair.

Seagulls, and now one woodpecker. The comparison amused her.

“Hello, Ivy.” Frances’s voice suited her. It was husky and dramatic, with a refined sensuality and a faint hint of the Midwest in the consonants. “Glad you could make it.” She smiled, her wide, voluptuous mouth revealing perfect white teeth. As usual, Ivy felt diminished by her mother’s beauty.

“Slow day,” Ivy said, taking a long, thirsty drink from the water glass beside her plate. “I took a group up the mountain early this morning, they’re skiing down and then I’ll fly them back to Uncle Theo’s.”

Frances nodded. “I talked to Caitlin the other day. She said Sage and Ben were due back today from that wildlife conference in Montana.”

Ben was Ivy’s cousin, Sage his wife. Caitlin and Theo had twin sons, Ben and Logan, ten years older than Ivy. Growing up, she’d idolized both of them and, during her teen years, she’d had a massive crush on Ben, the more charismatic of the two. Thank God maturity cured things like that.

Maturity and the realization that her handsome cousin’s actions didn’t always live up to his charm. His second wife was Ivy’s best friend, and there were times when she felt Ben didn’t deserve Sage.

“Dad’s going over to the lodge for supper tonight.” Ivy watched her mother’s green eyes, wondering if Frances knew or even cared where Tom was spending the evening.

Frances nodded. “Yes, he told me.” She glanced up and smiled again at the plump waitress. “Hi, Sally. I’ll have the lasagna, spinach salad and a glass of chardonnay.”

“Same for me.” About the only thing she and Frances had ever agreed on was food. Ivy had inherited her mother’s metabolism as well as her appetite, which meant they both enjoyed staggering quantities of food without gaining an ounce.

Conversation faltered as Sally poured their wine—one glass wouldn’t impair her ability to pilot—and then brought a basket of hot bread and, a few moments later, their salads.

After she left, the silence stretched painfully. Had there ever been a time when talking to her mother was spontaneous and easy? If there had, Ivy didn’t remember it.

Frances sipped her wine and Ivy wondered if her mother was also searching for a common interest. “How’s Bert making out with his flying lessons, Ivy?”

Good one, Mom. Neutral, uncomplicated.

“Dad says he’s a natural.” And how come you’re asking me? Don’t you ever talk to Dad about anything besides the plumbing and the bank balance?