“How do you stand knowing your sons are out in this awful storm?”
“They’re very well trained, and they love what they do. Besides, all Vermonters are used to bad weather. It doesn’t faze us.”
“You’re made of hardy stock, as my mother would say.”
“We have to be. Reach out if you need anything at all. You’re not alone with the Abbott family in your corner.”
Amanda got up and hobbled to the door to see Molly out. “Thanks again.”
“Take care of yourself, Amanda.”
“I will.”
Amanda waved from the door as Molly drove off, and then she locked up since she had no way to know when Landon might make it home. She decided to retrieve her dinner from the oven and enjoyed every savory bite of the meal Molly had brought. It was so nice of her to do that, and to listen to Amanda’s troubles, too.
Molly had given her a new perspective by telling her there would be sunshine after the rain and that the emotions battering her since the fire were actually healthy despite how dreadful she felt at the moment.
That was the best news she’d had in days.
Chapter Two
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Landon trudged through wind, driving rain and ankle-deep mud that slowed him down. A spotlight attached to his helmet provided limited help in seeing through rain that hadn’t let up in hours. Mother Nature was being a serious bitch this year, with the rainiest May on record extending mud season weeks longer than usual. After this latest downpour, they’d be in for more mud when they should’ve been settling into summer.
His voice had gone hoarse from screaming the names of the three teens who’d gone missing almost four hours ago. They were tourists from southern Connecticut who’d had no idea they’d entered a whole other world in the Vermont mountains. They’d thought it would be fun to leave their hotel for a late-afternoon hike.
During a Nor’easter.
Now Landon, four of his six brothers, their cousins Grayson and Noah, and ten others from the Butler Mountain search-and-rescue service were trying to find them. Good times. In the meantime, the rain fell and accumulated at an alarming rate as the temperature continued to drop. The very real fear of flooding hung over the effort. A few years ago, a spring storm just like this one had caused the creeks to overflow into the town.
No one knew what the kids had been wearing when they left the hotel, but the searchers were operating under the assumption that they were in no way prepared to be out in weather like this for hours.
Landon was connected to the rest of the team by satellite radios that conveyed the coordinates of each searcher. The radios made it possible to split up and cover more ground rather than rely on the buddy system, like they had before satellite technology made it safe to work alone.
He welcomed the time to himself to ponder the confounding situation with his sexy roommate. Having Amanda living in his cabin was wonderful—and torturous. The house was so small that her distinctive sexy scent invaded every corner of the place. He had to move her toothbrush to get to his own, had to step over her pile of folded clothes to get to his closet. She was everywhere he looked, and he liked looking at her—a little too much, if he was being honest.
He’d tried to keep his distance, to give her room to recover and cope with the emotional overload that came from surviving a fire, but it was hard to keep your distance from someone when you were living practically on top of each other.
Not that he’d mind being on top of her.
“Cut it out,” he muttered as he stopped moving to take a breather. The mud was getting so deep, it was becoming harder to get through it, not to mention the cold was seeping through his foul-weather gear into his bones. He reached into his pocket for a protein bar and downed it in three big bites, chasing it with Gatorade.
Amanda was in no condition for him to be thinking of her that way. The poor girl hadn’t stopped crying since the fire, and the last thing she needed was him panting after her. But what did it say about him that he thought she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, even when her face and eyes were red and puffy from crying? What did it say about him that he