Ian waiting for her, his gaze locked with hers and filled with vast emotion, a deep love that had filled all the empty spots in her heart.
She gripped Lord Henry’s arm and glided down the aisle past all the people who had shaped her into the woman she had become, toward Ian and the future they would build together.
* * *
A Haven Point Beginning
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER ONE
THIS WAS A mistake of epic proportions.
Gemma Summerhill gripped the steering wheel of the hybrid SUV she had purchased six weeks ago, when she first came to the States. She was going only about five miles per hour but that still seemed entirely too fast as she steered through treacherous conditions with giant snowflakes slapping against the car with astonishing force.
She shouldn’t be here. She should be safe and dry in her charming rented cottage beside Lake Haven, sitting by the fire with a cup of tea at one elbow and a good novel on her lap.
Whose crazy idea was it to go into the mountains today, with a storm coming on?
Hers. She sighed. She should have checked the weather report more carefully and shouldn’t have relied on one app that had promised a beautiful fall day.
In her defense, the October day had been lovely when she set off that morning for an easy hike, all warm sunshine, clear skies, comfortable temperatures. Oh, how quickly conditions could change. Now the Idaho mountain road was slick, precarious, and the rain that had hit with ferocious strength about twenty minutes earlier had shifted just as quickly to snow.
Gemma peered through the windshield. With the sun quickly setting and those wildly churning snowflakes coming at her, she felt as if she were driving at warp speed through a galaxy far, far away.
A song came on the radio, a country ballad about a woman who made one bad choice after another. Gemma wanted to roll her eyes. That could well be her anthem right about now.
She had so been looking forward to exploring the backcountry. She had been in Haven Point for six weeks and had mostly hiked around the lake. This had been her one time to see more of the countryside.
It had been spectacular, Gemma had to admit. The aspens were a beautiful golden color and the other trees provided contrasting colors in reds and oranges. As she had hiked the route McKenzie Kilpatrick had told her about, an easy trail to a beautiful alpine lake, she had felt good. Her leg had bothered her, as it always did when she pushed it too much, but the gorgeous setting had helped distract her from it.
Once she reached the lake, she had the place all to herself and had sat for a good hour, in awe that she was there. She had been thrilled to see two moose in the distance as well as a handful of elk.
This was exactly why she came to Idaho and took the job with Caine Tech—the chance to experience beautiful settings like that one, as far removed from their neatly manicured home in Dorset as she could imagine.
And then everything went wrong. The trail back to her vehicle should have been easier but she had found even slightly downhill terrain more difficult to navigate with her bad leg. And then she had stumbled on a rock when she was about a half mile from her vehicle, twisting her ankle enough that she’d had to hobble the rest of the way.
The snowflakes seemed to whirl and dance with increasing intensity now and her tires fought for traction on the road. If she went out of control, she would plunge down the mountainside with only trees to block her fall. There were no guardrails on this backcountry dirt road, no warning signs. Only darkness that plunged down for hundreds of feet.
What if she couldn’t make it down the road the rest of the way? What if she was stranded here on the mountainside? She had passed a few ranches on the way up. Surely she could find someone who could give her shelter until she could make her way home.
She shouldn’t have come alone. Gemma knew the rules about never hiking into the backcountry without a buddy. The salesperson at the sporting goods store in town had been firm on that.
She had figured she would be going only on a short hike and would be fine on her own. While she had made friends since she came to