When Twilight Comes - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,60

As she started the car, she glanced at Fernhaven. In the morning sun, mist bathed the rooftops, the mountain behind the hotel shimmered a verdant green and Fernhaven looked like a fairy princess’s castle.

She hurriedly looked away, turning the SUV around and heading off the mountainside. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t.

“Hey!”

Jenna glanced in her side mirror and saw a man who’d been talking to one of the policemen. He waved to her to stop. She braked and lowered her window as he ran up to her side of the car.

“Hi,” he said, and smiled.

He wore jeans, boots and a leather bomber jacket, and he had a knapsack thrown over his shoulder.

Jenna stared up at him. There was something familiar about the man. The smooth, self-confident way he moved. The set of his broad shoulders. Something so familiar, and yet she knew she had never seen the man before in her life.

“Any chance of hitching a ride out of here?” he asked.

“Sure.”

His hair was a tawny blond, long at the neck, curling up over his collar. His smile broadened as he crouched next to the car so she didn’t have to look up. His eyes were a clear deep blue.

“I kind of got stranded up here,” he said. He glanced in the back seat and gave Lexi a wink. “It’s the strangest thing. If I told you how I got here, you wouldn’t believe it.”

She looked into his eyes and saw something that lifted her heart like helium. Was it possible? “Where are you headed?” she asked. If Fernhaven had taught her anything, it was that there were things beyond earthly understanding.

“Don’t really have a destination in mind, to tell you the truth.” He laughed, the sound making Jenna’s pulse quicken with a familiar excitement.

She glanced back at her daughter. Lexi was smiling at the man in a way that made her heart jump.

“We’re going to the ocean,” Lexi said excitedly. “Aren’t we, Mommy?”

“Yes, we are,” Jenna said. That was exactly where they were going.

“No kiddin’? I grew up on the California coast. You headed that far south?”

“Quite possibly,” she said, surprising herself, scaring herself, and yet having never felt so right about anything.

He laughed again, wiped his right hand on his jeans and stuck it in the window. “John James Harrison. My friends call me Harrison.”

Jenna’s hand trembled a little as she shook his hand. It was large and warm and fit hers perfectly. “Jenna…McDonald. This is my daughter, Lexi, and the cat is Fred.”

“Glad to meet you and I appreciate the ride,” he said as he ran around to open the door and slide in. He smelled of the outdoors, a mixture of fresh air and green trees. “I’m planning to keep both feet on the ground for a while.”

“Oh?” Jenna asked as she got the car moving again.

“I’m a helicopter pilot,” he said as he settled in, putting the knapsack on the floor between the bucket seats. “My last job just about killed me.”

“Really?” Jenna said, thinking about the chopper crash that had killed Raymond Valencia. This man had been the pilot? And he’d walked away without a scratch?

“Someone must have been watching out for me up there,” he said, looking out the windshield to the blue sky overhead. “I thought for sure I was a goner. That was one close call. Something like that changes you. I know it sounds corny, but I feel as if I’ve been given a second chance. Silly, huh?”

Jenna shook her head, thinking of Harry Ballantine and second chances. “No, that’s a feeling I’m pretty familiar with,” she said and smiled over at the man beside her.

ISBN: 978-1-4268-6178-9

WHEN TWILIGHT COMES

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When Twilight Comes - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,60

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