The Daughters of Dancing Falls

Life is meant to be lived

Surprising her family for Christmas seems like a good idea...until Carrie Foster loses control of her car in a freak blizzard. Now she’s stuck in the middle of nowhere with a fractured leg, the unplanned-for guest of the man who saved her life.

Keegan Breen lives in a secluded cabin on his family’s neglected campgrounds, which nature-lover Carrie sees as a potential paradise. The haunted war correspondent is a world away from the boy he was once. But together, can they prove the cynics wrong and show that opposites can not only attract, but be soul mates?

“I’m a realist, Carrie. You’re a...”

“I know what I am! Go ahead, be cynical.” She glared at him, an inner fire now lighting her eyes. “You were a good reporter. Heck, you’re even famous. But here’s what I think. I think you got some kind of kick out of seeing the awfulness of mankind. I think it confirms what your dark, brooding soul has always believed—that our world is a miserable place. And that, Keegan Breen, is just plain sad, and that’s why I feel sorry for you.”

“You know what I think, Carrie?”

She scowled. “I think you’ve made it quite clear.”

He smiled, because in truth he was enjoying this moment more than many he’d experienced in a long time. He more than liked this fighter Carrie. He more than admired her. “I think we’ve pegged each other pretty accurately. We haven’t been together two weeks yet, and we know each other as well as if we’d been friends for years.”

Secretly, he was starting to hope they could be more...

Dear Reader,

This is the final love story about three sisters, The Daughters of Dancing Falls. I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey of each of the unique women, who are bound together by their love for each other and their caring father. No family dynamic is perfect. It takes work, patience and love to nurture the bond of parent and child.

In this book, Carrie’s story, this youngest daughter flexes her independence muscles despite having challenges to face. All her life she fought against her father’s overbearing concern, and only when she meets a man who seems her complete opposite does she learn what it means to see the world from another person’s point of view—even her father’s. I sincerely hope that Carrie’s struggle to be herself while recognizing her special gift to help another person heal will be a satisfying end to a series I loved writing.

Cynthia

PS: I enjoy hearing from readers. You may contact me at cynthoma@aol.com or visit my website, cynthiathomason.net.

Rescued by Mr. Wrong

Cynthia Thomason

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CYNTHIA THOMASON inherited her love of writing from her ancestors. Her father and grandmother both loved to write, and she aspired to continue the legacy. Cynthia studied English and journalism in college, and after a career as a high-school English teacher, she began writing novels. She discovered ideas for stories while searching through antiques stores and flea markets and as an auctioneer and estate buyer. Cynthia says every cast-off item from someone’s life can ignite the idea for a plot. She writes about small towns, big hearts and happy endings that are earned and not taken for granted. And as far as the legacy is concerned, just ask her son, the magazine journalist, if he believes.

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This book is dedicated to anyone who ever felt that true love was just beyond their grasp.

Don’t ever stop reaching.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

PROLOGUE

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

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

PROLOGUE

“WHITEOUT CONDITIONS.” Those had been the radio forecaster’s words just a few minutes ago as Carrie slowly navigated the lakeshore route to her home in Fox Creek, Ohio. She couldn’t recall ever driving on such treacherous roads before, but now she knew exactly what was meant by “whiteout.” The paleness of the snow-covered asphalt seemed to blend with the white of the air around her as flurries mounted in intensity. The horizon had been obliterated, making the lanes of the highway indistinct and the sun only a gray, hazy memory. Her surroundings were muddled together, a vacuum of white, starkness and cold.

The sudden blizzard wasn’t the only frosty aspect of this holiday season. Her chilly conversation with her father last night was still fresh in her mind.

“I’m very disappointed, Carrie,” her father had said. “This is the first time you’ve missed Christmas, and I can’t imagine what is more important than being with your family.”

Once again her father had used the guilt factor to persuade her to do what he thought was best. Carrie was tired of explaining all her decisions. Besides, no one in the Foster family understood Carrie’s devotion to trees, especially the shoreline birches of central Michigan lakes that were showing serious effects of pesticide treatment.

Even worse, her father had followed up by announcing, “I’ve made you an appointment with a brilliant new allergist, Dr. Hower, for December 26. I don’t want to cancel.”

“Not another allergist, Dad,” she’d said. “We all know what I’m allergic to—nearly everything. I won’t be prodded and poked anymore!”

“Fine. Have it your way.” He’d been angry, but after a moment his tone had leveled. “Honey, I am the doctor in this family, and I’m only thinking of you.”

That statement had calmed her since it was true. Unfortunately, her father’s concern and medical expertise had left her longing for independence her entire life and a lot less mothering from her caring father. This time she was determined to chart her own course, which meant monitoring the experiments with her trees and refusing more asthma treatments.

Dr. Martin Foster had ended their uncomfortable conversation with a warning. “If you change your mind...”

“Daddy, I won’t.”

“If you do, don’t set out in the morning. Bad weather is predicted for Christmas Day.” As if he didn’t trust her to do anything he told her, he’d added, “I mean it, Carrie. Don’t drive if the forecast is unfavorable.”

When would he ever stop treating her like the baby of the family? Even babies grew up, and she was thirty years old. However, by that evening, Christmas Eve, she’d mellowed. With promises from her crew to continue her work, she’d decided to tackle the five-hour drive in the morning and arrive at her father’s estate, Dancing Falls, in time for Christmas dinner. She’d loaded her car with gifts and headed south for the normally easy drive. Hopefully she’d miss the worst of the weather.

But typical of Ohio winters, a freak blizzard, worse than predicted, had blown in off Lake Erie. The turnpike closed almost immediately, but the traffic app on her iPhone showed that the local two-lane roads were being cleared, leaving her route along the lake passable. That was a few hours ago. Now, in midafternoon, she still had more than two hours to drive in rapidly deteriorating conditions.

Carrie slowed her small foreign car, impractical for blizzard conditions, to a crawl, and was still unable to determine where the road ended and the shoulder began. She hadn’t seen another pair of headlights in miles, so she wasn’t worried about hitting another car. She gripped her steering wheel and plowed ahead. This storm couldn’t last forever. She pictured her father sitting in his chair by the fireplace, secure in the knowledge that his daughter wouldn’t dare ignore his warning and be foolish enough to set out in a storm. He would be furious if he knew she was out in this weather.

Vapor collected on the inside of her windshield, so Carrie lowered her window a few inches to let in fresh air. Just in case, she reached inside the pocket of her purse where she always kept her inhaler. Sometimes, thank goodness not often, a sudden blast of frigid air could bring on an asthma attack.

This was obviously not her lucky day. The wind rushed around the knit stocking cap over her head and seemed to flow downward and settle directly in her lungs. She felt her airways constrict with a tingling pain that signaled a problem. She put the inhaler between her lips, depressed the button and breathed in the lifesaving medicine.

Several seconds later she found herself staring into a pair of bright gold eyes. She braked suddenly, and her heart raced as she realized she was sliding toward a deer, a beautiful fawn-colored creature who stood in the road and was probably as shocked to find herself out on a day like this as Carrie was. Carrie swerved. The deer took flight.

Before she could contemplate the miracle that the deer’s life had been spared, Carrie’s car skidded on a patch of ice. She braked with a slow and steady pressure as she’d been taught by a driver’s education instructor. The car began to fishtail. Turn the steering wheel in the direction of the skid or away from it? She couldn’t remember. She lost control. The car veered off the road as if it had a mind of its own and spun in a complete circle before plowing into a bank of snow and hitting something solid.

Carrie felt the impact in every bone. A sharp pain sliced up her right leg as the car’s air bag exploded around her chest. Her forehead connected with a bone-rattling jolt against the top of the steering wheel. Carrie thought of her family snug and safe at Dancing Falls. Images of her two sisters, her niece and nephew, her dad, swirled in her mind before she lost consciousness.

CHAPTER ONE

LATELY, KEEGAN BREEN was the last person anyone should count on to run an errand of mercy. And he was just fine with that. He didn’t ask anyone to do anything for him, and he appreciated the return consideration. However, this Christmas Day was something of an emergency. His neighbor Duke struggling to cope with memory loss associated with his eighty-six years, had forgotten to order his heart medication, and he needed to take it every day, or... Well, even Keegan didn’t want to be responsible for that.

So Keegan had called Duke’s doctor and discovered that the MD had some samples of Duke’s meds in his home. Keegan then ventured out in the snow to pick up a couple of pills. What had started out as a short twelve-mile journey to town in light snowfall had now become an hour’s pain-in-the-neck trek in blizzard conditions.

“Lake-effect snow,” Keegan muttered to himself. A person never knew when it would do its worst, but that was the chance he took living on the shore of Lake Erie. Thank goodness his seven-year-old Chevy Tahoe—with its 350 horses, V-8 engine and two tons of steel on a truck chassis—could barrel through almost anything.

He slowed for the curve about a mile from the abandoned Cedar Woods Campground where Keegan lived in the old camp store and Duke lived in a small trailer. Through the whiteout conditions, Keegan managed to see a pair of red taillights glowing faintly from a mound of snow left by an earlier plow. He braked to a crawl and stopped behind the motorist who’d obviously lost his mind to be out in this weather on a holiday. Especially without a “blizzard beast” like the Tahoe.

Getting out of his vehicle, Keegan walked around to the driver’s side of the compact car. A few more minutes and the ridiculous little two-seater might have been buried in a mini avalanche, leaving the driver to become a human popsicle.

Pulling his jacket collar around his ears where his ball cap stopped short of providing protection, Keegan approached the driver’s window. Snow had accumulated, but it was light and dusty, not the kind that sticks the moment it lands. He brushed off the snow with his heavily gloved hand and peered inside.

Besides a mound of wrapped packages, only one person was in the automobile—a woman, slumped over the limp remains of an air bag, and one who apparently didn’t have the sense to listen to a weather forecast before venturing out on a day like this. Even more astounding, the gal had left her window partially opened and snow was settling on her shoulders and head.

“Lady!” Keegan called. “Lady, are you okay?”

She wasn’t. Keegan saw a faint stream of red coming from her forehead. He’d seen enough head injuries in his day to know the possibility of serious complications. He tried the door. Locked. With about four inches of opening to work with, he slipped off his glove and stuck his hand in the window, wiggling his arm downward to the door lock. Thank goodness he was able to reach the button and pull it up.

He opened the car door. The woman didn’t move. Her breathing seemed labored. “Darned air bag must have knocked the wind out of her,” Keegan said aloud. He’d never thought they were a good idea. He wasn’t crazy about seat belts either, especially now when he had to work his fingers through deflated nylon to free the woman.

The seat belt latch clicked, and the woman moaned and tried to sit upright. She managed to turn her head and stared with partially closed eyes at Keegan. Those eyes popped wide open instantly. Visibility was poor, but he figured she’d seen enough to be freaked out by his appearance, so he backed up a step. Meticulous grooming wasn’t at the top of his list of priorities these days.

She stuck out her hand and pounded his chest with a weak fist. “Leave me alone,” she said.

Keegan leaned in the car door. “If I do, you’ll freeze to death out here. And you have a head injury.”

She struggled to take a breath. “I do?”

“Yes, and who knows what else is wrong. You’ve driven your car into a snowbank and hit one of our scenic telephone poles.”

She continued staring at him as if he were her worst nightmare. “Call an ambulance,” she said.

“You don’t want me to do that. If I call for an ambulance, it would take forever in this weather for it to reach us. Plus, we’d be putting the drivers at risk. Your best bet is to go with me.”

“Go with you? I don’t even know you.”

“I don’t know you either, but I’m willing to take the risk,” the man said. “Now, let’s get you out of that car, so we can get you medical help. You could have serious injuries.”

“I do,” she said through gritted teeth. “I think I broke my leg.”

* * *

CARRIE FELT LIKE a knife had sliced into her calf. She touched her head and stared at the sticky red mess on her fingers. Definitely bleeding, but the cold was slowing it down some. What was she going to do now? Miles from nowhere, a broken leg, a damaged head, an asthma attack, and no one but this large, grisly-looking man to help her. His hair reached his shoulders, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in a month.

Mr. Grisly leaned on the roof of her car. “Do you live around here?” he asked.

She could honestly answer that she didn’t. She was still at least two hours from home and four hours from her Michigan address. But maybe she should lie. What good would that do? Even if her car wasn’t wrecked, she didn’t know if she’d be able to drive anywhere. Why couldn’t it have been her left leg that was injured?

“No,” she said. “I live in Michigan.”

“No one you know in this area?”

She shook her head, knowing if she gave her father’s name, he would never let her forget her foolish decision.

“Then I guess you’re stuck with me.” He reached his arms into her car, pushing back the remains of the air bag. With a skillful and surprisingly gentle touch, he probed her arms and legs. “I don’t think anything else is broken. So come on. We’re going to the hospital.”

Did she want to add stupidity to her list of problems? She didn’t know this guy. Think, Carrie. Drawing in a sharp breath of pain, she said, “I don’t even know your name.”

He exhaled a frosty breath. “Keegan Breen.”

“I don’t know if I trust you.”

“Look, I’m not going to hurt you. Truthfully, I’m not that crazy about helping you. I was on my way home and looking forward to a fireplace and roasting some hot dogs.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “It is Christmas, you know.”

“How far is the hospital?” she asked.

“Twenty minutes, maybe more in this weather.” He looked out her windshield. “I think it’s let up a little in the time we’ve been talking.” Wiggling his fingers, he added, “Let’s go, buttercup. Grab hold.”

There was something calm about his voice, almost soothing. And anyway, what other choice did she have but to trust him? She couldn’t stay in an automobile that didn’t even have a working heater anymore. She wrapped her hands around each of his forearms and let him do the heavy lifting. He pushed his hand under her rump and had her out of the car and safely tucked against his chest in a matter of moments. The change in position made the pain in her leg worse. She bit her lip to keep from screaming out.

He started walking toward a monster car of some type. “Wait,” she said. “My purse. My inhaler. My glasses. They probably fell off the dashboard when I hit the pole.”

He trudged back, leaned her against the car and reached for her purse on the passenger seat. She took it, scrambled to find the inhaler where she’d dropped it in the bag. He found her pair of dark-framed reading glasses on the floor of her car and handed them to her. Then she allowed him to lift her again. This time she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her hands in the fleece underside of his collar. Ah, warmth...and something else, too. The scent of hickory, like kindling from a fire. Nice. Maybe he wasn’t kidding about the fireplace or the hot dogs.

Just before they reached his vehicle, he glanced down at Carrie’s face, probably his first good look since he’d found her. His jaw dropped a bit. “You’re just a kid,” he said. “Why did your parents let you out on a day like this?”

Once again the baby of the family gets treated like a baby. All her life people had been telling her she didn’t look old enough to be out of grade school or middle school. Just recently she been aged to the high school level. “I swear, Carrie Foster, you don’t look old enough to even have a full-time job...”

Well, she did have a job, a very responsible one as an agent with the US Forest Service. And she had a master’s degree in natural sciences. And she was an adult! “I’m not a kid,” she said. “I’m quite old enough to know better than to drive in this weather, thank you!”

“Knowing and doing are obviously two very different things to you.” He deposited her in the roomy passenger seat of what she now recognized as a Chevy Tahoe, similar to the vehicles her coworkers drove in the Service. After this experience, she’d have to seriously consider trading in her cute French car and getting a four-wheel drive of her own.

“I’d put you in the backseat, but it’s full of fire logs,” he said. “I can help you elevate your leg onto the dashboard.”

“No. I’m okay. Just drive.”

He went around to the driver’s side, got in and pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’ve got to make a phone call before we go.”

“Okay.”

“Duke? It’s Keegan. I’ve got your meds, but I won’t be back at the camp for a while. How soon do you need them?”

The camp? Was this guy a survivalist of some kind?

He paused while Duke answered. “No problem. I should be home by then.” Another pause. “I’m fine. Just came across a stranded motorist who needs some medical attention. I’m dropping her at the hospital.”

Carrie relaxed her shoulders into the seat back. Once she was at the hospital she’d be safe, and the twenty-minute drive with Keegan Breen was better than alerting her father to her problem and enduring his criticism. Besides, there was something comforting about the conversation she’d just heard, and she realized that she was beginning to trust him. Keegan was apparently doing something for a friend. And right now he was her only hope of getting out of a snowbank and getting her leg looked after. It was nice to know he was accustomed to helping people. Although she couldn’t get the image of his idea of a “camp” out of her mind.

And getting to the hospital was only the beginning of her problems. What would she do after he dropped her off? She didn’t want to call her sisters. Even if she swore them to secrecy about this event, they would ignore her and immediately tell their father, claiming it was for her own good. Everyone just assumed that Carrie needed help, and rules of independence didn’t apply to her. Her best bet was to see what the damages were and what the hospital suggested. Then she’d make a decision.

“So, what were you doing driving on a day like this?” His voice brought her back to the present and the throbbing pain in her leg.

“I was hoping to surprise some people today.”

He stole a quick glance at her before focusing on the road. “They should be surprised all right. A call from the hospital should knock their socks off.”

So true. If the hospital called her family, someone would definitely hop in a car to come get her, which could easily end in another vehicle disaster. And if they even made it safely in this blizzard, she’d never hear the end of it.

“I’m not going to tell them,” she said, deciding at that moment that she would handle this situation on her own—somehow.

He stared at her a bit longer, his face serious. “That’s your decision, I guess. But you are in somewhat of a mess here.”

She shifted on the seat, trying to relieve some pain. There didn’t seem to be a comfortable position. “How much longer?”

“About ten minutes I’d say.” He stared up at the gray sky. “As long as another flurry doesn’t start.”

She appraised his face, which seemed perpetually set in a stern profile. Despite his growth of beard, she could tell his features were strong and weathered, as if he’d spent time in the sun and wind. Maybe he was a farmer or a construction worker, something like that—or, there was the image again, a survivalist. She’d heard stories about these rugged, gruff men who lived in compounds. Anyway, she figured he wasn’t a businessman driving an old monster vehicle. The gray in his beard indicated that whatever he did, he’d been at it awhile.