Deep River Promise, Jackie Ashenden [large ebook reader .TXT] 📗

wooden pole stuck in the boardwalk that had “Middle of Nowhere” painted down the side. A tall, gangly teenager dressed in jeans and a black hoodie.

He always seemed to be in Damon’s vicinity, and if Damon didn’t know any better, he’d say he was being followed.

Though surely it was a little too early in the morning for teenagers? Weren’t they supposed to sleep past twelve or something?

The kid was looking straight at him, though he was too far away for Damon to see what expression was on his face. The fixed way the kid was staring was slightly unnerving.

A woman came suddenly into view. She had shoulder-length blond hair, and it was blowing around in the wind, a bright counterpoint to the plain jeans-and-T-shirt-combo she wore, a parka pulled on over the top, and she moved with great purpose to where the kid stood. She spoke to him a second and then turned her head, and Damon found himself under the intense scrutiny of two people.

His skin prickled, cool air moving across it. Moving everywhere across it.

Aw hell. He’d neglected to dress before stumbling out onto the balcony, and since he always slept naked… Yeah, no wonder both the woman and the kid were staring.

He might have been able to get away with that in LA—people did things on the Sunset Strip in broad daylight that would make a streetwalker blush—but here in small-town Alaska? Not so much.

Cursing, Damon made a reflexive grab for something to cover himself with. His fingers closed around a handful of curtain, pulling it over his groin as he backed hastily through the doors and into his room.

Great. Wonderful. Way to endear himself to the population.

Not that he particularly wanted to endear himself to the population, but standing around naked on a balcony in a tiny town wasn’t exactly his finest hour.

Too many beers with Silas in the Moose the night before, that was the problem. And then on top of that, some home-brewed whisky with a kick on it like a mule.

Irritated both with himself and his hangover, Damon sat on the bed and rubbed at his temples, trying to massage away his headache.

He’d come to Deep River mainly to see where the hell his friend Silas Quinn had gotten to and yell at him about how he needed to come back to Juneau because Damon wanted to get rid of his share of Wild Alaska Aviation, the aviation company he’d gone into with Silas, Caleb, and another friend, Zeke, after they’d all gotten out of the military.

But it turned out that Silas wasn’t coming back to Juneau, and it was difficult to yell at a man who was blissfully happy, having found love with the owner of the Happy Moose, his erstwhile best friend, Hope Dawson.

And most especially difficult when that happy man had spent three days plying him with whisky, towing him around Deep River, introducing him to all and sundry, and talking about tourism opportunities and investments and how much Damon’s financial knowledge was needed.

Damon dropped his hands from his temples and sighed.

Silas had been very persuasive last night, both with his talk of tourism ventures and with the whisky, and if Damon hadn’t had urgent responsibilities back in LA, he might have considered sticking around for a while. Caleb, Deep River’s former owner, had left the whole place to Damon, Silas, and Zeke in his will, and although none of them had actually wanted to own an entire town, he couldn’t exactly leave the rest of them in the lurch. Even if being tied down to Alaska was the last thing Damon needed right now.

Hell, if that had been the only issue, he’d have found someone else to take up the mantle of ownership by now. But that wasn’t the only issue.

Deep River was sitting on a huge oil reserve, which had complicated things immeasurably, and not only had Silas decided to stay in his hometown, he’d also decided to take on responsibility for the town himself.

Damon could only commend his friend’s decision, even if it wasn’t something he’d ever decide for himself. He liked the wilderness—Alaska was a special place, with challenges that he found exciting—but he had responsibilities in the city he couldn’t afford to leave hanging for too long.

As if on cue, his phone, which had been just about silent for the past three days due to Deep River’s intermittent cell phone coverage, suddenly started vibrating on the nightstand beside the bed.

Damon reached for it immediately, concern twisting in his gut.

A whole lot of notifications on his screen popped up, texts and voicemails and emails that he’d missed. He scrolled through them until a name jumped out at him.

Rachel. The housekeeper he’d hired to come in and help his mother a couple of hours a day. She’d left him a voicemail.

Shit.

Damon called his voicemail immediately, cycling through the messages until he got to Rachel’s.

“Damon? You told me to let you know if anything of concern happened with your mother, so I’m calling now to let you know that when I arrived this morning, she was watching her shows, but there was a pot on the stove, cooking away with nothing in it and the kitchen was full of smoke. Of course, Laura swore blind she hadn’t put that pot on and that she had no idea who did, but I know she put it on herself and forgot about it. No harm done this time, but…well. Just thought you should know.”

Damon’s heart sank as the message ended.

Typical of his mother. She was tough and proud, always had been, and she hated getting sick. She hadn’t wanted anyone to know about her diagnosis of early onset dementia, had tried to hide it even from him for months before he’d eventually found out.

Yet he’d found out all the same and not too long before the accident that had killed Caleb. And he knew immediately that it would spell the end of his time as a bush pilot. Selling his