A Match Made In Alaska

Something about her reaction served as a domino effect. The sting of tears blurred his eyes, and he sniffed them away. He never cried. Tears were a sign of weakness. He had learned that lesson as a child at his grandfather’s knee. Stiff upper lip. Never let them see you cry. Declan O’Rourke wasn’t a weak man. Not by a long shot!

As he always did, he would use humor to diffuse the tension. He was a master at stuffing things down that he didn’t want the world to see. He’d been doing it ever since he was a kid. It had always served him well.

“This too shall pass,” he murmured, knowing he had been through worse losses in his thirty years. “Honestly, I’m more concerned about my aviator sunglasses. I spent a lot of money on those,” he cracked. “Wish I had grabbed them before we exited the plane.”

Silence greeted him. Miss Murray’s expression was dubious. She raised an eyebrow and twisted her mouth. If he had to guess, he’d say she didn’t buy his act.

“If you say so,” she said. She held up her cell phone. “There’s no cell service. Is there a way to radio for help?”

“We’re going to have to wait for rescue. The only radio went up in flames with the plane. I have my cell phone, also, but it’s pretty useless without a signal.” He shook his head as all the possible avenues for communication with the outside world seemed to evaporate. “I can’t imagine they would be able to ping our location in this forest. This area is too remote. When we don’t make it back to Love by nightfall, a red flag will be raised. A search and rescue will be put into motion.” His chest tightened at the thought of his best friend, Boone Prescott, and his entire family worrying about his demise. Even his brother, Finn, would be put through the ringer by the news, he imagined. Finn, who never took anything seriously, would be forced to face the grim news head-on. “At least for a little bit, there wouldn’t be an escape route from the pain and fear and loss, Miss Murray.”

“Annie. My name is Annie,” she corrected him. “And considering the circumstances we find ourselves in, I think we can use first names when addressing each other.”

Declan nodded. “Annie it is. Feel free to call me Declan.”

“So, Declan, do you have any idea how long we’ll have to wait for rescue?”

He scratched his jaw. “I imagine until morning. By the time the alarm is rung by the FAA and my friends in town, it will be nightfall. They don’t routinely send out planes at night to look for crash sites.”

“And you registered your flight plan?” she asked, her expression somber.

Her question made him want to grin. Annie Murray knew a little something about planes, he surmised. “Yes, I did, which means they’ll be scouring the route we took. Are you an aviation buff?”

“Not exactly. I’m a town librarian. Reading is my superpower,” she said with a smile.

Annie’s smile packed quite a punch. It reached all the way into his chest cavity and tugged with a mighty force. He shook off the feelings her smile elicited. Annie wasn’t his type. The sort of women who appealed to him were classic beauties—tall, elegant, refined. Annie had small town written all over her. Not that there was anything wrong with small towns, but as the product of one, he knew he needed something different in a romantic relationship. Perhaps that was why he hadn’t been tempted by any of the women who had arrived in Love to participate in the town’s matchmaking enterprise. Although a few of them had made their interest in him known all over town, he hadn’t reciprocated their feelings. It was just as well, he realized. The women who had moved to Love were interested in settling down and finding husbands. Declan wasn’t the marrying kind, and it would have been cruel to make any woman believe otherwise.

“Well, flying planes is my superpower,” he said. He twisted his mouth. Doubt crept in. “Or at least, it was until today.”

He scratched his jaw as his mind wandered to the events leading up to the plane’s malfunctioning. What had happened? He wasn’t entirely sure, which shook him. Everything had happened so quickly. All his attention had been focused on landing the plane safely and ensuring that he and Annie walked away from the plane in one piece. He didn’t like all the unanswered questions that were bouncing around in his mind. Had the crash somehow been his fault?

“That’s a wonderful superpower to have,” Annie said. “I’m very grateful that you were my pilot today. What you did...safely landing the plane...it’s rather incredible.”

Incredible? He wasn’t sure he agreed with Annie, although he appreciated the sentiment. As an experienced pilot, it was his job to avert disaster and to skillfully maneuver all aspects of aviation.

In his opinion, a crash landing should never have been necessary in the first place. It bothered him deeply that something had gone so catastrophically wrong on his watch.

“Thanks for saying so. I wish that I could have kept us up there in the wild blue yonder. If all had gone well, we’d be getting ready to make our final descent into Love right about now.” He shook his head ruefully. As soon as they made it back to Love, he would begin putting the pieces together in an effort to find out what had gone so terribly wrong with Lucy. He wouldn’t rest until he had those answers!

Annie began to shiver right before his eyes. She folded her arms across her chest and rubbed her arms over her cloak in an effort to get warm. He wished he had a blanket to throw over her shoulders. He’d been so preoccupied with their location and the events leading up to the crash that he had allowed his mind to wander from the pressing matters at hand.

“We need to find shelter and hunker down for the night before it gets dark.” And he needed to build a fire before they froze to death out here. The fire from the plane had petered out, no doubt due to the snow and ice on the ground as well as the low fuel supply. There had been only enough fuel in Lucy to get them back to Love, which might have been a blessing. If conditions had been different, the blaze from the plane could have spread to the forest and led to a wildfire.

Hmm. He hadn’t built a fire since he was a kid on a school wilderness field trip. And even then, Boone had actually been the one to get it going. He let out a sigh. Boone had been stepping in to rescue him ever since.

“If you’re cold, you should pull something from your luggage and add another layer,” he suggested. “It may take a bit to get a fire going.”

Annie nodded and dug around in her bag until she produced a knitted blanket. She wrapped it around her shoulders and let out a contented sigh.

“Where exactly are we?” she asked, looking around her surroundings with big eyes.

“Midway between Anchorage and Love. We’re in the Chugach National Forest. I spotted it as we flew overhead. Although this area is sparsely populated and heavily forested, I seem to recall a campground in these parts.”

He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his trusty compass. It was his habit to carry it around with him. It was the only earthly keepsake his grandfather had been attached to during his lifetime. When he had passed away, Killian O’Rourke had made sure to hand it off to his favorite grandson. Declan had kept it in his shirt pocket close to his heart ever since.

And under different circumstances, he might have been able to use the compass to lead them toward rescue. But there was no way they could navigate their way out of the forest. And the likelihood of stumbling across the campground was remote. Surviving in the wilderness meant making smart choices. He owed it to both of them to make wise moves from this point forward.

Now that the shock of the plane crash was beginning to wear off, he had a better viewpoint on their situation. It was a blessing they had been traveling over land at the time of the plane trouble rather than Kachemak Bay, where he would have been forced to crash-land on the water. They would have been in the middle of nowhere out on the water with no means of rescue or saving themselves. Hypothermia would have set in shortly. In all likelihood, they would have perished.

Declan began scouting out their immediate area. Knowing it wasn’t wise to stray too far from the crash site, he began surveying for the driest area that was protected from the elements. By tonight it would be much colder, with a fierce wind to accompany the temperature drop. There was a copse of pine trees about one hundred feet from the wreckage. Declan walked over to check it out. When he reached the pine trees, he bent down and noticed that there was a relatively dry area between the trees where Annie might be able to make a pallet for sleep. He would stay up tonight to watch out for any signs of rescue or predators. Although it was unlikely that planes would be searching at night, he didn’t want to miss any window for rescue.

There was no need to scare Annie by telling her about bears or wolves that roamed the Alaskan wilderness. The last thing he needed was for her to panic. As it was, he was slightly amazed she’d been holding it together. He hadn’t pegged her for the calm, cool and collected type.

He walked back over to Annie. She was sitting on a rock and rummaging through her bags with a determined expression plastered on her face. She let out a cry of glee as she pulled out a pair of thick red mittens. “Score! I found them. These will be a game changer. My fingers are frozen.”

He nodded approvingly. “Those will definitely help, especially as the temperature drops in a few hours.”

She looked up at him with her brows knitted together. “Where are yours?”

Declan shrugged. “I didn’t bring any. This was supposed to be only a short flight from Love to Anchorage and then back home.” He grinned at her. “I’m not in the habit of bringing mittens on my flights.”

She ducked her head and dug back into her bag. A look of triumph flitted across her face as she held up a pair of black mittens with a pink heart on each. “Ta-da! I found another pair. You’re welcome to borrow them.”

Declan frowned. He wasn’t exactly the type of guy who sported mittens with hearts on them. They were super girly. But his hands were getting cold. Annie was holding out the mittens to him with an expectant look on her face. Suddenly he didn’t want her to feel bad about his refusing her sweet little mittens. There was something about Annie Murray—eccentricities and all—that reeked of pure goodness.

He reached out and took the mittens from her. “Thanks,” he said as he slid them on, letting out a contented sigh as his hands began to warm up from the cold. “You might have just saved my fingers from frostbite.”

“Just returning the favor,” she said with a huge grin. “After all, you saved both of us with your skilled crash landing. Something tells me not every pilot could have pulled that off.” She held out her hands toward the forest. “With all these trees, you had to be dead-on with that landing.”

“It’s a first for me, Annie. I’ve never had to make an emergency landing like this, but I’m thankful for years of flying experience. I learned to fly a plane when most kids are dreaming of getting their first kiss.” Declan felt a rush of joy rising up inside him at the memory of his first flying lesson with his grandfather. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget the thrill of soaring up above the clouds into the clear blue skies of Alaska. He had felt invincible up in the air, as if none of the heartache and pain of his early years could touch him. And the praise his grandfather had heaped on him had truly made him feel a sense of accomplishment, one he’d never experienced before in his life. For the first time, he’d felt as if he was good at something.

And he was a good pilot. A great one, according to most of his clients. How he wished his grandfather could have seen it all come to fruition. He’d passed away before Declan had gotten his pilot’s license. Now O’Rourke Charters had gotten off the ground. The old man would have been so proud and tickled that Declan had made a business out of flying planes, the thing his grandfather had always loved most of all. It hadn’t been fair to lose his grandfather to the ravages of diabetes before he’d had the opportunity to give the old man a glimpse of his aviation enterprise. But the one thing life had taught him was that fair hardly ever entered into the equation.

He shook his head in an effort to drag himself out of the past. Those memories could do nothing but hurt him. At the moment, he needed to focus on survival and making it through this ordeal. Night was quickly approaching, and being able to get a fire going would be a huge advantage for them.

He pointed at the area he had just checked out. “That spot over there is probably the best shelter we’re going to find. It’ll give us a little protection from the elements, and if we can get a fire going, we’ll be able to stay warm through the night.”

Annie rubbed her hands together. “A fire sounds good. It will save us from hypothermia. I’m sure you’re aware of it, but hypothermia sets in when your body core temperature is below ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. Signs of hypothermia can be drowsiness, confusion, shivering and a slowed-down heart rate.”

He nodded his head. As a native Alaskan, he had known about hypothermia before he’d learned to tie his shoes. “Good to know, Annie. I for one do not intend to find that out firsthand,” Declan said. “I’m going to make haste and look for some tinder to get the fire going.”

Declan began to root around in the brush. He picked up pine needles, shredded bark and a few twigs. When he returned to the makeshift shelter with an armful of tinder, he deposited it in a heap on the ground. He noticed that Annie had moved her belongings over to the site. She had made a little pile of things in front of her seat on a log. With a cheeky grin on her face, Annie held up a granola bar.

“Voilà! It’s not a five-course meal, but it should tide us over until tomorrow.” She pointed at the pile of snacks set out in front of her.

Declan’s stomach grumbled with appreciation at the sight of chocolate, trail mix, beef jerky, peanut butter and crackers. And a bottle of water. For someone who hadn’t eaten since this morning, it was a veritable feast. God was good!

“It’s a divine meal as far as I’m concerned,” Declan said as he accepted the granola bar she held out to him. “It was brilliant of you to bring all these snacks on the flight.”