Chapter One

Alex Knight fought the fatigue weighing on his eyelids and brushed an unsteady hand through his hair in an attempt to wipe the fog from his brain. He needed to stay focused on the road ahead, to avoid the final irony of cheating death in the jungles of Brazil only to die in a car wreck less than ten miles from home. He rolled down the window of the rented sedan and sucked in the crisp November air, hoping the scent of fir and spruce and pine would perk him up. Not three days ago, he'd thought the rotting jungle would be the last thing he smelled and screaming monkeys the last thing he heard.

But he was home now, thanks to a healthy amount of luck and the determination not to die in that stinking jungle at the hands of some crazy rebel bastards. Well, luck and the thought of his father and brothers who needed him, and his two would-be orphaned children who needed him even more.

Alex came fully awake the moment he turned onto the Knights' private logging road, anticipation quickening his pulse and making his foot heavy on the gas as he passed the sign that said he was entering NorthWoods Timber land. Only eight miles of blessedly familiar gravel road, and he would be back in the bosom of his family.

Alex dodged frozen puddles as he picked up speed, guiding the car around a sweeping curve and thumping over the solid wooden bridge that crossed Oak Creek. He'd rebuilt that bridge two summers ago with Ethan and Paul, and he remembered the arguments he'd had with his brothers over the bridge's design. Ethan had wanted to use steel beams, Paul had wanted to make it single-laned, and Grady, their father and patriarch of their little clan, hadn't cared how it was built as long as it got done before a loaded logging truck ended up in the creek.

Alex frowned as he pushed the car recklessly faster. Where in hell was everyone, anyway? He had called home countless times from the U.S. embassy in Brazil three days ago; he'd tried again from Mexico yesterday, and yet again this morning when he'd landed in Maine. No one had answered, and this morning all he'd gotten was a mechanical voice saying the message machine was full.

Some homecoming this was going to be. He was back from the dead, dammit, and nobody knew it! The company he'd been working for in Brazil had told Alex they'd sent two men to Oak Grove eleven days ago, to tell his family he had been killed and that his body had likely been swept downriver when a murdering band of rebels had attacked the dam site where he'd been working as a road engineer. Which meant everyone should be home mourning their loss instead of running around the countryside, but it appeared that the five people he loved were about to miss his miraculous resurrection.

Alex slammed on the brakes when the dense forest suddenly opened to reveal a spectacular view of the lake, then waited for the frozen dust to settle as he stared out the open window. He sighed long and painfully hard, emotion welling in his chest at the sight of Frost Lake's northernmost cove stretching deep into the densely forested mountains. The view never failed to move him, and this morning it was especially sweet.

Completely unbidden, Alex remembered another homecoming ten years ago, when he'd brought home his bride. He'd stopped in this same spot, and they'd talked about their future—Charlotte about her plans to update the lodge's kitchen and Alex about his hope to expand their landholdings by another hundred thousand acres within two years.

He shook his head at how naive he'd been at twenty-two. Or, rather, how blinded he'd been by Charlotte's beauty that he hadn't seen the dollar signs in her eyes. She'd left him and their two children five years later, once she had finally understood that profits went into land and equipment purchases and that redecorating meant only a new stove. Four months later Charlotte had died in a car wreck, leaving Alex a widower and the sole parent of Delaney and Tucker. Delaney was ten now, and Tucker had turned seven only three months ago.

Yes, marriage was one mistake he was in no hurry to repeat. He had his kids, his father and brothers, and their logging business; he had everything a man could hope for in life. A life he was getting a second chance at and would never take for granted again, Alex vowed as he stared at the Knight homestead, snuggled in a stand of old-growth pines three miles up the rocky shoreline.

He could just make out the dock jutting off the south side of the peninsula, and he noticed that the floatplane was gone. But there was smoke rising from the chimney of the seventy-year-old lodge, which meant someone was home. So why weren't they answering the phone?

Copyright © 2006 by Janet Chapman.