Bear of a Honeymoon

  Also by the Author

  The Ivory Express - A Taylor Kerrick Mystery

  A Division of 10361976 Canada Inc.

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  ISBN 978-1-988281-62-9

  Copyright © 2019 Laurie Carter

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design by Eleni Karoumpali

  Formatting by Renee Hare

  Publisher Sands Press

  Publisher’s Note

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales, are intended only to provide as a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the authors' imaginations and are not to be construed as real.

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  1st Printing March 2019

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  Chapter One

  "Stupid," I raged, applying enough brake to give myself some hope of rounding the next curve alive. "Beyond stupid!"

  Lack of response from the empty passenger seat just fuelled my temper. Shouting out loud seemed the only way to vent. "How could I possibly have lost my head like this...? After so many years of sensible singlehood, what could have possessed me to marry a whack-a-do cowboy I'd known for less than three weeks?"

  I sucked in a lungful of air and tried to let it out slowly. Then another—and another—gradually calming to a mere simmer.

  Not for the first time, my mind flashed to family. I imagined my parents—no doubt doing the proverbial roll-over in their respective graves? Then an image of my namesake, Grandma Taylor, materialized, shaking her head as she would have pronounced one of her moth-eaten maxims. Something like, "Marry in haste, repent at leisure," jumped easily to mind—and who could argue the point?

  I kept wondering if my headlong charge into matrimony might have played out differently if they'd still been with me.

  Yes, I felt sure. It would. No way would I have disappointed them with a slam-bam civil ceremony half a continent away. As it was, I felt badly enough about shutting out my cousins and uncles and aunts— especially Aunt Harry. Like a mother to me in so many ways, she'd taken it on the chin and offered nothing but cheerful support, even though I knew she'd been hurting.

  Yet, even as I alternately wallowed in guilt and railed at the ether, not one fibre of my being felt the desire to repent my hasty marriage. Upset as I might be at that moment, I was still completely convinced that Matt Anderson was the guy for me. And it wasn't as though I hadn't known exactly what I was getting into.

  But this was ridiculous!

  In nine whole weeks of connubial bliss, you could practically count on the fingers of one hand the days we'd shared. Heck, the ink on our marriage certificate was hardly dry before all the career pressures we knew we'd have to face were already spinning us into separate orbits. Matt had to get back to Taiwan. The photo assignment he'd dropped cold to waltz me to the marriage commissioner was waiting— impatiently. He'd had no choice but to hop a plane the very next day, which might actually have been great, if I'd been free to join him. If I had, our honeymoon would now be a blissful memory.

  But I wasn't free. So, I'd kissed my new husband goodbye, sat down with my laptop, and turned out the story it was my job to write. Such a massively high-profile story that reporter Taylor Kerrick suddenly found herself "flavour of the week" across the continent. Once the wire services picked it up, my phone melted. Apparently, my account of the continuing ivory trade had struck a sort of collective nerve. It felt like every talk show, podcast, and radio call-in programme wanted to know about endangered elephants.

  That story had nearly cost my life—but it had also brought me Matt.

  I rolled down the window, letting the fresh mountain air further cool my temper. The memory of our meeting flashed into focus and I couldn't repress a giggle at the thought of the tall, sandy-haired Caucasian—togged in jeans and Navajo shirt, tipping a Stetson the size of Texas—as he towered over the throng of hurrying travellers at Taiwan's international airport. It reminded me of the unlikely string of coincidences that had produced the moment.

  An assignment that could have taken a hundred different twists just happened to lead to a distant Asian island. Ben, my editor and mentor, just happened to choose that moment to insist on asserting his latent overprotectiveness by insisting I accept a local partner. And Matthew Anderson, who just happened to speak Mandarin and just happened to share a mutual friend with Ben, just happened to be in Taiwan. Now if that's not the intervening hand of fate, well...

  Our work had brought us together, and now our work seemed bent on keeping us apart. Of course, we'd seen it coming, weighed the risks, plunged in with eyes wide open—or that was the theory.

  "Then why am I so bleeping mad right now?" I demanded of the silent pines I hurtled past.

  Simple answer.

  This was, after all, our official honeymoon, and I felt quite definite on the point that we deserved two undisturbed weeks at a secluded resort. What we did not deserve was a fickle twist of fate. Naturally...

  Early on the third morning of what was already proving a bizarre retreat, Matt's ring tone had chosen the most inopportune moment to intrude. "Who is it," he'd panted, his uncharacteristic bluntness perfectly understandable, at least to me. "How did you get my number?"

  The caller obviously provided a satisfactory enough answer to make Matt sit up. Resting his elbows on his knees, he used the fingers of his free hand to comb the sandy tangle of his hair as he listened. After a significant interval, my almost-newly-minted husband shook his head and said, "Forget it. You've got a stable of staffers, and I'm on my honeymoon."

  But right about then, I realised said honeymoon was in serious trouble, because my man didn't instantly hit the little red phone button and return to my charms. Instead, he nodded at whatever the invisible caller was saying and his face took on a look of growing interest. The pit of my stomach was already starting to feel distinctly hollow by the time Matt pressed the phone to his chest and turned to face me.

  "It's News World," he said, flat out.

  "And they want to do a story on media honeymoons," I quipped, trying to smother my growing sense of alarm.

  A muscle twitched at the corner of Matt's luscious mouth. It might have been the start of a grin—I don't know—it didn't get any farther. "They need me," he said, simply. "It's an emergency."

  "Why would their emergency involve you?" I demanded, beginning to feel like a mother hen defending her roost.

  Matt shook his head, his chiselled features now gathered in a frown. "Bad timing, I guess. Their staffers are spread all over the world—war, pestilence, famine—you know the drill."

  Reluctantly, I nodded. We were on a mountain, not the dark side of the moon. I checked the news twice a day. "Then what's the last straw?" I asked, knowing the camel's back must well and truly be broken if News World was calling Matt in a panic.

  An emotion suspiciously resembling relief registered briefly in my husband's eyes before he flicked his glance away. "A couple of hours
ago, a train carrying crude oil from Alberta to a refinery on the Gulf Coast derailed on a trestle somewhere in Montana between Glacier National Park and the Flathead National Forest. They're talking potential catastrophe," he said, sneaking a look at my face. There must have been enough encouragement showing to make him hurry on. "You can imagine the furore that's going to erupt."

  "Environmental impact. Political football. International incident..." I listed off the top of my head. Like it or not, my reporter's instincts never lay far beneath the surface.

  "Just for starters," Matt agreed.

  "Tell them we're on our way," I announced and jumped out of

  bed—my mental to do list already taking shape. I could be packed in ten minutes. We could entrust our feline companions Dudley and Nell to the care of my human friends, who happened to own the lodge where we were staying. And if we grabbed a bite in the kitchen, we could be on the road in half an hour.

  With one leg already stuffed into my jeans, I suddenly registered the look on Matt's face. It brought me to a sudden stop. "Now what?" I demanded, instinctively knowing I wouldn't like the answer.

  "You can't go."

  I paused long enough to harness my temper. "Why not?" I countered, trying for what I hoped would sound like a semi-reasonable tone. "I could write the story."

  "Afraid not," Matt replied, quickly flicking his glance away from my green-eyed glare to the phone still clutched against his chest. "News World's got a reporter," he said, "already on the way. Photos were the only problem. They want to start getting visuals as soon as possible and I'm the closest photographer they could call."

  Poor Matt looked so conflicted, I was actually starting to feel sorry for him—until he finished the thought. "Jack says I'll be in and out in thirty-six hours, forty-eight tops."

  My heart sank in my chest as I sank on the bed—jeans clutched by the waistband—one leg in, one out. Two days! What about our honeymoon? What about us?

  I really didn't know how to react. Even on a professional level, this was completely new territory. Being an investigative journalist, I was used to sneaking up on my stories, not the other way around. And Matt was usually booked for photo assignments weeks or even months in advance. It was bad enough to know our careers would sometimes take different directions, but I hadn't bargained on it happening at a moment's notice—and certainly not on our long-delayed honeymoon.

  Yet I had to admit there seemed little choice. It was an important story and time was critical. "Go ahead," I said at last, in a tone that, maybe childishly, made no effort to hide my disappointment.

  "You're the best," Matt said, sounding like he really meant it as he burst into a hundred-watt grin. He even took the time to squeeze my hand and plant an appreciative peck on my cheek before he raised the phone back to his ear—and left me for his assignment. The physical separation took a little longer, but from that moment, Matt was essentially gone.

  He fiddled with cameras and lenses nearly the whole time I drove the sixty-some kilometres from the lodge to the airport in Kelowna, checking each piece of equipment before carefully repacking it. But as Matt boarded the charter plane, he turned, like the American president granting a final photo op at the open door of Air Force One, and waved a hopeful good-bye. I wasn't happy—and we both knew it. Still, I'm not much for hoisting lost-cause banners. I swallowed hard and sent him on his way with my best good-trooper grin.

  After the plane took off, I drove into town and treated my low spirits to breakfast at a likely looking family restaurant. I sought solace in all the grease and cholesterol the menu had to offer, but it didn't help much. Even though I polished off a trucker-sized cheese omelette complete with toast, bacon, and home fries, I was still mad—and hurt.

  As I faced the gaping spectre of a honeymoon on my own, about the only encouraging thought I could muster was an attack on the rally course drive back to the lodge. I'd managed to maintain admirable restraint on the way down, but that succession of ever-narrower roads coiling into the mountains was just the sort of driver's delight challenge I needed to reset the dial.

  Completely ignoring the potential for a deadly plunge, I rammed my little Toyota through a lineup of sheer-sided curves balanced on the edge of deeply eroded cliffs, pelting along at a clip to match my mood. I was heading back to the lodge on Bear Lake. Cobalt blue and perennially cold, the lake nestled on the Thompson Plateau west of the Okanagan Valley. Of course, I'd had to do some background research before we arrived. You can take the reporter out of the newsroom, but...

  It hadn't taken much web surfing to learn that these highlands— ancient peaks, smoothed and rounded by grinding glaciation—stretch west from the Okanagan to the once fiery volcanic cones of the Cascades. The line of mountains creates a massive rain shadow that produces the semi-arid climate of the valley. Because of altitude, the highlands get more precipitation, but it mostly falls as snow in winter.

  If I'd been less intent on driving away my demons, I could have taken time to appreciate once more the beautiful landscape Matt and I had so enjoyed when we arrived. Even though I took no notice, the forest I drove through that sparkling end-of-April morning offered a stunning object lesson in the effects of elevation on ecosystems.

  Lower down, I zoomed through the open parkland of red-barked ponderosa pines, each standing well apart from its neighbours to take best advantage of scarce moisture. Wildflowers, glorying in the short-lived abundance of spring snow-melt ran riot in every sunny space. But I barely spared a glance for the daisy-like yellow creations commonly known as Okanagan sunflowers carpeting the hillsides and clustered in natural gardens randomly scattered through every bright clearing. And the last thing I needed was the reminder of decorative wedding bowers created by thickets of white-blossomed Saskatoon bushes, overhanging the roadside and mocking my headlong, lonely passage.

  The blacktop had long since given way to gravel before I'd worked out enough aggression to slow down and actually admire the forest surrounding me. Up here, the ponderosas were mixed among Douglas fir and I knew that higher still, the bush would morph yet again to closely packed lodgepole pine. Later in the summer, the flower show would feature the flaming reds and oranges of Indian paintbrush and the vibrant purple of wild lupines.

  Driving amid such natural splendour should have inspired my writer's soul. Instead I was working through a schizophrenic fit over this insane situation. One minute, angry at Matt's callous abandonment, the next, bogged in a mire of self-pity. I was in one of the mad phases when I recognised a cream Chevy Blazer. At least I think it was cream. The amount of paint still visible under the coat of rust made it hard to be certain. But I was sure about the driver. As the SUV hurtled by me, I caught a quick glimpse of an employee I recognized from the lodge, Shane Deeks. And wasn't that Tovey Acquino, I wondered, with nothing more to go on than a flash of bushy red hair?

  Now there's an unlikely combo, I thought. Miss biology-student-summerintern paired with local chip-on-the-shoulder bad-boy—headed out for a day of— what?

  I was still turning that one over when I reached the T-junction at Bear Lake Road. Two choices and a perverse mood—I turned away from the lodge. To my surprise, the road rapidly deteriorated into not much more than a dirt track. If I'd had any sense at all, I would have been worried sick about a broken axle. Some of the potholes were like open-pit mines. But my ornery streak had taken over. I pushed ahead, manoeuvring my tiny Toyota around the worst of the craters and belly-wrenching straight through the rest.

  I'd been at this for quite some time, although I couldn't have covered that much straight-line distance, when the track rounded a massive boulder and abruptly dead-ended in a sunny clearing. Before me squatted a mahogany-stained, cedar-sided structure that effectively barred any further progress. I use the term structure rather than cabin because the wall facing me was dominated by a double roll-up garage door. But if this was a garage, where was the house? It sure wasn't the shack standing twenty metres to one side. If my guess was right, tha
t building served quite a different purpose, and the only other man-made occupant of the clearing was a roofless doghouse of similar construction. There were no signs of life.

  I climbed out of the car and grabbed my shoulder bag out of habit. I slung the strap over my head to cross my chest and dropped the keys in the outside pocket. "Anybody here?"

  The birds responded with a momentary hush.

  "Hello," I tried again, thoughts of wayward mates and conflicting careers suddenly replaced with speculation on deep forest hideaways. My creative imagination would never settle for such a simple explanation as hunting cabin or summer getaway. No, as I followed the remnants of a rustic brick path toward a front porch now visible on the opposite side, I pictured a whole range of possibilities. Reclusive writer, artist, drug dealer, even moonshiner all flipped through my active grey cells before I reached three worn steps leading to the screened porch.

  I crossed the couple of metres of weathered planking to the main door. It didn't seem likely that I'd get a response, but I knocked loudly and waited. With no sign of another vehicle, I didn't really think anyone could be living here. I went in for a second round of vigorous pounding, then gave up, backtracked through the screen door and crossed the open deck across the front of the cabin. An uncurtained picture window gave me a reasonable view of the interior. Nose to glass, I shielded my eyes and peered in. All I could see was a single vacant room. Good. I beetled back to try the door.

  It swung easily and I stepped into the kitchen area. Homemade plywood cabinets spanned the wall beneath the big window and a cast iron wood stove sat centred on the opposite wall with split kindling and stove lengths piled neatly by its side. Advancing into the room, I found a '50s vintage chrome set with grey Arborite top and red vinyl, duct-taped chairs arranged next to a wrought iron room divider that bisected the cabin. On the other side stood a double bed with battered wooden headboard and pink chenille spread.