The Parent Plan Part 1

By Paula Detmer Riggs

36 Hours Serial

As a devastating summer storm hits Grand Springs, Colorado, the next thirty-six hours will change the town and its residents forever .

The Parent Plan Part 1

As the rains bring mudslides down the mountain at Devil's Butte, little Vicki Sloane is trapped alone in a dark cave. Anxiously waiting while rescuers search for her are her parents, Karen and Cassidy Sloane.

Dr. Karen Sloane is used to being in charge and saving lives at the hospital. But she feels shattered and helpless in the face of this disaster. Her only comfort is Cassidy's strong arms. When he accuses Karen of neglecting Vicki, his anger toward her is as chilling as the cold rain.

For rancher Cassidy Sloane, family is the most important thing, and all he ever wanted was to take care of his wife and daughter. But does Karen even need him anymore? She seems to care about her patients more than her family, and now Vicki's been put in danger.

Will Vicki's accident bring this loving but strong-willed couple together, or drive them further apart?

The story continues in The Parent Plan Parts 2 and 3.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harlequin E
• Release date: Apr 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781460331095

Paula Detmer Riggs

It's often said that good things spring from bad, and in Paula Detmer Riggs's case, that's certainly true. Being fired from an executive recruiter position led her to the San Diego library for a little light reading -a love for romance fiction blossomed. Paula has been nurturing that love for nearly twelve years and has written over twenty-five romances. PDR, as she's known to her friends and fans, is a native of Southwestern Ohio, where she attended Miami University, earning a degree in speech therapy and psychology. The ear that allows her to hear nuances of dialogue, she credits to speech therapy training and the varied life experiences she details in her books, she credits to being the wife of a Naval officer. Over the years, she has tackled a variety of jobs - an executive recruiter, an admissions officer in a computer school, a sales rep for a collection agency and a dormitory supervisor at a children's home in Brooklyn. All were valuable and sometimes intimidating experiences, adding grist to her writing imagination. Paula and her husband Carl raised two sons in San Diego. The elder, who has hazel eyes and blond dreadlocks, still lives, with two mellow California cats, at the beach where he works in special education and surfs every day. He's still a bachelor, by the way - and in PDR's unbiased view, a really nice guy. Their younger son, definitely an Alpha type, who was probably an imperious Scottish laird in a previous life, lives with his patient, darling wife, and two fat cats, on the eastern side of Washington Cascades. Soon, if all goes well, they will provide PDR her first granddaughter. PDR and her husband, who she met when her former sweetheart played cupid after dumping her on her eighteenth birthday, have lived all over the country and are now happily settled on the oldest plant nursery in Douglas County, Oregon. At last count, they owned two purebred Australian shepherds, Molly and Daisy, a three-legged Siamese/Russian blue cat, Cleo, a psychotic Russian blue demon-cat, Sketch, and a mini lop bunny, Bun.

Book preview

Five

Prologue

Saturday, June 7

Lazy S Ranch.

Dr. Karen Sloane was used to working under pressure. In med school, she’d found out she was a wimp when it came to dealing with the suffering of others and she’d trained herself to remain absolutely steady, her mind clear, her reflexes lightning quick. But now, standing alone near the makeshift canteen just beyond the glaring spotlights that bathed the side of Devil Butte in brilliant light, she was close to shattering.

Silhouetted by the harsh glow, rescue workers in protective clothing and miners’ helmets struggled to reach the spot below a thick slab of red rock where her eight-year-old daughter, Victoria, was trapped in the entrance of an unknown cave. Torrential rains had tumbled tons of rock and earth from the face of the butte, exposing the dark pit.

In the past ten hours since her arrival, she’d experienced shock, disbelief, terror, and finally a numb misery that increased minute by minute. Only one thing remained constant. Vicki was alone in that pit—and time was running out.

Karen had been on duty at Vanderbilt Memorial when Cassidy had called around ten that morning, and told her to come home. She could still hear the raw note in her husband’s distinctively husky voice, the stark undertones of desperation. The unspoken plea for help.

Somehow she’d managed to get through the roadblocks and detours set up by the state police, and she’d reached the site to the west of the main house shortly after Lieutenant Brendan Gallagher and the fire department’s mountain rescue unit had begun on the rescue shaft now angled down toward her little girl.

Cassidy had been like a crazy man, shouting at Bren to let him help, threatening his poker buddy with castration and worse if Bren didn’t give him something to do. Something. anything. If he had to, he’d claw his way to his daughter with his bare hands.

Catching sight of Karen half running, half stumbling down the mud-scoured slope, Bren had silently pleaded with her for help. She’d put aside her questions long enough to coax Cassidy away from the knot of grim-faced, dedicated men. A shiver transited her spine at the wild suffering she saw in his eyes. For an instant she wasn’t sure he even knew who she was. And then his arms crushed her to him, his need a living thing.

Between hard shudders, he told her about Vicki’s trip to the butte with her dog, Rags, and her regular baby-sitter, Wanda June, to watch the clouds. About the tons of mud that had torn down the hill. Of their little girl’s sudden disappearance and Wanda’s frantic search of the area before she’d run across the storm-ravaged pastures to find Cassidy.

It had been Rags who’d led him to the raw gash in the granite.

The torn flesh of Cassidy’s face and hands bore testimony to his attempts to reach their child. But his shoulders had been too broad to allow him to reach into the black pit where Vicki had been trapped.

Knowing her husband’s almost irrational fear for his daughter’s safety, Karen had a good idea how terribly he’d been suffering when he’d all but ridden a gelding into the ground in order to call for help. She suspected, too, that leaving Vicki with only Wanda and Rags to guard the site had almost torn him apart.

But when Karen tried to comfort him, he suddenly stiffened, as though jerked out of a terrible nightmare. His face twisted, his head snapped up. The arms that had bruised her flesh, so tightly had they held her, relaxed.

Suddenly he was in control again, his gaze steely, his emotions shuttered safely, as he jerked his hat from his head, placed it on hers and ordered her into taking his slicker, all the while castigating her for not wearing a jacket, for driving too fast, for a half dozen things she no longer remembered.

It was Cassidy’s way. Reaming her out while at the same time making her breakfast after she’d worked a late shift the night before. Growling orders at her as though she were one of his wranglers even as he put in endless hours helping her paint Vicki’s room or till the garden plot.

Maybe he never said he loved her in so many words, but a woman knew when she was loved. For all his firmly rooted beliefs and sometimes inexplicable opinions on the way of things, Cassidy was a gentle man at heart.

Karen was sure of it.

With a sigh, she searched for her husband’s tall form. But though she recognized friends and neighbors and the whey-faced paramedic she’d helped to patch up various minor injuries, Cassidy was nowhere in sight.

Had he gone back to the house for a moment? Or taken Wanda June home to be with her family on their neighboring ranch?

But no, Wanda was still huddled into a blanket in the first aid tent, looking scared and forlorn and far younger than her sixteen years. In the stark light, her normally vibrant face was pinched and drawn.

God, but it was a hellish night, Karen thought, swiping a tired hand over her face. Somewhere to the south, lightning rent the air like the vicious slice of a scalpel while thunder crashed and rolled in its wake. The trailing edge of the storm had finally moved out around six that evening, leaving chaos in its wake. Power in the Grand Springs area had been out since last evening, and according to the reports on the radio, many roads were closed and the emergency resources were stretched to breaking. It would go down in the history books as one of the worst storms to hit Colorado in a hundred years.

A sudden movement to the left caught Karen’s gaze an instant before Rags stuck his cold nose against her thigh. Ignoring the mud, she dropped to her knees and threw her arms around the Australian shepherd’s shaggy neck. Oddly, the warm, pungent odor of dog and dirt served to soothe her in ways that nothing else could manage. Perhaps because she’d so often smelled that same combination on her daughter’s skin.

Oh, Rags, she whispered. She has to be all right. She just has to. His tail wagged once, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Everything will turn out just fine, she murmured, her voice hollow as she got to her feet again. As hollow as the comforting words she’d shouted down at Vicki only a few minutes ago. Words that echoed obscenely in the bottomless void where Vicki waited for someone to come for her.

As though sensing her thoughts, Rags licked the hand that had fallen to her side, then turned to jog to the spot in front of the jagged hole where he’d been hunkered down almost continuously since Vicki disappeared.

Her eyes filled with tears at the sight of her daughter’s beloved pet waiting patiently for his mistress’s return. And heaven help anyone who tried to make him move.

Oh, baby, don’t give up, Karen prayed as she pulled the slicker closer to her throat. We’re coming. Daddy and I are coming for you.

She saw Cassidy then, standing alone at the edge of the light, an intensely physical man who expressed himself with actions and kept his own counsel, taller than most, his large, well-muscled body a match for any there.

She took a hasty step, then stopped, suddenly uneasy, as he tipped back his head and looked up at the sky. There was a look of stark anger about him that chilled her to the bone as she, too, stared upward.

The overcast sky seemed as solid as the hard red Colorado ground, yet she knew those murky, threatening clouds contained enough water to swamp the