Soaring into His Heart: Small-Town Sweethearts, #4

By Aileen Fish

Molly Hazard dreams of two things: competing at the top level in snowboarding and opening a training center for kids to learn both skateboarding and snowboarding. She's been saving her winnings to buy the land she'd been using for the past few years, and this season will be her best yet. The last thing she needs is the distraction of her idol and crush Chad Bell. Who knew he even knows who she is?

World Snowboarding Champion Chad Bell bought the perfect piece of land to practice snowboarding tricks and looks forward to having a private place to train for the Olympics. Then he rescues Molly in a snowstorm and his thoughts turn to the future, beyond competition. He's sworn to never fall in love again, never put a woman through a life of waiting for him to return from another competition. But Molly isn't like other women, and she's getting under his skin. How can he get her out of his head?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aileen Fish
• Release date: Oct 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223821373

Book preview

Chapter One

White.

White in front of her. White collecting on the side and rear windows of her sedan. Molly Hazard turned up the defroster in hopes of keeping up with the condensation threatening to cover the inside of the windshield. This is supposed to be light flurries. Nice time for the weatherman to get it wrong, she muttered in the empty car.

Gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white, she leaned forward to peer out. If she was smart, she’d pull over, get out and use her snowboard to get down the mountain road, but she was due at work in an hour and would never make it home in time to change.

Her phone rang through the radio speakers. With a glance at the caller ID, she pushed the button on her steering wheel to answer. Hi, Cheyenne.

Where are you? It’s starting to snow heavily. Her close friend Cheyenne Miller’s voice sounded tight with worry.

I’m not sure where I am. All I can see is trees. Well, shadows of trees in the blinding white. I should have left sooner but I wanted one more run.

You always want one more run. You know better than to allow yourself to get caught up in a snowstorm. Pull over and call Kev to get you in his truck.

I’ll be fine. Molly sighed and glanced at the clock on the dash, trying to calculate how far she’d traveled. It feels like I’ve been on this road forever, but I’m barely doing fifteen miles an hour. I know the way, though, so I’ll be fine.

She’s been repeating that last part in her head for the past ten minutes.

Do you give in and buy chains?

Molly glared at the radio as though Chey could see her. Of course not. Kev can drive me up here the times it storms badly enough. It’s not like it happens more than once a year.

Well, drive carefully. Don’t go too fast because you need more time to brake.

Yes, Mother. Talk about a mother hen. At twenty-eight, Chey took full advantage of the four years age difference and bossed Molly around on a regular basis. I need to hang up now so I can concentrate. It’s getting dark. And I’m getting scared.

Call me when you get to White Oak. It’s not too bad here in the valley, so you’ll be okay.

After their goodbyes, Molly tried to draw in a deep breath, but her stomach muscles clenched too tightly. Darkness fell as she continued to crawl down the winding road, her spirits fading with the light.

Her front wheels slipped a bit, but she got them under control. Thank goodness no one approached in either direction, so she could steer down the center of the two-lane road and not worry about traffic.

The trees grew closer together as she rounded the crest of the mountain, California Oaks mingling with cedar and pine. That’s what memory told her. Now they were ominous giant, shadowy beasts reaching for her car.

What an imagination! The only beast likely to dart out was a deer, and they probably had the sense to stay sheltered in this weather.

She reached the top of the road where it leveled out and released a huge breath. The hard part was over. She guessed there was about five miles to go, but that part of the road was less winding. Small dips and rises and only one sharp turn, all easily manageable as long as she kept her speed down.

A bit of calm began to build in her nerves, replacing the gut-wrenching fear. Her bosses at the Royal Oak Bar and Grill, Katie and Juan Diego Santiago, would understand being caught in the weather, and business would be slower than usual for a weeknight so Molly’s absence wouldn’t cause a hardship.

The road dipped and suddenly the rear end of the car drifted to the left side. Molly lifted her foot off the accelerator and turned the wheel opposite the spin, forcing herself not to overreact. It didn’t help.

Continuing to slide, her car backed closer and closer to the line of trees on the edge of the road. Helpless, all Molly could do was grip the steering wheel and pray. Please, don’t hit anything. Please, don’t hit anything…

The forest moved past in slow motion. The silence bothered her, her mind expecting the squealing tires of movie crashes. Yet everything happened so gracefully. More like a ballroom dancer than a head-banging rocker, her car quietly slid to the low point of the dip and came to a rest sideways on the road.

Thank you.

After giving herself a moment to relax, Molly then pushed slowly on the accelerator. The car rocked forward but wouldn’t budge. She gassed it up harder. The front wheels spun, unable to pull her free.

No, this can’t be happening!

Molly picked up her phone and called Chey. Or, tried to call. There were no bars displayed on the screen. Terrific. She had no signal. Shutting off the car, she climbed out and examined the road. The snow was only around six inches deep, not nearly enough to cause her such headaches. As she made her way back up the hill, she checked her phone again.

No signal.

Now what?

The quiet around her was unnerving. Rather than peaceful, it was almost spooky. End of the world spooky. Did zombies make noise when they approached? Surely if all the people had died, animals would still be running around yapping or hissing. There weren’t even animals tracks in the snow.

Note to self: find less nightmarish TV shows when binge-watching.

Logic told her the snow hadn’t been falling long enough for anything to have walked over it. What was really going on was her thoughts obsessing over next week’s competition. Yes, she was ready, as ready as she could be, but she was still a lot better on the half-pipe than freestyle, which lowered her chances of making a team. Confidence was what she really needed to improve to succeed.

When she returned to her car, she cleared the snow from around the exhaust pipe, climbed in and started the motor. There was no telling how long it would take Cheyenne to grow worried enough to send Molly’s buddy Kev Watson looking for her.

After about fifteen minutes of sitting in her car and repeatedly checking for a phone signal, Molly leaned on the horn. There were only a few cabins in the area, but with the deafening silence on the mountaintop the sound should carry. If she honked every ten or fifteen minutes, someone would hear and come to investigate.

She hoped.

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Chad Bell ran his gloved hand over the cow’s back. Easy girl. Easy.

The animal grunted, her sides compressing with the next contraction.

Talk about the worst timing ever. This storm was strong for this early in the season, with winter still two weeks away. His family kept the bull away from the cows except for