Love me till the end

Chapter 1

**** All characters depicted in this work of fiction are 18 years of age or older. ****

A high-pitched scream cut through the silence surrounding Luke Remington. He halted and brought his binoculars up, even while knowing the sound was a bird of prey. Nothing looked out of place against the frozen backdrop of snow and ice and the towering pines that dotted the Alaskan mountainside. No movement to indicate life, the human kind anyway.

He dismissed the beauty of the majestic eagle soaring overhead and sucked in air cold enough to burn his lungs. His gut, and the fresh shoe prints in the snow, told him he was getting close to the survivor of the plane crash. He knew the direction the pilot had taken would lead straight to a river.

And a dead end.

He hoped the pilot wasn't stupid enough to try and cross the river to the other side. It would be suicide. Even if some of the water was frozen, the ice would never hold up beneath the weight of a person, even a small one. A sense of urgency came over him. If the person was foolish enough to leave the crash site, then they just might be crazy enough to try and cross over a frozen river.

The darkening sky revealed the signs of an approaching snowstorm. That was nothing new for this time of year. Lately it snowed every day, sometimes twenty-four hours a day for days on end. There were days when he couldn't leave his cabin. Those were the only occasions he regretted the isolation of his mountain home. When he couldn't come and go as he pleased. So why was he going out of his way to rescue someone who was probably going to end up invading his privacy for the next couple of months?

Luke knew the answer to that because it was the right thing to do. He might be a loner, but he was still human. He'd seen the small Cessna go down, and couldn't ignore the fact that there might be survivors. Only he hadn't counted on that person being stupid enough to leave the crash site.

He took a deep breath, exhaling a cloud of white air. It was a good thing he'd thought to bring his backpack with him because he knew the extra warm clothes would most likely come in handy. He began to follow the small footprints left behind in the snow, again.

His instinct told him the pilot was a woman.

* * * *

Charlie Wayne came to an abrupt halt and stared in disbelief at the raging river in front of her. Of all the rotten luck! She glanced both ways. A sick feeling settled in her empty stomach. She couldn't see any way around it. At least nothing that didn't involve getting wet.

Why isn't the blasted thing frozen over like everything else in this godforsaken wilderness? She glanced down at her feet and frowned at the inadequate sneakers that were fast becoming caked in ice. She could barely feel her toes. Shivering violently, she strained to see to the bottom of the dark, churning water in an effort to determine if it was shallow enough to cross. One thing was certain, it was far too wide for her to try and jump over. Even with a running start.

The thought of getting wet appealed to her about as much as returning to the wreckage of her plane. Which Charlie knew she should never have left. She knew what the rules of survival were. And she had broken the most important one. Only staying could have meant her death, too. She'd been way off course. She hadn't had time to radio in a mayday call with her location. And the thought that no one knew where to begin looking for her had convinced her to leave the wreckage and take her chances.

The sky was turning a dismal gray. She knew from years of living in the north that it was going to snow and the temperatures were going to drop. The last thing she wanted was to become a frozen Popsicle for some carnivore to munch on when spring arrived. It was bad enough that disappearing would probably give her agent a heart attack. Charlie couldn't help wondering if she was going to make her next singing engagement. Now that her comeback tour was well under way, Charlene Benton was becoming a household name again.