Match Made In Paradise by Barbara Dunlop (black female authors TXT) 📕

“I don’t know. A flight-seeing tour of the Pedestal Glacier? People pay big money for that.”

“You think Brodie’s going to lend you a plane?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe not. We’re wall to wall.”

“I suppose,” Xavier said. “I’ll think of something else.”

It was far too easy for Silas to picture Mia on a flight-seeing tour of the Pedestal Glacier, her bright white smile in awe of the blue fissures at Right Ridge, her gasp of amazement at Briar Falls. The image warmed him, and he didn’t like that, especially since he was picturing himself as the pilot.

He pressed harder on the accelerator, churning up a spray of gravel behind them.

*   *   *

With a phone call from the Bear and Bar, Mia learned Marnie had nothing new to report. No surprise there. It had barely been a day since Mia left LA. Still, she couldn’t help but be impatient. They hadn’t even set a court date to hear the appeal to the injunction, never mind a court date on the will itself.

She’d also talked to Raven, who had estimated she’d be finished with work around seven o’clock.

Mia was surprised by the long workday. She’d been told summer was the high season in Alaska, but thirteen hours? She hoped Raven made a lot of money as Galina Expediting’s operations manager. Although judging by her house, she couldn’t be doing all that well. Who didn’t have proper plumbing in their bathroom?

Coming up on seven, Mia crossed the noisy crowded Galina parking lot, winding her way through pickups and alongside a red semi truck.

“Hey, lady!” the driver called out his window, shouting above the rumble of the diesel engine.

She stopped and looked up. “What?” She’d normally ignore a strange man’s shout, assuming it was a cat-call or a brash proposition. But this guy didn’t sound like he was trying to pick her up.

“Blind spot,” the scruffy, portly fifty-ish man said with his arm raised in frustration.

She looked behind herself.

“You’re in my blind spot. Get out if you don’t want to get run over.”

“No need to be rude,” she said, but she skittered ahead. She didn’t know what he was on about, but she’d get out of his way to keep him happy.

He muttered a swear word, and the truck let out a booming hiss and belched some black smoke as a piercing intermittent alarm engaged. The big rig jerked a couple of times on its oversized tires and gradually eased backward.

“Hard hat! High vis!” the driver called out his window for good measure.

She wasn’t sure how that was an insult. But it sounded like an insult. She hurried through the big warehouse door and left him and his anger behind.

“You’re looking for Raven?” A twenty-something man briskly approached her. He was fresh-faced, tall and lanky, and he sounded eagerly friendly.

That was more like it. “Yes, I am. Thank you.”

“Bert can be a jerk,” he said.

She assumed Bert was the truck driver.

“But you were in his blind spot,” the younger man said.

“I didn’t mean to be.”

The young man pointed back behind her. “If you take the gravel walkway around the corner instead of cutting straight through the loading dock, you’ll be safer.”

“Thanks.” She’d do that in the future.

“I’m AJ Barns. I’d shake.” He self-consciously wiped his hands down the front of his coveralls. “But you probably don’t want to get your hands dirty.”

“I’m Mia Westberg.”

He started to walk beside a long wall. “I know. Raven’s cousin from LA.”

She went along with him. “That’s right.”

The noise from the backing semi was replaced by the sound of a forklift and the clatter of crates being moved from one place to the other.

“We don’t get many ba—I mean, girls.” His brow furrowed. “I mean women here in Paradise.”

“It does seem to be mostly men,” Mia said.

“There’s Raven, of course. But she’s . . . well . . . Raven, you know?”

Mia didn’t know, but he didn’t seem to be looking for an answer.

He kept right on talking “And Dixie. She’s older than my grandma, like Mrs. France at the Bear and Bar. Hailey’s a girl pilot over at WSA, but you don’t want to mess with her. I mean.” AJ chuckled. “If she didn’t kill you, Silas or Brodie would.”

“Silas?” Mia asked, partly from curiosity about Silas’s relationship with Hailey the pilot, and partly to stop AJ from listing every woman in town.

“He’s the chief pilot over at WSA. Next to Brodie, Silas is the head honcho.”

“He’d defend Hailey’s honor?”

AJ’s head bobbed up and down. “Yes, he would.”

“Why?”

AJ looked confused. “He takes care of all his pilots. I mean, not that the guys need someone to defend them. Neither does Hailey, really. But she is one of the few girls here and has to deal with all these guys, and he don’t take no guff.”

Mia could see that in Silas. He did not seem to be a guff-taking kind of guy.

“Raven’s right up those stairs, around at the end. Don’t cut across the red line to get there. You need a hard hat for that.”

Mia remembered the way, but she hadn’t known about crossing the red line.

“All right. Thank you, AJ.” She held out her hand; to hell with the dirt. She appreciated him walking her back here.

“You sure?” he asked.

“I’m willing to brave it if you are.”

A little flush came up on his cheek and his grin went wide. “Nice to meet you, Mia.” He shook her hand, a little too vigorously and a little too long.

“Nice to meet you too, AJ. Thanks for the help.”

“No problem.” His head bobbed again. “Anytime.”

Mia stuck to the red line until she came to the stairs. She found Raven on the phone behind a little desk in a small room crowded in by filing cabinets, a credenza and about a three dozen manuals overflowing a bookshelf.

Raven grinned and pointed to a torn green leather guest chair.

Mia’s pants were pale turquoise and peach, and it was impossible to know if the dark-colored chair was clean or dirty. She took a breath, hoped for clean and perched herself on