Angels Of The Big Sky

MARLEE STEIN TOPPED a ridge, leaving behind White-pine, Montana, the town closest to where she'd been born and raised. She rolled down the driver's window, breathing in the autumn scent of the piney wilderness, and felt herself relax. Until then, she hadn't been aware of how tense she'd gotten on the long drive from San Diego.Who was she kidding? She'd been riddled with tension for the past five years.But now, on this lonely stretch of highway with nothing but fall sunlight sprinkling pine-needle patterns across her windshield, she began to shed the stress that had become so crushing.She'd realized that the sense of heaviness and regret might always be with her. It was barely a year since she'd lost Cole to the ravages of lymphatic cancer. Too young. His life snuffed out at thirty-six. There was so much they hadn't done. One of the many things they'd talked about but never got around to was visiting this beautiful country Marlee loved.They'd been introduced by mutual friends. Had dated for a whirlwind thirty days, married on base in a fever pitch driven by the demands of their jobs--she, a navy helicopter pilot on the verge of shipping out; he an officer with an eye to one day commanding his own ship. It seemed a lifetime ago, those scant six years they'd shared. Or not shared, since much of it had been spent apart. But...so many dreams, all left in tatters. Widowed at thirty-four, Marlee was running home to hide.No, to rebuild a shattered life--according to her twin brother, anyway.Mick Callen, her twin, knew about rebuilding a life. A pilot, too, he'd been shot down over Afghanistan--what was it--four years ago? Mick had come home to Whitepine and forged a new life. On almost a weekly basis during the past awful year, he'd insisted that Marlee could do the same. She wanted to believe him.Averting her eyes from the ribbon of highway, she glanced in the rearview mirror of her packed-to-the-ceiling Ford Excursion. Jo Beth slept on. Without doubt, her daughter was the most precious part of her too-brief marriage.Maybe their lives could get back on track. Mick thought so, or he wouldn't have badgered his twin to join the family airfreight business, Cloud Chasers, originally started by their grandfather, Jack Callen. Everybody called him Pappy. He'd taught her and Mick to fly anything with wings, and they'd developed a love affair with flying.It seemed unreal that they'd both come full circle. Fate, maybe? In the days immediately following Cole's death, Marlee had thought about the circle of life, but Whitepine was the last place she'd envisioned herself ending up. Big plans, she'd discovered, were best left to starry-eyed innocents. Reality made its own claims. And to think she and Cole had worried that her naval career presented a greater risk of death. She, who'd done two tours in the Gulf.Releasing a sigh, she wiped a sweaty palm on her jeans. Really baggy jeans, she noticed, and grimaced. She'd lost weight--was down to a hundred and five pounds. Skeletal, her lieutenant commander had growled when he'd signed her discharge papers.Mick would probably be shocked. Or maybe not. He'd suffered through his own months of hell in military hospitals after he took a legful of shrapnel and debris from his F/A-18, when a handheld surface-toair missile blasted him out of the sky.The Callen twins, who'd left Whitepine for the naval academy with grandiose ideas, had come full circle, all right.A mile to go. Nervous, Marlee wasn't altogether sure what to expect. Three years ago Mick had said he'd found Cloud Chasers in sad shape. Pappy Jack apparently suffered from arteriosclerotic heart disease, which caused bouts of dementia. It must be true; otherwise he'd never have let the business decline.Through hard work, Mick said he'd enticed old customers back and added new accounts. He regularly groused about needing an extra pair of hands. Marlee hoped he truly did. Because it was crucial to end heFox, Roz Denny is the author of 'Angels Of The Big Sky', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373781133 and ISBN 037378113X.