Home Before Dark by Susan Wiggs Read Free Book Online

Amber while Dusty got his business off the ground—literally and figuratively.
    He patted his daughter’s hair again, its softness slipping between his fingers, then headed out the back to the shed that doubled as a workshop and business office. To the dismay of his ambitious parents, he was in love with flying, not thepetroleum industry. He earned his pilot’s license even before his driver’s license and had been flying ever since. By the age of twenty-one, he’d acquired a Pilatus PC-6 Turbo Porter, and for fifteen years he’d worked as a pilot in Alaska, flying mining, oil rig and pipeline workers to sites so remote that they seemed to be on another planet.
    The wilds of Alaska would always call to the adventurer inside him, but with the birth of Amber, he’d had to make adjustments. Including leaving the frozen wilderness for his home state of Texas and the picture-postcard world of Edenville. The flying business was working out well here. Between Austin dot-com millionaires and good-old-boy oilmen, Dusty stayed plenty busy. But there was a jagged hole in his life, and he figured there wasn’t any arrangement he could make to change that. His folks complained that Eagle Lake was too far from Austin; why didn’t he find someplace closer?
    They didn’t understand. Karen had died in the autumn when the trees in Alaska took fire with color. She had always loved that time of year, when the first skin of ice on the lakes meant taking the floats off the plane and replacing them with skis. She would like the idea of her little girl growing up in a place where trees turned color as though touched by magic. The sight of those trees here in the middle of Texas was something special, like finding a pearl in an oyster, or a four-leafed clover. Rare, unexpected. Lucky, even. Discovering the maples here was like watching a bumblebee fly. Aerodynamically impossible, but they defied nature anyway.
    From the window of the business office, he watched the woman on the dock. Though unable to see her in detail, he knew somehow that Arnufo was right. She was definitely related to Mrs. Benning. Where had she come from and why hadn’t he seen her before?
    You should have introduced yourself.
    Arnufo was always handing out advice like that, but then again, life was a simple matter to Arnufo. So was death, come to think of it. In life, you made certain you did good work, took care of your family and kept your promises. If death happened to steal something from you—say, your wife of fifty-two years—well, then, you made a new sort of life for yourself.
    Go and take what you want from life, Arnufo liked to counsel him. Don’t wait for it to hand you something. Things given away freely are given away for a reason—because no one else wants them.
    Dusty had tried dating a few times in the past few months, but he found the whole process depressing. His heart wore an armor of numbness. He had better luck when he stuck to running his business and raising his daughter. That’s what he told himself, anyway.
    â€œIntroduce myself,” he muttered under his breath, booting up the computer to log on for his briefing and clearance before gearing up for the night flight. “Hi, I’m Dusty Matlock, and I haven’t been laid in two years.”
    â€œSome women would find that a great challenge,” said Arnufo, joining him in the shop. On his hip, he carried a smiling, much more fragrant toddler. As she tugged at Arnufo’s trademark bolero tie, she yakked away with the uncanny conviction that her babbling made sense.
    â€œYeah? Like who?”
    â€œBunny Sumner at the airpark, for one. She gave you a whole plate of brownies and you never called to thank her. And what about Serena Moore from the Country Boy grocery? The one with the muy grande… ” With his free hand, he pantomimed a huge rack.
    â€œOkay, I get your point. Should have introduced