after she had left the highway and turned off onto this side road, everything had seemed all right. She’d been sure that all she had to do was continue following it. Things would be fine once she reached Sleepy River. She’d been repeating it like a mantra since early that morning.
However, a few minutes ago, clouds had drifted in to cover the moon and these woods were desperately dark without its glow. This section of tall, dark pines was hardly ablaze with streetlights.
Squinting into the night, she tried to see something; a road sign, a blazed trail, a friendly native, anything around her besides trees, trees, and more trees.
She had long since left Morenci, the last town, far behind and she knew she couldn’t turn back. Wherever she was, she knew she was closer to Sleepy River than she was to Morenci, so she might as well keep going. She gripped the steering wheel and lifted herself up to gaze forlornly over the hood. She would keep going as soon as she figured out what had become of the road.
She knew she had taken exactly the right turns every step of the way as she followed the Coronado Trail, which had supposedly been scouted out by the Spanish conquistadors four hundred years ago.
“Too bad I don’t have one of them along to help me now,” she muttered in annoyance. A glance at the dashboard clock told her it was after eleven o’clock. The efficient little car, borrowed from her friend Rachel Burrows, was easy to drive, but every tense and aching muscle in her body told her it was time to quit.
But how could she? Somehow she’d managed to get herself lost—a rarity for her. She would have called for help if her cell phone hadn’t died on her. Besides which, she had a map and precise directions, and she was excellent at following both. Until a few days ago, her entire life had been a perfect model of direction-following.
In spite of that, she’d done something wrong because the paved road had petered out into nothingness leaving only a dirt track for her to follow.
“Oh blast and bother,” she groused.
With a discouraged sigh, she leaned her head against the steering wheel and closed her eyes. This had been the most impossibly longest day of her life and it was far from over.
Exhaustion nearly swamped her as she tried to recall exactly how all this had happened. Oh, yes. She’d been pursuing her dream; a dream of independence, self-reliance, having a career instead of being a glorified baby-sitter for her nephew. A dream of being her own person instead of the last of the three daughters of Prince Michael of Inbourg whose occupation seemed to be, as one tabloid so gracelessly put it, “Squandering the money of the citizens of Inbourg with marathon sessions of power shopping.”
Never mind that her sisters, Anya and Deirdre, had been photographed buying supplies for the disaster relief society they co-chaired. Tabloid reporters didn’t care about the truth, only about publishing the flashiest headlines. What would they think if they knew that Princess Alexis had taken a long-term substitute teaching job in a one-room schoolhouse in the mountains of Arizona? It didn’t matter what the truth actually was. Their assignment would be to put the most negative possible spin on it.
It would be bad if the tabloids discovered that she had come to the States on the pretense of spending several weeks pampering herself at a health spa. It would be disastrous if they learned she had installed Esther Wanfray, her lady-in-waiting, there in her place.
Oh, why was she thinking about that now? Alexis looked about in quiet desperation. She had to turn around, go back, and figure out where she’d gone wrong. Carefully, she put the car in reverse and started to back up.
A sickening thud and then a splintering of wood told her she’d hit something.
“What on earth…?” Quickly, she threw the car into drive and lurched forward. This time a jarring scrape on the front right fender split the air.
“Oh, no.” Horrified, Alexis stared straight ahead for an instant trying to think what to do next. Get out and take a look was the only thing that occurred to her.
She reached across the seat and scrambled in the glove compartment for the flashlight only to find to her astonishment that there wasn’t one.
Suddenly furious, she sputtered as she threw open the car door and hopped out, “Oh, Rachel,” she wailed. “Why don’t you carry a flashlight in your car?” She stood peering into the darkness beyond the beam of the headlights for a moment, then remembered a small book of matches she’d picked up somewhere. She didn’t know how much good they would be, but a little light was better than nothing.
She took the matches from her purse, struck one carefully, and turned toward the back of the car to see what she had hit. The wind immediately blew out the match.
“Drat.” She struck another match and tried again. It blew out before she’d taken two steps, as did matches number three, four and five.
Frustrated, she glanced back into the car and spied the magazine she’d bought before boarding the plane to Phoenix. With a glad cry, she picked it up, tore out several pages and wrapped them into a roll. She then lit the end and had a crude but effective torch. Holding it carefully, she moved to the rear of the vehicle where she saw a splintered pole lying on the ground and on the end of it, tilting crazily skyward, was a mailbox.
“McTaggart,” she read, and then read it again. “McTaggart!” Astounded and relieved, her voice rose an octave. “I’m in the right place.” Whirling around, she held the torch up and tried to peer farther into the darkness. “But where’s the house?”
McTaggart was the name of the school board president. She was to pick up the key to her own cottage and to the schoolhouse from him. Now all she had to do was figure out where the house was.
She wasn’t lost, after all, she thought, elated. She had ended up exactly where she was supposed to be. She had reached Sleepy River community and, as she’d been promising herself all day, everything was going to be just fine.
Hurrying back to the front of the car, she looked for the house, but could see nothing and finally concluded it was farther down this dirt road. Hope and confidence surged. With the help of her trusty torch, she could find it, though she moved her hand farther down toward the end of the burning papers, and prayed the flame would last until she found the house.
In a rush, Alexis reached in and took her shoulder bag from the car, paused to lock the doors, then began moving forward cautiously. She paused to see what she’d scraped the car against when she’d pulled forward.
It was a vine-covered wall. If the moon had been out, she probably would have seen it as well as the mailbox. The damage to the car didn’t appear to be too bad.
As she straightened, she heard the crunch of gravel behind her, and then a deep male voice saying, “What the devil…?”
With a start of surprise, Alexis whirled. The sudden movement fanned the flare of the torch, sending a speck of burning paper flying down to scorch her hand. With a cry, she dropped the torch into the grass beside the wall.
Immediately, the dry grass burst into flames.
“Hey,” the man yelled. In the flare of light, she saw only shadows and had the impression of a large body flying past as he leaped forward to stamp out the flames. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m sorry,” she stammered, dropping her purse beside the car and jumping onto the flames. She stomped for all she was
