She’d also told him about the summer the sky burned across Alaska, how Riley and his smoke jumping team showed up to help fight the fire that nearly consumed the ranch.

Riley had saved Larke’s life.

Yeah, Dodge liked him.

Of course, Larke had turned into the spitting image of their mother, with her blond hair, her adventurous spirit, her courage to face her fears. And she was courageous enough to face them again, if she had to, with Riley.

It evoked her words from over a week ago. “What are you afraid of, Dodge?”

Maybe she was right—he had been afraid. Mostly that his father wouldn’t have wanted to see him.

Dodge still struggled to reconcile the look of surprise, the smile his father had given him when he’d woken in the hospital, with the father who had betrayed him ten years ago.

Okay, everybody calm down. His father had been heavily sedated, maybe a little loopy from the pain meds.

He was probably just relieved that the ranch wasn’t going to fall apart.

As Dodge waited for Larke, he got up and walked over to the big bank of windows that lined the back of the house.

This view. He never tired of it, the postcard visage embedded in his mind. Even when he flew over the barren brown Kuhi Baba range in Afghanistan, Dodge had seen in his mind’s eye the majestic granite spine of the Alaska Range. From here, with the sky clear, the massive hulk of Denali framed the horizon, whitened peaks jutting ruthlessly through the finest wisp of brave clouds, the deadly blue-black granite valleys. At the foot of it all crouched the darkened foothills, and through them wove the fingers of the hundreds of glacial tributaries, now frozen, but in a month or so, lethal as the rivers broke and flushed out the remains of winter. Between the lodge and the park, a vista opened, once upon a time a lush array of black spruce and deep green pine. Now, the snow blanketed the land, newly sprinkled with saplings, like tiny moles peeking through the white.

“I miss it when I’m not here. Florida is warm, but it has a sort of earthy, almost mossy smell that feels primordial. Here, you always smell the mountains, the vast magnificence of the land.” Larke had come down the stairs, a bag over her shoulder. “Thanks for staying. You’re doing the right thing.”

He turned. “Take care of that baby.”

She smiled, the finest shadow in her eyes. “Don’t let him do too much, Dodge. He’s so stubborn.”

He lifted a shoulder. “So am I.”

“I’m counting on it.”

Riley came back inside. “I’ll be glad to get out of this cold.”

“Wimp. It’s nearly in the teens outside.” Larke laughed and headed for the door.