Blue Ridge Breakdown, page 1
Also by Rachel Hanna
January Cove Series
Waiting For You
The One For Me
Loving Tessa
Falling For You
Finding Love
All I Need
Secrets And Soulmates
Choices Of The Heart
Sweet Love
Faith, Hope & Love
Spying On The Billionaire
Complete January Cove Boxed Set Books 1-10
Second Chance Christmas
South Carolina Sunsets
The Beach House
Sunsets & Second Chances
Fireflies & Family Ties
The Inn At Seagrove
The Wedding At Seagrove
A Seagrove Christmas
Lighthouse Cove
Beneath The Willow Tree
Mutts & Magnolias
Chasing Sunsets
Sea Glass Summer
Sweet Tea B&B
Sweet Tea Sunrise
Sweet Tea & Honey Bees
Sweet Tea & Wedding Rings
Sweet Tea & Christmas Trees
Sweet Tea & Baby Makes Three
Sweet Tea B&B
The Jubilee Series
Welcome To Jubilee
All Tucked Inn
Christmas In Jubilee
Blue Ridge Breakdown
Waverly Lane
Christmas On Waverly Lane
Whiskey Ridge
Starting Over
Taking Chances
Home Again
Always A Bridesmaid
The Billionaire's Retreat
Wisteria Island
Wisteria Island
Wisteria Winds
Standalone
Back To Us
Blue Ridge Christmas
The Book Club On Waverly Lane
The Bucket List
Watch for more at Rachel Hanna’s site.
BLUE RIDGE BREAKDOWN
RACHEL HANNA
CONTENTS
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
FOREWORD
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CHAPTER 1
Ava Monroe held onto the steering wheel of her old truck like her life depended on it, and it probably did. Her knuckles were turning white. Outside, a snowstorm had transformed the world around her into a blur of white and shadow. The flakes were falling so thickly that it seemed like she would be swallowed up at any moment. Like in front of her, there would be nothing and everything at the same time.
Why she had chosen to drive her vintage red truck for this trip, she had no idea. It was something she cherished. Her father had bought the ratty shell of a truck when she was just a baby, and after he passed, her grandfather decided to restore it in honor of his late son. Ava had helped him when she was just twelve years old, learning all about old trucks in the process. When she’d taken off and left town, the truck was one thing she wasn’t willing to leave behind. Now, she was regretting that decision a bit.
She'd left the main road behind a long time ago, trying to put as much distance between herself and the situation she was fleeing. All of it felt like a surreal dream that she was trying to wake up from but just kept getting worse. Her brain seemed to want to roll the events leading up to this over and over in her mind, but she tried to push it away.
Somehow she found herself driving up a mountain that she wasn't expecting. Of course, when a person flees their life, they don't really tend to look at a map. She just wanted to go, get out of there as quickly as possible, and that seemed to have led to a really poor decision. She had never driven in snow, and she certainly hadn't ever driven over a mountain, but now she found herself doing both. The tires crunched against the snow-packed road, and it was the only sound in the otherwise silent snowstorm. It truly felt like she was the last person on earth. The quiet was deafening.
She questioned every decision she'd made in her life in the last couple of years and certainly the one she had made that morning when she decided to just drive. Visibility was almost at zero, and the road seemed like more of a path now. Everything disappeared just a few feet ahead of her vehicle.
She looked down at her fuel gauge and realized that she was running dangerously low on gas. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach.
"Just a little further," she said to herself and the truck, hoping to find a place that she could pull over and figure out her next steps. But the last thing she wanted to do was pull over on a snowy mountain. There was no telling what could happen to her there. There were no other cars passing her. In fact, she hadn’t seen another person since she got on the mountain, probably because they were smarter than her and stayed home.
Suddenly, as she turned one of the curves as slowly as possible, her truck lurched. A hidden patch of ice sent it skidding off the narrow road and into a snowbank on the side. She didn't have to worry about anybody coming up behind her and running into her because there was no other traffic. Again, she was the only genius who would end up in this mess. Just like her life. A big mess.
Her engine stalled and left her sitting in silence, except for the sound of her own ragged breathing. She kept trying to crank the truck over and over again, but it refused to start.
The storm seemed to be getting heavier. Mother Nature certainly didn't seem to care about her plight. She wrapped her arms around herself as the cold started seeping into the truck. She looked over at her beloved boxer, Millie, who was still sleeping peacefully in the passenger seat next to her, as if nothing was going on. That dog could never be rattled. She'd had her for three years now and she was her best friend and closest companion, the one who would never judge her for all the silly mistakes she'd made.
Now, as she sat alone with her truck broken down on the side of a mountain during a snowstorm, Ava wondered if this was going to be her last day on earth. She didn't have any food. She was only wearing a sweater and had a lightweight jacket under her purse in the passenger floorboard. Panic started to set in as the gravity of the situation became clear. She was all alone, as usual. She had no cell service, no way to call anybody for help, and she was certain that it was many miles to the nearest town. She took in a deep breath and pulled her sweater tightly around her. She needed to think. She had to come up with a plan, but as she looked out into the snow swirling in front of her, she couldn't help but wonder if she had escaped one nightmare only to find herself trapped in another one.
Madeline was in her favorite place on earth - inside of her cozy cabin overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains with snow falling outside. She snuggled up next to Brady, pulling the blanket tighter around them as they sat in front of the crackling fire. They had been snuggled up like this for well over an hour, and she was hesitant to move because she was so comfortable and warm.
He turned and looked over at her. "It's hard to believe," he said, "after everything that happened - the fire, the loss - we're finally going to have a place to call home again." He squeezed her hand. After losing his family home in a fire a few months ago, Brady was very excited to have his sister and niece with him in a brand new house on their family property.
"I've seen the work that you've put into it, Brady. Every nail, every board. It's not just going to be your house. It's going to be a place that stands as proof of your strength and your resilience. Jasmine and Anna are very lucky to have you."
He laughed under his breath. "Well, you know I couldn't have done it without you. You've encouraged me the entire way, even on the days where I wanted to quit. You helped me keep going so that I could have a home that will stand the test of time. I can't believe we're just a couple of weeks away from moving in. Jasmine has already started planning a garden, and Anna has been trying to pick the color for her room."
She leaned back into him, resting her head on his shoulder. "It's going to be a wonderful, beautiful start to this new year, a new beginning for all of you." They sat there silently listening to the fire crackle, the only sound in the room for a few minutes.
"You know, I was thinking."
"Thinking what?"
"Well, once the house is finished, maybe we could have some family dinners there from time to time."
She smiled. "Of course. Just because we have two different homes doesn't mean that we can't go back and forth between them. That's double the blessing, right?"
"Yeah. And it's not like we live far apart," he said, laughing.
She often wondered if he thought about the future, their future. Would they ever get married? And if they did, where would they live? She loved her home overlooking the mountains, and he wou
"And you know that I think of your family as my family, and I hope you think the same about my mom."
Brady nodded. "Of course. We are both very blessed to have everyone in our lives like we do."
They looked out the window with the snowstorm raging. Within the walls of Madeline's cabin, there was only warmth. As they sat by the fire continuing to discuss the plans for the cabin and all the great things that would happen there, Madeline knew she was exactly where she was meant to be.
Clemmy liked to think of herself as a risk-taker, but as she watched the snow fall harder and harder outside the windows of her bookstore, she wondered if she had made the wrong decision. Away With Words was her baby. She loved it more than just about anything, except for her grown son, who she rarely got to see. It was the thing that got her out of bed each morning and excited her about the day. She loved meeting new people who came into the store and also interacting with her regular customers. She loved to read, so in her downtime between customers, she would always grab a book from one of the shelves and escape into its pages.
But right now, she found herself stuck in a moment of indecision. Should she go ahead and close early and get home before the snow got too bad, or take her chances later when it was starting to get dark? She knew what the decision should be, but that wasn't the one she made.
Instead, she went and sat back on her tall stool behind the cash register and looked out over the beautiful town square. She had a wonderful view of the snow falling in front of the red brick courthouse. People were still driving, albeit slow. She knew there might be some ice later, and she had to get home before that happened, of course. But as a mountain woman, she was pretty accustomed to driving in the snow from time to time. Although she loved her home, she also loved being at the bookstore. It was her refuge, even on her stormiest days.
She looked at the clock as another hour passed and felt a little sense of unease in her stomach. Maybe she should have closed earlier. But what if somebody needed to come get some books before the snowstorm kept them inside for a few days? The streets of Jubilee were usually bustling with activity, but now it was almost eerily silent, with just the occasional vehicle passing in front of her shop. The foot traffic was much less today as the weather worsened. She watched the snowflakes, large and relentless, as they blanketed the world outside in white. Suddenly, the shops didn't look like themselves anymore, as they were obscured by the blinding snow falling harder and harder.
"Goodness, I should have seen this coming," she muttered to herself, looking at the snow accumulating on the windowsills across the way. The weather forecast had not said it was going to be quite this bad, although it was labeled a significant snowstorm. Now she wondered if she was going to be able to get home at all.
Thankfully, she had an area in the back room where she could sleep if she needed to. It wasn't comfortable, and it definitely wasn't her first choice, but she would do it if it meant that she would be safe. The bookstore was warm and would be a perfectly fine place to spend the night if she had to, but her intention was to get home, make a big pot of vegetable soup, and sit by the fire for the rest of the night. She decided that she would stay another hour, maybe two, before she would close up and head home.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the chime of the door. Just as she suspected, one of her regular customers had come in to load up with books so they could sit by the fire and read them as the snowflakes fell. She was distracted by the conversation, which was a good thing because she didn't want to sit around and worry about getting home later. Instead, she would do what she always did, dive headfirst into the fictional world sitting in the book in front of her, and make real-world decisions later.
Ava's breath fogged up the inside of the truck, showing just how cold it was getting outside. As the snowstorm raged, her gas light had been on for at least the last three miles before she had run into the snowbank. It was a constant reminder of her precarious situation. She pulled her jacket ever tighter, wishing that she had brought a heavy coat. She had assumed wrongly that she would be in her truck with a heater all the way to her destination, even though she didn't know where her destination was. She had just packed up her things and started driving. She figured when she found the place she was supposed to be, maybe she would feel it. Maybe she would get some sort of feeling in her bones.
But right now, all she felt was cold and scared. Her phone was the last lifeline she had to the outside world, but there were no bars, no service. She kept checking it hoping that somehow, some way a signal would come through. She decided that maybe she should try one more time, but step out of the truck. Maybe if she walked a few feet ahead up the mountain, she could get that one bar of signal that she needed.
She carefully cracked open the door, and the biting howl of the wind got louder as it found its way inside the truck. She stuck her arm out into the snowstorm, her phone clutched tightly in her hand, which was quickly turning red, her eyes squinting against the snowflakes as they hit her in the face. In just that little moment, the world inside the truck went from being a sanctuary to a whirlwind of cold and chaos.
Her dog Millie, who was normally calm and composed, got startled by the sudden influx of the cold air, or maybe she sensed Ava's desperation, and she sprang into action. With a suddenness that even took Ava by surprise, she pushed past her legs and darted out into the snow-covered forest beside them. "Millie! No, Millie!” Ava cried out her voice dripping in panic.
She jumped completely out of the truck at this point, chasing after her beloved dog. As soon as she stepped all the way out, the intensity of the storm hit her with a full force biting at her exposed skin, blurring her vision.
"Millie, please come back here!” she shouted, but she didn't even know where her words were going. Everything was getting swallowed up by the storm. She was insignificant against the white expanse. Everywhere she turned looked exactly the same. She had no idea where her dog had run, and she could barely see her bright red truck even a few steps away. She called out one more time, but there was no sign of her. The thought that her dog could be gone, lost to the snowstorm, frightened and alone, was a blow that left her feeling completely isolated and desperate. She knew she couldn't stay outside the truck for much longer or risk hypothermia.
She jumped back in the truck, shaking from the cold, hoping against hope that she could warm back up again. She looked out her windshield and through every window trying to see her dog in the whiteout, hoping for any sign of her, but there was none. Now, she was truly alone. She didn't even have Millie for comfort.
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she felt a sharp ache in her stomach from Millie's absence. She leaned her forehead against the steering wheel, feeling the weight of the whole situation closing in on her. The storm was showing no signs of letting up, and now her dog was gone, facing a long, cold night. She wondered if she was going to survive this.
Brady and Madeline decided that there was nothing better to do during a snowstorm than to invite more people over to enjoy the coziness of sitting by the fire, watching the snow fall outside. Madeline's cabin was nestled amidst the thick blanket of snow, and it glowed from within. Laughter and conversation filled the air as Jasmine and Anna joined them. Brady and his sister had become closer and closer since she had come back to town, and he adored his niece, Anna.
The storm outside made the cabin's warmth all the more inviting as it provided a safe haven against the chill of wintertime. Madeline had put extra blankets and pillows around the living room and, as the fire cracked in the hearth, conversation flowed. The night wore on as they watched Anna, who asked questions about pretty much every topic under the sun.
