Paradise Cafe

by Adrienne Staff

Genres: Women's Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

In this sensual tale from beloved author Adrienne Staff, a life-saving hero sets out to convince a mild-mannered beauty that desire means jumping in headfirst.
 
After falling out of her raft into the river rapids, Abby Clarke is sure that she’s going to drown . . . until she’s suddenly pulled from the water—terrified, desperate, and soaking wet. Abby has never enjoyed flirting with danger, but the daredevil in front of her—a ruggedly handsome outdoorsman with deep gray eyes—makes her forget all about being safe.
 
Jack Gallagher is a heart-stopper who likes a challenge, a man of few words and fast moves—especially when destiny tosses a woman like Abby into his path. After escorting her home, Jack can’t resist trying to get this damsel in distress to open her heart. Abby’s always been one to plan for tomorrow, but Jack is living proof that today is the only certainty—and that reckless passion is always worth the risk.
 
Includes a special message from the editor, as well as excerpts from these Loveswept titles: About Last Night, Blaze of Winter, and Lana’s Lawman.

Release date: November 12, 2012

Publisher: Loveswept

Print pages: 208

Sample

One
 
“Let go of the raft!”
 
The words shouted from behind were lost in the roar of the water over her, the thunder of the water crashing against the sheer canyon walls and hurtling her downstream.
 
“Let go of the raft!” The second time she heard the shout, but her fingers clutched the edge of the heavy rubber raft more tightly, as tightly as she ever had held to anything in her life. Her life! Oh, Lord, she was going to die! She knew it. In the seconds after she was swept through the first rapids, her thoughts were fragmented: Death. Fear. Loss. Panic. She hadn’t said good-bye to her parents. Shed never see home again. She was going to die in this ice-cold water, all alone in the rushing river, the white and green foam swirling over her face.
 
Moving ever downstream, Abby lashed one arm across the hump of the raft and wept, her tears instantly erased by the icy splash of spray. What was she going to do? Oh, God, she prayed, oh, someone, help! She began to scream, “Help me! Oh, help me … oh …”
 
Like a living thing, the river gathered itself beneath her and leaped forward. “Oh, help! Someone help me!” She felt the river surge and rise, and ahead she saw the white riffles and hanging spray that signaled the start of the next rapids.
 
Saw them and was taken by them in the same second.
 
The water was lifting and churning over rocks that were only dark, looming shadows beneath the white, foaming surface. “Oh, no, not again, no more—please!” she screamed, while the raft strained at her hold, leaping and jumping over the dark, crouched rocks, wrenching at her arms, pulling her faster and faster, the water always in her eyes and mouth and nose.
 
And then the third shout came from behind, loud and insistent and commanding:
 
“Let go of the raft!”
 
And her mind, or the tiny section of her mind that wasn’t numbed by fear and panic and cold, remembered her guide’s instructions before they ever got on the river, the damned, damned river where she was about to die. Three rules if you fall in: Point your feet downstream to cushion the blows, hold on to your life jacket, and if someone yells “Let go of the raft!” then do it!
 
“Oh, no. She couldn’t. She couldn’t! It was all she had that meant safety and hope. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.…
 
“Let go of the raft! Now!”
 
She released her hold, and the raft tore downstream like a demon creature bent for hell. Flying, springing, it crashed against the looming black canyon wall.
 
Abby swung her arms wildly, the water swirling over her face, drowning her, choking her. But instead of the wall, her feet hit the torn rubbery side of the raft, and she bounced back away from the rocks and out into the middle of the river again.
 
For a moment she hung there, shocked into immobility by the memory of those looming rock walls flying at her and away. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think; her eyes were wide with fear. She hung there in the deceptive, momentary calm of one of the deep, still pools between the rapids.
 
The water was black there, deeper than she could imagine. She tried to kick, but her feet were numb; so were her legs. The icy numbness was sliding insidiously up her body to her waist, her chest. She felt the cold hand of death gripping her.
 
Screaming, she flailed at the water, aiming for the canyon wall. Anything, anything was better than the water. The wall slid by, picking up speed like a phony backdrop in a grade B movie. Fast and faster now, as the river carved into the canyon walls at a sudden angle. She could see the spiked tips of the pines growing at the cliff top above her, the rib-boned layers of rock exposed on the cliff walls, the white, churning water ahead. “Help!” she screamed, the water filling her mouth. Panic brought life to her legs, and she backpedaled desperately. “Save me!”
 
Incredibly, another raft flew into sight, with a huge, dark-haired guide at the oars. She struggled toward this one hope. She saw the man straining against the pull of the river, his arm muscles bulging, his whole body fighting the current, fighting to save her, his arms, back, neck, hips locked in battle, slowing the raft, slowing it just enough perhaps to let her grasp the hands reaching out to her as she splashed closer. He fought the river, shouting “Swim, dammit! Swim!” in the same hoarse, urgent voice that had commanded her to let go of the raft. “Come on! Swim!”
 
Abby tried, but her body was too cold to obey her commands, and the river was too strong. The guide shouted a curse as the river escaped the drag of his oars and the raft leaped into the rapids and was gone and she was pulled under the foaming surface.
 
She felt a sharp stab of pain as she hit the rounded hump of a boulder and was flung over it. She gave up all hope and stopped breathing, stopped thinking, stopped praying. The river swept on with her as it snaked around its next turn, and then suddenly she was trapped in a tangle of tree branches leaning like a net across the water.
 
As Abby felt the solid wood, sheer instinct took over and she scrambled up, sending loose gravel and rock hailing into the water. She felt the dead tree slip under her weight and climbed faster, planting one foot on the broken trunk, pulling the other up alongside, scrambling up onto the rocks until she could think, stop, and take control of her body. She dug her heels into the loose rock face of the canyon wall and spread her arms wide, her fingers prying a hold into the rock.
 
She was out of the water. Alive. Oh, God …
 
She started to shake and couldn’t stop. Her whole body was jumping with fear and shock; her teeth were chattering. There was nothing she could do. She wanted to climb farther but couldn’t, wanted to edge over just a foot or two to a notch in the wall that had grass she could grab hold of, but she couldn’t. She wanted to shout for help, but couldn’t; her teeth were clicking and wouldn’t stop even when she bit her lips hard enough to taste blood.
 
A rock slid from beneath her left foot, and she screamed. She turned and pressed her body against the rock wall until it dug into her back.
 
Suddenly she saw movement on the cliff top across the river. Wiping her face against her shoulder, she squinted through water and tears to bring the shapes into focus. Someone was there, gesturing, shouting. “Up … go up!” the person yelled, pointing to the top of the canyon wall forty feet above her; she shook her head in a short, nervous jerk.
 
She couldn’t move, couldn’t answer.
 
The person kept shouting at her, waving, yelling at her as if she were purposely not listening, not following orders. She saw it was her guide, the one who had lost control and let her raft flip, flinging her and the others into the river, and the others were with him: her pal Elaine and the two fellows they had met in Estes Park who had promised that a raft trip would be such fun! Oh, dear Lord, they were all there, safe, and she was down here, the wall crumbling into the river below her, the water just waiting, waiting to take her again.
 
She squeezed her eyes shut, and tears slid down her cheeks, ran into her open mouth. Everything hurt now, her legs, her stomach, her chest whenever she breathed. Help, she prayed silently. Someone help me. In all her life she had never been so afraid. It was worse than the most awful nightmare.
 
Then she heard a noise above. Abby gasped, then held her breath and listened. It was a voice, a mans shout, directly overhead. She tipped her head back against the rock wall and saw a rope uncoil from the edge above and to the right. And then that dark-haired rafter swung himself over and down, sending a tiny avalanche cascading harmlessly past her and into the water. She shuddered, cringing at the splash. “Hurry,” she begged.
 
“Hold on! I’m coming to get you,” he shouted, and she let her head fall back and didn’t open her eyes until she felt his hand on her shoulder.
 
“Don’t be scared,” he said softly. “You’re okay now.”
 
She didn’t answer, couldn’t, just kept her teeth clamped down over her bottom lip and tried to stop shaking. Tears spilled from her eyes.
 
He touched her face, pushing the hair and leaves and dirt back from her cheek with blunt, strong fingers. “It’s okay now,” he repeated, looking into her wide, terrified eyes. Poor thing, he thought, poor little thing, but aloud he said, “Are you hurt? Tell me where you’re hurt.”
 
Abby was shaking too hard to answer, so he gently ran a hand across her arms, down her ribs on one side and up over the other. Then he crouched against the rock and ran his hand over both scratched and bruised legs.
 
She felt cold as ice, he thought, and those wide, unblinking eyes worried him. He touched her cheek. “You’ve all right. Nothing’s broken. You had a bad time, but I’m going to take care of you; I’m going to get you out of here. I know you’re scared, but it’s going to be okay.” He kept stroking her face and talking, ignoring her chattering teeth, her silence. “Okay, now, I want you to take hold of this rope and pull up. I’ll be under you here, pushing. We’ll get you right up, just one foot at a time, hand over hand—”
 
She shook her head wildly, panic blinding her. She could not, would not, move, knowing she would slide back into the river like a stone.