After our night of Skype sex, I headed out dark and early to meet Sam and Susan. Sam was nice enough to meet me in town, his son coordinating for us to meet during Sam’s supply run. He greeted me next to the biggest of his snowmobiles, a huge cargo job with attached trailer, with a hug that had damned-near taken my breath away, but it was good to see him again. Funny how a few days with just the two of you, working in the woods, could create an instant deep friendship.

“I gotta tell you, Nic, you were a lifesaver this winter,” Sam says as we go up and down the aisles of the market, checking items off Sam’s list. “Twice, we got huge snowstorms that woulda knocked out our old gear. But the stuff you got us, me and the family were nice and cozy. Haven’t had a single snowmobile go down all winter, no matter how hard we’ve run them.”

“Considering the amount of stuff you’re putting in this cart, I guess you’ve been able to run them pretty hard too,” I joke as Sam puts in a case of Dinty Moore beef stew to join the roughly hundred pounds of other stuff in the cart. I swear, anywhere you go in North America, you go into the woods . . . and someone’s going to have a can of Dinty Moore nearby. It’s damn near a law.

“You would’ve laughed your ass off at this city boy who came out, bag packed full of beef jerky and socks,” Sam says, pausing his story dramatically to grab two twenty-five-pound bags of rice. “Damn fool had nothing else. Not a knife, map, flashlight, or even matches in there at all.”

“What the hell was his idea? Was he going to build a tent out of socks? Keep the bears away with athlete’s foot funk?”

Sam laughs. “I don’t know. Susan geared him up properly with your stuff and we headed out, supposed to be a five-day trip. But wouldn’t you know, by nightfall day three, we hadn’t even made it halfway to the turnaround point, so the next morning, we took a shortcut out and I radioed Susan to pick us up on the main trail in the SAG wagon. That big boy ATV you left sure came in handy. Got us out and home for Susan’s apple pie before dark, and city boy said he felt like he’d had ‘a life experience he’ll never forget’. Can you believe that?” He laughs good-naturedly. “Damn fool never even got to the peak I wanted to show him.”

“At least he didn’t die,” I point out. “A credit to you.”

“Your gear too,” Sam says honestly. “He put a beatdown on your stuff with his bumbling ways, but it took it all. Even when he thought that you were supposed to hammer tent stakes into a tree.”

After finishing his list, Sam and I load up the cargo trailer on his snowmobile and jump into the passenger cabin to drive deep into the woods. “I know it seems a waste down here, where the snow ain’t deep,” Sam says as he adjusts his throttle, “but once we go about two or three miles, you’ll see why. While you’re out here, I’ll give the ATVs a test run. Some of the trails are clear enough.”

“They’ll handle anything you put in front of them without a problem,” I assure him.

As soon as we’re surrounded by trees, I feel a tightness in my chest loosen. The fresh air, bright in my lungs, rejuvenates me, and the pine boughs waving in the breeze as we slowly roll by seem to welcome me home.

Susan’s greeting is much the same as Sam’s, although her hug isn’t nearly as backbreaking since she’s less than half his size. “Good to see you, Nic. How’s civilized life?”

“Lots of good, but I’ll tell you about it inside. I see you’ve built a fire and I don’t wanna waste the good oak,” I reply, looking at the idyllic looking cabin. “And I heard something about pie?”

“Of course,” Susan says with a knowing glance at her husband. “Come on in.”

To say the dinner is delicious is a ridiculous understatement. The stew is venison, shot by Sam himself, while the pie is mountain berry, picked and canned by Susan back in October and aged just right. As we eat, we catch up more, and I tell them about what’s been going on over the months since we last saw each other.

“So after our last visit, I flew around a bit, same as always, visiting with customers and negotiating with potential customers. A resort that had gone another way called us back, and I flew out to Great Falls, a town back east that I’d been to right before seeing you guys. Ran into a woman there I knew from my last trip.”

Sam looks over at Susan, mouthing ‘a woman he knew’ as he waggles his eyebrows. She giggles, slapping his arm lightly. “Be good and let the man finish his story. Tell us about this young woman.”

They turn back to me, and I smile at their easy camaraderie. “So, I see Rose—that’s her name—and she’s pregnant. She uh, well . . . she didn’t know how to get ahold of me, and there was a bit of a mix-up with a phone call message when she finally did find me, but long story short, we’re having a baby.”

Susan claps, tears springing to her eyes as she rushes over to hug me. “Congratulations, Nicolas! That’s fabulous, honey!”

Sam offers a hand-crushing shake and pats my shoulder. “Well done, Son. I had a feeling, the way you were talking out in the big woods.” Before I can reply, he squeezes down a little more warningly while giving me a mean hard-eyed look. “You’re doing right by this lady, aren’t you?”

I smile through the pain, glad I’ve been drinking my milk or else I might have a broken hand right now. “Well, I’m damn sure trying. It was a little rough at first, as you can guess. The first meeting again when I walked in to find her five months pregnant . . . yeah, that was a little dramatic. She thought I wouldn’t want to be part of the baby’s life, but we got it all straightened out. Now, I’m looking forward to it being the three of us. I’m moving to Great Falls permanently to be with Rose, and ADRENALIN is working with me to help make that happen. I’m just riding out my lease on my old apartment and already arranged for a company to send me what I want from there and donate the rest to the Salvation Army.”

Sam nods and gets up to pour the after-dinner coffee. “Well, if you got a guy that’ll come all the way out here, I’ll work with whoever you recommend. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

I shake my head, getting up to help clear the dishes. “Nah, if you don’t mind, I’d like to stay the primary contact on your account. I won’t be able to travel much, especially at first, but a trip out here every once in awhile sounds like the reprieve I need from city life. Also, no buttering you guys up, but this place is just about next door to paradise in a lot of ways.”

Sam nods knowingly, handing me a steaming mug. “Sounds good to me, but if it’s too much, you just let me know. I sure like the gear you left and appreciate the deal we’ve got, so if you need to stay closer to home, we understand. We had babies once too.”

Susan clears her throat, tossing a dish towel over her shoulder as she prepares to wash up. “All right, boys, if you’re done with the business chatter, I have a question . . . when are you getting married and do I get to meet the baby?”

I laugh, feeling heat rush to my face. “Well, I’ve been living in her house for a couple of months now, working remotely to be there as we get ready for the baby, but we need to make it a little more official, if you know what I mean.”

Susan’s eyes are shining like diamonds as she nods. “I know, and I can understand that. But I want to know all your plans, about the baby, how you want to do the proposal, wedding . . . all the good stuff.”

Sam chuffs, rolling his eyes as he takes the dish towel from his wife and starts running water. “You two go on. This could take you all night. About the only things that can make my tough as nails spitfire wife go all gooey are weddings and babies. Back when we lived in town, she’d watch these Hallmark movies every day, same damn story with different characters every time. Now she just reads them.” He leans in to whisper, even though Susan can hear every word, “At least I don’t have to listen to them anymore, and the books seem to get her going, so that works out just fine for me.”

I laugh along with them, happy to bear witness to their love. When their eyes come back to me, I continue. “I am planning to propose, but figured I’d wait. We’re moving about as fast as you can, and I don’t want to overwhelm her. I do plan on visiting a jeweler in Portland before I fly back to Great Falls though. Just gotta plan when I’m going to pop the question, so not a word to anyone.”

Susan mimics locking her lips and throwing away the key. “My lips are sealed.”

I laugh and sit down on the couch. “We’re naming the baby Amelia, and her room is already painted pink, like a Pepto-Bismol bottle got tossed all over the walls. I know that sounds cliché, but Rose loves it, so I do too. Best of all, she’s got a good group of friends that rally around her, and a helper in her shop so that she can take off for several weeks after Amelia is born. It’s not where I ever saw my life going, but now that it’s here and it’s happening, I can’t believe how amazing it is.”

Sam and Susan smile back at me, delving into a long story about how their son, Mason, had met the woman of his dreams. She’d hated him for being backwoods, but he’d eventually won her over, and now they live in the small town we’d shopped at today with their five kids. Sam laughs. “Trust me, keeping up with those five as they go running through the woods . . . the first time I let them, their mother was worried they’d get eaten by a bear or something, but I told them with all the noise they were making, the bears were heading over the mountains as fast as their legs could take them.”

His story gives me pause. I might be excited about Amelia, but the thought of five kids gives me a good dose of fear, and somewhere deep inside, I hope that Rose doesn’t want quite that many. Maybe one or two more, but definitely not five. I don’t want to raise a basketball team. I mean . . . we’d have to have a chain of Mountain Roses and I’d end up having to take Wes’s job to afford that.

* * *

Sam and I spend the next few days running maintenance checks on every piece of gear he’s got, checking his soon-to-be broken out ATVs from bumper to bumper, restringing fishing reels, and replacing a ski on one of the snowmobiles.

It’s dirty, hard work but I enjoy it. Being outdoors, making sure that Sam has what he needs to be successful and safe, and generally being useful in a way that pushing papers around doesn’t make me feel. This is a sort of life I could certainly get used to.

We chat as we work, and Sam’s full of little nuggets of wisdom. “You know what will keep you in your lady’s good graces?”

“Tell me,” I reply as I oil a drive chain. “Figure you, of all people, might know, from what I’ve seen.”

Sam chuckles as he checks a length of rope for wear and tear. “When your baby’s born, you’re gonna be tempted to swap turns getting up when she cries. You’re gonna have days at work that’ll make getting up at two in the morning seem like the toughest thing ever. But don’t you do it. You drag your carcass out of bed when you’re home . . . it’ll pay off.”

“Pay off, huh?” I ask, and Sam chuckles.

“Chances are she’ll need to be fed or need to be changed. You can’t feed her, but you can sure take her to her momma since she’ll be the one staying up to do the feeding. And you can dang sure change a diaper. Lord knows I did my fair share of diaper duty once upon a time.”

I store the advice away for later, sure that he knows what he’s talking about if his marriage has lasted this long and is as good as it appears.

Sam finishes the last few inches of rope inspection and makes a quick coil of it, looking over to see if I’m done with my assignment too. “You ready? Let’s run these babies.”

It’s great to take the ATVs out, heading out along the paths Sam’s created as he shows me some hidden treasures along the property. The caves, huge trees, and a surprising hidden pond are amazing to see, and the machines run smoothly, not a single hiccup after our maintenance and care.

“They’re purring,” I comment as we come to a stop overlooking the pond. “Let me guess, your old ones were cranky as hell the first days of spring?”

“You could say that—” Sam says, but before he can finish, his radio squawks.

“Sam? Come in, Sam.” It’s Susan, and Sam cuts off his engine. I follow suit, the silence somehow sounding ominous after the pleasant drone of the engines earlier. I shiver, suddenly feeling the chill wind on my throat.

“Susan?” Sam asks, picking up the radio. “What’s up, honey?”

The radio static quiets before Susan continues. “Mason just came out from town, said he got a call from a fella named Wes who’s looking for Nicolas. You boys need to come on in.”

She doesn’t say as much, but I feel a knot in the pit of my stomach and my hand trembles on the controls of the ATV. There’s only one reason Wes would go through the trouble of calling Sam’s son to come find me out in the sticks. “Rose . . . something’s wrong.”

Sam meets my eyes, nodding once as I see he’s come to the same conclusion. “All right, Son, keep your head. We’re gonna get you back as quick as possible, but these woods and these machines ain’t made for racing, so hold it together.”