Final Resort

DANGER ON THE SLOPES

Ava Stanton has no need for love or tales of hidden treasure—until her uncle is kidnapped at her family’s ski resort. Now she needs help from professional treasure hunter Luca Gage...the man she’d tried to forget. Signs point to a fortune hidden in the mountain, and Ava and Luca need to find her uncle before his assailant finds them. As their search for treasure draws them closer together, Ava must decide how long she’ll run from love. She doesn’t have much time, because something is buried under Whisper Mountain—and someone is willing to do anything to get to it.

Ava watched Luca step onto the slick surface of the ice.

He teetered slightly before finding his balance. Face fixed in concentration, he moved slowly toward her.

“Hold on, Ava. I’ll be there in a minute.”

She watched through blurry eyes as he stepped onto the chunk of ice near her. She was amazed that he had not fallen through. Her body shivered so bad she could hardly keep him in her field of vision.

“Please go back,” she whispered.

Slowly, kneeling on a shelf of ice, he crouched over to grab for her sleeve. The green of his eyes was the only thing she could see clearly. His fingers gripped her wrist and he hauled her toward him, hoisting her over his shoulder. Ava wanted to say something, to force her body to work in some way, but she could not. She found herself slung head down, staring at the milky ice beneath Luca’s feet.

And then, with a sudden lurch, they both plunged through the ice.

DANA MENTINK

lives in California, where the weather is golden and the cheese is divine. Her family includes two girls (affectionately nicknamed Yogi and Boo Boo). Papa Bear works for the fire department; he met Dana doing a dinner theater production of The Velveteen Rabbit. Ironically, their parts were husband and wife.

Dana is a 2009 American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year finalist for romantic suspense and an award winner in the Pacific Northwest Writers Literary Contest. Her novel Betrayal in the Badlands won a 2010 RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award. She has enjoyed writing a mystery series for Barbour Books and more than ten novels to date for Harlequin’s Love Inspired Suspense line.

She spent her college years competing in speech and debate tournaments all around the country. Besides writing, she busies herself teaching elementary school and reviewing books for her blog. Mostly, she loves to be home with her family, including a dog with social-anxiety problems, a chubby box turtle and a quirky parakeet.

Dana loves to hear from her readers via her website at www.danamentink.com.

Final Resort

Dana Mentink

Again, the kingdom of heaven

is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it.

—Matthew 13:45–46

To my Mike, who is a priceless treasure to me.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Excerpt

ONE

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and when he had found one of great value, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it.”

—Matthew 13: 45-46

Ava Stanton jumped when a bevy of quail scattered as she got out of the car, snow whisking in tiny puffs under their feet. One shot her a beady-eyed look as if to ask why in the world a woman would be out on the remote mountain road by herself, especially as another wave of winter storms rolled in across the Sierras. Ava wondered the same thing, pulling her knit cap farther down over her short blond hair. The family of quail left a profound silence behind as they moved away. In the distance, she caught the sound of skiers on the slopes of the neighboring Gold Summit Lodge which butted up against Whisper Mountain Resort property.

Won’t be our property much longer.

The thought sent a wave of despair through her. She shook it off. Too much coffee. Too little sleep. She was fatigued mentally and physically from the extra skiing classes she’d been teaching in Westbow, a town about twenty miles away where she rented a room. A useless effort. Hadn’t made a dent in the debt that buried Whisper Mountain.

The sky was cloudy and ominous. Shadows shifted on the lumps of snow that had collected on the steep slope overlooking an iced-over Melody Lake at the periphery of the Whisper Mountain Resort property.

She did not know the real name of the lake, only the nickname given to the small body of water by her uncle the day they’d scattered her mother’s ashes there, accompanied by the mournful singing of the birds. Melody Lake. How often she’d visited, watching the seasons morph from summer to the white cocoon of winter, the water gradually sealing over like her own grief. Sealed over, but still just as present.