A Match Made in Alaska Read Online Free PDF Page A

each. “Ta-da! I found another pair. You’re welcome to borrow them.”
    Declan frowned. He wasn’t exactly the type of guy who sported mittens with hearts on them. They were super girly. But his hands were getting cold. Annie was holding out the mittens to him with an expectant look on her face. Suddenly he didn’t want her to feel bad about his refusing her sweet little mittens. There was something about Annie Murray—eccentricities and all—that reeked of pure goodness.
    He reached out and took the mittens from her. “Thanks,” he said as he slid them on, letting out a contented sigh as his hands began to warm up from the cold. “You might have just saved my fingers from frostbite.”
    “Just returning the favor,” she said with a huge grin. “After all, you saved both of us with your skilled crash landing. Something tells me not every pilot could have pulled that off.” She held out her hands toward the forest. “With all these trees, you had to be dead-on with that landing.”
    “It’s a first for me, Annie. I’ve never had to make an emergency landing like this, but I’m thankful for years of flying experience. I learned to fly a plane when most kids are dreaming of getting their first kiss.” Declan felt a rush of joy rising up inside him at the memory of his first flying lesson with his grandfather. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget the thrill of soaring up above the clouds into the clear blue skies of Alaska. He had felt invincible up in the air, as if none of the heartache and pain of his early years could touch him. And the praise his grandfather had heaped on him had truly made him feel a sense of accomplishment, one he’d never experienced before in his life. For the first time, he’d felt as if he was good at something.
    And he was a good pilot. A great one, according to most of his clients. How he wished his grandfather could have seen it all come to fruition. He’d passed away before Declan had gotten his pilot’s license. Now O’Rourke Charters had gotten off the ground. The old man would have been so proud and tickled that Declan had made a business out of flying planes, the thing his grandfather had always loved most of all. It hadn’t been fair to lose his grandfather to the ravages of diabetes before he’d had the opportunity to give the old man a glimpse of his aviation enterprise. But the one thing life had taught him was that fair hardly ever entered into the equation.
    He shook his head in an effort to drag himself out of the past. Those memories could do nothing but hurt him. At the moment, he needed to focus on survival and making it through this ordeal. Night was quickly approaching, and being able to get a fire going would be a huge advantage for them.
    He pointed at the area he had just checked out. “That spot over there is probably the best shelter we’re going to find. It’ll give us a little protection from the elements, and if we can get a fire going, we’ll be able to stay warm through the night.”
    Annie rubbed her hands together. “A fire sounds good. It will save us from hypothermia. I’m sure you’re aware of it, but hypothermia sets in when your body core temperature is below ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. Signs of hypothermia can be drowsiness, confusion, shivering and a slowed-down heart rate.”
    He nodded his head. As a native Alaskan, he had known about hypothermia before he’d learned to tie his shoes. “Good to know, Annie. I for one do not intend to find that out firsthand,” Declan said. “I’m going to make haste and look for some tinder to get the fire going.”
    Declan began to root around in the brush. He picked up pine needles, shredded bark and a few twigs. When he returned to the makeshift shelter with an armful of tinder, he deposited it in a heap on the ground. He noticed that Annie had moved her belongings over to the site. She had made a little pile of things in front of her seat on a log. With a cheeky grin on