Vala,
now a divorcee, and her young son, Davis, arrive in Phoenix, Arizona,
intending to hike into Superstition Mountain to follow an old map her
son was given by an elderly Apache before he died. Davis believes it's a
treasure map. Convinced by a camping outfitter that they need a guide,
Vala checks the list on the store's bulletin board, and finds one name
crossed out. Perversely she reads it anyway. . Bram Hunter! Even though
she left Phoenix with her family when she was sixteen, she's never
forgotten him.
Which drives her to call the number listed.
Bram's
planning to leave for a Caribbean vacation in a few days, but he
remembers Vala. He has no intention of guiding anyone anywhere right
now, but remembers one night long ago, and agrees to meet her.
"Mountain Moonlight…is a leisurely-paced, heart-warming story with intriguing mythological overtones." Teresa Roebuck
Excerpt:
Chapter
1
"Apache
Junction," Davis said as Vala stopped the rental car in front of a store
advertising camping equipment. "That's a really cool name for a town,
Mom."
Seeing
his enthusiasm made her almost forget the hassle to get here--how she'd argued
and pleaded for ten days off so they could fly to Arizona after the Christmas
holidays, which she already knew she couldn't take off. Davis would have to
miss a week or so of school, but that couldn't be helped. Finally her employer
had rather begrudgingly given her the seven vacation days she had coming plus
another three days leave of absence.
She
was grateful she hadn't been fired. Heaven knows she needed the job. Since
Neal's new wife had blessed him with a son last May, he tended to be careless
about his child-support payments for Davis. He was equally careless about
keeping in touch with his first-born son. Or maybe heartless was the right
word.
Davis
tugged at her arm. "Look!" He pointed. "That's it, that's
Superstition Mountain."
She
stared at the towering mass of rock--volcanic, she'd read somewhere--off to the
northeast. It wasn't her first view of the mountain because she'd lived in
Phoenix when she was young. Her thought now was the same as she'd had back
then--Superstition Mountain didn't look real, thrusting up forbiddingly like it
did in the middle of this flat land.
"I'm
glad we came," Davis said, his gaze fixed on the mountain. "Really,
really glad."
So
was she. Davis probably believed he'd convinced her to make the trip because of
his earnest arguments about how finding the treasure was going to make up for
having to spend a lot of money to get to Arizona. She didn't intend to admit to
her son that she was willing to do anything to keep the bright glow of
enthusiasm in his eyes. Before John Mokesh had given him the old deer skin map,
Davis hadn't been interested in anything. Even his Christmas computer game, one
he wanted, failed to fill the bill.
Poor
Mr. Mokesh had died in his sleep the night after he'd presented Davis with the
map. To her surprise, her son had accepted the old man's death without
excessive grief, saying, "Mokesh told me it was his time to die. That's
why he gave me his treasure map."
"Mom,
you're lollygagging," Davis said. The word came from her father and
probably from his father, but it had caught Davis's attention and he liked to
use it.
"I
was just thinking," she said.
He
grabbed her hand, tugging her toward the store entrance. Once inside, Vala told
the clerk, a tanned, healthy-looking woman with a long braid down her back,
that she and her son planned to make a trip into the Superstitions. "But I
don't know much about camping," she admitted, "and so I haven't the
faintest idea what we'll need."
The
clerk's eyebrows raised. "You're planning to trek into the Superstitions
without knowing anything about camping? I hate to rain on your parade but that
is not a good idea. Not without a guide. That mountain isn't
greenhorn-friendly. Fact is, Superstition Mountain can't be called friendly to
anyone."
"A
guide?" Vala repeated. "How do I go about finding one?" She
hadn't planned on any extra expenses but maybe guides took credit cards.
"We
got a list posted." The woman jerked a thumb toward a bulletin board near
the front of the store. "Names and phone numbers. We don't guarantee any
of the guides but, as far as we've heard, they're all able to bring you out of
the Superstitions in almost as good a shape as you were when you went in. Any
one of them can tell you what you need to buy and we'll be more than glad to
sell you whatever they recommend."
Thanking
her, Vala went to take a look at the list while Davis roamed through the store,
examining the camping gear. The third name on the guide list was crossed off.
Perversely, she wondered why, leaning closer to see if she could make out the
letters beneath the heavy dark line. Was it Bruce something? Or Brian? No, that
was an "a" and then an "m" after the Br. She gasped,
staring at the paper in disbelief. Bram! Was it possible? The last name
certainly looked like Hunter.
Turning
toward the clerk, she called, "What about this Bram Hunter? Why is he
crossed off?"
The
woman shrugged. "That's Bram for you. He only works when he feels like
it."
Glancing
at the list again, Vala took a pen from her bag and squinted at the paper as
she wrote down the barely legible phone number, all the time telling herself it
was a waste of time. Bram had taken his name off the list, so why call him? She
already knew he wasn't available as a guide and if she made the call for old
time's sake, he probably wouldn't remember her anyway. Why should he? She'd
left Phoenix with her family when she was sixteen and, at that age, she'd been
a bookish, mousy, overly shy girl.
He
might not remember her but she'd never quite forgotten him. At eighteen Bram
Hunter was the most devastatingly handsome boy in the school with just enough
of a shadowed reputation to intrigue every girl she knew. Including her. Her
mother, unlike the mothers of her friends, had never bothered to warn her to
steer clear of Bram Hunter, believing Vala was too shy to speak to any boy. Her
mother had been right--in a way. But there were some things her mother never
found out.
Sophisticated
Taylor Briggs had her entire life planned out. Engaged to her college
sweetheart, Ari Gallagher, Taylor learns a week before her wedding
that her perfect life is all based on lies and betrayal. But being the
daughter of the Mayor comes at a high price: Taylor’s life is not her
own, and she has no choice but to go forward with the wedding. 
