Read One Night with her Bachelor for Free Online

soon as she took in the scene in front of her. Josh’s friend Jake sat at the base of a tree, sobbing. And a small clearing was marred by a gigantic hole in the ground.
    “Oh my God. Josh! Josh!” She started to run, but Gabriel yanked her back against his chest. She fought him with all her strength. “My baby! Let me go!”
    He spun her around, backed her up against a tree and took the helmet off her. His face held no fear, only calm determination. “We’re going to find him and everything’s going to be okay, all right, Molly?”
    She couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but dig her nails into his hard arms.
    “What’s his friend’s name?”
    “J-Jake.”
    “Okay. I’m going to let you go, but if you go anywhere near that hole you’re not just endangering yourself but Josh, too. Got me?”
    She nodded. Her boy was in a hole. In a hole in the ground .
    She pressed her lips together till the metallic tang of blood swept across her tongue.
    Gabriel grabbed her hand and led her to Jake, cutting a wide path around the hole. Every instinct, every fiber of her being, screamed for her to run at it and jump in head-first to be with Josh. Only the insistent pressure of Gabriel’s grip kept her moving away from it toward Jake.
    “Hey, buddy. Where’s Josh?”
    Jake sniffled and pointed at the hole. “We were walking around looking for the mine shaft, and the ground just… it just—”
    “Has he said anything? Made any noise?”
    Jake shook his head, his breath catching. “I-I called his name, but he hasn’t an-answered.”
    Sobs racked Molly’s body as her strength gave out. She collapsed to her knees and hugged Jake. But he wasn’t the one she wanted in her arms. He wasn’t the one she needed to hold.
    Gabriel’s hand landed on her shoulder. “Have you ever ridden a motorcycle?”
    She shook her head. “Only today.”
    “Okay. The path back to the campsite’s too treacherous if you don’t have experience. When we find him, we’ll have to carry him out, so I need you guys to make a stretcher.” Gabriel opened up his rucksack and dropped some canvas fabric and two metal poles on the ground next to her. “Unfold the poles so they’re as long as they can be. Lay them on the canvas next to each other with enough room for Josh in the middle. Wrap the canvas around the polls like this.” He motioned as if he were wrapping a long, thin gift twice over. “Can you do that?”
    She nodded and got to work, grateful for something to take her mind off all the horrifying images crowing for her attention.
    Josh, broken and bloody.
    Josh, already gone.
    Josh, buried.
    Gabriel’s hand landed on her shoulder. “Molly, I’m going to do everything I can. Trust me.”
    She gritted her teeth and forced herself not to be sick.
    *
    Molly looked traumatized, but Gabriel had to shift his focus away from her to Josh. He scanned the area around the hole. There were trees all around, a damn good thing because the area around the hole was now type-B soil and likely to cave in even more if he stepped on it. He needed edge protection, and he knew how to create it.
    Doubts tried to eat away at his concentration. He hadn’t done anything like this since the explosion. Would his leg hold his weight? Or would it betray him and send him falling into the hole?
    No time to worry about it. He had to find a way in there that relied mostly on his upper body and right leg. Then he had to find Josh.
    He hustled over to a tree, dug his right toes into a gap and hoisted himself up. He couldn’t trust his left leg to work properly, so he let it dangle as he wrapped climbing webbing around the trunk a few feet above his head. He clipped a carabiner into the webbing and attached one end of his rope, tying a figure eight on a bite.
    He jumped down, landing on his good foot. Keeping well clear of the disturbed soil, he hurried to the other side of the hole. He took his knife from his bag and gritted it in his teeth as he climbed a couple