Chapter Twenty-One

Bridget could offer weak excuses. She could argue. She could try to negotiate. None of it would work, Archer vowed as he walked from the parking lot to the terminal. He would call her out on the weak excuses, counter every argument, and negotiate her right into a corner, but one way or another, she would spend this evening having dinner at his house. Tonight officially kicked off the play-hard-to-get portion of his win-Bridget-back plan, and he intended to play very hard. He also had a big ace up his sleeve. One he doubted she’d be able to resist.

Once inside, he looked through the tarmac-facing windows along the back wall and saw Wing had done as he’d asked. The Cirrus sat outside the hangar, nose wheel chocked, ready to go. The evening promised clear, calm weather for a thirty-minute flight. He ought to be able to get up and down with minimal jostle. A good thing, because his anticipated passenger wasn’t ready to push the envelope yet.

“Back again, Archer? There’s nothing on the schedule for this evening.”

He turned to find Lenna kneeling by the beverage niche, restocking the mini-fridge.

“Thought I’d take mine up, see if I still remember how to do anything besides run passengers and cargo.”

She stood, dusted off the knees of her black pants, and turned to him. “Ah. A pleasure flight, in a nice plane. All by yourself?” Her eyebrows lifted. “Maybe you’d like some company?”

“I, uh…” He hadn’t counted on Lenna inviting herself along. “I planned to ask Bridget, actually.”

“Oh, but the Cirrus seats seven, right?” She tipped her head and sent him a guileless gaze. “Plenty of room for three. Plus”—she straightened to her full five-foot nothing inches—“I’m small.”

His plan didn’t involve a small, clueless third wheel. “Tom’s probably home holding dinner for you. I don’t want your husband mad at me. Why don’t we find a free day and I’ll take you both up?”

The older woman approached him, laughing, and touched his shoulder. “Relax. I’m only teasing. I’m not so old and so long out of the game I don’t realize you’re trying to woo our Bridget.”

Relief had him returning her laugh. “How am I doing?”

“She’ll enjoy a short hop. She hasn’t been out of the air this long in years, and she loves to fly as much as any of you. Maybe more. But”—Lenna’s brow lowered, and she flattened her lips into a stern line—“be gentle with her. She’s not as tough as she looks.”

“It’s a calm evening. I wouldn’t take her up if I didn’t think I could manage a smooth ride.”

“I don’t mean just the tailbone. She has other tender parts, especially after last winter, so have some care.”

Did Bridget know she had a human bulldog looking out for her? “I have nothing but care for her.”

Lenna’s brow smoothed, and her lips curved into a satisfied smile. She reached up and patted his cheek. “If I thought any different, I’d already be out there in the shotgun seat of your pretty little plane. Have a nice night.” She stepped away and headed to the ticket counter to retrieve her purse and coat.

“You, too,” he said as she walked out of the terminal.

Turning away with the intention of rousting Bridget from the office, he stopped when he saw her leaning against the archway, watching him. For once, her expression offered him no clue to her mood.

“Hey.”

She straightened. “Hey, yourself.”

He closed the distance between them, wrapped an arm around her, and gently cupped her ass. “How’s your butt?”

She ignored the question. “About dinner—”

“Want to take a ride beforehand?”

“I don’t want—” Her gaze narrowed, and she trailed off as his question over-rode whatever speech she had planned. “What kind of ride?”

“I’m going to take the Cirrus up. If this”—he patted her backside—“isn’t troubling you too much, I thought you’d like to come along.”

The excitement in her wide eyes chased away every guarded shadow in her expression. “Are you serious? Right now?” The pulse at the base of her throat visibly quickened. He couldn’t hold back a grin.

“Yeah. Right now. She’s all fueled up and ready. Interested?”

“Holy shit.” She punched him lightly in the arm. “Yes! Just give me a minute to grab my keys and lock up.” She spun and started to hurry away, then paused. “Oh. Key.” Turning, she stared back at him. “Key’s in the office…”

He didn’t want a furry third wheel for this flight any more than he wanted an overprotective airfield admin. “We’ll only be gone thirty minutes or so. Can he have free run of the terminal for that amount of time?”

“He’ll be fine for that amount of time.” Rushing off again, she hollered, “K’eyush, you’re guarding the terminal for a while. Okay, boy?”

“Grab your seat cushion,” he called over the Husky’s bark. “I’ll meet you out back.”

He did an external safety check while he waited, pulled the chock from the nose wheel, and opened the clamshell door on the side of the craft when she came down the ramp to the tarmac.

He took a minute to admire her long body in her blue-and-white argyle sweater, loose jeans with frayed hems that hit midway down the shafts of her low-heeled, black, lace-up boots. She carried her cushion under one arm and held her keys in the other. A light breeze toyed with her hair, blowing her long bangs across her eyes as she turned to inspect the plane.

“Hello, beautiful,” she said, tucking her keys into her pocket so she could run her hand over the nose of the craft, along the line where the charcoal gray upper body paint met gunmetal gray lower body paint.

He stepped over and swept her bangs from her eyes. “Hello yourself, beautiful.”

Indigo eyes met his, and he saw humor in their depths. “I was speaking to the plane.”

He leaned in and kissed her lightly. “Not me.” Divesting her of the cushion, he added, “Just so you know, the plane can’t speak.”

“She’s speaking to me,” Bridget insisted and pressed her ear against the fuselage. “She’s saying, ‘Let’s go for a ride.’”

He gestured her to the stairs. “Let’s.”

Bridget climbed up first. “No stepping on a strut to get into this cockpit. Fancy… Whoa.” She stopped halfway up the steps.

He knew the gray-on-gray interior of the craft made an impression she would appreciate. The cockpit balanced technology, efficiency, and comfort. “Get in.” He passed her the cushion. “I’ll walk you through everything.”

“Dual controls,” she noted, winging a brow at him as she settled into the right-hand seat. She closed her hand around the joystick.

“Don’t even think about it.” He sealed the door shut and took his seat. “You’re the passenger.”

“Hmm,” was all she said to that, then looked around for a headset. “Communication?”

“No need,” he replied and strapped in. Nodding his head toward the terminal, he said, “There’s nobody back there to talk with, and she runs so quiet you’ll think you’re flying commercial. We’ll be able to hear each other. Unless you want my voice in your ear?”

An eye roll served as her reply. “You might want my voice in your ear. I know this runway, this air, better than most.”

He flipped the switch on the dash to power up the craft. “I think I can manage. I’ve been flying your passengers and cargo for days.” Flashing her a grin, he dropped his voice. “Pretty sure I can give you an unforgettable ride.”

She laughed. “We’ll see.”

He listened through the system check—all good—and then released the brakes and throttled up to make the turn and line the craft up with the longer of Captivity Air’s intersecting runways.

“How much takeoff distance do you need?” she asked.

“They recommend a little over two thousand feet, but I’ve gotten her airborne in less. Why?” He glanced over at her. “You wanna try the short runway?”

She looked his way, slid aviators on, and kicked her grin up at one side. “I’m not in great shape for a water evacuation, and it would be a shame to send your million-dollar plaything to the bottom of the cove before I got a chance to fly her. Let’s save that until there’s someone more experienced at the controls.”

Meaning her. He sent her his own grin. “I’ve got plenty of experience. Don’t you worry.” But as he was already lined up at the proper runway, he throttled up. She gave highly perfunctory “all clears,” and he took off.

“Good acceleration,” she said.

He nodded, making minor control adjustments as he sped down the runway. Barnstorming wasn’t the goal. He wanted everything calm. Once he hit eighty knots, he pulled up. She lifted off like a feather rather than a four-thousand-pound piece of metal.

“Drop the nose a little, here,” Bridget said, coaching him just the way she’d done in the old days.

He reached over and touched his index finger to her shoulder. “Passenger.” He aimed his thumb at his chest. “Pilot.” And this was part of it, too, he realized. She’d introduced him to flying and taught him all the basics. He wanted to display his competence to her. Not just hold his own but hold her in thrall. Impress her.

After a few beats of silence, she said, “Sorry.” Even softer, she added, “Old habit.” A restless hand attacked her hair.

Well, hell. He also wanted her to have fun. Climbing to three thousand feet, he banked around slowly so they could fly along the curve of the cove.

“Smooth.” Bridget sat taller and peered through the window.

“She can yank and bank, if necessary. She’s got the maneuverability. But we’re not up here to push the envelope, right?”

“No. This is good, actually.” She raised her aviators to the top of her head and took in the view of the crystal cove, the weathered red terminal, the colorful town rising above the open green field now dotted with the earliest blooms of yellow poppies and blue-purple lupine, and the white-topped peak of Big Kat surrounding it all.

“Does it ever get old?”

She shook her head. “Never.” The word came out soft. “I feel like I’ve been away from this for years instead of days.”

He caught her blinking rapidly and laid a hand on her thigh. “Missed it?”

“Yeah.” Letting out a half laugh, she wiped her face with her sleeve. “I guess I have.”

“You’ll be dodging geese again soon.”

She nodded.

He banked, bringing the southern end of the cove into view, including the promontory where a tall white tower stood on a patch of green dotted with more early-blooming wildflowers. “And buzzing the lighthouse.”

She smiled. “Occasionally.” The smile deepened. “That’s more of a Shay stunt. He did it from time to time, just to watch picnicking tourists spill their chardonnay into their egg salad.”

“What’s your favorite thing to do when you’re up here for fun?” Would she share that with him? Take something that was hers and let him do it with her? Let him make it theirs?

She turned in her seat to look at him. “This might be considered pushing the envelope a smidge.”

“I don’t mind if we push it a little. It’s you I’m trying to keep comfy.”

“I’ll be fine.”

He suspected the truth was that she really felt like whatever she had in mind was worth a little risk but decided to go with it, for now. “Where to, Miss?”

Inching forward in her seat, she pointed. “See the creek that empties into the cove over there?”

“I see it.”

“Follow that creek north. Keep the altitude around seven hundred. You can drop your speed to two hundred knots.”

“Roger.” He did as she said, enjoying the view as they flew northeast, over his side of Captivity, over his house, climbing steadily as the hillside merged into the mountain. Some thin clouds appeared at the higher altitude, but visibility remained good. Before them, long, lacy white ribbons of waterfalls unfurled from the craggy face of the mountain and tumbled into canyons.

“That’s a pretty sight.”

“It gets better. Keep going.”

He didn’t think anything got better than her wide smile and eager eyes, but he followed where she pointed, navigating to a gap between two peaks, where sheer sheets of icy granite scowled at each other across a span of maybe one hundred feet.

He steered them between the rocky slopes and joked, “She’s got a forty-foot wingspan. You’ll warn me before we…oh, I don’t know…ding a wing on the side of a mountain?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he wished he could bite them back. He didn’t want to drag Shay’s tragedy into the cockpit with them. But she turned to grin at him and tapped her joystick. “I can take the controls if you’re nervous.”

“Back off, Shanahan. I’ve got this. What next?”

“Keep the current heading and prepare to be amazed.”

She really meant it, apparently, because she pulled her phone from her pocket and got ready to take video. Just as the channel between the cliff walls grew uncomfortably narrow, they flared out into an open valley with mountains on three sides. The mountain directly in front of them had full shelves of packed snow now subject to the slow spring melt. Bridget extended her index finger and twirled it in a lazy circle. “Let’s see what shakes loose.”

“You want a snow shower?”

She cocked her head, grinning big. “Could be a snow shower, could be an avalanche. One never knows on a day like today. But it’s going to come down sooner or later. We’re just giving it a little nudge.”

“What happens if it’s an avalanche?”

“You bank hard and haul ass.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“What’s the matter? Can’t your pretty bird handle a little snow? Afraid to scratch the paint?”

Afraid of getting pummeled to the bottom of the valley by a thousand tons of snow, but not willing to let her see him flinch, he trimmed at his current speed, firmed his grip on the stick, and concentrated on his visuals. “Tell me when.”

“Atta boy,” she said, faced the mountain. “Come in close. You’ve got to send those sound waves out like standing water under a tire at sixty miles per hour. With a prop plane like the Beaver, you can almost feel when the vibrations hit hard enough to start a fall, but in a jet”—she glanced back at him—“we’ll have to find out.”

“Or die trying?” Despite his reservations, he did as she asked.

She looked back at him, still grinning like a fool. A sexy, scary fool. “There are worse ways to go.”

“There are better ways to go. Lots of them.”

“Nobody’s going anywhere,” she muttered, “and…there it is…”

Just as she spoke a light rain of snow hit the wing. He banked left, slowly, and circled around in time to frame up in the windshield a view of a thick slab sliding off a lip of rock and falling in breathtaking slow-motion down the canyon, leaving a rainbow in its wake from the trail of tiny ice particles chasing it into the valley. Like a private show from Mother Nature, for those bold enough to go after it.

“Nicely done.”

He turned to find her looking at him, felt a burst of pride at the admiration in her eyes. “Thanks.”

She sat back, pleased and, by all appearances, relaxed, but he felt her gaze linger on him. After a quiet moment, she touched his arm. “Thank you. I needed this today. More than I realized.”

Covering her hand with his own, he gave it a quick squeeze. “Anytime.”

He’d never meant a single word more.