Chapter Thirty-Four
Archer made it back from Ketchikan in record time, but too late. Bridget had taken the damn Anchorage run. He’d missed her by less than thirty minutes, according to Lenna, who appeared none the wiser to any distress she might have been in when she’d left. Whatever degree of anger and betrayal she grappled with, she’d been able to compartmentalize her emotions and do the job. He should have found that reassuring, considering “the job” put her and a load of passengers thousands of feet in the air and reliant on her skills as a pilot for their survival.
But he wasn’t compartmentalizing quite so deftly at the moment. A bitter brew of anger—at his father, himself, and yes, Bridget, too—and hurt threatened to choke him. He didn’t want to spew any of that ugliness on an innocent bystander like Lenna, so before he gave in to the urge to put his fist through a wall, he told the older woman Bridget had left something for him in the office and escaped to the seclusion of that small, private space. Once in the office, however, bathed only in dingy gray light filtering in from the single tinted window, the urge came back stronger than ever. Bridget’s engagement ring sat, abandoned, on the desk. And yeah, she’d said she was leaving it there, but some small part of him hoped she’d decide not to give up on him—on them—without hearing him out.
Suddenly exhausted, he lowered himself to the desk chair and stared at the ring. Bridget had her pride, and an impulsive streak a mile wide, but she also had a smart, logical mind in that beautiful head of hers. Given a moment to reflect on what had happened, her logical mind would surely have to question how he could have manipulated her into their engagement, given the way it had come about. Hide the ring in his sock drawer knowing she’d need to borrow a pair? Place it exactly where she’d happen upon it, sitting on four years of longing, and then…what? Employ reverse psychology to get her to accept the thing? Even he, an adept motherfucking planner, couldn’t plan like that, and deep down, she knew it. She had to.
Completely without a plan at the moment, he pocketed the ring and withdrew his phone. His fingers hovered over the screen while he considered and discarded various options. Fly to Anchorage and talk to her tonight? Make her see reason? Useless, unless she was ready to talk. If not, he’d end up escorted off the premises by hotel security and/or the Anchorage PD. Two hundred miles was a long way to go to spend the night in a cell and give her ammo for that restraining order she’d once claimed to want. Call her? Again, total waste of time until she was ready to talk. Flooding her voicemail accomplished nothing. Tamping down on frustration, he resorted to the only viable method of communication left to him at the moment. He shot off a text to her with a brief and simple request.
If she didn’t do at least that much, and she was in one piece, she would damn well find him hammering on her hotel door at an ungodly hour, at which point he might kill her himself. With no other choice, he left. Ten silent minutes later, he arrived home to a house half full of her, but otherwise empty, aside from a dog and a kitten curled up together in Key’s bed in the kitchen. Two sets of light blue eyes looked at him when he entered. Key gave a loud yawn that sounded like “Arr-errr,” and lowered his head. Wally gave a little mewl before snuggling back into Husky fur. They, at least, appeared happy with each other. “You guys have it all worked out, don’t you?”
Key snored in response. He got himself a glass with ice, poured two fingers of whiskey, and proceeded to his office to do the thing he should have done a month ago, if not four years ago. He fired up his laptop, composed a brief yet to-the-point letter to his father, resigning from the board of directors of Ellison Enterprises, copied the other directors, and hit send.
After a sip of whiskey, he waited for the keen edge of loss to cut. It didn’t. Not really. He’d called Bridget prideful, but the truth was, he’d held onto the board seat out of his own sense of pride. He’d forfeited so much in terms of time and effort to get where he wanted to be, but he’d stubbornly refused to relinquish his place on the board of his family’s business on the grounds that it was his, and also as a “fuck-you” to his father.
But in trying to keep it, he’d given the man leverage. Letting it go removed the leverage. He took another sip, closed his eyes while it burned off the worst of that bitter brew he’d been swallowing since his father’s self-satisfied call earlier in the afternoon. And felt…liberated.
Yeah. Liberated. He took a last swallow and put the drink aside. Resigning removed the remaining hook his father hoped to jerk him around by and gave Bridget clarity regarding his motives to be with her.
Or it would give her clarity, assuming she ever spoke to him again.
…
Bridget throttled up through thick, gray morning fog and low visibility. At three thousand feet, as promised by the Anchorage tower, the dense cloud cover broke. The air settled. A pearly dawn tinted the eastern sky, but despite the beauty of it, she thanked God her flight home involved cargo only. After a sleepless night spent trying to untangle her emotions, she wanted the drone of the engines to quiet her mind. She didn’t have it in her to point out natural landmarks and wildlife sighting to enthralled tourists.
In solitude and radio silence, she climbed another thousand feet, set her course, and settled back to—
“Hey, Bridge.”
Oh, fuck. Not this. Not now. Turning her head fast enough to court whiplash, she stared at the filmy image of her brother in the co-pilot’s seat. “Go away, Shay.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “I can’t talk right now. Little busy flying and all.”
When she opened her eyes, he still sat there, clearer and more solid. “We’ve been over this. You control the when and where. I gotta say, though, it’s nice to be in the cockpit again, so thanks for that.”
“You’re welcome. But doesn’t it, uh, make you nervous, considering?”
He grinned. “What? Because of my crash?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Nah. I’ve got no worries. I can’t die in a plane crash. I’m already dead, and no, it’s not your fault. We settled that, right? We recognized that you’re still alive and need to live your life without guilt and fear. I felt like you understood, yet here you are, back to running from the future like a repressed, chicken-shit drama queen. When are you going to get over yourself and start living?”
She took a break from checking her instrument panel to glare at him before focusing on the altimeter. “I moved forward. I let myself buy into happy endings again and embraced the future. Big mistake, as it turned out. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t feel gutted right now, would I? I wouldn’t wonder if Archer asked me to wear his ring because he loves me or because he wants to… Fuck. I don’t know. Win a pissing match with his father.”
Silence followed that little outburst, so long and thick she looked over at the seat beside her again. Shay sat there, staring at her, unsmiling.
“Do you really wonder?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because he moved to freaking Captivity to be with you. Because he stepped up for you when you needed him. Because the man loves you—don’t ask me why—and you know it. You love him, too. Uh-uh. No.” He cut her off when she would have spoken. “Don’t even try to deny it. I know these things.”
“Get out of my head, Shay.”
“I’m not in your head, dummy. I’m in your heart. It’s a lot stronger than you think, by the way. It survived a bad turn at love when you were young and fragile. It survived losing me. It’s got a lot to give. Trust what it’s telling you.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she admitted, appalled to realize she was close to tears. “Can I trust him?”
“What does that strong heart of yours say?”
“I don’t know.” Frustrated, she squeezed the yoke, as if she could wring an answer from it. “I want to believe him, so badly, but why didn’t he level with me from the start?”
“Um, he worried you’d have doubts and bolt. Silly man,” he added, loading plenty of irony into the two words.
“All right. Point made. I did bolt, and I hate to be predictable, but if he’d told me before his father dropped a bomb in my lap…”
“Look, I’m not saying he did things perfectly, but he doesn’t have a crystal ball. You’re going to have to trust him.”
“I…” Can’t. Shouldn’t. I’m too afraid of being hurt again? Instead of any of those replies, what came out of her mouth was a very soft, “I do.” Simply acknowledging it took the burn out of her eyes and the thickness from her throat. “I love him, and I trust him. And oh God. I owe him such an apology…”
“You owe him a grovel to end all grovels.” Shay rubbed his hands together in anticipation but then offered her an encouraging smile as he started to fade. “Don’t worry. You’re up to the challenge. Just do me one favor.”
“What favor?” She could barely see him, strained to hear him.
“Watch out for the geese.”
Huh? “What geese?”
“Last challenge,” he called faintly, from very far away. A loud thump in the right engine emptied her lungs. She whipped her head forward as the engine coughed, sputtered and…died.