Always Valentine's Day

Helicopters scared her silly.

Everybody else seemed totally confident about the ride. As far she was concerned, they were crazy. Something about a helicopter seemed a bit too improbable to really work. After all, straight wings were everywhere you looked in nature—birds, dragonflies, even mosquitoes.

She couldn’t think of a single critter that had blades whirling around over its head.

The sound of the motor changed. Larkin stared out the window, feeling panic clog her throat.

Suddenly her fingers were caught up in a strong grip. She looked down to see Christopher’s hand clasping hers and glanced up to see him wink.

“We’ll be fine,” he mouthed at her over the din.

“Okay, folks,” Buck said. “Here we go.”

And with a bounce, they lifted off into the air.

She’d endure the flight, Larkin told herself grimly, even if she wound up sweat soaked and emotionally exhausted by the end. But as Juneau fell away and the helicopter rose over the ridgeline that ran behind it, an almost giddy magic took hold of her.

She’d had no idea it would be like this. They were surrounded by Plexiglas, but it felt more like really flying, soaring over a snow-covered landscape like a bird. Then ahead of them rose a ridge higher than the rest. And Buck aimed directly for it.

Larkin’s heart pounded a little bit, equal parts excitement and nerves. Her grip on Christopher’s hand tightened, and she felt him squeeze back. It seemed simply too high for the helicopter to get over, as though they would hook a skid and go tumbling down the mountainside. But instead, with an almost insouciant flick of the control stick, Buck sent them up and over.

And she caught her breath.

The glacier unfurled below them, a long sweep of gray-white snaking between ridgelines, looking almost incongruously smooth amid the rugged landscape. “That’s the Taku glacier below us,” Buck said. “It’s the only one you’ll see today that’s still growing. All the others are receding.”

He sent the aircraft tilting a little bit, edging in toward the ground.

“Oh, look.” The words just burst out of her. One minute, they were flying over the striated, dirty gray snow of the glacier. The next, she was staring down into a long crevasse at the most intense, most luminous blue she had ever seen. Impossible to believe such a gorgeous, glowing color existed. She couldn’t stop looking at it, turning to glance back as they flew past.

“Can you take us by that again?” someone asked, echoing the words in her head. It was Christopher, she realized.

Larkin glanced over at him quickly to see him watching her, not the glacier. Something flipped in her stomach, something she didn’t think had anything at all to do with the motion of the helicopter. Suddenly, it was hard to breathe.

“There’s your crevasse.” Christopher pointed beyond her. It released her from the spell, and she turned, gulping air. It was just the close confines of the cabin, she told herself. Too many people, not enough air, all of it making her light-headed. That was all.

She stared down at the glacier, amazed at how clearly she could see it. The surface, she realized belatedly, was coming closer. They were dropping, lower and lower still, until, soft as thistledown, the helicopter settled onto the ice.

Chapter Four

“Okay, you got to be smart here,” Buck said as the rotors ran down. “Watch yourself on the ice. Even with them boots, you can slip. And be careful around the crevasses. You want to look into ’em, do it from the ends. You do it from the sides and you’re gonna get a closer look than you bargained for. And if you fall in, I guarantee Scout and I ain’t comin’ after you.”

Larkin put on her hat and stepped carefully down on the ice. She started to walk a little ways away and turned back to the helicopter, only to see Christopher watching her. “What?”

“Don’t let that hat fall off. Scout’s likely to think it’s a rabbit.”

“Don’t make fun of this hat. I like this hat.”

“I like that hat on you, too. You look like you should be sitting in Red Square drinking Stoli.”

She sniffed. “You’re lucky there’s no loose snow here I could make a snowball from.”

“You’re from L.A. What would you know about snowballs?”

“Certain things come naturally,” she said silkily and walked over toward a fissure on the face of the glacier. She wanted to see that blue, that impossible, luminous pale blue-green that was almost ethereal enough to make her believe in angels.

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