Flying Home

“Maybe he hasn’t made it there yet,” the woman offered, confirming to Merry that he was heading there.

Perfect. “Maybe not,” she conceded, trying to control her growing excitement. “I just never expected to see him here, either. You know, on a charter. After all, the word is he’s got tons of money. But maybe it makes more sense to lease instead of buy. I don’t know anything about big business.”

The woman seemed a bit put off by Merry’s confession. “I wouldn’t know, but most men in his position have a company plane. He’s no different.”

His own plane! She felt like screaming, “Yes,” and pumping her fist, but instead she shrugged. “Of course.”

“You’re friends with Mr. Carson?” the woman asked, the smile all but gone now.

“I knew him since we were kids,” she said, deliberately slanting the truth toward the idea that they’d been close. Merry left without another word and carried her bags across to the store that Gage had entered.

She stepped in, and spotted him in a rear display area, looking at snow globes. He lifted one, shook it, put it back, and repeated those actions as he worked his way through about a dozen or so ornaments. She took a breath, tried to still her hammering heart, then headed toward the man.

CHAPTER TWO

“A SNOW GLOBE INSPECTOR?” Merry asked, going for the silly approach as she got within a few feet of Gage Carson. She’d save the serious begging for later, when she worked up the nerve to ask him for a ride on his plane.

The man turned at the sound of her voice, and she met the darkest brown eyes she’d ever looked into. They were narrowed on her, either from puzzlement or annoyance. She wasn’t quite sure. “Are you speaking to me?”

“I’m sorry, I saw you checking out all the snow globes and I had images of...” She shook her head, stopping mid-sentence, knowing that hokey line had run its course. “I’ve always loved snow globes.” That was the truth.

He surprised her by not dismissing her abruptly. “So does my mother, and I need a peace offering of sorts for when I see her. I missed Christmas with the family.” He glanced at the globe in his hand, and then put it back on the shelf. “The thing is, none of these seem right.”

“What does she like—angels, Norman Rockwell scenes, Winnie the Pooh?” She glanced at the American flags encased in three of the globes. “Something patriotic?”

He chuckled roughly at that and shook his head. “No, none of those seems quite right...” Merry scanned the globes and saw a smaller one sitting in a corner and reached for it. “Well, then, how about this?” She held it up to Gage after she shook it so the artificial snow was swirling around a solitary man in buckskins who stood with his head thrown back, and one hand raised to point to something he seemed to be yelling to. Then she saw the shadow on the glass, the smoky silhouette that was barely there, the suggestion of a wolf.

Gage looked at it critically, then slowly took it from her hand and studied it. “Great,” he said as he twirled it in his strong fingers. Then his dark eyes met hers again. “Thank you...” He raised an inquiring eyebrow at her in a question.

“Brenner,” she said. “Merry Brenner.”

He twirled the globe again. “Well, Merry, she’ll love this,” he murmured. Merry had seen Gage’s mother, Lark Carson, a long time ago—a tiny woman with flowing black hair, a ready smile and a real pride in her Indian heritage. As the daughter of the man whose family had given his family name, Wolf, to the town, she could imagine her being particular about the general presentation of the Native spirit, even in a snow globe. And to have a wolf suggested in it would be specific to her. “It will really suit her,” she agreed.

He glanced at her quizzically. “How would you know that?”

She blinked, realizing what she’d said. She couldn’t take it back, so she pushed on. “You are Gage Carson, aren’t you?”

He was obviously surprised. “How do you know me?” he asked, as his gaze flicked over her.

“From Wolf Lake,” she said, letting him digest that and ask his own follow up question.

And he did. “You’re from town?”

“I was, a long time ago, but then I came back for work. I remember the stories about your grandpa helping form Wolf Lake.”

He looked puzzled. “I really don’t remember any Brenners in town.”

“You wouldn’t,” she started to say, ready to tell him her birth name, but she didn’t get the chance before the guard he’d spoken to earlier, came rushing up to him.

“Sir, Mr. Carson? It’s all ready. Just pick up the papers, and head on out.”

“Thanks,” Gage said, and when the guard left, he looked back at Merry as he held up the globe. “Thanks for your input.”

“Sure, no problem,” she barely got the words out before he was on route to pay for the globe before ducking out of the store with the guard. Without a backward glance, he crossed the walkway and veered away from the charter service desk with the blonde still behind it.

Merry could have kicked herself. Talk about handling the situation all wrong! She should have just walked up to him, introduced herself, and immediately asked for a ride on his plane. “Should have, could have, would have, but didn’t,” she muttered, angry with herself as she quickly rushed after him.

Dragging her bag after her with one hand, the duffel in the other, she frantically tried to catch up to him as he cut diagonally across the seating area. His long stride was eating up the distance as he darted toward a side door marked “Private,” where another guard stood.

When he stopped to show identification to the security guard, Merry called out, “Mr. Carson...Mr. Carson!”

He frowned as she sprinted toward him, stopping within a few feet of him. She let the duffel and suitcase drop by her feet. “I’m sorry,” she gasped, breathless from the exertion. “I don’t mean to bother you, I really don’t,” she said. “But I need to ask you something, and you got away too fast in the store.”

He didn’t bother hiding his impatience as he looked pointedly at his watch, then back to her. “What is it?”

Mary filled him in on her predicament. She spoke in a rush of words, trying to get everything in before he up and left. “I can’t get out until tomorrow sometime, and that’s not acceptable because I’m needed back in Wolf Lake now.”

He hadn’t moved while she spoke, and she barely paused to take a breath before going on. “Since you’re on your way there, and you’ve got your own plane, I was wondering if I could hitch a ride with you back home?”

His intent gaze didn’t change for a long moment; he shattered her hopes with a shake of his head. “No, I can’t do that, and I’m in a hurry.”

“Why not?” she asked before he could disappear through the door the guard had just pushed open for him.

“It’s a company plane.” He held up one hand, palm toward her when she started to protest. “The rules are, no one gets on board who isn’t an employee or connected to the company in some manner. Sorry. Now I have to go.”

Merry swallowed hard. She should have simply told him she was Merry Casey back in the day, that her dad had worked on his parents’ ranch, fencing and running cattle. But she hadn’t, and he’d made up his mind. But she refused to give up. “Mr. Carson,” she began, but he cut her off again.

“No,” he said as he slipped off his ball cap, smoothed back his thick dark hair with one hand then tugged it back on with a sharp jerk of the bill. The action served to shadow his eyes even more. “Rules are rules. Now, I really have to go.”

Panic stricken, one last-ditch idea came to Merry—something that, if he agreed to it, wouldn’t break any rules.

“Mr. Cason, please listen for one minute?”

“This is not open for discussion.”

“I know, but I also know you’re the head of your own company, so the plane is technically yours... And since you’re the one who makes the rules, I think you could make an exception to break those rules just this one time for a neighbor.”

He countered that with, “It’s an insurance thing.”

“You said you take clients up in your plane?”

“Of course I do, when it’s called for,” he admitted, “but—”

She cut him off by reaching in her pocket and pulling out her small wallet. She took all of the bills she had left from her trip, just over a hundred dollars, and held it out to him. “Please, I want you to do some work for me. I’m hiring you, right now, right here, so then I’ll be your client.”

“That’s not going to happen,” he said roughly.

“I want you to design and make a bulletin board for me with ‘Kids Are Cool” at the top of the frame.” She plowed on. “Four feet by four feet, a perfect square and painted in primary colors, nothing too cute or sweet. Just bright and beautiful.”

His harsh expression eased a bit, and that seemed to soften the angular features of his tanned face. Even his eyes seemed a bit less intense. But he didn’t take the money. “I don’t do bulletin boards, only the buildings they hang in.”

She stared at her hand, which was still thrusting the money toward him, and hated the unsteadiness that was starting to show. “It’s a specialty job. I know you do them. A doctor at the hospital said you did one for him when the expansion was completed a few years ago. He brags about it, in fact—he said it was an add-on for the Radiology department.”

“What doctor?”

“Dr. Moses Blackstar.”

“He told you about me?”

She smiled at that. “Yes, he has. That work you did at the hospital is his favorite subject when it comes to you.”

“So you’re friends?”

“I’m on a government grant to The Family Center. I address the emotional and mental needs of challenged children, and he does the physical concerns. He’s basically overseeing the grant, and that means the doctor and I work together a lot.”

Gage cocked his head slightly to one side as if affording himself a better view of this crazy woman trying to hitch a ride with him. “I won’t even ask what’s in Wolf Lake that can’t wait a day, because I need to get in the air myself, and if you’re a friend of Moses’s, then I’ll take that as a recommendation.”

He took the money out of her hand, his heat brushing her skin for a second before he pushed the money in the pocket of his denim jacket. “Just let me know when you need the bulletin board by.”

She drew back quickly, slightly light-headed with the massive relief she was experiencing at his sudden agreement. “Remember, all primary colors,” she said a bit breathlessly as she pushed her now empty wallet back into her purse. When she looked up, he was already going through the open door and into the corridor.

“Come on. I can’t waste any more time,” he called back over his shoulder without looking, obviously certain she was following in his wake. And of course she was. She wasn’t about to let him out of her sight now. She got her bags, and took off down the metal tunnel that echoed with each footstep she took.

At the bend, she turned, and almost rammed into Gage’s back when he slowed to flat-hand a swinging door open to expose the cold gray day and a stretch of tarmac. As she stepped out, feeling the frigid air whip against her face, and gasping for breath, Gage stopped and swung back around. “Give me that,” he said without preamble, and grabbed her suitcase, then turned and kept going. Merry was tall and her legs long enough to keep stride with most men, but Gage was not only long legged, he was a very fast walker.

She caught up to him again at the door to a flat roofed hangar set up against a ten-foot chain-link security fence. “There’s a storm off to the east, and we need to be well out of its path before it gathers strength, but that’ll only happen if we load up and get out of here quickly.”

A storm? It did look like one might be coming, with the sun pretty much blocked from sight by a scattering of clouds. She nodded, yet not even thoughts of a distant storm could ruin her euphoria. She had never truly believed in miracles, but as she met Gage Carson’s probing gaze, she actually felt she was in the middle of one right then.

In a few minutes, she’d be in the air and in less than two hours, she’d finally be home.

* * *

GAGE CARSON DIDN’T have a clue why he’d agreed to take this woman with him, except for her connection to Moses, and that arguing with her would have taken up precious time before he could get in the air. Moses and Gage had been childhood friends, spending boundless days on the Rez or on the Carson Ranch with Jack and Adam—Gage’s brothers—and John Longbow, now the town sheriff. Gage would do anything for Moses, and since it had been clear that Merry Brenner wasn’t going to give up easily, it had been most expedient to agree.

He crossed directly to his plane, a new aircraft with very few hours on it. It was a huge relief that the reason he had to put down in Pueblo, a slight hesitation at cruising speed, had been a simple fix.

He opened the door to the onboard storage area between the back passenger windows and the tail of the plane and tossed in the luggage. He turned to get Merry’s other bag, expecting her to be behind him, but she was still over by the open double doors, staring nervously up at the plane. He crossed to take her other bag from her and said, “Let’s get this show on the road.”

It was then that she started babbling, just as she had when she’d been going on about needing the ride and Moses and custom jobs.

“I had no idea a corporate plane would be so small,” she’d started out with, and hurried onto, “It looks too little to fly, and only two really small engines, they don’t look as if they could actually get any plane up in the air. I mean, the weight has to be a lot, even if it is so...so compact.” At least she’d come up with a new word for small, he thought, and let her prattle on as he tossed her second bag in the compartment.

“If an engine goes out, can it keep going on the other one?”

“If it needs to,” he said over his shoulder.

“But what if both go out?” she prodded. “Does it glide then?” She was slowly approaching the wing by him. “Well, can it?” she asked.

“Glide?” he queried as he closed the compartment hatch and secured it.

“Like one of those planes you make when you’re a kid, all out of balsa wood and it floats in the air?”

“I never made one, but this plane can kind of glide for a short period, depending on the air speed, turbulence and other factors.” He moved closer to her, and the minute he inhaled a floral fragrance that barely permeated the air around him, his first sight of her in the souvenir shop came back to him. The image of a tall and slender woman whom he could face and not have to bend down to make eye contact with, donned in skinny jeans, a suede jacket, chunky boots, and a dab of delicate perfume that had filled his senses.

He was studying her face now, her dark hair streaked with auburn, tugged back into a high ponytail, emphasizing a heart-shaped face dominated by striking green eyes. And there were freckles, dusting her clear skin over a flush to her cheeks that came either from the cold or from her being uneasy about flying. He didn’t want a case of nerves on this flight, not with the weather starting to shift and change.

“You’ve never flown in a small plane before, have you?”

She blinked at him. “Of course I have. Actually, lots of times. Miles and miles and miles. How about you?”

“Obviously I’ve flown,” he countered with his version of her answer to him. He saw her grimace. “I’ve been flying since I was twenty, and soloed before my twenty-first birthday,” he added quickly. “Since then, it’s one thrilling air ride for me after another.”

“I bet,” she muttered as she compulsively twisted the strap of her purse around her forefinger.

He didn’t have the time to talk her into sitting back and relaxing so she could enjoy a “top of the world” flight that would be like no other in her life. The next couple of hours could be fun, but he didn’t say any of that. He had a gut feeling that if he did, she’d start one of her bursts of nervous chatter.

So instead he stared right in those green eyes that had flares of gold at the pupils, and said as evenly as he could, “Let’s get you home.”

Her eyes widened slightly, and he had a momentary fear that she was not only a babbler when she got scared or excited, but she was a crier. Thankfully that didn’t happen. She managed a weak smile and said softly, “Yes, home,” and went toward the side of the plane.

He came up behind her and cupped her elbow to help her up onto the wing. “Grab the door by the bottom, then ease back as you lift it.” She did as he directed and the wing door went up. He was merely helping a client into the plane. No rules, even if they were his own rules, had been broken. He almost laughed at that, remembering how she’d thought fast enough to con him into this flight with a bogus retainer.

He got onto the wing himself, let her get seated, and then warned. “Don’t touch any controls. And be careful about the foot levers, just keep your feet off of them.”

She nodded and shut the door. It only took him a minute to get behind the controls. He was aware of Merry buckling in as he contacted the tower, got his take off position and instructions for taxiing, then he started the plane. He motioned to the same set of controls in front of her. “If we have time, I’ll give you a flying lesson,” he offered to try and ease the tension.

She gasped at him with what sounded like horror, and he smiled. “Just kidding,” he said.

Within minutes, they were on the runway, positioned for takeoff. Once they got clearance, it was flaps up and trim set for takeoff. He released the brakes and with the throttle fully open, the journey began. As the motor revved higher and higher, they gathered speed. At about sixty-five miles per hour, that moment came when the tires left the ground and there was nothing but air around the plane as the earth fell away.

He loved that transition—an addiction he freely admitted to—he loved flying, having this plane at his beck and call. It was the best fringe benefit of his success. But one glance at his passenger and Gage knew she wasn’t sharing any of his excitement at all.

She sat still, her hands gripping her knees, her eyes tightly shut, and he could see her taking deep breaths. Then her lips started to move silently. Praying? Oh, boy, he thought. “You okay?” he asked as they reached cruising altitude.

“Fine,” she replied, barely breaking the rhythm of her breathing and quiet chanting. If she wasn’t careful she was going to hyperventilate.

He eyed her. “I guess no one’s pointed out to you during all those flights you had, that flying is safer than driving?”

She kept her eyes closed. “Sure, that’s what they say, but no one adds that if you’re in a car and there’s a problem, you can pull to the side of the road, even if your motor explodes, but in a plane—” Her words cut off and she started that deep breathing and lip movement again.

Some kind of Zen thing, he thought, but said, “Never mind. Forget I mentioned that. The engines are not going to explode, and I know what I’m doing. It’s all good.”

“Fine,” she muttered, but went right back to her “exercises.”

“So, you’re going to Wolf Lake?”

She exhaled on a sigh and he couldn’t tell if it was from him annoying her with questions, or that special breathing she’d been doing. “Yes.”

He’d thought he could distract her, but now he wasn’t sure that was possible. “And you know Moses.”

“I told you that already, and I can’t talk, I have to count,” she said, her arms wrapping around herself so tightly her knuckles whitened.

“Count?”

“Please, yes, let me count.” He did as she asked while he checked the GPS, banked southwest into the flight plan, then set auto pilot and sat back in the seat. Looking over at Merry again, he took in the whole picture and came to the conclusion that she was not the type of woman who would blow your socks off at first, but the kind that probably grew on you as you discovered more about her. He noticed the straightness of her nose, and the sweep of her jaw, a delicate angle. And those freckles. He’d never thought about it before, but the freckles in some way made her seem vulnerable.

He couldn’t recall ever seeing her in Wolf Lake before, although he hadn’t been back to town in a long time. Now, his older brother, Jackson, was dealing with the loss of his wife and not doing well. His other brother, Adam, had taken off for Chicago with a woman who had visited Wolf Lake around Christmas, and now he was helping the woman and father in a legal battle. He didn’t understand much of what Adam was doing, but he knew it was so important to Adam that he left his job as a detective in Dallas, Texas, to go to Chicago with this lady called Faith.

Now Gage was on his way back, but not exactly for a visit. He looked at Merry, watching her lips moving again, and realized at one time he knew everyone in town, at least by sight, but now he figured there might be a lot of people who were total strangers to him. Just like Merry Brenner. The idea she was a friend of Moses’s, well, he really did want to learn more about Merry and her association with the good doctor.

“You okay?” he dared to asked again.

“Fine,” she breathed softly.

“Counting?”

“Yes.”

“You know, I once heard that an interviewer’s worst fear was a guest who gave one word answers. I think I finally understand what was meant by that.”

He thought she might smile at that, or at least stop counting whatever she was counting, but she didn’t. The only positive change was her flexing her fingers as if to ease the tension there. But her eyes stayed shut and the counting went on.

He checked the instrument panel, and then looked back at Merry. “Is there any point in my asking what you’re counting?”

When a long moment went by with no response, Gage was ready to give up, get through the trip in silence and wish her good luck once they landed. What she counted was her own business. Then she surprised him by saying, “Bubbles.”

“What?”

She exhaled, slowly rested her hands on her thighs and leaned back in the seat. Her eyes fluttered open, but they stayed focused on what was ahead of them, a growing cloud bank and thin beams of sunlight feebly cutting through them. “You know, the kind you blew as a kid that you could make from dish soap or get in those little plastic bottles?”

“Sure, but—”

She kept talking as if he hadn’t tried to say anything. “When I was little, I’d get away from wherever we were living at the time, find some grass and blow bubbles while I laid on my back. I’d watch them float up and up and up, until they either disappeared or burst.” She stopped and he saw her bite her lip. He could tell she wished she hadn’t said that. “Like most kids,” she added quickly.

He liked the feeling of her sharing, even if it she seemed to think it had been a mistake on her part. “My method of getting away was to go up to the lake at night,” he admitted, surprising himself that he’d said that out loud to her. It wasn’t something that had been brought up in any conversation for years.

“What would a Carson have to get away from?” she asked, finally turning to him. “You know the lake?”

“I was born in Wolf Lake. Obviously, I know the lake. I didn’t see it until I was maybe six years old, just before we left, but I’d heard about it all my life. The magic of how the full moon turns that whole area of wild grass into a rippling ocean moved by the breeze.”

She was born there? He shifted in his seat. She wasn’t familiar at all. He tried to think of families he’d known in the past, but nothing came to him. “You know, I don’t remember a Brenner family.”

“How about the Casey family?”

Casey? Yes, he remembered a family named Casey, and a child, but he couldn’t recall if the child was a boy or a girl. But he clearly remembered the father, Jerry Casey, a good man who had worked on the roads, and on some of the ranches around the area. Jerry had died young, and he couldn’t remember seeing the mother or the child after that.