onto the road, then popped it into forward gear. The tires slipped on an icy rut, then caught, and they zoomed off around the perimeter road.
“Hey, your headlights!” Sean reached for the switch, and she batted his hand aside.
“Uh-uh! Look behind you.”
Sean turned—to see that a car had stopped behind the first car back at the bluff. A spotlight switched on, illuminating the luckless couple twined together in the backseat. “The sheriff!”
“Nosy Noonan. And he’s a friend of my dad’s.” Zoe passed the first hangar and hung a hard right, driving along the far side of the building toward the airfield, then tucked her Mustang in neatly ahead of a pickup truck set up as a snowplow.
The giant curved blade blocked Sean’s view of the road entirely, provided perfect cover. “Whew!” She was clever.
“Get down, get down!” she cried in a giggling frenzy. “If he shines his light…!” She leaned sideways toward him over the gearshift, her frizzy hair brushing his knees. Sean laughed and hunched down over her, his chest pressed against her quivering shoulder. He stayed there that way, in a state of total bliss, long after the sheriff’s car had cruised past. Her shampoo smelled of lemon and a spice Dana used sometimes in her cooking; rosemary, that was it. Something soft was touching his thigh, and he thought—hoped—prayed—it was her breast.
“Is it safe to come out?” she asked finally in a muffled voice.
“I think…” Except he wasn’t. He was absorbed totally in feeling all the wonderful sensations of a warm girl sprawled across his lap. Zoe. Her giggles made her seem younger, more his own age than an impossible two years older.
She jabbed an elbow gently into his ribs, and he had to sit up. Curling one hand around his thigh just above his knee, she pushed herself upright—then slowly turned her head to look at him over her right shoulder. Their lips were only inches apart.
Every muscle in his legs tensed and hardened. Heat pooled in his lap. Oh, Zoe!
She pulled completely away from him and sat, clutching her steering wheel, staring out through the windshield.
He counted his own heartbeats, dizzy from the lack of blood in his head. What do you want from me, Zoe Montana? Anything, anything at all that she wanted, he’d give—and give gladly.
“Want to see a special place?” she said finally, not looking at him, her voice sounding funny. “My special place?”
TEN MINUTES LATER they sat in the cockpit of a wrecked Cessna, which was parked on the far side of the hangar. Zoe had claimed the pilot’s seat, which to Sean seemed only fitting. She could take him anywhere she wanted tonight.
They even had supplies for their journey. Zoe had pulled two down sleeping bags, and a sack that contained water and granola bars, from the trunk of her car—part of a safety kit her father made her carry in winter, in case she ever was caught out in a blizzard.
“I found this last fall.” Zoe stroked the Cessna’s steering yoke. “Some elk hunter flipped it coming in for a landing. He walked away and swore he’d never fly again. Something’s twisted in the frame. Luke, the mechanic here, bought it cheap from the insurance company. Said he’s going to fix it one of these days. But meanwhile she just sits here, all lonely.”
“Cool.” In every sense of the word. Huddled in his ski jacket, Sean was starting to shiver, partly from the cold, partly from excitement.
“I’m going to be a pilot someday,” Zoe said dreamily. “Dad promised he’d pay for my flying lessons when I graduate from college.”
And his dad had promised that when Sean graduated from high school, he’d give Sean a motorcycle, an old Harley he could fix up himself. That they’d ride together all the way up to Alaska, then back again, the summer after his senior year. Dreams…so fragile that a mound of moving snow could crush them. The snowbound runway beyond the windshield shimmered, then blurred, and Sean blinked frantically. “So tell me about college, what that’ll be like.”
“College…” She tipped back her head and stared up at the dented ceiling. “It’s going to be…different. Very, very…different.”
“Different how?”
She turned to fix him with her wide, light eyes, and was quiet so long that he wondered if he’d said something really stupid. “I’m freezing,” she said at last. “Want to get into the bags?”
They zipped themselves into the puffy down bags and sat shoulder to shoulder in the wide, flat space in the rear that once must have held passenger seats.
“Much better,” Zoe murmured, leaning against him. She sighed contentedly. “Mmm…how will college be different? Well, for starters, nobody’s going to call me a brain, or a grind or a teacher’s pet at Harvard. I won’t be a freak. I’ll be normal.”
Just as he had been a normal kid, back in San Diego, before Dana married his dad and lured them off to Colorado. “That’s good.”
“Yeah…and maybe I’ll throw all my clothes away and start over. No more thumbing my nose at the cowgirls and the cheerleaders. I want a whole new image—sleek, elegant, sophisticated. I’m going to scout the campus for a day or two when I get there. Before I check in. See what everybody’s wearing…”
He was so used to Zoe’s rebel tomboy looks that it was hard picturing her dressing to blend in, but Sean knew what she meant. You got tired of fighting, but what else could you do? Once they had you pigeonholed, they’d laugh at you even harder if you tried to change. If he broke down and bought a Stetson and boots like the cow-patty crowd wore, that wouldn’t get him accepted now. They’d brand him as a phony—and a coward.
“And maybe I’ll switch to using my middle name. Elena.” She gave it the Spanish pronunciation, making it sound rich and exotic.
I’d miss “Zoe.” But he nodded gravely. A fresh start; it was what he wanted, too. “Elena—it’s pretty.”
“And…” She tipped her head down to rest it against his shoulder. “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”
“I swear.” He drew a shaky breath and, holding it, put his arm around the soft, puffy expanse of her waist. When she didn’t stiffen, didn’t pull away—actually seemed to settle a little closer against him—he felt as if the Cessna had taken off. He was floating, flying…“I swear I won’t.”
“I’m thinking of dyeing my hair. Black. Or maybe an auburn so dark it’s practically black.”
He loved her crazy red hair, loved the fact that, in her own way, she was a freak like him, a fish in the wrong pond. Even holding her, he felt a wave of loneliness wash over him. She was soaring away, off to somewhere she’d fit in, while he—
“You think that’s crazy?” Zoe demanded in a tiny, dubious voice.
While he—he was her friend. Here to back her up, even when she was crazy—and dyeing her fire-engine-red curls was the worst kind of crazy crime. “No…No, I don’t think so. I think you’d look wonderful with black hair,” he lied. “Or maybe…um…auburn? That might be an even better idea.” At least, less of a crime.
“Good!”
