bash the mayor.”
“I’m fine with letting her draw her own conclusions. Deal?”
“Deal,” Ruby Jean said, not sounding entirely confident but being smart enough, for once, not to push him further.
“I really need to get back to work. What day is she arriving? How long will she be here?”
“Um…twelve thirty.”
“Twelve—you mean December thirtieth? It’s August, Ruby—”
“I mean twelve thirty, as in her plane lands out in Holden then, and I was kind of hoping you could go pick her up. In one of your planes. Because that’s way more impressive then just having her rent a car.”
“What might be impressive is her mom and stepdad driving out to Holden to greet her personally.”
“They can’t. They have that Chamber of Commerce luncheon thing that Charlene is sponsoring for that charity she started, and the mayor is the keynote speaker. So, having you there, to pick her up in a private plane, that’s perfect. But that can’t be your date! It’s not far enough. A thirty-minute hop doesn’t count. She needs a bit more…time. Okay?”
Jake looked at the clock on the wall. It was ten thirty.
“I love you, Jake. You’re the bestest brother in all the world. Thank you a million times over for helping me with this. I owe you so much. And I will make it up to you. Promise. Kisses!” And then she hung up.
Which was a good thing. That way his eardrums were the only ones assaulted by the loud clanging of metal on metal when he threw the wrench and let it bounce off the curved wall of the hangar. “It’s a good thing I love you, too,” he muttered, then rolled his tool chest closer and turned his attention back to the automatic manifold pressure regulator, which was, up until five seconds ago, the biggest pain in his ass. Now there was competition for that honor. But he didn’t have to think about Lauren whatsername for another two hours. And he didn’t plan to.
Chapter 2
Lauren Matthews was going to die. Her life was going to end in this tiny little gum-wrapper-size plane, which, given the way it was bouncing around in the air like a Ping Pong ball, was surely going to drop from the sky any second now and burst into flames as it crashed into the side of the nearest mountain peak. Of which there were thousands, so the chance of missing one and miraculously surviving was slim to none.
“Sorry for the turbulence,” the senior pilot called back. “Storm coming, but we’ll beat it in. Not to worry.”
She knew how he’d gotten every one of his gray hairs, too. And did he announce his reassuring tidbits over the intercom? No. He just called out the information over his shoulder. Because she was less than ten feet away. And she was at the back of the plane. In fact, she was the only passenger filling one of the ten available seats. “Not much call for trips past the front range during this time of year,” he’d told her when she’d boarded the tiny piece of tin back in Denver. After she’d disembarked off of the very nice, very large, very steady jumbo jet that, once she’d finally made it out to Dulles and found a place to park and made it all the way in to the terminal, then out to the other terminal, had delivered her quite smoothly all the way, nonstop from Washington to Colorado. A pleasant flight. She’d actually gotten some reading in. Now, with less than thirty minutes left in her daylong journey, she was going to die. Figured.
Sure, the pilot had gone on to say that he made the trip west several times a day during peak season. Which translated to ski season, since, other than mining or ranching, that was all they did in the middle of Colorado as far as she could tell. And she assumed the miners and ranchers didn’t need to fly anywhere all that often. But with the plane bouncing around like some massive cosmic cat was using it as its personal play toy, batting it this way and that, she wasn’t all that reassured by his past success rate.
“How mu-much longer?” she asked, her teeth clacking together as the plane dropped into another air pocket. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the engines. Had she mentioned the engines? The incredibly loud engines?
“We’re descending now.”
“Just what I was afraid of,” she muttered, but looked out the window anyway. Might as well see where she was going to spend her eternal rest. But there was cloud cover now. Thick, dark, gray-black clouds. Swirling all around them. That couldn’t be good.
“Ho-how do you know where to la-land?” she called out, fingers digging even more deeply into the already deep indentations on the armrests as they bounce-bounce-bounced along. “How can y-you see?”
“Radar. Don’t worry,” he said, tossing a quick smile over his shoulder. “I’ve landed in worse. Much worse.” He seemed almost happy about the challenge.
Great, she had the crazy pilot with a death wish. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know what “much worse” could consist of, given that, at the moment, her teeth felt like they were cracking from constant impact. A mouth piece would have come in handy, but who knew flying had become a full contact sport?
Just then the plane dropped, then dipped to one side then the other, causing her to rap her head against the window. She added helmet to her new list of must-have carry-on items. “How much longer?”
But the pilot didn’t respond. He was too busy flipping switches and talking on his headset to someone on the ground, trying to land the plane. Which should have instilled all kinds of confidence but fell way short.
She was debating on whether to keep her eyes open or shut, when the pilot called back, “Hang on, we’re coming in.”
“Hang on? To what?”
That question was answered a moment later when the wheels touched down, then bounced up, then touched down, then bounced again, jerking her body around like a rag doll strapped to a roller coaster. She grabbed the seat back in front of her with one hand, braced her feet against the bottom of it, gripped the armrest with her other hand, and held on for dear life. Which, in this instance, was not simply a cliché. The plane bounced and jerked for a few hundred more years, then finally stayed on the ground and eventually rolled to a stop.
She wanted to first kiss the pilot, then the ground, but couldn’t seem to pry her cold, stiff fingers from the seat and armrest to do anything but stare dazedly and give a silent and quite fervent prayer of thanks.
“Sorry for the rough commute. It’s that time of year.” He slid a compact umbrella out of a side pocket and handed it back to her. “Here, you’ll want this. It’s a bit fierce out there.”
Now that the droning engine noise had subsided, and her ears had stopped ringing, she identified the new noise she was hearing. It sounded like thunder, but was just the heavy drumming of rain on the body of the airplane. “What are you going to use?”
“I’m fine. Hope you enjoy your stay in Colorado.” The pilot grinned and sketched a quick salute as she took the umbrella and gathered her things.
“They’ll have your bag in the terminal shortly,” he said, shifting to stand long enough to open the mechanism that opened the door, which lowered into its own staircase.
“Okay,” she said, rising on shaky legs. “Thanks.”
He lifted a hand
