reached out, wrapping his long, cold fingers around her hand to keep her from turning away. His eyes locked onto hers and she stopped breathing.
‘I’m honoured.’
‘Make that suckered,’ she said, just so that he wouldn’t think she was going soft. ‘You’ll be using your card to pay for the fuel.’
She would have turned away but he held her hand for a moment longer until, with a nod, he took the keys and walked away, leaving her normally warm hand like ice.
* * *
‘Do you want to take the stick?’ she asked, out of courtesy rather than any expectation that Cleve would say yes. He wasn’t a back-seat flyer and had no hang-ups about women pilots—he’d married one after all. The fact was, he hadn’t been flying much since the crash.
He complained that his time was fully occupied running the business these days, setting up the new office in Cyprus. And, when he was forced to leave his desk, the murmurs reaching her suggested that he was taking the co-pilot’s seat and letting his first officer have the stick.
That he had lost his nerve.
He shook his head, climbed aboard and closed his eyes as she taxied out to the runway. His attempt at humour on the subject of her bridesmaid dress had apparently drained him of conversation and any excitement about picking up the new aircraft would be inappropriate.
Forty silent minutes later she touched down and taxied to her personal parking space on the Marlowe Aviation airfield.
She didn’t wait for him to thank her. She signed off, climbed down and, before he could dismiss her, crossed to where the chief engineer, no doubt warned by the tower of their arrival, was waiting for them.
‘Hello, Jack.’
‘Andie...’ He took her hand, kissed her cheek, then looked up as Cleve joined them. ‘Cleve. Good to see you,’ he said, not quite quick enough to hide his shock at Cleve’s pallor. Any other time, any other man, Jack would have made a joke about women pilots, she would have rolled her eyes, and they would have got on with it.
‘Jack.’ Cleve’s brief acknowledgement did not encourage small talk.
‘Right, well, we’re all ready for you.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Andie, you’ll be interested in seeing the updates we’ve incorporated into the latest model of the Mayfly to come off the production line.’
It was a plea not to leave him alone with Cleve but, with the tension coming off him in waves, she wasn’t going anywhere.
‘I can’t wait,’ she said, touching her hand to Cleve’s elbow, a gentle prompt forward, and she felt the shock of that small contact jolt through him. She caught her breath as the responding flood of heat surged back along her arm, momentarily swamping her body.
She held her breath, somehow kept her smile in place as he pulled away from her.
‘The new tail design is largely down to Andie,’ Jack explained to Cleve as they walked towards the hangar. ‘The sooner she gets tired of life at altitude and gets back to the design office, the better.’
‘Miranda was born to fly,’ Cleve said before she could answer.
‘No doubt, but my time will come.’ Jack grinned confidently. ‘Some lucky man will catch her eye and she won’t want to be up and down all over the place once she starts a family.’
Desperate to cover the awkward silence that followed Jack’s epic foot-in-the-mouth moment, she crossed to the aircraft, sleek and gleaming white but for the new tail that bore the stylised red, gold and black goldfinch identifying the ever-growing Goldfinch Air Services fleet.
‘She’s a beauty, Jack.’
She turned to Cleve for his reaction but he looked hollow and she thought, not for the first time, that this very public support of Marlowe Aviation and the aircraft her father built had been a mistake.
‘Why don’t we go and deal with the paperwork first?’ she suggested. ‘If Immi’s in a good mood she might make us—’
‘Let’s get this over with,’ Cleve said, cutting her off before she could suggest a bracing cup of tea. But she was the one making all the right noises, asking all the questions as Jack ran through the new design details.
The chief engineer’s relief when a loudspeaker message summoned him to take a phone call was palpable.
‘I’m sorry but I have to take this,’ he said, handing her the clipboard. ‘We’ve just about finished the externals. Why don’t you take her out, try a few circuits? Get a feel for her.’
‘Thanks, Jack,’ she said, when Cleve did not reply. ‘We’ll see you later.’
‘I’ll be in the office...’
She gave him a reassuring nod when he hesitated, then turned back to Cleve.
He was staring at the aircraft, his face set as hard and grey as concrete. Her hand hovered near his elbow but she was afraid that if she touched him again he would shatter.
As if he sensed her uncertainty, he said, ‘Go and find your sister, sort out your dress. I’ve got this.’
‘I don’t think so.’ He turned on her but before he could speak she said, ‘You’re not fit to fly a kite right now.’
They seemed to stand there for hours, staring one another down and then, as if a veil had been lifted to reveal all the pain, all the grief he was suffering, his face seemed to dissolve.
Before she could think, reach for him, he’d turned and stumbled from the hangar.
The airfield was bounded on one side by a steeply wooded hill and in the few moments it had taken her to gather herself he had reached the boundary.
‘Stop!’
She grabbed his arm and he swung around. For a moment she thought he was going to fling her aside but instead he caught hold of her, pulling her to him and, his voice no more than a scrape against his vocal cords, he said, ‘Help me, Andie...’
He hadn’t called her that since the days when he’d teased her, encouraged her, kissed her in the shadowy corners of her father’s aircraft hangar and her stupid teenage heart had dreamed that one day they would fly to the stars.
He was shaking, falling apart and she reached out, slid her arms around his chest, holding him close, holding him together until he was still.
‘I’m sorry—’
She lifted a hand to his cheek and realised that it was wet with tears.
‘I can’t—’
‘Hush...’ She touched her lips to his to stop the words, closing her eyes as he responded not with the sweet, hot kisses that even now filled her dreams, but with something darker, more desperate, demanding. With a raw need that drilled down through the protective shell that she’d built around her heart, that she answered with all the deep-buried longing that she’d subsumed into flying.
She
