Flying Home (2 page)

She managed to sidestep any impact, but he never even noticed her, he was so intent on the call he was taking on the cell phone pressed to his ear. There was no three piece business suit on his six-foot-plus frame, but instead, he gave more of an impression of an impatient cowboy, in snug jeans, a sheared wool trimmed denim jacket and scuffed boots that were as well worn as the rest of his getup. A baseball cap was the only thing not determinedly Western about the man.

She watched him stop halfway between where she stood on the walkway and the desk for charter flights over by the windows. He tugged sharply at the dark cap worn over slightly shaggy, midnight-black hair, framing an angular clean shaven face. When someone bumped her from behind, trying to get past her, Merry moved to her right, and off the walkway to get out of the way. The maneuver brought her closer to the man she’d been watching. In fact, she was near enough to hear most of his end of the conversation.

“I’ll check with him as soon as I can.” He listened, glanced around, his dark eyes sliding right past Merry, before he exhaled. “I told you, I’m waiting for clearance.” Pausing, his attention apparently on the tiled floors underfoot now. “Nothing serious. A glitch. You know how it goes.” He checked the watch on his wrist. “Soon. They said it was almost done. Should be up in half an hour at the most.”

While he was speaking, Merry saw a security guard approach the man, then hesitate before he reached out to tap the stranger on the shoulder. At first the man kept talking. “You, too. I’ll call when I get a chance.” The guard tapped his shoulder again, and the man turned to him, but still spoke into the phone as he held up a forefinger to acknowledge the guard. “Let me know if I can help. I have to go,” he said, finishing the call. “What is it?” he asked. The guard straightened a bit before speaking.

“Are you Mr. Gage Carson?” He nodded and the guard looked relieved. “They sent me to let you know the work’s done on your ride, and you’ve been cleared to take off in the next half hour.”

Merry didn’t hear the rest of the conversation between the two men as she stared at Gage Carson. A miracle? She couldn’t believe the luck or Fate or serendipity or whatever was at work here.

Gage Carson. The man, dressed like a roughhewn working cowboy, was the adult version of a young teenager she’d known over twenty years ago in Wolf Lake. Well, she hadn’t actually
known
him, but she’d seen him enough around town with his two brothers, and she knew of him. Everyone knew the Carsons, and she remembered him all too well.

Now he was within ten feet of her, talking to the guard about his “ride” and “taking off soon.” To make this a true miracle, he had to be going to Wolf Lake. She knew there was an airstrip on the Carson ranch.

The guard nodded at something Gage had said before striding off into the growing crowd from a flight disembarking farther down the concourse. But her full attention was on the man who could just be her own personal savior. All she had to do was figure out the best way to talk him into helping her get back to Wolf Lake.

Suddenly, Gage Carson turned, startling her as he seemed to look right at her. But before she could raise a hand and introduce herself, his gaze skimmed right past her as if she didn’t exist. Abruptly, he made for the nearest desk for the charter businesses near the windows.

It wouldn’t be farfetched, if the man, who led one of the largest construction and architectural corporations in the country, owned one of those sleek corporate jets. Or at least, chartered one of them. Chartering made things a bit more complicated, but it was still doable. She could play on the old hometown connection and snag a ride if the plane was his, and offer to make payments to share the cost of the charter once they got back. One way or another, if he was going to Wolf Lake, she was going too.

She watched him speaking to a woman agent, so attractive that Merry wondered if beautiful women were the only type that the airport employed. The two talked, leaning toward each other across the desk, and although she could only see Gage’s back, she didn’t miss the dazzling smile on the woman’s face as he spoke to her. She was nodding, touching his arm to make a point, and then lifted her hand to break the connection and motion to the row of specialty shops on the far side of the walkway.

Merry’s stomach was in a knot as Gage retraced his steps, coming toward her, then going right past her without looking up. She had to make this happen. She’d do her best to reason with him, and even beg if she had to. She glanced back to the counter, saw the attendant was alone at the desk and boldly crossed to her. Merry made herself smile, knowing it was a mere shadow of the version the woman had offered Gage moments ago. “Can I ask you something?”

The woman looked up and nodded. “Why, of course, that’s why I’m here.”

Merry motioned behind her. “Was that Gage Carson?”

Obviously the wrong way to start the conversation. Privacy had to be one thing a moneyed business, like a luxury jet charter, offered its clientele without any question. The woman’s expression changed from warm to cautious. “Is there a problem?”

“Oh, no,” Merry said quickly. “I just hadn’t heard anything about him being back...in Wolf Lake. You see, our hometown’s so small, everyone knows everything about everybody and no one mentioned he had made a visit.”

“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.

* * *

G
AGE
C
ARSON
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.”