have betrayed her because Oliver turned and gave her his full attention. Frowning, he asked, “Have you been drinking?”
“This early in the morning?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“No,” she returned with an edge of defiance. “I don’t drink.”
“Ever?” His eyebrows rose as if he doubted her.
She shrugged. “I do on occasion, but I don’t make a habit of it.”
His dog sneezed, spraying her pant leg. This was her best pair of wool pants and she wasn’t keen on showing up for the interview with one leg peppered with dubious-looking stains. Oscar sneezed again and again in quick succession, but at least she had the wherewithal to leap back. “Yuck!” she muttered. “Oh, yuck.”
“You wouldn’t happen to be wearing perfume, would you?” Oliver demanded in a voice that suggested she was attempting to carry an illegal weapon on board.
“Yes, of course I am. Most women do.”
He grumbled some remark she didn’t hear, then added, “Oscar’s allergic to perfume.”
“You might’ve told me that before now,” she said, wiping her pant leg a second time. Thank goodness she’d brought gloves. And thank goodness they were washable.
He raised his shoulder in a nonchalant fashion. “Probably should have. It slipped my mind.” He continued his outside inspection of the plane. “Oh, yeah,” he said, testing the flap on the opposite wing, “I need to know how much you weigh.”
“I beg your pardon?” There were certain things a man didn’t ask a woman and this was one of them.
“Your weight,” he said matter-of-factly.
Despite her drug-induced state of relaxation, Emma stiffened. “I’m not telling you.”
“Listen, Emma, it’s important. I’m loaded to the gills with furnace parts. I have to know how much you weigh in order to calculate the amount of fuel we’re going to need.”
She scowled. “You expect me just to blurt it out?” A woman didn’t tell a man anything that personal, especially a man she barely knew and had no intention of knowing further.
“If I miscalculate, we’ll crash and burn,” Oliver said, apparently assuming this would persuade her to confess.
She glared at him in an effort to come up with a compromise. With her mind this fuzzy, it was difficult. “I’ll write it down.”
He didn’t seem to care. “Whatever.”
Emma set her briefcase on the floor inside the plane and extracted a pencil and small pad. The only time she weighed herself was when she suspected her weight had fallen. She certainly wasn’t overweight, but a desk job had done little to help her maintain the figure she’d been proud of back in college. A few pounds had crept on over the last five years. She penciled in her most recent known weight, according to a doctor’s visit last year, and then quickly erased it. After a moment’s hesitation, she subtracted ten pounds. At one point in the not-so-distant past, she’d weighed exactly that and she would again, once she got started with an exercise program.
Tearing the sheet from the pad, she folded it in fourths and then eighths until it was about the size of her thumbnail.
Oliver was waiting for her when she’d finished. He held out his hand.
Emma was about to give him the folded-up paper, but paused. “Swear to me you’ll never divulge this number.”
He grinned, increasing his cuteness a hundredfold. “This is a joke, right?”
“No,” she countered, “I’m totally serious.”
He grunted yet another comment she didn’t understand and grabbed what now resembled a paper pellet. “I can see this is going to be a hell of a flight.”
Oliver stepped away, and Emma didn’t see where he went, but he came back a few moments later. He casually told her it was time to board. She stood outside the aircraft as long as she dared, summoning her courage. Maybe she should’ve swallowed two tablets for this first flight.
Oscar was already aboard, curled up in his dog bed behind the passenger seat. He cocked his head as if to say he couldn’t understand what she was waiting for.
“You got lead in your butt or what?” Oliver said from behind her.
With no excuse to delay the inevitable, she hoisted herself into the plane and then, doubling over, worked her way forward into the cramped passenger seat. Her knees shook and her hands trembled as she reached for the safety belt and snapped it in place, pulling at the strap until it was so tight she could scarcely breathe.
Oscar poked his head between Oliver’s seat and Emma’s, and she was left with the distinct impression that she’d taken the dog’s place. Great, just great. She’d arrive for her first interview with her backside covered in dog hair.
Oliver handed her an extra set of earphones and pantomimed that she should put them on. “You ready?” he asked.
She forced herself to nod.
He spoke to someone over the radio in a language she didn’t understand, one that consisted solely of letters and numbers. A couple of minutes later, he taxied to the end of the runway. And stopped there.
Emma didn’t know what that was about but regardless of the reason, she was grateful for a moment’s reprieve. Her head pounded and her heart felt like it was going to explode inside her chest.
Oliver revved the engine, which fired to life with an ear-splitting noise. The plane bucked as if straining against invisible ropes.
Despite her relaxation pill, Emma gasped and grabbed hold of the bar across the top of the passenger door. She clutched it so hard she was convinced her fingerprints would be embedded in the steel.
Without showing a bit of concern for her well-being, Oliver released the brake and the plane leaped forward, roaring down the runway. Emma slammed her eyes shut, preferring not to look. She held her breath, awaiting the sensation of the wheels lifting off the tarmac.
For the longest time nothing happened. She opened her eyes just enough to peek and realized they were almost at the end of the runway. Despite the speed of the aircraft they remained on the ground. In a few seconds of sheer terror, Emma realized why.
She’d lied about her weight.
Hamilton had miscalculated the weight on board. In her vanity, she’d shaved ten pounds—well, maybe fifteen—off the truth. Because of that, she was about to kill them both.
Unable to restrain herself, Emma dragged in a deep breath and screamed out in panic, “I lied! I lied!”
No sooner had the words left her mouth than the plane sailed effortlessly into the sky.
Fruitcakes are like in-laws. They show up at the holidays. You have no idea who sent them, how old they are, or how long they’ll be hanging around your kitchen.
—Josh Sens, freelance writer in Oakland, California, and food critic for San Francisco magazine
The fear dissipated after takeoff. Emma kept her eyes focused directly in front of her, gazing out at the cloud-streaked sky. For the first while her heart seemed intent on beating its way out of her body, but after a few minutes the tension began to leave.
It wasn’t long before the loud roar of the single engine lulled her into a sense of peace. No doubt that was due to the pill, which was exactly the reason she’d taken it. When she did find the courage to turn her head and look out the side window, she found herself staring Mt. Rainier in the face. She was so