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 in a quick wave, then seated himself once again in the cockpit and turned back to his wide panel of instruments. A few seconds later, he was back on the radio checking flight plans, it sounded like. Just another day at the office for him.
Lauren hefted her laptop bag and purse strap over her shoulder, then positioned herself so she could open the umbrella outside the door. The wind almost yanked it from her hands, but she grabbed tightly at the last second, barely keeping herself from making a Mary Poppins exit, smack onto the tarmac. Carefully, she exited down the stairs and headed toward the small building that, she assumed, was the terminal.
It was raining so hard, with the wind whipping even harder, that she didn’t even attempt to take a look at her surroundings. Not that she could have seen much anyway, but she’d been looking forward to seeing the Rocky Mountains. All she could do, however, was focus on the wide rivers of water cascading across the paved tarmac as she skipped and hopped her way to the double set of glass doors.
Just as she went to reach for them they swung open for her, and a large male hand snaked out and gripped her elbow. The action startled her into loosening her grip on the umbrella, which was immediately snatched away by the wind and went flying back over her head toward the tarmac. She turned instinctively to see where it went only to get hit with a full swath of rain, which immediately plastered her hair to her head and her clothes to her body, along with fogging up her glasses. She was, for all intents and purposes, blind. She’d never considered herself much of a screamer or a squealer, but she might have done a little of both.
The man holding her elbow tugged her in out of the rain.
“Thank you,” she gasped. “I’m so sorry—my umbrella—”
“Marco picked it up,” came a very deep voice with a bit of a rough edge to it, like maybe he’d just woken up.
She was still blinking water out of her eyes and he still had a hold on her elbow. Her other hand was clutching her purse and laptop bag to her side in a death grip. Everything was just a blur. “Marco?”
“Ground crew. Here, let me take those.”
Her elbow was abruptly released, which sent her a bit off balance, then her bags were suddenly lifted from her shoulder and slipped out of her death grip as if her hands were made from putty, sending her staggering a step in the other direction. Both her feet slipped a little as the smooth soles of her shoes were not made for…well, any of this. And then his hands were on her again, both elbows this time, and, and…well, the entire last sixty seconds had been so discombobulating, for a person who was never discombobulated, that she didn’t know quite what to do. She blinked at him through wet ropes