Freedom To Love

Once again the man at her side seemed to know when the drinks were being brought round, although this time he opted for coffee, several cups of it, black. The air hostess, a girl probably in her late twenties, returned to him again and again to see if he required anything else. And by the invitation in her eyes she clearly meant anything.

Katy pointedly ignored the man, although this left her fairly isolated, shut out by her sister and Gerald, and determined not to even notice the man on her other side. She was glad therefore when the film came on the screen in front of her, a screen that appeared to be the back of the painting that had recently been displayed there. She had hired the earphones from the’ air hostess at the start of the flight, intending to listen to the radio later, but the film would be much more interesting. Besides, it would take up a couple of hours of the flight.

The film was one that had recently toured the cinemas, one that she hadn’t had the time to go and see. It looked strange without the necessary sound. She looked down for the place to plug in her ear-phones, realising she should have thought to do it before the window-blinds were lowered and the lights dimmed. Where on earth was the hole for the other end of her earphones?

Impatient fingers pushed her hand away as she sought frantically for the right place, dealing with the plugging in within a matter of seconds. Katy looked up shyly to thank the man she had so far thought rude and arrogant.

He was watching her with narrowed eyes, eyes that no longer seemed deeply blue but were glacial. ‘Are you always this helpless?’ he asked contemptuously.

She flushed. ‘I——’

‘Don’t bother,’ he impatiently dismissed her reply. ‘Just watch your film. Maybe then I’ll be able to get some rest without your fidgeting about beside me.’

‘I wasn’t fidgeting!’ Katy told him indignantly, looking about them almost guiltily as she realised other people could hear this conversation. Luckily no one was listening, all seemingly engrossed in the film, and so all other sound was blocked out. ‘Anyway,’ she added resentfully, ‘you’ve been sleeping since we left London.’

‘Sorry!’ His sarcasm was blatantly obvious. ‘I wasn’t aware I was here to entertain you.’

‘You aren’t,’ she blushed.

‘Thank God for that!’ He leant his dark head back, closing his eyes again. ‘Idiotic females, particularly young ones, bore me silly.’

‘Ooh!’ Her mouth set mutinously.

He opened one eye to look at her. ‘Shut you up?’

‘Yes!’ Katy snapped.

‘Good.’ He smiled, closing his eyes again.

Well, really! Katy stuck the ear-phones on, turning the sound down as it roared into her eardrums. For all the notice she took of the film, or the dialogue, she might just as well not have bothered. She was too angry and upset to concentrate on anything at the moment. This man must have taken lessons on how to be unpleasant, he was so good at it.

She shot him a resentful glance, having to admit an unwilling attraction to his dark good looks. It was probably his looks that enabled him to be this highhanded with her; most people, particularly women, would forgive him anything. So might she have done if he had turned the charming smile on her that he had given the air hostess. But he had decreed her too young for his attention, and had dismissed her from his mind accordingly.

The film was almost halfway through when she realised her orange juice and after-lunch coffee were taking their toll on her. She could see the sign for the toilets; the only trouble was, she couldn’t get out. Gemma and Gerald were engrossed in the film and wouldn’t thank her for disturbing them, and the sleeping man at her side would thank her even less.

After another half an hour of moving restlessly about in her seat, giving up any attempt to concentrate on the film, she was feeling desperate. She had to get up, the question was whose wrath was she going to evoke by asking them to let her out.

‘For God’s sake, woman!’ the man at her side exploded, sitting upright in his seat to glare at her with angry blue eyes. ‘Don’t you know how to sit still?’

‘Of course I do!’ Katy was angry herself now, having put up with his boorishness long enough. ‘But it isn’t easy when you want to go to the loo!’ She blushed at having to talk about such intimacies to this stranger.

‘Why the hell didn’t you just say so?’ he snapped, already beginning to stand up to let her pass.

She drew a deep angry breath. ‘Maybe because I knew this would be your reaction. You are without doubt the rudest man I’ve ever met!’ With this comment she flounced off.

Her bravado lasted her as long as it took her to reach the privacy of the toilets, staying there much longer than she needed to because she dreaded returning to her seat. She took her time over renewing her make-up and tidying her hair, finally bracing herself to go back and face that awful man.

The blinds had been lifted and the lights were fully back on, and people were wandering about the plane talking to each other. Kate almost heaved a sigh of relief as she saw the seat next to hers was empty.

‘What’s his name?’ Her sister turned to look at her.

Katy looked startled. ‘Whose?’

Gemma gave her an impatient look. ‘The man sitting next to you. I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere before. Gerald thinks he has too.’

Now she came to think of it he did look slightly familiar, although she felt sure she wouldn’t have forgotten him if she had ever met him before. He wasn’t the sort of man you could forget! ‘Why should I know his name?’ she asked tersely.

‘You seem to have been talking to him.’

Talking? What they had been doing certainly couldn’t be called talking, it was more like an argument. ‘A few casual words,’ she evaded. ‘Nothing as revealing as names.’

‘Yours wouldn’t reveal much,’ Gemma scorned, turning back to her boy-friend.

Charming! Katy was surrounded by them. She had even been dismissed as a nonentity by her sister now. She was getting a definite feeling of rejection.

The long length of her arrogant stranger coiled down into the seat next to her and she forced herself not to even look at him. She wasn’t risking any more rebuffs from him. She stared rigidly down at the paperback in her hand, not taking in a word of it.

‘You aren’t safe to be let out on your own,’ that silky voice taunted as he bent to retrieve something off the floor. ‘Here,’ he held out her purse to her. ‘It is yours, I presume?’

Katy paled, almost snatching it out of his hand. All her money was in here, all her travellers cheques. The only things she had kept separate were her passport and her return air ticket. ‘Thank you,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I—It must have fallen out when I got my book out.’

‘Obviously,’ he said dryly. ‘Is someone meeting you at the other end?’ he added thoughtfully.

Her eyes widened. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Her reaction seemed to amuse him. ‘I wasn’t propositioning you. But you don’t appear to be safe to let cross the road, let alone the Atlantic,’ he said insultingly.

‘No one is meeting me,’ she answered stiltedly. ‘I happen to be going to Canada on holiday—with my sister and her boy-friend. They’re sitting the other side of me,’ she added at his sceptical look.

He glanced around her, sitting back with a shrug. ‘She’s nothing like you to look at.’

Katy knew that, had always known that Gemma was the beautiful one of the family. Gemma was honey-blonde where she was caramel, had deep green eyes where Katy’s were grey, and her sister had never been troubled by spots or puppy fat, seeming to the younger Katy to have always been slim and petite.

‘I know that,’ she snapped at this man. ‘But that doesn’t make it any less a fact that she is my sister.’

‘Prickly little thing, aren’t you?’ he taunted. ‘Rather like the wild rose the Canadians are so fond of.’

‘Are they?’ Katy frowned.

‘Mm,’ he nodded. ‘Especially where we’re going. Alberta is its home. It’s very common up there on the mountains just below the timberline.’

‘Timberline?’ she echoed dazedly.

‘Tut, tut, tut,’ he mocked, seemingly fully awake now, and even more taunting than he had been before. ‘You haven’t done your homework on Alberta. I take it you intend touring the National Parks there?’

‘Yes,’ she nodded.

‘Then you should know that the timberline is where it becomes too cold up in the mountains for the trees to survive, they just suddenly stop growing, hence the term timberline. Make sense?’ he quirked an eyebrow questioningly.