Flying Home

“Good,” he thought he heard Merry say as he spoke into the radio, telling the nearest tower what he’d do and asking for wind speed and direction. As he listened, he readjusted the controls and the plane started to climb. With the tower voice in the background, he could feel the small aircraft respond perfectly, and that gave him a sense of relief. It was a great plane. Then he felt the beginning of a drag, a sense of lost direction, right when Merry spoke again.

“Why are we climbing so slowly?”

The radio contact was breaking up, and he ignored it to check the radar. Because the wind is so strong, it’s pushing us back and down, he told himself, but instead said, “The weather.”

He had to concentrate, but was finding it harder than it should have been with Merry so close. He never should have let her get on board. Never. He didn’t need this. It was why he had no wish to be in any long term relationship because he didn’t want the responsibility or pressure. His job and his family were his only responsibilities, and business had been the main focus of his life since he’d started the company.

It still would be if the calls hadn’t come, one after the other over the past month. Calls about mundane things from friends and family in Wolf Lake. But beyond all the banter, he knew their real purpose. His older brother, Jack, needed him and he hadn’t been around.

Initially, Gage had planned on flying back for a day or two closer to summer. Then the request for a full bid on an entertainment complex southeast of Wolf Lake near the Rez had come from the town council, so he had made arrangements to travel there sooner rather than later.

Penciling in a week’s stay in Wolf Lake, he’d pacified his obligations business wise and his own conscience. However, he never thought he’d be in this plane, with a beautiful, confounding woman, flying straight into a storm. When the plane shuddered again, he tried to feather it into the wind to get clear and the action didn’t get any response from Merry. No gasp, no sobs, no petrified screams, so he chanced a look at her.

She was bent forward, her face hidden in her hands, and her back rising and falling rapidly. She was going to hyperventilate if she didn’t stop. He tried to push away that growing sense of protectiveness and that effort made his words sound short and abrupt. “Sit back and stop breathing so fast. You’re going to pass out.”

Her hands dropped just a bit and he could see her green eyes flash angrily at him. “Thanks,” she muttered, but did sit back and drop her hands to her lap.

He dismissed any apology he’d thought he should make, satisfied that she’d stopped counting bubbles and looking so terrified. “Make sure your belts are fastened and tight.”

“You, too,” she said, fiddling with her restraints.

He ignored her curt tone, and went on. “We’re going to have to fight to get to the west,” he told her, focusing on the panel in front of him. “That means jerking and possible dropping, but none of that means that we’re putting down. Do you understand that?”

He heard one word as he kept scanning the screens. “Yes.” She didn’t ask any questions.

“Ready?”

Another single word answer. “Yes.”

He didn’t have to look to know her eyes were shut. “Okay, here we go,” he said and began a painfully slow descent to the west. At first he felt it was working, despite two drops in altitude, and a jerk that snapped his head back. “It’s okay,” he said as much for his own benefit as it was for Merry’s.

“Good,” she replied, but he knew he’d spoken too soon. Things weren’t okay. They were losing altitude at about the same speed he was losing control of the plane. The angry winds knocked them, the snow finally growing into thin flakes that were more like needles being driven at them. Visibility was failing and the compass was nudging toward the south, not the west.

“No,” he murmured, trying to get control. The direction they were heading in was bringing them toward the mountain range that he flew over to get to Wolf Lake.

Now they were twisting in the air, icing on the outside direction adjusters made his control next to nonexistent. He heard Merry saying something, but the static of the radio in his ear drowned it out. He hit the button and heard more static. He felt a rush that came when he got in a tight spot, and he adjusted channels again, trying to get some clear connection between them and the nearest tower.

He gave his call identification, thought he heard someone say, “Roger, where—?” Then abrupt static was all he detected, along with the sounds of the wind beating against the plane, the whine of the engines and his own heart rattling against his ribs. He darted a look at Merry and was surprised to see she wasn’t doing her bubble counting. She was gripping the sides of the seat, but her eyes were on him, filled with what looked like disbelief.

“What?” he asked when she didn’t speak.

With a shake of her head, she rasped, “You’re crazy.”

He didn’t know where that came from. “You won’t be the first to call me that, or the last.”

“I bet,” she managed before biting her lip hard when the plane shuddered from the wind.

“How did you come to that diagnosis, Dr. Brenner?”

“All I had to do was see that excitement in your eyes,” she said. “You’re actually enjoying this!”

He wouldn’t deny that, at least for now, and he hit her with his own question as the plane seemed to settle a bit. “Why exactly are you here?”

Very slowly, they were gaining ground on a southerly direction. “You know why,” she responded.

“No, I don’t know.” Make her talk. Keep her occupied. “You’re terrified of flying, yet spent a hundred dollars to get on this ‘small, fragile plane’—your words, not mine—just so you could get home a day earlier than if you waited for a commercial flight.” He read and reread the altimeter. “Now, don’t you think that unless there’s some certifiably pressing reason behind all of this, you might be a bit crazy to inflict torture on yourself by flying with me?”

When she didn’t answer, he chanced a glance away from the screens to her. She was staring straight ahead, her teeth busy worrying her full bottom lip. “I just want to get home.”

He’d blown it. All that anger was gone, and she looked as if she was on the verge of tears. He could kick himself for whatever he’d said that did this to her. “Okay, you’re just in a hurry.”

She was still silent and Gage felt the plane slide slightly as the altitude decreased enough for him to feel it. He hoped Merry wouldn’t feel it, too. Wrong again. “What was that?” she asked abruptly.

“Just an adjustment,” he replied, then tried the radio again. While he sent out his ID, it was met by the incoming contact. He went through a check, felt positive, and told the tower that they had stabilized and were now heading west. After giving their coordinates once again, he said he’d contact them at a designated time for an update and signed off.

While he settled back, letting the plane do the work now that circumstances were more normal, he had a thought, but didn’t know where it had come from. Merry was doing anything to get home and the logical reason was someone was waiting for her in Wolf Lake, someone she was willing to risk everything to get to.

He kept a check on the information, but wondered why the conclusion he’d drawn, almost annoyed him. After all, what did he care what her reasons for returning home were? He’d known her for an hour at the most, and she was a “client.” That brought a slight smile at the ridiculous way she’d managed to become a client.

“I told you, you’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she demanded. “You’re almost smiling.”

He wasn’t about to tell her why he almost smiled, that was for sure. So he went for sarcasm that usually served him well. “Yeah, I just love being in the middle of a storm with ice on the wings and a compass that can’t figure out which way we’re going.”

Wrong thing to say again. “We’re lost?” she blurted, his smile long forgotten now.

“No,” he reassured her. “We’re doing just fine right now. We’ll be out of this mess in a bit, and home in Wolf Lake soon after that.”

* * *

“GREAT,” MERRY SAID on a shuddering sigh, her relief a heady thing. That was why he was smiling. They were in the clear, despite the growing storm, and he had it all under control. She’d been wrong to say he was crazy, since she was crazier than him. She should have waited at the airport. “I’m sorry,” she muttered to him, trying to block out the noise outside. “Obviously you’re in control.” She closed her eyes tightly to stop the sight of the ominous grayness that surrounded them.

“We had a problem,” he said evenly. “But we got through it. So, just sit back and count your bubbles.”

She opened her eyes to glance at him at the same time he turned to her. Her heart lurched when she was met by a smile that crinkled the corners of his dark eyes and exposed a single dimple to the right of his mouth. For that moment, she forgot all about the storm and the wind and the plane. It all came back when the plane bucked, the action so abrupt that she felt as if her heart was in her mouth.

Gage quickly got the plane under control. “Merely fine tuning,” he said, as the plane evened out again.

“You...you’re doing fine,” she breathed, needing that encouragement as much as she thought he probably did.

“Thanks,” he said, flashing another grin in her direction. “I like that assessment better than the crazy one.”

She wasn’t sure if there was sarcasm or not in his response. “I trust you, I really do.” And she meant it.

That brought a look her way that was dead sober, the dark eyes considering her before glancing away. There was no response from him, only a soft whistling of a tune she couldn’t recognize. She reasoned if he could joke about their situation, then that meant things had to be okay.

She exhaled, speaking to herself as much as to him. “You know, I’m the crazy one. I’m going back when I should have been patient. I should have called and let—”

She bolted upright. She hadn’t called Marsala back! Since she hadn’t heard anything from her, the receptionist probably figured Merry was still in Pueblo waiting for the morning flight out. She tugged her cell phone out of her jacket pocket and hit the power button. Her heart sank when she saw the battery was low and that no signal was available.