The plane lurched forward once again.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” she said, moving toward the cockpit. “Stop so I can—”
“Too late,” he said as the plane gathered speed.
“We haven’t taken off yet. Just stop and I’ll—”
The nose tilted upward and they were airborne.
“What on earth is the matter with you?” she demanded. “Have you lost your mind?”
“If you want to get to Glenraven, then this is the way to do it.”
The plane’s engine whined as the pilot urged it to climb higher and faster through the dark, menacing clouds. She’d been aboard jumbo jets that took a beating going through clouds like these. What chance would they have in this little bucket of bolts?
The plane trembled then bucked violently as they broke out of the clouds, and a small whimper of alarm escaped her lips.
“You’d better sit down.”
“I’m fine,” she said as she pressed her eyes tightly closed. “I know all about CAT.”
“Do you now?”
The plane shimmied, and she forced cool air into her lungs. “Clear air turbulence,” she said. “It’s nothing to worry about. It just feels like you’re in trouble even though you’re not.”
“And where did you learn this fact?”
“My fear of flying class.”
His laugh was wonderful. Dark and rich and genuine. She hated those fake laughs she heard sometimes in the boardroom of Wilde & Daughters Ltd. This man had the kind of laugh that took you by surprise and made you want to hear it again.
The plane dropped a few feet, steadied, then dropped again.
“Oh, my God—”
“Sit down,” he ordered, pointing to the seat next to him.
“I’ll sit down when I’m ready to sit down,” she said, wondering how she was going to make it to the seat she’d abandoned. Almost on cue, the plane reared like an unbroken horse.
“Ready now?” he asked.
“I think so.” She sank down next to him and fastened the seat belt with trembling fingers. “Clear air turbulence never lasts long.” She knew that she was babbling but it kept her mind off the fact that she was a mile above the earth in a plane that was roughly the size of her father’s Caddy. “They used to tell us that in class to trick us into getting on the plane in the first place.”
“They were right,” he said in that mellow Scots voice of his. “Clear air turbulence is all bluster and no might.”
“So I have nothing at all to worry about,” she went on. “Another minute or two and it’ll be clear sailing.”
“Aye,” he said, “clear sailing if I can restart the engine.”
Chapter 2
“That’s a joke, isn’t it?” Sam asked, her eyes wide with fear. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Ice in the carburetor. We most likely picked it up in the cloud cover.” He obviously didn’t believe in sugarcoating the truth.
“We shouldn’t have taken off,” she said. “I told you the weather was too risky.”
“Quiet,” he ordered. “I need to think.”
Thinking’s good, she agreed silently. Especially if he thought up a way out of this mess.
She clasped her hands together tightly and rested them in her lap. Her right foot drummed a tattoo against the floor of the plane. Rat-tat-tattattat. Rat-tat-tattattat. She waited for her life to pass before her eyes. That’s what they said happened when a woman was about to meet her Maker, a parade of First Communions and first teeth, of best friends and forgotten lovers, all marching before you in review as you got ready to breathe your last.
So why was it the only thing Sam saw when she closed her eyes was the way the pilot had looked in the glorious altogether?
She saw his broad shoulders, the rippling muscles of his back, the powerful legs—
Good grief, what was wrong with her? She was a woman of substance. She prided herself on her serious nature, her attention to detail, her unwavering focus on the important things in life. She wasn’t the kind of woman who made a habit of ogling naked men. She usually didn’t even find them that attractive. All of that anatomical detail seemed a little excessive to her, as if nature had gone a tad overboard with the design.
A few years ago she’d attended a bachelorette party for an employee at one of those male strip clubs. She’d been downright shocked by the way her normally cool, calm and collected staff turned slack-jawed at the sight of the G-stringed dancers. There was something so calculated about the whole experience that it was about as erotically stimulating as a triple root canal. All around her, women stomped and cheered and practically drooled over those perfect specimens while Sam wished she’d brought a good stock report to read.
Wouldn’t you know it? She finally figured out what all the fuss was about and now she’d never have the chance to act on it.
A cosmic joke, that’s what it was. One giant gotcha before the lights went out for good.
She inhaled sharply as the nose dipped toward the cloud cover. It took her a second to realize the pilot was talking to her.
“…and so I had my fortune read when I was a young man at university,” he said, manipulating various dials and levers in what seemed to Sam an alarmingly random fashion. “Did you ever have your fortune told?”
“I don’t believe in that nonsense,” she said, forcing herself to ignore the deep and utter silence from the engine. “No one can foretell the future.”
“Sophie could.”
Her left brow arched. “Sophie?”
“A dark beauty she was in her prime.” He paid no attention to a horrible grinding noise on the left. Sam struggled to do the same. “All said she had the gift.”
“The gift,” Sam repeated.
“The gift,” he said solemnly. “The veil between this world and the other was thin as smoke
