He looked back to Melissa, who had all but forgotten about the two of them. Lauren tugged his hand and jerked her head toward Melissa, clearly thinking the same thing he was. He wasn’t sure what value Melissa was to Arlen, but if he could get to her, that was at least one less gun pointed in their direction. He squeezed Lauren’s hand back, gave her a brief nod, then started to make his move, only to have Melissa trot on down the stairs in that exact same instant. Dammit.
Jake steered clear of the open doorway, but both he and Lauren crouched down out of direct view but still able to witness the reunion through the side windows. There was no hug, no display of real affection. Melissa stopped a few feet short of Arlen, gun by her side. Arlen’s however, was not.
“She was figuring it out,” Melissa said. “They had the papers. About the fire. She was never going to stop digging. I just wanted her to go back and leave us alone.”
“Hand me the gun, Melissa,” Arlen said calmly, coldly.
“But—aren’t we going to do something about them? We’re a team. I’ve done everything for you. I even got Lauren to promise to help you with your campaign when she gets back to Washington.”
Arlen looked at her, his expression one of barely concealed disgust. “Now, why in the world would she be inclined to do that?”
“So we don’t hurt Charlene.”
Jake flashed a look at Lauren, whose poor, banged up face had gone pale again. “It’s okay,” he said quietly to her, even though, at that moment, things were far from okay. Every time Arlen or Melissa spoke, he had more questions and fewer answers.
“Why in the hell would I hurt Charlene?”
Melissa looked incredulous. “Because that’s the only way—”
She didn’t get a chance to finish her statement. Arlen reached out, snagged her elbow, and bodily yanked her next to his side. He didn’t threaten her directly with the gun, but he was holding her quite close, too close to hear what was being said unfortunately. But from the steely cold look in Arlen’s eyes, to the almost bug-eyed fear that was on Melissa’s, he didn’t imagine it was a welcome home, honey kind of thing.
When he was finished with his short, but apparently very effective, lecture, he took Melissa’s gun and directed her to stand off to one side. Then he looked back at the plane. “I ask the both of you to exit the plane now, if you would. There has been a terrible misunderstanding. I’m certain we can work everything out.” He lowered both hands, each holding a gun. “She’s of no harm to you, Lauren. And Jake, neither Lauren nor her mother are in any kind of jeopardy from me.”
“You’ll have to excuse me, Arlen,” Jake called out, “if I don’t take your word for that. You’re still packing some serious firepower there. Put the guns down, and we might be able to have a conversation. Lauren has been terrorized for the past several hours by your less-than-stable secretary. You both have a lot to answer for. I’m—we’re—more than willing to have a discussion, but it will have to take place back in Cedar Springs. Lauren needs her injuries attended to. So, if you’ll be so kind as to back away from the plane, we’ll be leaving now.”
Arlen lifted the guns. “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I can’t allow these misunderstandings to compound themselves. We need to come to an understanding here and now. If you don’t mind.”
Jake turned to Lauren. “I want you to get in the far seat there,” he said, nodding to the seat behind her. “Strap in. I’m going to work my way closer to the hatch—”
“Jake—”
“—and try to crank the stairs up. If I can’t do that, then we’ll have to create some kind of diversion so I can get to the cockpit and get this bird moving.”
“With the stairs down?”
“We don’t have to take off, we just have to move. In a game of chicken, Arlen and Melissa are going to lose.”
“But what if they start shooting? What will keep him from just running toward the stairs and boarding?”
Jake could see she was holding it together at this point with a slim thread, and he couldn’t blame her. He had no idea what had gone on the past several hours, but none of it had been good, that much he knew. He banked the fury that had been simmering since he’d discovered who her captor was. Just looking at Lauren, normally so direct and in control, looking so beaten and scared…it made him want to do more than play chicken with a Cessna. “We’re going to get out of here.”
Lauren nodded but didn’t immediately move to take a seat. Jake started to move closer to the door.
“I’m losing my patience here, Mr. McKenna,” Arlen said.
“Wait,” Lauren whispered. “I’ll distract them; you get into the cockpit and start this baby up while I crank up the stairs. Just show me where the thingie is and how to pull them up.”
“The thingie? Lauren, we can’t risk—”
“I’m risking everything here tonight. My own safety and those of the people I care most for. My mother.” She captured his face in her hands. “And you. I can’t stand that you’re in this, that you’re in danger, because of me.”
“We’re in this together,” he told her, never more serious.
“Then prepare to run to the cockpit. On the count of three.”
“Lauren, wait, what are you—”
She pushed past him and moved directly into their line of vision—and target range. She motioned behind her back for him to move past her into the cockpit. “Arlen, I have no idea what has been going on. I assure you, my concern was, and is, only for the well-being of my mother. Melissa has some sort of delusional fixation on you. I get that; you get that. But I need to get back to Cedar Springs. We’ll talk there.”
Jake smacked the wheel next to the door and dove for the cockpit. Lauren immediately stepped clear of the door and began cranking it.
“He’s coming at us,” Lauren called as Jake rapidly went through the steps necessary to start the engines. He desperately wanted to look over his shoulder, but they hadn’t a second to spare if they wanted to pull this off. He couldn’t believe how strong Lauren was, how mentally tough. Well, that wasn’t true. He knew she was tough, but this…He did look over his shoulder then, in a quick glance, and saw her cranking the wheel with all her might to pull those stairs up, and allowed himself a brief smile. That was his woman, right there.
“He’s getting closer and the damn stairs are only a few feet up—”
“Hold it right there!” came yet another voice—a woman’s voice—from somewhere beyond Arlen. This was followed, not by the sound of a gun being cocked…but by a shotgun being ratcheted into firing position.
Lauren’s hands froze momentarily on the wheel as Jake spun around to see what was going on now.
“Mom?” Lauren said, a moment later.
“I have no idea how to use this thing,” Charlene yelled, “so that makes me plenty dangerous.”
“I do.” Ruby Jean stepped forward, took the hunting rifle from Charlene’s hands, and quite capably shouldered it. “You might want to drop the firepower, Mayor. And, by the way, I quit.”
Jake abandoned his seat and moved quickly to lower the steps again as Arlen shoved one gun into his pocket, grabbed Melissa by the hair, and pulled her in front of him, arm around her throat, pushing the other gun against her temple. “Not so quickly there, Ms. McKenna.”
“This is so not good,” Jake murmured.
“How in the hell did they get here?” Lauren asked.
“I’m not the only one in the family who can fly a plane,” Jake said, looking at his sister with a mixture of pride and abject terror. Now the whole family was in the line of fire. Great. Just great.
“The police have been summoned, Arlen,” Charlene informed him. “Sergeant O’Hara contacted the Holden office before we took off. They’ll be here any moment. In fact—”
Just then sirens sounded in the distance. Ruby Jean stepped forward and Jake’s heart leaped in his throat.
“Seriously. Put the gun down,” RJ demanded. “Both of them. You’re outnumbered.
And, frankly, at this particular moment, given what she did to Lauren, none of us will be too heartbroken if you put a bullet in Melissa’s head.”
“RJ—” he warned, just as Lauren said, “Maybe not a bullet, but if he roughs her up a little…” She looked at Jake and he knew right then he was never letting her go. “I’m just saying.”
“Marry me,” he said.
She smiled at him as the police cars rolled in. He didn’t know how big the department was in Holden, but it looked like they’d sent pretty much the entire force. Police swarmed; guns were put down. Arlen’s hands went up in the air, and Melissa tried to claim she was a victim. Ruby Jean handed over the shotgun, and she and Charlene made sure Melissa was taken into custody, as well.
Jake turned back to Lauren. “Not exactly the way I’d intended to propose.”
Her eyes widened a little. “You intended to propose?”
“Eventually. When you’d gotten used to the idea of me being around forever.”
“I might be able to get used to that.”
Ruby Jean and Charlene stormed up the stairs just then and everything became a series of hugs, kisses, apologies, and revelations. The whole story came out later at the Holden police station. Not from Arlen, who’d called for his lawyer immediately and been close-mouthed since. Charlene contacted hers, too. To seek an annulment. Ruby Jean, Lauren, and Jake provided what little they knew. Melissa filled in most of the gaps, when she wasn’t alternately screaming invectives at Arlen and sobbing to the police about how horribly she’d been used.
“And to think, I used to avoid family drama,” Jake said as he and Lauren were dropped off, close to daybreak, back at the airstrip. Ruby Jean and Charlene were flying back in the other school plane. They weren’t really sure, as yet, what parts of Melissa’s claims were true, and what might be part of the delusional fantasy she’d constructed about her future life together with Arlen.
Whether or not Arlen had actually had a hand in his first wife’s death or his apparent ex-wife’s disappearance—Melissa had tried to hunt her down only to discover she didn’t apparently still exist—one thing had emerged from his personal secretary’s furious rants, and that was that Arlen had made a career out of choosing women for his own personal gain. Which generally translated into political gain, as that was how he gauged himself as a success. According to Melissa, he’d targeted Charlene the moment he’d met her in Florida, quite pleased when everything had fallen in line so swiftly. Lauren had been a side benefit he’d been happy to exploit, as well.
Arlen wasn’t corroborating any of that, of course; that would take months in court and some very expensive lawyers to sort out. But Melissa had known enough damning facts and truths from how he’d initially romanced Charlene that Charlene could corroborate, to make it pretty clear she at least had that much correct.
Charlene and Lauren had spent a long time sequestered in a room alone together at the police station, talking and coming to terms with what had happened. Jake didn’t know what exactly had been said, but when they emerged, the two were holding each other tightly and were very clearly a united front.
Jake reached across the space between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats, taking Lauren’s hand before revving up the engines, when it would be harder to talk. She’d cleaned up a little at the police station, more than a little alarmed upon first seeing herself and just how banged up she was. Jake still thought she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“So…you give my heart-stoppingly romantic proposal any additional thought?” he asked. “Given as how we’ve had so much free time to consider it.” He’d been teasing, trying to lighten the bit of despondency he sensed after she and Charlene parted so RJ would have someone with her on the flight back. Lauren hated that her mom was suffering from the pain of betrayal. She was humiliated and embarrassed, too, and it would take some time before she worked her way through that, but Jake had promised Lauren they’d all be there for her. He suspected with the way the town had taken to Charlene, they’d be behind her, too, especially once the whole story came out. If it hadn’t already reached home already.
“Actually,” Lauren responded quite seriously, though she was smiling that crooked smile while she said it, “thinking about that proposal—and it was very romantic to me, by the way—is what’s getting me through this endlessly long night. Morning,” she added, noting that the sun was starting to come up.
“Lauren, don’t feel you have to—”
She leaned over and grabbed his sleeve, pulling him toward her for a kiss. Even despite the burn marks on her face from the air bag explosion, and the rapidly discoloring contusion on her temple, she kissed him passionately and fully, pouring more into that single connection than he’d felt from her ever before. Which was saying a hell of a damn lot.
“I am feeling so many things right now, and it’s going to take a long while for all of us to sort through this.” She framed his face with her hand. “But one thing I’m very, very clear on, is that I want to be beside you while I figure it out. So…if you’ll have me, dramatic family issues, no future prospects, and looking like roadkill, then I want a shot at being with you, too. How we do it, I don’t care. However long it takes for us to take whatever the next steps are…I want to figure all of that out with you.”
Jake’s smile was so wide it hurt. But nothing had ever felt as good as what he saw in Lauren’s eyes. “You’re it for me,” he said.
She grinned. “Sometimes you just know.”
Then she shifted back to her seat and put her headphones on as she studied the console in front of her. “Okay, so…tell me, what do these buttons do?”
Jake frowned. “Maybe we should save the lessons for another time.”
“As long as I get lessons.”
He grinned, then. “I might be able to work out a special package deal rate.”
“What would that package deal include?”
“A lot of hands-on instruction.”
“Mmm,” she said, strapping herself in as he began to taxi down the runway. “I always do much better with showing instead of telling.”
“Hold on,” Jake said, grinning, watching as Ruby Jean took off in front of them while he taxied into position. “We’re about to embark on one hell of a ride.”
Epilogue
“I can’t even look.” Charlene covered her eyes as Ruby Jean stepped out on the wing.
“Holy mother of—” Lauren couldn’t even finish the sentence. Mostly because her heart was lodged squarely in her throat. “I know she used to do this, but holy heaven, I never really imagined…” She closed her eyes, then opened them again, fixated on Ruby Jean’s flight suit–clad figure, performing a little routine on the wing of the ancient-looking biplane, like she was dancing down the sidewalk. “In a million years, and for a million dollars, you could never make me do that.”
Lauren was very proud of herself for how well she was doing with her flight lessons. But there were never going to be any wing-walking lessons. Not in this lifetime.
Her mother turned to her only after Ruby Jean had completed the stunt and was safely back in the plane. The crowds cheered and roared as the pilot continued on with the air show. Lauren had thought watching Jake race Betty Sue in the preliminary heats had been terrifying enough.
“I’m not sure I’m going to make it through this,” she told her mother.
“Of course you are,” Charlene responded, taking Lauren’s arm as they wove their way through the throngs that had amassed for the air race in Reno. “Someone has to revive me when I faint dead away, and I want that someone to be you.”
“Oh, well, then. When you put it like that.”
“Snow cones. We need snow cones.”
“I’ll buy,” Lauren said as they pushed their way toward the string of vendors. They had a little over an hour before heading over to the field where Jake would race in the final, championship heat. It was a perfect day, with a brilliant blue sky, the temperature a comfortable sev
enty-five. Lauren and Charlene had passes that allowed them over where Betty Sue was being maintained. Paddy’s crew, as she’d come to affectionately think of them, along with the pit crew working the race, and occasionally Roger and his gang, were all there in between races and events.
They started to head that way, nibbling at the sweet crushed ice. “I was kind of surprised when Ruby Jean said she wanted to go back to working air shows,” Lauren said. “But she’s clearly a natural up there.” She looked at her mother. “Have you given any more thought to the town council’s proposition?”
It had been just shy of two months since the big showdown with Arlen and Melissa. Things hadn’t progressed that far with their respective trials, as both were pleading not guilty, so it was going to drag out. But the townspeople had been far more swiftly decisive, almost universally condemning both Arlen and Melissa for their alleged activities. Well, some more alleged than others. Charlene had been welcomed back with open arms and, by proxy, so had Lauren. Those arms only spread more widely when she announced she was staying.
The town had been united when it came to Charlene, whom they’d circled around like soldiers protecting their fort. With Charlene solidly on the inside of that circle. The town wanted to find someone to run for mayor to replace Arlen. The wanted to reunify everyone and get the town back on a positive, forward-thinking track, which was a challenge given the scandal was the biggest thing to ever hit their small resort town. To that end, they’d approached Charlene about running to fill her soon-to-be-annulled husband’s now vacant office. It had been a tremendous vote of support and respect, which both Lauren and Charlene had been vocally thankful for. To embrace them both was one thing, but to accept them so fully was as humbling as it was heartening.
“I am,” Charlene said, “but…”
Lauren paused a few dozen yards shy of joining the Betty Sue crew and pulled her mother to one side. “Mom, please don’t feel you have to say yes just because they were generous enough to ask. It’s very, very flattering, but it’s not a good reason to take a job like this if you don’t really want it.”
A Great Kisser Page 40
