Come Fly With Me

by Addison Fox

  Grier waved back and knew where she’d stop next.

  The nonexistent traffic on Main meant she didn’t have to cross at the light and within moments she was stamping snow off her boots in the front of his store.

  “Well, if it isn’t Miz Grier.” Tasty smiled at her from behind the counter. “You looked lost out there. I’m glad you came to pay me a visit.”

  She stopped midstomp as she worked to kick the last bit of snow off her boots. “Lost?”

  “Lost in thought.”

  “I’ll give you that.”

  “Speaking of giving, where’s the hat I gave you?”

  Since gray winter beanie caps were about as fashionable as a pair of granny panties, Grier had left the cap at the very bottom of her suitcase, but from the look on his eager face, she could hardly tell him that. “It’s in my laundry basket.”

  “No worries.” Tasty shook a hand. “I’ve got another one you can have.”

  Her lightly whispered “Thanks” was lost as he moved behind the long wooden counter that ran along the front half of his store. As he puttered off, her gaze alighted on a book that lay in front of his seat, its pastel-colored spine cracked. Curious, she moved closer, surprised to see it was a Regency romance by an author she had on auto-buy.

  Tasty was back all too soon with the cap, his smile proud as he handed the gray monstrosity to her.

  “You’re a big reader?”

  “Oh yeah. I love those Regencies. Ballrooms get me every time.”

  She took the cap he extended toward her with a smile. “That’s romantic of you.”

  “I carry ’em in the bookstore I keep in the back. Fat lot of good it’s done me, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I didn’t get bid on again.” At the puzzled look she gave him, he added in a forlorn tone, “At the auction.”

  “Oh.”

  Grier had heard about the bachelor auction that was part of the grandmothers’ annual shenanigans to get their grandsons married off, but she’d missed the actual event as she’d tried to break in to her father’s house while the festivities were going on. Her first and only attempt at breaking and entering had been a dismal failure, but it had put her smack-dab in Mick’s arms once more.

  Until she ran away like a frightened mouse who didn’t know her head from her ass.

  Tasty’s words pulled her from the slightly embarrassing memory.

  “Chooch says I need to stop looking so scary.”

  Although the woman had a point, Grier thought there might be a slightly less abrasive way to tell him. “Have you thought about shaving the beard?”

  The look of horror that filled the man’s eyes had her leaning forward. “I’m sorry. That didn’t come out as I meant it. You need to be you, but maybe you could trim it a bit?”

  “It is a little full.”

  “Exactly. Let the ladies see a bit more of your face.”

  “Hmmm.” He ran a hand over his cheeks, the motion so deliberate and thoughtful, Grier had the strangest urge to hug him. “You know, that Mick O’Shaughnessy is one lucky man.”

  “Mick doesn’t have a beard.”

  “Hee hee.” Tasty slapped his hand on the counter. “I was talking about you.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re a sweet girl, Grier. And you’re a good person, sitting here shooting the shit with me. He’s one lucky man.”

  “I’m not dating Mick.”

  “Sure you are.”

  “No, really, I’m not.”

  The smile fell from his face as her protests finally registered. “Well, why the hell not?”

  The outburst wasn’t what she’d expected—especially not after their bonding moment over personal grooming. “I’m sorry, Tasty, but I’m only here for a bit and then I’m headed home. Once I get things figured out with my father’s estate.”

  “That’s not right. You’re one of us, now. You need to settle down right here just like your daddy always wanted.”

  “If that’s what he wanted, he had an awfully funny way of showing it.”

  “I won’t argue with you there. I told Jonas more than once he needed to get off his ass and call you. And then the cancer spread on ’em and he didn’t do what was right.” Tasty leaned forward. “Please don’t hold it against him.”

  Something hard settled in the pit of her stomach and she was caught off guard. Grier wanted to offer some mild-mannered, lovely retort—more than thirty years of having manners drilled into her almost had her offering up some nice platitude—but something held her back at the last minute.

  She would have liked to have known her father. Would have liked to have known that she had a home somewhere in the world where someone wanted her.

  But Jonas Winston hadn’t been able to give that to her.

  “Even if you do have a right to be madder than a rattler at him.”

  Tasty’s words penetrated the dour moment and she smiled in spite of the roiling emotions she couldn’t quite get under control. “They have rattlesnakes in Alaska?”

  “Nah, it’s too cold here for reptiles to survive. But I haven’t spent my whole life in Alaska. I’m originally from Arizona.”

  “How’d you end up here?”

  He shrugged. “Pipeline, same as so many others. Place sort of grew on me, so I stayed.”

  “I see.”

  He eyed the winter hat she’d rolled up into a tight ball in her hands. “You sure you want that?”

  “What? Oh—” Grier looked down at her hands. “Of course I do.”

  Tasty’s expression was a mixture of relief and dawning horror. “I just gotta figure out how to put that freebie into my accounting of my inventory.”

  “It’s not too hard. Just count it as an expense against the business.”

  “That’s usually where I get messed up.” He pointed at an old computer sitting on a small desk behind him. “I’m not great with the numbers.”

  “Would you like some help?”

  Whatever tense moments the two might have shared over her lack of commitment to Mick or Jonas’s lackluster parenting skills evaporated as he extended a hand to unlock the small half-wall that separated his area from the customers. “Would you?”

  “Sure. I haven’t quite gone rusty on my accounting skills in the last six weeks.”

  “I’m sure glad you stopped in.”

  As Grier pulled up an old Quicken program on Tasty’s computer—one that had matching floppy disks he proudly produced a few minutes later—she let out an inward sigh.

  At least she wouldn’t be bored this afternoon.

  “Oxygen. Stat.”

  Grier came to a halt next to Avery where she shoveled off the front parking area of the hotel.

  Avery’s smile was broad as she stopped and looked up. “Tasty?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Word travels faster than the speed of sound in this town. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  Grier reached for another shovel sitting against the wall and took a patch a few feet away. “Yes, but how could anyone know? No one came into his store the whole time I was there.”

  Avery’s eyebrows rose as she went back to her freshly dug path. “Didn’t you see all the people passing by outside the windows, checking out what you were doing in there?”

  “I guess I missed them. I spent the afternoon helping him with his accounting. It took every ounce of focus I possess.”

  Avery let out a long, low laugh. “You sure your hair’s not on fire?”

  Grier tapped her shovel against a thick snowbank, admiring her neat, even row of now-clean asphalt. “No, but I will cop to popping a few antacids around the start of hour three. The man sells worms, chewing tobacco and a few other fishing items. He can’t have more than one hundred SKUs in his total inventory. How’d he manage to mess them up so badly?”

  “A few too many years with the wacky tobaccy will do it to most.”

  “Oh no, this was a special brand of madness ev
en a drug-induced haze couldn’t cause.”

  “Let’s just say Tasty’s talents lie in his people skills, not his math skills.”

  Grier positioned her shovel to begin a new, fresh row, debating her next words before simply letting them loose. “He mentioned my father.”

  “Tasty was good friends with your dad.” Avery stamped her shovel with her foot, securing another wall of snow at the edge of the lot.

  Grier began to push her shovel, suddenly glad for the listening ear. Sloan was wonderful and had done an incredible job of being a supportive listener, but she hadn’t known Jonas.

  And it was that perspective, Grier realized, she craved.

  “You knew my father?”

  “Everyone here knows one another.” Avery paused a moment, indecision flashing in her dark brown eyes like a neon sign. And then the storm clouds cleared as if to say she’d made her decision. “But yeah, I knew your dad. He helped me out a few times with my mom.”

  “Helped you out? What do you mean?”

  “My mom was an alcoholic. She died about a year and a half ago.”

  “Oh, Avery, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not. And before you say anything,” she rushed on, “I just mean that I’m not sorry she’s not living a miserable existence anymore.”

  “Of course.” Although she’d have taken Avery’s side regardless, the pain she saw in her friend’s gaze hit with the force of a battering ram.

  Grier suddenly realized she wasn’t the only one in turmoil.

  And she wasn’t the only one who suffered from the poor choices of a parent.

  Whatever support she’d expected when she’d decided to open up, Grier appreciated that she’d gained so much more in befriending Avery Marks.

  “My mother is a story for another day.” It didn’t escape Grier’s notice Avery had momentarily stopped shoveling, even though her breathing was steady and even. “But your dad, on the other hand. He was a good man. I grew up in a house a few doors down from him and he kept a lookout for us. My mother was known for the occasional bender and Jonas had a way of sensing when I needed an extra hand.”

  Grier hazarded a guess. “Small-town grapevine again?”

  Avery tapped her nose in the age-old gesture for “spot -on.” “Yep. Maguire could see a bad night coming from a mile away. He’d send Jonas down to check on us.”

  “And your dad?”

  “Was a very not-involved pipeline worker who ultimately went back to his other family when his time on the line was over.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh yes, the cliché to end all clichés. My mother thought he hung the moon and instead all he hung was a baby on her.”

  “It’s not a cliché, Avery. It’s your life.”

  “Which is also why I have to tow the town line and tell you that your dad was a good man. Clearly misguided because he never found his way to bringing you here sooner, but a good man all the same.”

  Grier let out a heavy breath and watched the mist swirl in front of her face while she considered Avery’s words. “It sounds different, coming from you. From Tasty, or from anyone else here in town, it sounds like a defense. From you, it just sounds honest.”

  “I am that.” Avery started on another row of snow and Grier did the same, grateful to know about another side of her father.

  “Since I am unflinchingly honest,” Avery shouted over the heavy crunch of her shovel, “I can’t help but notice that your sexy bush pilot didn’t spend the night last night.”

  “He just came upstairs to check on me. Kate and I also left the room with quite a lot to discuss.”

  “The man wanted you.”

  And I wanted him, too, she wanted to add. “It’s not the right time in my life for this.”

  “So when is the right time? When you’re dead?”

  “This sounds suspiciously like a lecture.” Grier stopped at the edge of the lot and kicked her shovel to pack the snowbank in a pitiful attempt to hide from that unrelenting stare.

  “I never lecture. It’s bad form. What I am doing is trying to talk some sense into you. That man is so crazy about you, it blinks off him like the Christmas lights on Main Street.”

  “He should be blinking for someone else,” Grier muttered. “I’m damaged goods. Oh wait, make that damaged goods that will be leaving in six weeks.”

  Whatever lighthearted note had tinged Avery’s words up to that point turned serious as she walked over and wrapped an arm around Grier’s waist. “You deserve love. You really, really do.”

  The tears she’d held back the night before welled up before Grier could stop them. “I know I do.”

  “Then why won’t you reach out and take what’s right in front of you?”

  That arm never left her waist and Grier wondered how she’d come to trust this woman in so short a time. With a quick look around the empty parking lot, she took a deep breath.

  Trust meant risk.

  “You want to talk about clichés, Avery. I’m a walking cliché and you know it. My father’s never been a part of my life and my mother sees relationships as a social tool. I’m not exactly a good bet.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Wait. If you want me to talk about this, you have to let me get it out.”

  Avery nodded, but her brown eyes, the color of rich sable, never wavered.

  On a heavy breath, Grier swallowed around the constriction of tears in her throat. It was a new year and damn it, she was not going to cry every day. “I’m not exactly a good bet and I know that. But I also know, under the right circumstances, with the right person, I could be a good bet.”

  “I’m so glad to hear you say that. You mean it?”

  “Yeah, I really do.” Grier held up her mittened hand. “Scout’s honor. You have to believe me on that. And you also have to believe me when I say the circumstances just aren’t right here.”

  Avery’s eyes narrowed. “If you’re so sure about that, then why won’t you just enjoy yourself with him for the next few weeks?”

  “Because that’s just selfish.”

  “Mick’s a big boy. I think he’s more than capable of handling a little selfish.”

  “It doesn’t make it right.” Before Avery could argue, Grier added, “I’ve been the one left behind, Avery. It damages you.”

  Avery’s mouth opened, then closed again as a small line marred her forehead. When she finally spoke, her lighthearted tone was absent. “I thought you didn’t care about him.”

  “Jason? In hindsight, I really didn’t. I mean, I cared for him—but I didn’t love him. And it still hurt to be the one left. And if the way I do feel about Mick is any indication of how he feels about me, I just can’t do that to him.”

  The two of them stood there for a long time in silence, breaths misting before them, both lost in thought.

  And then Avery dropped her arm and stood before her. “You’re sure about this?”

  “About what?”

  “Why you can’t have it all. Why this isn’t different from what happened with your ex.”

  “The time’s not right.”

  Her new friend nodded but didn’t press as she turned to walk back to finish off her nearly cleared area.

  Avery and Sloan and even Mick seemed to think the time was exactly right. And so she didn’t risk her heart and start believing them; she had to stay strong.

  She simply couldn’t give in and do something stupid.

  Like fall in love with the man.

  “My fingers are going to fall off.” Grier leaned over to whisper it in Sloan’s ear as they moved into their third hour of cutting out red construction paper hearts. Someone had unearthed a few sets of scissors from the elementary school and she’d used the small torture device for so long, her palm was actually cramping.

  Sloan gritted her teeth and kept a proper Westchester smile on her face as she muttered back, “You do realize someone will have to hang these, too?”

  “Oh good God.”

  “You
gals having fun?” Julia cooed from the end of the table. She was unraveling a string of pink and red beads that Sophie had unearthed from a giant rubber tub.

  “The best, Mrs. Forsyth,” Sloan sang out.

  “Do you know when we started this little event?”

  “Um, no.” Grier looked around the town hall at the various groupings of women. Another table was busy using a pattern to draw the hearts—in all three sizes they’d ultimately hang—and yet another where Avery sat unraveling the same type of beads Julia had.

  “It was a celebration for Mick’s parents when they got married. We’d so wanted a couple to get married on Valentine’s Day in this town and they obliged us.”

  A delicate elbow hit her in the ribs as Sloan muttered, “Say something nice.”

  Grier shot her a dirty look back as she pried her fingers out of the small scissors and reached for a can of Coke someone had pressed on her. “That’s really nice, Mrs. Forsyth.”

  “It wasn’t just nice.” Mary O’Shaughnessy floated over to their table as if she carried a radar device. “It was dreamy. Just as we’d hoped. Mick arrived the following November.”

  Grier almost choked on her soda. “That’s great.”

  “His parents didn’t waste any time making me a grandmother.” Mary’s beatific smile shone down on her and Grier had the sudden urge to scream, Fire! and flee the building.

  When neither she nor Sloan said anything, Mary continued on as if there had never been a silence. “I’ve always thought Mick would make an excellent father.”

  “I agree.” The words were out before she could stop them and Grier quickly realized she had no interest in holding back the compliment. “He’s a wonderful man, Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. He’ll make a great father.”

  Giant hearts practically floated from Julia’s and Mary’s eyes as they exchanged glances down the table. Grier wondered abstractly if she and Sloan came off nearly so scary when they got together.