by Anne Calhoun
They resolutely avoided eye contact on the way to the launch site. They were fine, as long as they didn’t make eye contact. As soon as they did, based on the way they looked at each other, everyone would know. The heat between them would burn an office building to a blackened shell.
The balloonist sized them all up with a practiced eye, then pointed the older ladies into one balloon basket and Rose and Keenan into another. “Wait,” she said. “I want to go with Grannie.”
“So do we,” Florence said.
Rose narrowed her eyes. Florence gave her a little finger wave / shooing motion, and Rose turned to find Keenan politely holding the basket door open for her.
“I don’t like heights,” she said as she stepped into the compartment.
“Neither do I,” he said.
“You jump out of airplanes,” she said, remembering Jack’s descriptions of HALO training.
“With a parachute I’ve packed myself,” he explained.
The basket was sectioned into compartments. She and Keenan were in one, while a heavyset older man with a graying beard occupied the other. The grounds crew unhooked the basket from the stakes, and with a deep whoosh, the balloon rose into the air. The soil and dry grass surrounding the launch site blurred into an indistinct pale brown as they gained altitude, drifting on the currents after the other balloons. She turned in the enclosure, looking for Grannie’s balloon, but quickly lost her in the flock of balloons now soaring over the valley.
“How many balloons go up each day?” she asked the balloonist.
“Hundreds,” he said cheerfully. “But don’t worry! There has been only one crash in the last dozen years. Very safe.”
She looked at Keenan. “Given the right equipment, I can defy the laws of physics,” he said.
Her gaze flicked to his backpack.
“Sometimes a backpack is just a backpack, not a parachute.”
Smart aleck. Rose went on tiptoe, peering into the cloudless sky, a crisp, cool blue that seemed to go on forever. The balloon ride was different from being in an airplane; aside from the occasional whoosh as the balloonist turned up the flame above their heads, the ride was so silent Rose heard ringing in her ears. “I can’t see her,” she said, her voice disappearing into the vast, pale sky.
“She’s fine,” Keenan said quietly. “You’re the one who’s about to snap off a nail,” he said, still in that low undertone. “Not that I’d mind.”
She shot him a look.
“The scratches stung this morning,” he said.
The balloonist was chatting to the other passenger, pointing out the scenery below. The rising sun picked out undulating folds of hillsides, in sepia tones of brown, gray, and cream, and the villages carved into the rock, the arched doorways irregular, mysterious, ancient. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m not,” he replied. “You were amazing.”
She glanced at him again, looking for the teasing, the punchline. Without breaking eye contact he peeled her fingers away from the edge of the basket, then took her wrist in his fingers in a touch so delicate, so careful, so viscerally possessive, she stopped breathing. He pushed up the sleeve of her sweater and the silk thermal t-shirt below, then turned her wrist underside up to press a soft kiss into her wrist. The contrast between his soft lips and his raspy beard sent a hot thrill through her.
She’d stopped looking for Grannie’s balloon. And breathing. The air up here was very thin, trickling into her lungs past her locked throat. The seemingly endless sky all around her, the ancient landscape below her, and Keenan’s blue eyes conspired to pull her into this moment, in a hot air balloon, halfway around the world from her daily life. Her brain, normally chattering away like a monkey on crack, suddenly was possessed of two thoughts. Last night was a one-off, and she wanted to do it again.
He could tell. He’d known before she had, that much was clear in his knowing eyes. A hawk soared on the same rising current that lifted them, then wheeled to dive into a field and come up with breakfast, a mouse by the look of it. She swallowed, and turned her attention to the balloonist’s patter about Cappadocia’s fairy chimneys, dousing the fire, but the coals still smoldered, waiting for night.
“Rebels used to hide here,” Keenan said during a lull.
“Which rebels?”
“All of them,” he said, then nodded at the gently folded terrain. “See how the roads wind and lift with the terrain? You couldn’t easily get mounted troops, or chariots, into the area, and if you did, the insurgents would hide in one of the thousands of caves.”
“Does it remind you of Afghanistan?”
“The terrain is more mountainous in Afghanistan, but the problems armies face are similar.”
She surveyed the territory again, but with a different eye, an eye toward the human cost. “Do you see the world in terms of warfare now?”
The heater whooshed again, sending hot air skyward, keeping them aloft. Keenan rested his elbows on the woven edge of the balloon’s basket, and didn’t meet her eyes. “Yes,” he said finally.
The balloons dropped gently until they skimmed a few feet above the landing sites and were hauled down to the beds of waiting trucks by handlers who deftly secured the baskets and stowed the billowing balloon fabric. The balloonist unlocked the basket’s gate and let out the other passenger, then Keenan, who reached up for Rose’s hand to help her down to the ground. A linen-draped table with strawberries and champagne awaited them. Grannie, Florence, and Marian each had a glass in hand, and triumphantly bent forward so the balloon company’s owner could drape medals around their necks. For a moment she thought Keenan would refuse the cheerfully intended honor, but he stood by her and accepted his medal with only a hint of the ridiculous in the set of his lips.
* * *
They clambered into the waiting shuttle bus for the drive back to their hotel. The Babes spent the drive comparing pictures, leaning over the back of Rose’s seat to draw her into their conversation. When they arrived back at the hotel, Keenan mustered everyone around one of the comfortable sectionals in the lobby. “I took a look at your bucket list, and your itinerary,” he said as he held up a map neatly highlighted and marked with arrows, then handed each of them a printed sheet of paper. Rose skimmed it and saw he’d reworked the trip. “Your original plan took you to a number of archeological sites along the Meander Valley, but didn’t leave you much time to linger in Istanbul. If we cut out a couple of the smaller sites, which aren’t as excavated anyway, we can visit Konya, Ephesus, and Troy, which gives you more time at each site, plus extra days in Istanbul. This way you spend your daylight hours at significant sites, and nights driving to the next location. You wake up there, ready to go.”
He looked at Grannie, who was already nodding, then at Rose. “I put the itinerary together after Jack pulled out but before I knew you were going to replace him. I was leery of driving at night in a strange country where I might have a hard time reading road signs.”
With precious cargo in the backseat, his gaze read. “I’ve got that,” he said.
“Rose?” Grannie asked.
She was running his itinerary against Grannie’s bucket list. “If you’re okay with it, I’m okay with it.”
Grannie looked at Keenan.
“Ma’am,” he said respectfully, “Ephesus is the best-excavated site in Turkey. Unless you have a deep interest in the spread of Christianity, Roman ruins, or the history of the Ottoman Empire, you’re not missing anything at the other sites.”
“Done,” she said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
They piled into the Land Rover and set off for Derinkuyu. “I hired a guide,” Keenan said, looking at his phone when they pulled into the parking lot. “He’s meeting me by the bazaar.”
“We just need to use the ladies’ room,” Grannie said.
Amused, Rose watched Keenan control the lift of his eyebrow. “Be prepared to stop at every gas station, rest stop, and caravanserai between here and Istanbul.”
/> “Where will you be?” he said.
“Right here,” she said, and sat down on a rock outside the entrance.
Ten minutes later she’d had ample time to think about how little she could do without cell phone access or the ability to read or understand the language flowing around her. She wandered through the stalls set up outside the entrance, examining the colorful scarves, pottery, statues, and evil-eye symbols available for purchase. More practically, she picked up an English-language book on the site. By the time she’d returned to her spot, Keenan was back with the guide, but no Bucket List Babes.
“Where are they?”
“You haven’t spent much time with old ladies, have you?” Rose said mildly, flipping through the book.
Grannie and her entourage reappeared moments later. “You would not believe the toilets,” she said gleefully. “Marian practically had to take one apart to get it to flush.”
Marian was drying her hands on her water-wicking travel pants. Rose’s eyes widened. “Soap, but no towels,” Marian explained.
“Maybe we could save the stories for the ride to Konya?” Keenan said, eyeing an enormous bus that was pulling into the parking lot. “This is our guide, Recip.”
“Hello,” Recip said.
“Hello,” everyone else chorused.
With just a look Keenan indicated he’d go first and help the ladies up or down as necessary, while Rose should bring up the rear and make sure no one wandered off into the maze of corridors and caves. The caves were a United Nations World Heritage site, and absolutely fascinating. Rose found herself drawn into Recip’s tales of bandits and Roman soldiers, of the tunnels opening far into the hills, of the groups that survived for months on stored grain. They duck-walked through tiny passageways carved into the rock, sidestepped down narrow staircases, and examined grain storage rooms, kitchens, sleeping alcoves, and worship spaces complete with chancels and altars. At the end of the tour Grannie cornered Recip, who clearly loved an enthusiastic and engaged audience.
“How much do we tip him?” Rose asked under her breath. “Whatever it is, he was worth it.”
“I took care of it,” Keenan said just as quietly.
“You built in time for them to shop?”
“Ninety minutes,” he said, with a look on his face that said she’d better not say they needed more than ninety minutes to shop.
“Grannie won’t last that long,” Rose said. “I could use some tea, though.”
A shop with a small patio was set up across the path from the stalls. Rose bought herself a glass of apple tea, steaming hot and served in a glass cup with a handle and a tiny silver spoon. The smell was fragrant, sweet, and soothing. She found a spot still warmed by the setting sun, sat down, sipped, and closed her eyes. She dreamed she was back home, arguing with the management team and Jack about the inoperative toilets on the thirty-sixth floor.
A not-quite-subtle nudge to the sole of her boot made her jump. Keenan stood by her table, drying his hands on his pants. “Wake up. I’ve lost your grandmother.”
“What?”
“I went to the head,” he said, hands now on his hips. “When I came back out, they were gone. I looked down every aisle of the market, but no luck. “
Rose rubbed her eyes and looked around. Still in Turkey. It wasn’t a dream, and neither was Keenan.
“If they’ve gone back into the caves, our schedule’s fucked,” Keenan added.
Rose stood up and looked around, then stood on her chair for a better view. “I know where they are,” she said.
She led Keenan around to the back of the tea shop, then up a slight rise covered in tall grass bending in the breeze. Over the crest she pointed into the middle distance, where three bright fleece jackets huddled together. “Grannie, Marian, and Florence are all lifetime members of the Lancaster Garden Club,” she said. “Toilets first, then the nearest green space.”
Keenan grunted, then stuck two fingers in his mouth and gave a sharp whistle. The ladies and a border collie on the opposite hillside all perked up. “We leave in ten minutes,” he bellowed.
Grannie waved back with a hand clutching a small thicket of flowers plucked from the field.
“She’s going to want to identify those flowers. What do you know about Turkey’s flora?” Rose asked, eyes still on the group.
“Not a goddamn thing,” Keenan said. “You?”
“I kill cacti,” Rose said.
He stared at her, incredulous. “You kill the only plant you don’t have to water?”
“Yes.”
“Well, shit,” Keenan said.
* * *
The molten gold disk had just dipped below the horizon when Keenan merged into traffic on a two-lane highway and started heading west. In the backseat, Grannie and her friends were examining the leaves and petals of several flowers they were unable to identify. Keenan’s profile, illuminated by the Land Rover’s dashboard lights, was knife-edged, his eyes steadily on the road, his mouth set in a firm line. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows in the flat, precise turns Jack adopted after he joined the Navy. Boot camp and BUD/S hadn’t tamed him so much as provided a structure for his wild side; the possibility for mayhem simmered under everything he did. But she’d use a different word to describe Keenan. A warrior. Unlike Jack, Keenan wouldn’t go looking for trouble, but he’d sure as hell manage it if it found him.
The memory of the previous night bloomed in her veins. She’d tried to direct things, manage them, really. She liked orgasms really quite a bit, and desperately wanted another one, perhaps even two or three, with Keenan, who inhabited his body so completely he could take over hers, as well.
It wasn’t so much the physical side as the mental ruthlessness. He didn’t quit. Quitters didn’t get through BUD/S. If he made up his mind to take her into a dark, delicious place that a day ago she had no idea she wanted to explore, he’d take her there. Again, and again, and again …
He flicked her a quick glance. “What?”
Praying that the dark interior would hide the heated rush of color in her cheeks, she reached for her tote bag and pulled out Keenan’s new itinerary. “Nothing. How far are we from Konya?”
“About three hours,” he said. “Traffic should be fairly light this time of day.”
“Good,” she said, riffling through the original, optimistic plan. “The only site on the list is the Rumi museum, which works out well. It’s a seven-hour drive to Ephesus. Could we stop at Isparta on the way?”
“If we leave Konya by about noon, sure.”
“Okay. Good. Thank you.” She made a notation, then pulled out the map to calculate the detour’s mileage.
“Do you always worry this much?”
“I don’t worry,” she said, stung. “I plan. Then I make a contingency plan. Then I execute the first plan, unless I have to switch to the contingency. You can’t make sure things go right unless you anticipate the ways things can go wrong.”
He nodded. “Understood,” he said easily. “But you also have to know when to shut it off.”
“I never shut it off,” she said. “Dad left when I was seven and Jack was four. Mom never stuck to a plan. She’d start a new job in a new place with wild expectations for the future, then abandon the job, and usually the town, at the first sign of trouble. I got in the habit of planning for whatever could happen because anything could, and often did, happen. Now it’s my job. Operations supports the marketers, the people who make money for the company. If we don’t do our jobs well, they don’t do their jobs well. We grew fast, acquiring companies all over the world. There are so many redundancies and inefficiencies that waste time and money. That’s what I do. I find those, and I fix them.”
Eyes fixed on the road, he drove in silence for a while. She’d built her life around a skill she’d developed early in life, and she’d made Senior Director by thirty by virtue of those skills. If all went well, she’d be a VP by thirty-five. Frankly, this worked for her, and she saw no reason to change it.
/>
But Keenan wasn’t her boss, or a peer. “That must have been hard,” he said.
“It’s a useful skill to have,” she said with a shrug.
“Would you feel better if I kept you apprised of our progress?”
He said it so seriously she almost thought he might be teasing her. Then he turned his head to look at her, casting his profile in shadow and light. Either he had the world’s best poker face or he was completely serious. In the end, she didn’t care if Keenan Parker thought she was the world’s most uptight bitch.
“I’d appreciate that, yes,” she said.
Eyes back on the road, his cheek creased ever so slightly. “We’re exactly two hours and nineteen minutes from our hotel.”
Teasing. Definitely teasing her. She found she didn’t mind at all.
Chapter Four
After making sure Marian and Florence were settled in their room, Rose closed the door and walked down the hall to the room she was sharing with Grannie. She found her grandmother in bed, her soft, long silver hair loose around her shoulders, her tablet beside her and her laptop on her lap.
“What are you doing?” Rose asked as she rummaged through her bag for her laptop. Please God let the hotel’s WiFi be faster than the one in Cappadocia.
“Uploading the pictures I took today,” Grannie said absently. “I want to label them as I go, or I’ll forget what I saw.”
Laptop in hand, Rose peered over her shoulder. Grannie was a not bad amateur photographer. The album was labeled “Bucket List—Turkey,” and she was organizing the pictures by date, then by location.
“Nice,” Rose said as Grannie tabbed through the pictures she’d taken. There were several in the caves, and two of Marian disassembling a toilet tank. “She’s so handy.”
“She worked in her father’s garage before she married Tom,” Grannie said.
“I didn’t know that,” Rose said, surprised.
“Ask her about it some time.”
“I’d love to get copies of those.”
“I’ll make a slideshow and upload it to the cloud”
