by Susan Napier
It was no use. Fran couldn't let Ross's family go on believing him the villain of the piece when he was being so disgustingly, implacably honourable...
'Well, you can set your mother's mind at rest... or I will when I write to her next. It's not Ross who's baulking at marriage. It's me.'
Beth was predictably scandalised. 'Fran!' she screamed, upsetting her coffee. 'He proposed? And you turned him down?' She hooted. 'Poor Ross, no wonder he looked as if he'd been run over by a concrete mixer!' Then outrage conquered sisterly malice. 'But why? Are you crazy?. I thought you liked us, I thought you'd jump at the chance to be my sister-in-law,' she wailed.
'You marry a person, Beth, not a family,' Fran said drily, although she knew that wasn't quite the case with the Tarrants. They were all lovingly close.
'But what's the matter with Ross? Was it the way he asked or something?'
'Or something,' Fran sipped her coffee broodingly. 'And he didn't ask, he assumed.'
'You can't blame him for that,' said Beth uncertainly, 'I mean...he's got a lot to be confident about, don't you think? He loves you, he's disgustingly eligible, he's kind to children and animals, has a terrific respect for your career. What else could you want?' Put like that, it did sound incredible.
'He also likes dangerous sports,' Fran pointed out defensively. 'Specifically, jumping out of aeroplanes in midair.'
'Nobody's perfect,' Beth joked. Then, seeing Fran was
deadly serious, she protested, 'But, Fran, that accident
was a fluke. Statistically speaking, he's far more likely
to be killed in a car accident. Or die of cancer, but I bet
you wouldn't let that hold you back. If parachuting was
really that dangerous, do you think Ross would encour-
age me to take it up? Yet when I was watching him jump last week he helped me sign up for—'
'He's jumping again?' Fran interrupted blindly, and Beth groaned.
'Oh, hell, me and my big mouth! Three times and text-book perfect every time. It's too late to worry now. What you don't know doesn't hurt you.'
She was wrong. Ignorance was the major cause of Fran's fear. By Ross's side or a thousand miles away, Fran was going to worry. Instead of letting her imagination run riot in the dark she should arm herself to the teeth with knowledge. Knowledge was power, knowledge was strength. Already she had let her insecurities dominate her to the point where they were ruling her life.
Beth was right about something else, though. It was more likely that Ross would be hurt in an accident on the road than anywhere else, but because Fran drove and accepted that risk herself her fears were proportionately less. An idea, wild and audacious, and worthy of Ross himself, took hold. Why should not the same perspective apply at a higher level of risk, too?
Ross loved her—enough to offer marriage, enough to offer secret assistance by trying to buy the cabin she had flung on to the market in a fit of defiance when the probate was finally settled. She couldn't even drum up any anger at the attempted manipulation, not when she knew it had been motivated by the sweetest of sentiments, the same ones that had led her to take the cabin off the market again barely two weeks later, admitting she would rather mortgage herself to the hilt than sever that precious link with love and Ross Tarrant. And if she loved him, didn't she owe him the best? A woman who was his equal, not one who let doubts and anxieties nibble away at the foundations of love until it crumbled into nothingness. Could she do it? Escape her own limitations, try her wings, literally, to see how high she could soar?
But when she blurted out her idea to Beth, instead of looking suitably impressed by her courage, the girl had been dubious. 'Do you think that's such a good idea? I mean...it's not really your kind of thing...'
'Is that a polite way of calling me a wimp?' Fran's jaw shot out even as Beth hurriedly denied the calumny. Ross had called her a coward too, once too often! She would do it, and to hell with what they thought!
'When's the next course?' she demanded, adding grimly when she saw Beth bite her lip, 'And don't you go running to Ross about this. I don't want him to know.'
'But then, I don't see the point—'
'No more meddling, Beth. You promised!'
'OK, but I tell you—I think you're crazy!'
That made the verdict unanimous. Christina, too, thought her friend insane.
'I get palpitations when the kids ride their bikes up to the shops, for goodness' sake,' she said, which only served to confirm Fran's theory about perspective. One loves, one fears... it was just necessary to get a proper handle on them, and not impose them constantly on others.
The hardest part, during the two weeks it took for Fran to rack up the required hours of ground-training at the parachute club was resisting the temptation, at Beth's urging, to ring Ross.
'At least give him some hope...tell him you're thinking about it. Please, Fran. He won't ring, you know. A man has his pride, after all, especially when he's just had his love and honour thrown back in his teeth as if they were insults!'
Fran had winced, but she hadn't given in to the emotional blackmail. Besides, Ross wasn't the kind of man to cave in at the first sign of resistance or adversity. If he loved her, he would be back... after his pride had given her the opportunity to stew for a while, by which time she would either have been tempered in her trial by fire or consumed by it. All or nothing, that was what he had demanded and that was what she was going to give him. If she wasn't strong enough to love him, she must be strong enough to reject him. Ironically, acceptance of her own weakness would require the greatest show of strength.
'OK?' The jumpmaster's voice was suddenly loud in her ear as he helped her into position sitting on the door sill, her legs dangling into a seventy-mile-per-hour slipstream. She had hardly been aware of the others jumping, but she could see them now, below her, five flowering canopies drifting on the light breeze.
'Go!'
Instantly obeying the command to go had been drilled into them so often that it was second nature. Fran went.
She pushed off firmly, collapsing into the solid pressure of the air two and a half thousand feet above mother earth. Without even thinking about it she went straight into the drill, forcing her body into the 'stable' position, stomach down arms and legs spreadeagled, head back against her pack as she shouted out the vital count, 'One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand. Check!'
Even before she had finished counting off the seconds she felt the disorientating jolt that pulled her into a vertical position, indicating that the static line attached to the plane had deployed her parachute. On the word 'check' she looked up to make sure and to her horror she saw that the canopy was billowing out into two asymmetrical lobes rather than a reassuring roundness. She recognised it instantly from their lectures as a 'Mae West'; one of the rigging lines must have caught over the top of the canopy. She looked down towards the other jumpers to judge her speed, and her stomach swooned as she realised that her descent was far more rapid than theirs. She was also starting to rotate in the rigging and knew that it would continue to increase at an alarming rate if she didn't act quickly. Time, it had been hammered into them, is your biggest enemy. Fran, with years of practice at reacting quickly to emergency situations, had performed the equipment and safety drills meticulously in class and now she automatically went into action, cold clarity of thought smothering her momentary sense of panic.
She reached for the handle on the top of the reserve parachute strapped to her stomach and pulled, holding the pack steady with her other hand and keeping her feet pressed tightly together. The handle came away and she let it go, grabbing the emerging reserve with both hands and throwing it violently down and away. It blossomed up past her, immediately slowing her rate of descent, and she rested her forearms on the reserve rigging lines to keep it clear of the main 'chute which was now beginning to collapse completely. A few seconds later she used the canopy releases to jettison the useless main, and
watched it snake ground wards.
She had done it! She had only a brief moment of glorious relief to savour the drifting weightlessness, the beautiful sound of the canopy singing its rushing song of flight, before she was looking for the ground instructor, grasping the steering toggles to obey his hand signals to run and hold according to her position over the target area.
She didn't have time to be scared, even when the ground came streaking up at her—she was too busy. She tucked her arms up, bent her chin on to her chest and rounded her back, holding her knees and feet together to absorb the passive blow from the grassy field, and dissipating the shock of landing with a backward roll to the left.
She was scarcely aware of the congratulations of the instructor as she deflated her canopy and gathered it in, or of the excited chatter of her fellow students. Her hands shook as she removed her goggles. Dimly she heard someone say, 'You did everything right, Francesca, everything right. Here, let's get this off you and you can sit down.' Calm hands unbuckled her harness webbing and pulled off her helmet. 'Are you OK?'
And then there was another voice, abrupt, familiar, aggressively controlled. 'No, she's not OK, she's in shock. I'll look after her, I'm a doctor,' and she was being hustled across the uneven grass, half-dragged, half-carried, past the knot of interested friends and relations and Saturday-morning tourists, through the sagging farm gate to the road where a cluster of cars were parked. She was thrust on to the back seat of the nearest, a long, black limousine which even had a uniformed chauffeur sitting glassily in the front seat, her booted feet scuffing the roadside dust as her head was thrust unceremoniously between her knees. One of the jumpers must have some very rich and very vulgar friends, Fran thought with a semi-hysterical giggle. She stared at the Italian leather shoes, toe-to-toe in the dust with her borrowed boots.
Ross! Her shock began to dissipate as she realised that he must have witnessed her spectacular victory over self. Beth must have spilled the beans after all, but no matter, it saved Fran a trip. She felt drunk with relief. She wanted to share the bubbling exhilaration with Ross. For a few minutes up there she had walked the knife-edge, thrilled to the sharp taste of fear. But this time, unlike that terrifying flight in the Tiger Moth, she had been prepared for it... had conquered the fear with her own force of will. It was like a revelation, illuminating all the shadowy corners of her psyche. Fran knew now that she could conquer the world if she wanted to...!
'Ross—'
'Shut up and breathe!' The hand tightened murderously on her neck and Fran squeaked. His tone of voice was hardly calculated to soothe her shock. Wasn't he going to congratulate her? He had toasted Beth with champagne! Fran hadn't gone to watch her friend's inaugural jump, not only because she wasn't ready to face Ross, whom she knew would be there, but because she thought that it would be a psychologically disastrous move to confront the reality of what all those ground drills meant until the last possible moment. Coward to the last... but a brave one!
'Ross—'
Suddenly the weight lifted from her neck and she was hauled upright, dangling on tiptoe from the jumpsuit fabric balled in his fists. She gulped as she got her first look at his expression. Congratulations were definitely not on his agenda! He looked grey under his tan, the sexy mouth clamped into a thin line, his eyes two chips of blue steel.
'What in the bloody hell were you doing up there?' His snarl took the skin off the top of her ears and she stared at him open-mouthed. The instructor had been pleased. Had Ross's expert eye seen something that he had missed?
'It all happened so fast,' she gasped apologetically,
trying to loosen his grip with unsteady hands. 'Should
I have tried to clear the canopy? I didn't think there was
time to have a go and we were told that if there's any
doubt—'
'Not that!' he roared, shaking her furiously. 'You know damned well what I mean. I mean, what were you doing up there at all! And don't try and feed me that lie you fed Beth about it having nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with me. You never showed any sign of being interested in adventure sports before. Why now? What incredibly cretinous theory about us have you cooked up in that tiny little brain that makes you think you have to prove anything to me? Goddammit, Frankie, have you any idea what I went through when I saw that malfunction? Well?' he rattled her again. 'Have you?'
The adrenalin still rushing frantically around her body was well shaken up by this time. 'No, but I can make a good guess,' she threw at him. 'At least I didn't land in a tree and break every bone in my body.'
'What did you say?' he asked, in a thick and dangerous voice and Fran, still feeling cocky, started to repeat herself with pointed sweetness. She didn't get past the first word. He kissed her with the full force of his anger and, after a moment of recoil from his savagery, Fran kissed him back, with equal force. She was his equal, in every way, and she was through running away from the prospect of loving him.
He broke the kiss as violently as he had begun it, one hand lifting from her shoulder to wipe his mouth. They both stared at the blood which streaked the hard knuckles.
'Is that yours, or mine?' Fran asked shakily and Ross closed his eyes, and shuddered. 'You're not going to faint at the sight of a little blood are you, Doctor?' she murmured as he actually swayed on his feet. He made a raw sound and put his arms around her, not gently, holding her hard against the erratic beat of his heart.
'Don't you ever, ever, do that to me again,' he said with quiet violence.
'Parachute?' Fran asked, her voice muffled in his chest. Now that her initial shock and euphoria had died she was realising that she didn't particularly want to make a habit of this kind of thing.
'Shut me out of a decision like this. I need to know, I need to be part of it. Oh, Frankie, I accused you of being a coward, but I'm the coward here, not you. I dismissed your fears as of no account because I was afraid that I would lose you if I admitted that they had any validity. But they do. God, how could I have been such a hypocrite as to say that I love you and yet be willing to put you through the kind of agony I just went through? I never fully realised before how utterly terrifying it can be to watch someone you love hover literally between life and death and be powerless to help them. I had an inkling of it when you swam out to the boat that day, but I didn't know I was in love with you then. I didn't realise it until you walked out on me, and I faced the fact that it wasn't a matter of choice any more. I couldn't just shrug and let you go, I had to make you love me, even if it took the rest of my life. But you do, don't you, Fran?' His arms tightened briefly. 'That's why you were so afraid and now I understand... But you don't have to be any more. If you want me to give up this sort of thing, I will, with no regrets. I'd far rather have you, just the way you are. You don't have to make any grand gestures to show me how brave you are, I don't care. Just show me your love, that's bravery enough... if you can...'
'I didn't do this for you, Ross,' Fran said, with tender amusement at his anguished humility. 'I did it for me. I wasn't trying to be someone I'm not—just to be a strong me. And I am. I'm...free. I needed to know that I could trust myself before I could trust anyone else. And I do trust you, Ross. I know that you would never deliberately hurt me. So don't you make any grand gestures, either. Even if you never regretted giving up your racketing around the skies, I would.'
He caught his breath and cupped her face, lifting it from the cradle of his chest. The clear, grey serenity of her eyes smote him to the bone. Her love was there, open and unafraid, for him to see.
'Yes, I love you,' she said huskily and watched his skin flush with warmth. 'All of you, not just the pieces that I feel comfortable with. And I couldn't bear it if you thought that you had to be less than you are for my sake.' She smiled at his expression. 'I want you to be more, not less. I love you, Ross.'
The long fingers tightened possessively on her jaw, his eyes alight with joy, relief. 'I thought you did, oh, God, I hoped you did, but how good
it is to hear you say it. Do you know how wild it drove me trying to work out why the idea of marriage to me was so horrifying? Even if you didn't love me, I thought you'd at least be flattered...' His soft laugh held the memory of his frustrated anger. 'When I went to bed that night I was cursing Beth for jumping the gun and myself for greedily trying to take advantage of it. I had been so proud of my damned patience so far, and it all went out the window in a moment when you suddenly looked at me as if I'd sprouted horns, rather than the halo I thought I deserved. Such arrogance...'
'Magnificent arrogance,' she agreed mischievously and he laughed, this time with some of that same, beloved arrogance.
'Like a callow boy I was outraged that you didn't treat my love like the priceless gift it was, and spitefully I tried to make you feel guilty about it.'
'You succeeded.'
'You got your revenge. When I saw that 'Mae West' I thought it would be my fault if you died. That I'd driven you into believing you had to be some kind of Amazon to earn my respect. But that you always had, and always will...' He tilted his head to the sky and blurted out, 'I still can't believe you did that!'
'I wanted to see what it was like,' she said meekly.
His lips moved silently, very like those of her fellow parachutist before he went out the door. 'And what was it like?' he finally asked, in strangled tones.
'I don't really know, it all happened so fast,' she admitted sheepishly. 'Not as scary as I'd expected while everything was going on and then... sort of quiet but not quiet... rather awesome and fantastic...' Her enthusiasm died a little as she remembered what could have happened. '... I think...'
Ross felt the last of his tension drain away to be replaced by a heavy, sultry sensation of anticipation, spiked with delicious slivers of amusement.
