“You’re not ready to fly yet.”
But Sydney seemed unfazed. “Sure I am.”
He stared at her. Was she out of her mind? “You almost hit the shed. How do you figure you’re ready to fly?”
The answer was simple and she delivered it as if she was conducting a lesson in common sense for third graders. “That’s easy. If I’d been flying, I wouldn’t have almost hit the shed. The shed’s on the ground, I would have been in the air.”
At first, he looked at her, dumbfounded. Then he started to laugh. Really laugh. Whether it was relief or tension that shed itself like skin off a snake, he had no idea. All he knew was that it felt damn good to really laugh again.
He shook his head as the laughter faded. “God, but you are something else, Sydney.”
She smiled at him as if he’d just paid her a great compliment. “Nice of you to notice.”
Shayne looked at her then, really looked at her. There were times he forgot how beautiful she was, and how attracted to her he was. But not for long. “I notice, all right, but I just can’t do anything about it.”
Sydney debated taking the compliment and letting the matter drop. She couldn’t. She needed to know. “Can’t, or won’t?”
He was honest with her. Maybe at one time he could have fallen for her. But not now. Besides, she’d been attracted to his brother, and he and Ben were as different as summer and winter. If she loved summer, the winter would only drive her away eventually.
“Both. I’ve been down that route, Sydney. Almost didn’t find my way back.”
He could do anything he wanted to. If he wanted to. “If you ask me, you still haven’t.”
“No one’s asking you.” He knew that sounded too sharp. She didn’t deserve that. Well, maybe she did, for delving too deep, but he was supposed to be civilized. That meant not jumping down her throat. “Sorry.” He thought of how devastated she’d looked that day at the airport. The day he’d had to tell her she’d been jilted. “I suppose you have found your way back.”
Maybe not all the way, she allowed, but almost. “To where I can laugh and live again, yes.”
“I was in love with my wife. Really in love, for the first and only time in my life.” Shayne had no idea why he was telling her this. Only that it felt good, finally letting it out. “I grew up believing that love meant standing by someone, making it work, not giving up because things weren’t going according to plan. But Barbara gave up. Gave up so easily, I felt she didn’t care.”
The woman had been an idiot, Sydney thought. “Did you fight for her, Shayne?”
For a second, the question didn’t compute. “What?”
Hampered by the seat belt, she unbuckled it and turned to face him. “When she wanted to leave, did you fight for her? Did you try to make her stay?”
He remembered the last days, the heated words, the slammed doors. And he remembered Mac crying, frightened by the yelling and the discord. That had hurt him most of all, to hear his son crying.
Shayne banked the memories. There was no point in going over them again. “I fought with her, if that’s what you mean. But it didn’t do any good. She’d made up her mind to go and she went.”
She reached out and covered his hand. “Taking your heart with her.”
He pulled his hand away, but not immediately. Not before he felt the empathy in her gesture. “That’s far too romantic a notion. When she left, I grew up. I saw the world for what it was.”
No, he’d seen it for what he felt it had turned into for him. “Haven’t you heard, Shayne? Adults need love, too.”
She looked so sure of herself. So incredibly convinced that she was right. He could almost believe it, too. Except he knew different. “You keep talking like that and—”
“And what?” she whispered.
Damn, but he wanted her. It wasn’t right—for either of them—but he did. “I don’t want to have feelings for you, Sydney.”
Her eyes held his. “No one’s twisting your arm.”
He framed her face in his hands. “Yeah, they are.”
It wasn’t easy kissing a would-be pilot while confined to the seat of a cockpit. But he managed.
Managed just fine, in her opinion.
Chapter Twelve
Sydney couldn’t have felt dizzier than if the plane had suddenly gone into a tailspin, forming corkscrew patterns in the air. The impact of Shayne’s lips was getting more and more lethal every time he kissed her. And it always left her wanting more of the same.
More of him.
With her fingers curling in his hair, she felt her body yearning for fulfillment. She wanted him. Wanted him to make love with her. Wanted him to want her the way she wanted him.
She knew she had more of a chance of the sun rising at six the next morning than getting her wish.
She struggled to ignore the wave of deprivation that washed over her as he pulled back. Very slowly, she opened her eyes and looked at him.
And knew she was in very deep trouble. It was hap pening. Completely without her consent, she was falling in love with him.
And he probably saw it all in her eyes. Catching her lower lip between her teeth, Sydney searched for a diversion. And then she looked over Shayne’s shoulder, through the passenger window.
Relief blossomed into an amused smile. “What would people say if they saw their doctor necking in the front seat of his plane?”
He had to get better control over himself, Shayne upbraided himself. But every time he was around her, he found himself weakening just a little more.
“It’s not a front seat, it’s a cockpit, and no one saw. Besides, we weren’t necking,” he denied with feeling, “it was just a kiss.”
Just a kiss. And the aurora borealis is just another mediocre scenic event. He could deny it all he wanted, but Sydney knew he had to be feeling at least part of what she was. There was too much emotion, too much protest on his part not to.
Right now, she was trying very hard not to laugh as she pointed behind him.
Feeling more than a little uneasy, Shayne turned to see Ike standing right outside the plane, a wide, wicked grin on his handsome face.
Ike tapped on the side window, beckoning for Shayne to open it.
“What?” Shayne demanded, pushing the door open. His only regret was that he hadn’t managed to hit Ike’s midsection with it.
“Nice to see you, too, Shayne.” Ike couldn’t wait to get back to the Salty with this. Making no effort to disguise his obvious pleasure at the turn of events, Ike looked at Sydney. “See you managed to finally thaw him out a little.” He winked at her, a sense of camaraderie permeating the air. “My money’s been on you from the start, darling’.”
Right now, Shayne hated being on the outside almost as much as he hated having attention drawn to him. “Did you come all the way over here just to tell us about your betting propositions?”
“Hell, no.” Ike held up the bag he’d brought with him. The item inside had to be special ordered and had just arrived at the general store. “For your information, I came to give Sydney an early housewarming present.” Ike thrust the bag at her. “Didn’t have time to wrap it,” he confessed. “But I thought you might like it right away.”
Curious, pleased, Sydney leaned over Shayne and took the bag from Ike. She looked inside. Within the bag was a box, a picture of a telephone stamped on either side.
“A telephone?” she squealed.
Shayne glanced inside the bag. “Looks that way,” he muttered.
Ike’s grin widened, pleased with her reaction. “I just brought it straight from the general store. Came in an hour ago. Talk about timing.”
She realized what Ike was hinting at. Hope strummed through her. “Does this mean the telephone lines have been strung up?”
It had been rough going, Ike reflected, but the weather had cooperated for the most part. Everything seemed to have become milder since she arrived.
“As of early this morning,” he told her. “Reed sto
pped by the Salty for some breakfast when he finished the installation. Said to tell you that you can now talk to anyone you want—weather permitting.”
One down. One to go. It was all falling into place. Sydney hugged the box to her. This was really becoming home for her. “And the electricity?” Mentally, she crossed her fingers.
Ike shook his head. “Not yet.” He hated the disappointment that he saw in her eyes. “But I hear tell they’re working on it. Hope to have the lines repaired before Christmas.”
Christmas was less than three weeks away. In Alaskan time, that was less than a blink of an eye. “Doesn’t matter. I have a phone.” Her eyes moved from Ike to Shayne. “I’m invincible.”
“Just don’t try flying to test that theory,” Shayne warned darkly, annoyed more with himself than with anyone else.
He hated this strange, possessive feeling that came over him every time someone paid attention to Sydney. She wasn’t his to feel that way about; why couldn’t he remember that?
“C’mere,” she told Ike, who complied so quickly it elicited a harsh laugh from Shayne. Leaning over Shayne again, Sydney brushed her lips against Ike’s cheek. “Thank you. It’s wonderful.”
Okay, he’d been a good guy long enough. Shayne cleared his throat, pointedly looking at his friend. “You two want to be alone?”
Ike took a step back, his hands raised as if he were on the wrong end of a bank robbery. “And be accused of trying to muscle in on your territory? Hell, no. I might need you someday, you quack. Just my luck you’d poison me instead of cure me.”
“If I haven’t done it yet, I’m not about to,” Shayne growled. To point out that she wasn’t his territory would have been unnecessarily embarrassing for him as well as for her. And useless on top of that, if he knew Ike. So he ignored his friend’s assumption, hoping it would eventually die from lack of kindling to feed it.
Sydney had pried the box lid open and was looking at the pieces neatly tucked against one another inside a nest of packaging. “I can’t wait to try this out.” Impetuously, she looked up at Shayne. “Switch places with me.”
He saw absolutely no reason for her to say that. “Why?”
Her mind was already three leagues ahead of her words. “Well, you won’t let me fly, and flying’s faster than driving.”
Was he supposed to understand that? “Right on both accounts,” he agreed slowly, as if he were talking to a three-year-old and choosing his words carefully. “But where are we supposed to be going?”
She held up the telephone. “I want to try it out.”
He looked back toward his cabin. “You can plug it into the outlet at the house.”
Holding the box against her, Sydney shook her head. “Not the same thing. I want to try it out at the cabin. My cabin.” That had such a great ring to it, she thought.
Chuckling, Ike reached up and clapped Shayne on the back. “Humor the lady, Shayne.”
Shayne glared down at Ike. “I’ve been humoring the lady ever since she came.”
Ike’s amusement only seemed to be multiplying. “Do tell.”
What was the use? With both of them at him, he might as well give in or be pecked to death. Shayne got out and trudged around the nose of the plane, glaring at Ike. “Wipe the smirk off your face, Ike. It’s not what you’re thinking.”
That only made Ike laugh again. “You have no idea what I’m thinking, old friend.”
“Yeah, I do. And you’re wrong.”
Ike struggled to mask his face in the soul of innocence. “If you say so.”
The more he protested, the worse it became. Shayne gave up.
Instead of following suit and getting out, Sydney climbed over to the passenger seat. She was buckling up again when Shayne sat in the pilot’s seat. Without bothering to say anything to Ike, and without a word to her, he turned on the ignition and began taxiing the short distance he needed for the plane to become airborne.
He didn’t have to say anything. His actions spoke louder than any words. She was beginning to appreciate that. She supposed he reminded her of her father in that respect. Except her father had smiled a great deal more.
Sydney hugged the telephone box to her. “Thank you.”
Shayne merely grumbled something unintelligible under his breath in response. He didn’t want her thanks. He just wanted to be left alone.
At the time, he really believed that.
She looked like a kid at Christmas, Shayne thought. Or maybe Easter was the more appropriate holiday.
Yes, Easter. On an egg hunt. Stirring the fire he’d lit to warm the cabin, he glanced over his shoulder and watched Sydney as she went from baseboard to unfinished baseboard, looking for the telephone outlet.
A kid looking for colored Easter eggs, that’s what she reminded him of.
“Found it,” she announced triumphantly.
“Congratulations.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, you know,” she told him. Making herself comfortable on the scatter rug that had once been in Jean Luc’s living room, Sydney sat cross-legged, taking the telephone pieces out of the box. With fingers flying, she quickly assembled it.
Sarcasm, he thought, was beginning to be his only line of defense against her. With the flames taking on a healthy size, he rose and crossed over to her. Amusement curved his mouth.
“You look like a woman desperate to make a call,” he commented.
“I am,” she confessed. Almost caressing the keys, she tapped in a number over the virgin keyboard. “This just makes me feel a little more in touch with everything.”
He would have thought her manner would have taken care of that for her. He’d never met a woman more in touch with everyone around her than Sydney. Everywhere she went, people seemed to gravitate to her, to her smile, to her laugh. At the clinic, the Salty, the Championship games Hades had held at the end of last week, where everyone came out to compete in physical contests the rest of the country would only turn up their noses at. Whenever he looked into the heart of the thickest throng of people, he knew Sydney would be there.
She was a veritable people magnet.
Shayne perched on the arm of the overstuffed chair that Jaclyn Riley, the elder, had donated to help furnish Sydney’s cabin.
“So who are you calling? Someone in Omaha?” A girlfriend? A past lover? The last thought teased his mind like a mosquito buzzing around his head during the wee hours of a summer’s night.
Sydney merely shook her head in reply, absorbing the sound of the telephone ringing on the other end as if she were listening to a symphony at Carnegie Hall.
The receiver on the other end was picked up, and she heard a childish voice say, “Hello?” Her smile bloomed in response.
“Hi, Sara, it’s Sydney. Guess what I’m doing?” She waited for the little girl to make several guesses, then said, “I’m calling you on my new telephone. No, at the cabin, sweetheart. Yes, the one everyone was helping me fix up. It’s almost ready now. Of course I’ll let you use the phone when you come over here. Put Mac on, will you?” She covered the receiver. “You want to talk to him?” When he shook his head, she wasn’t surprised, just disappointed.
“Hi, Mac, just wanted you and your sister to be the first to get a phone call from me on my new phone. It’s up at the cabin. No, I’m not moving in yet. Soon.” She glanced at Shayne. “Your dad says hi. Yes, really, he does. Okay, gotta go. We’ll be home in a little while,” she promised. “Bye now.”
Replacing the receivery in the cradle, Sydney looked up to see Shayne watching her. She couldn’t read his expression and it made her uneasy. The only time she was able to read it clearly was when he was angry about something. Usually her.
He wasn’t angry now, at least she didn’t think so, but she couldn’t guess what was going on in his mind.
Brows drawn together, Shayne was trying to untangle the puzzle that was Sydney Elliot. He wasn’t having much luck.
“With everyone you could have called back east, you called Sara and
Mac, two children you talk to every day.” It didn’t make sense to him. “Why?”
No big mystery. “I thought they’d get a kick out of being the first people I called. And I was right.”
That still didn’t explain it for him. The telephone was for communication, for spanning long distances, not for pleasing two kids. “You know, I don’t understand you, Sydney.”
He was delving too deep for an answer that was so close to the surface it almost floated. “I speak a fairly clear form of English.” She smiled up at him. “What’s not to understand?”
Something that had been nagging him ever since the beginning. “What I don’t understand is what you’re doing here.”
She could have easily risen to her feet on her own. Instead, she put out her hand, waiting for him to help her up. “You know what I’m doing here. I came to marry your brother.”
Taking her hand, he pulled her to her feet. “You could have turned around and gone home.”
She shrugged a bit too carelessly in his estimation. “I wanted something new, remember?”
For once he wouldn’t let a subject drop. This one time, he was determined to satisfy his curiosity. “Most women buy a pair of shoes when they feel like that, not a whole new way of life.”
She shoved her hands into her back pockets, looking off. There were storm clouds gathering beyond the big bay window. She wished he’d stop pushing for an answer. “Maybe I needed that whole new way of life.”
“Why?” he persisted. “I’m trying to understand why a woman who can obviously make friends wherever she goes would want to go into hiding.”
Her chin jerked up. “It’s not hiding, it’s…” Oh, what did it matter? “My father died almost three years ago, and it devastated me. For the first time in my life, I felt as if I was adrift. And alone,” she admitted. “Very alone.” She took a breath. Even now, it was painful to go over it. To touch upon her mistakes. “Then I fell in love with the wrong man—”
“My brother.” He meant it rhetorically. He didn’t expect her to shake her head.
“No, this was someone before your brother.” She could see that she’d surprised him. Well, he’d asked. “Someone your brother helped me to forget with his letters.” Letters that were so important to her, that had helped her out of the very difficult place she’d found herself in.
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