by JJ Aughe
Bailey pretended to give the idea a lot of thought as he slightly shook his head. “Hmmm. I was kinda looking forward to having top ramen for dinner. But just so you won’t look bad I guess I could give that up.”
Jessie, realizing what he was doing, decided to gig him a little in return. Frowning, she placed a serious expression on her face and returned, “Well, if you would rather have top ramen than her Beef Wellington or whatever Maureen has in mind for tonight, you just go right ahead. I’ll just tell her you begged off for noodles instead.”
Thinking she was really serious Bailey was immediately contrite. “Oh Jessie, I’m sorry. I was, , .” Seeing the sparkle in her eyes and the smug smile on her so kissable lips, he stopped in mid sentence.
“You are such a sneak, Jessie,” he laughed. “Though I know I deserved that gig, you did it again, didn’t you? When am I going to learn to watch your eyes when you say things to me?”
Jessie smiled and thought to herself, I hope it takes years and years. To him she just asked, “Are you coming to dinner?”
Chapter 3: An Eagle’s Flight
Friday morning of the following week.
Bailey silently agonized over his building relationship with Jessie as he made his second trip to the gate at the other end of the pier and back. Jessie says I am her best friend. Now what am I going to do? We are friends. That’s a fact. Do friends loan money to friends? Especially a loan of this magnitude? I know what they say. Never borrow from a friend because hard feelings are bound to follow. But what other options do I have? Can I justify accepting the loan on the basis that she offered without my asking? Or is that where I should have said no? But, if I had said no, I would never have known the real Jessie Melano, the woman who is full of surprises at every step. The care and compassion she genuinely openly shows for everything and everyone she ever comes into contact with. I’d have never known the Jessie who would gladly give her last dollar to help someone or some animal in need. That is the Jessie Melano I have come to know and respect and the woman I have begun to have stronger feelings for. But I’ll never disclose those feelings to her because she deserves a better man than I could ever be.
So the real question is, do I take this chance at fulfilling my dream and risk losing the friendship of someone who is so very important to me? That, I think, is the most important question I must ask myself.
Last Friday night’s dinner at her home was so very special! Escorting her to that fundraiser Saturday for the “Heroes of Puget Sound” I thought was the highlight of my life. But this last week has really been an eye opener for me. We did things together that I never thought I would even think about doing. Her persona is so strong, so magnetic, that whatever she wants to do, no matter how simple, how extravagant, or how ridiculously outrageous or funny, I am ready and willing to participate. And it’s not, as some might think, ever something I do because she is willing to finance my dream project. No! It’s because I have come to care for her. More than she will ever know and more than I should, I guess. I know that is true because I would do anything just to see her smile and hear her laugh, which her housekeeper says, though she was engaged to Hamlin, she hadn’t been doing much of before she met me.
Now, because of the fact that she means so much to me, if I go with my gut and follow through with this flight to the lake and the loan from her, I had better make it clear at the outset today that it is only a business transaction and nothing more. If I make that clear, maybe, just maybe, she will still consider me her friend years from now.
Bailey stood at the end of the pier for a moment eyeing his plane. He thought about rechecking his pre-flight checklist just to make sure everything was as it should be, but, his mind a jumble of disconcerting thoughts, turned instead to gaze longingly at the other end of the pier. A few minutes later he recognized Jessie’s classic red and silver ‘58' ‘Vette’ as it slipped into one of the reserved spaces he had negotiated for his charter service. Quickly stowing the checklist in the plane, Bailey hurried to the head of the pier.
Jessie raked her long, slender fingers through her windblown, satiny red tresses as her strangely gold and silver flecked, emerald-green eyes checked the rear-view mirror to make sure none of the silver-green barrettes had come loose during the drive. “What in the world am I doing?” she whispered. “Why did I say I would do this? Sure, Gilmore has sky blue eyes to-die-for, sexy collar length, ebony hair I’d love to get my fingers into and a dreamboat body! He is serious about the things that matter but has that endearing way of making some remark that puts things in a lighter vein that just makes me want to hug him. For my heart’s sake though, I shouldn’t be here. There is too much risk that I will wind up falling for him, if I haven’t already, and be sorely disappointed. But what’s a girl to do? I’m attracted to him. He’s not like any guy I’ve ever met. When he looks at me, really looks at me, it makes me feel so good inside. And his scent! Oh God! That scent! Jessie’s eyes closed as she thought about Bailey’s scent being the same as that of the stranger in her dreams and the scent that pervaded her room each morning afterwards.
I’ve only known him for a short time and yet I feel like I’ve known him all my life. Is it the dreams? Are they causing this feeling of euphoria and the desire to be near him that I’ve been having? Was it really the archeological aspects or was it the man himself that had me making the decision to finance his project? She shook her head as she quickly went over the events leading up to that thought provoking decision.
She let her thoughts run wild for a few minutes until she noticed Gilmore was already standing at the gate to the pier. She let out a soft sigh and decided she had better not keep him waiting. Though she was excited by the prospect of being alone with Bailey, she still didn’t want to seem too anxious to go on this excursion. After all, she told herself as she slowly got out of the Vette. I have known him for less than two weeks. Taking this trip to check out this private lake and the surrounding land is surely only so I can see first-hand what he talked so excitedly about at the restaurant and every time I have been with him.
As she leisurely strolled across the pavement in tan casual pants and a loose fitting yellow blouse she again had the shocking thought, ‘Wow! He sure is a fine specimen of manhood!’ Then, being she had refused every suitor who had tried to woo her into his bed she was dumbfounded by her next unbidden and outrageous thought. ‘Those powerful shoulders, muscular arms and narrow waist are screaming at me to run my hands all over them! And I bet his hands on me would drive me crazy!’
Embarrassed by her own fanciful thoughts she immediately tried to put a damper on them. Her efforts did little good as the object of her errant imagination started toward her with a rolling gait as if he were accustomed to walking on the heaving deck of a sailboat instead of flying a floatplane.
Hurrying, Jessie met him halfway across the pavement. Before the hunky pilot could say anything she gruffly asked, “Are you ready? I would like to get into the air.”
The uncharacteristic tone of her voice riled Bailey’s temper. Trying desperately to curb it, he ground his teeth, biting his tongue as he did. The pain helped. Checking out her attire, he forced a pleasant tone into his own voice. “The flight and the time we spend at the lake will take most of the day. You did bring extra clothing? Something you won’t be worried about getting dirty when we crawl through the small entrance to the cavern?”
As it had every since she had met with him, the rich baritone of his voice sent a shiver up and down her spine, settling at the center of her very being, and it excited her! God! It’s happening again! she silently gasped. ‘What is it about this guy that does that to me?’ To cover her traitorous body’s reaction to him she immediately turned back to the car. “Oh! How forgetful of me! I have a small backpack behind the seat.”
Watching her re-cross the pavement Bailey couldn’t keep his eyes from traveling down her lithe body, stopping at the enticing sway of her hips at each step she took. He gave himself a mental shake, tried to loo
k away, but failed miserably. “Holy Moses,” he half whispered to himself as Jessie opened the Vett’s driver side door and bent to pull out a small travel backpack. “She is such a knock-out! How am I going to concentrate on flying with her sexy body next to me in the cockpit?” Mentally kicking himself for letting his libido go crazy over a woman who was so far above him he didn’t have a chance, he turned and strode to the pier gate to await her. When she rejoined him he relocked the gate and led the way to the waiting plane, hoping he could somehow get through the day without making a complete butt of himself. He didn’t hold out much hope.
When he first began his air charter excursion service Bailey had made it a rule to briefly instruct all of his passengers about each dial on the instrument panel, how to read them and what to do in case of an emergency. Now, after Jessie was seated and had her seat belt fastened, he directed her attention to the instrument panel to go over the instruments and how to use the extra set of headphones and attached mike. “I hope, Jessie, that what I have just shown you and what I am about to tell you doesn’t scare you. You see, I’ve made it standard company policy to brief passengers on what do in case of an emergency. That said, should anything unforeseen happen, I may have to count on your ability to contact the tower.”
He indicated the printed words above the windshield. “I have stenciled the plane’s letter and numbers up there. As you can see, the letter and numbers are all separately spelled out. You will need to read them off exactly as they are written. The tower will do the rest for you. Hopefully, that scenario will not be something you will have to worry about. Yet, if something should happen that I needed your help I want you to know what you should do.”
Though she had flown all over the world on commercial airlines and in medium sized private jets, Jessie had never had the experience of flying in a small, six-seated plane such as this one. She was admittedly a little nervous. Ignoring the butterflies that seemed to be multiplying in her stomach, she smiled at Bailey.
“You don’t have to apologize, Bailey. I realize you have my life in your hands. I really do appreciate your instructions. Whether I will be able to remember what to do in an emergency remains to be seen, but I want you to know I will do my best to remember what you have just told and shown me.”
“I didn’t tell you about the instruments to make you nervous, Miss Melano,” Bailey apologized. “Now I suggest you get those headphones on or you won’t be able to hear anything I tell you anyway.” The engine came to life as he spoke, almost drowning out his words. When she had the headphones in place he continued what he had been saying, “I believe that if my passengers know about the instruments they will feel they are a part of the flight. So I have made it a rule I strictly enforce.”
Jessie pretended to pout at his formal use of her last name. “Hey! I thought we had agreed. It’s Jessie to you and Bailey to me!”
“Oh yeah, I’m sorry! I forgot, uh, Jessie. Sorry!”
Jessie grinned as she slipped into Burney and her mother’s cheery Irish brogue. “Sure, an’ I’m a certain bein’ a fergiven’ person such as I we’ll let it by dis time.” Wondering why he seemed upset by her brogue she cleared her throat and wisely changed back. “As for the rest of what you said, Bailey? I understand it’s just the procedure you go through. I am sure though that with your excellent piloting there will be” she held up her hands and made quote marks with her fingers, “no ‘emergencies’ where I will have to know anything about those instruments.”
In no time, it seemed, Jessie was enjoying the sites of the western slopes of Mt. St. Helens. Bailey made extra passes by the mountain’s crater so Jessie could have better look. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky for miles around but inside the crater a thick fog-like cloud obscured most of the crater floor. Wanting to see more, Jessie leaned closer to the side window.
Being used to his passengers asking to get closer to the crater, Bailey grinned and remarked, “Don’t even ask! This is as close as I take my charters. With me, as a pilot, anyway, it’s a safety thing. Sometimes, depending on weather conditions, the air currents around the mountain can be unpredictably gusty. I feel it to be a prudent thing to keep a healthy distance from the actual crater. Besides the gusty winds, I wouldn’t want to be within two miles of the mountain if it suddenly begins to erupt. Even those small eruptions we used to hear about in the Eighties and Nineties sometimes threw ash into the air far enough to down small aircraft like this flying within two miles.”
“Oh don’t worry,” Jessie replied. “I know first-hand what dangers that mountain can cause.” At his querying glance she continued. “I was two when it erupted in 1980. That Sunday morning my Father, Mother and I were on a trip to Portland. Dad decided to take a side trip to see the mountain. As he took the freeway off-ramp, Dad turned the radio off so he and mom could talk about the beauty of the area. Somewhere along the Toutle River the car suddenly violently rocked from side to side! Seconds later it did it again! Being only two years old I thought someone was hitting the car with a very large hammer. Thank God my Dad realized Mt. St. Helens was erupting. He immediately turned the car around and drove like a mad man back toward I-5. It seemed to me that, in no time at all, the river beside the highway had risen enough that water was actually flowing across the roadway. I still remember the stories about all the ash covering everything for miles around. Anyway, I think it goes without saying, we did not make it to Portland on that trip!”
“Ah ha!” Bailey exclaimed. “That tells me something!” She turned her head toward him with a question in her eyes and Bailey chuckled. “Oh, yeah. This is as good a time as any.”
Her stumped look had him choking back another laugh. “Jessie, I’m not being chauvinistic or anything, but woman, you take good care of yourself! When I first saw you at the bank, and later that night and even until today, I estimated your age at around twenty-two, but not more than twenty-five. When you arrived today you looked so fantastic I had to re-evaluate my prior assumption. I came up with twenty or twenty-one. Since we started this excursion I have realized you are either older than I thought or you have had to grow up fast. I didn’t want to be so rude as to outright ask you, but I have wondered just how old you really are. Now I don’t have to ask,” he triumphantly stated. “You just told me. You are thirty-five.”
Nonplused by his flattering prior estimation of her age she smiled the smile that had always shut smart aleck guys down. “Close, Buster, but no turkey!” Then, as her impish side took over, she stated, “I figure you are . . . what? Thirty-two, thirty-three?”
“Sorry, Sister,” he replied, getting into the game with a kidding smile. “I have a few years on you, Lady!”
Glancing up at the copy of his pilot’s license beside the call letters above the windscreen she scanned to the original date of issue. It read, September 10, 1990. “O.K.,” she quipped. “Since you received your pilot’s license in 1990, and if what you told me at the restaurant that you got your license when you were nineteen is true,. . .hmm. Let’s see. That makes you, what, forty-one, forty-two tops? Gotcha pilot man!”
“Okay!” Bailey returned with a chuckle. “Fair enough! I turned forty-three last month. Now you gotta tell me the truth. I was right, wasn’t I? You are thirty-five?”
“Not really,” she said with a teasing smile. Recanting her immediate thought to string him along for a little while, she sobered. “Actually, next Thursday I will be thirty-six.”
“Now that I have confessed my real age, Mr. Pilot, I think it is time to change the subject. And I know just the subject, too.” Going on before he could object, she asked him to fill her in on the whole story of how he had found the lake and property they were now going to see.
Bailey frowned to himself, gave himself an imaginary kick in the rear for hesitating and reiterated what he had already told her before getting into the facts of the story.
The flight that day had started out as a shakedown flight for new equipment he had installed. Finding everything working as it
should, and having intentionally not scheduled a charter for the day, he decided it was time to relax for a change and enjoy the pleasure he always felt when flying alone.
Every time he flew over that area with clients aboard something would always draw his attention to a small, five-fingered lake two-thousand feet below. Flying over that area that day he was almost certain he heard a quiet, yet familiar voice urging him to fly over the lake again.
He recognized that quiet voice as the one that had warned him many times of coming trouble as a child in foster care. Later, as a pilot in the Navy he was participating in a joint Navy/ Marine survival-training course in Afghanistan, when that same voice had warned him to be cautious as he and his best friend started across the training compound. He had immediately scanned the area and spotted a sniper in time to pull his friend behind a vehicle as the sniper started spraying the compound with automatic rifle fire. Bailey had been able to take the sniper out, saving the lives of countless trainees.
Those thoughts running through his mind, Bailey banked the plane, circling the area as he lost altitude. He had free time and it wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look. It might even be enjoyable to land and check the lake and the surrounding area at his leisure.
As he circled the lake, he could see that the lake actually formed an open hand shape with the fingers spread wide, each separated by low ridges ending at the palm. The lake’s palm was studded with dead tree snags and floating logs, as were three of the four fingers and thumb. The middle finger, the longest of the four, appeared clear and long enough for a landing. Making his decision, Bailey flew low over the length of the middle finger, closely checking for dangerous flotsam. Satisfied he could safely land he set the plane down and taxied to a small sandy beach where he dropped the anchor he always carried in the plane.
