“Yeah, Blaze,” she said, taking it.
“You’re tall, Blaze,” he said, still peering up at her. “You got a little Viking in your family, then?” As if she hadn’t heard that a million times already in her life.
“Six-four,” she agreed, forcing a smile. “You know how to fly one of these things?” She gestured at the floatplane that was secured to the dock beside her.
“Oh sure,” Lance Rogers said, peeling off his sunglasses and glancing at the Cessna 206, which was approximately the size of a sardine can. “Been in those things since I was a kid. Did my first solo at twelve, much to the consternation of my dad.” He grinned at her, showing a perfect white smile, even further removing him from the ‘Experienced Bush Pilot’ column in Blaze’s head. “Didn’t fly again until I was sixteen, after that. Dad started locking the keys in his safe.” Rubbing the little blue airplane beside him like an old friend, Lance said with a note of wistful regret, “Never did figure out how to hotwire ‘em.”
“Uhhh,” Blaze said, glancing quickly back at the weather-worn wooden sign of Bruce Rogers’ Flying Service, and the little hut beside the aircraft hangar where Candy, Bruce’s wife, was working on paperwork. “I don’t know, I can probably wait for Bruce to get better…”
“Bah!” Lance said. “I fly STOL Cubs and shit for air shows and do a little crop-dusting when I’m bored, which is basically whenever I’m not behind the wheel of a 747.” He shrugged at her widening eyes. “Copilot. Haven’t given me my own bird, yet. The chicken-shits won’t come out and say it, but I’m not bald enough.” At Blaze’s flinch, Lance grinned at her. “It’s okay. I get it a lot. Probably like you and being tall.” He looked up at her expectantly.
“I do get it a lot,” Blaze admitted.
“I’m sure.” What he left unsaid—but what dangled uncomfortably in the air between them—was, When you look like you just crawled out of a spaceship from Planet Orangutan. After an awkward moment, Lance cleared his throat and patted the little blue airplane again. “But yeah. Don’t worry, I won’t crash us. Brucey would kill me if I dinged up his baby. Besides, I hear you just bought a nice place out on the Yentna. Candy said ya had to wait through Breakup to get out there. Bet you’re dyin’ ta see what ya got, right?”
“Yeah,” Blaze said, breaking into a nervous smile. “Fishing lodge. The Sleeping Lady.”
Lance made a sound of appreciation as he started unwrapping the two ropes holding the Cessna’s float to the dock cleats. “Nice place. Landed on the lake for coffee a couple times.” He gestured at his brother’s airplane. “Candy got ya all loaded up?”
“Yeah,” Blaze said, still a little stunned by the fact she was standing beside a commercial airlines pilot. “You fly 747s? Really?” He just didn’t look…stuffy enough.
Lance shrugged. “I fly anything with wings.” He yanked open the door of the Cessna for her and motioned at the blue leather seat beside that of the pilot. “Climb on in. Try not to bump your head. Gonna be a tight fit for you, but nothing I can really do about that. Just be glad it’s not a SuperCub. Man, you’d have trouble getting inside.”
Oh, thanks, Blaze thought, once more reminded of just how far from the Law of Averages that Mother Nature had decided to throw her. She stepped on the convenient little foot-rest, grabbed the inside of the door, and tried not to wince at how much her body made the little plane sink on its floats as she heaved herself into the cockpit.
“How much you weigh, Blaze?” Lance asked almost thoughtfully. Then, when Blaze cast an irritated look back at him, his eyes widened and he held up both hands and quickly said, “Just tryin’ ta judge how close we are to payload.” He gestured at the back of the plane, which was completely packed full of groceries, luggage, and furniture, so much that it was completely blocking out the back windows. “Candy packed you in there pretty good. Everything but the kitchen sink, huh?”
And this was only the first load. Blaze had many more scheduled, to bring in groceries, lumber, and other supplies.
“I’m one-eighty,” Blaze muttered, estimating about twenty pounds low, just because the only people who needed to know that information were her and God. She delicately climbed past the pilot’s console, careful not to touch any of the controls, and sat down in the tiny passenger seat allotted to her.
“Call it two hundred, then,” Lance said, in consideration. “Hmm. I think we can do this thing.”
Blaze hesitated in buckling herself in. “Wait…you think?”
But Lance was already lunging into the pilot’s seat and pulling the door shut behind him. “Headset’s right there,” he said, gesturing to the dash as he buckled himself in and tugged his own headset on. “You ever been in a small plane before, Blaze?”
Blaze, who was still staring at the exit, considering whether it was worth trying to crawl over a commercial airlines pilot to get out of the little sardine Can ‘O Death before it exploded into a ball of fire on the far end of the lake, didn’t really hear him. Anyone who had lived in Alaska for any amount of time heard of the dozens of planes that went down every year. Most because they were overloaded, or because the pilots got cocky.
“Jesus, you’re sheet-ass white,” Lance laughed. “Come on, I already told ya I been in these things since I was a toddler. Okay, look. See this little case behind my seat? That’s the emergency survival kit. We go down, there’s flares, fire-making gear, some rations, all that good stuff in there.”
The casual way he said ‘go down’ made Blaze’s stomach clench.
“But if we do go down,” Lance said, “you’ll survive it a hell of a lot better than me. I mean, hell, look at me. Brucey didn’t give me much warning. I’m wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Didn’t even get a chance to dose myself with DEET. Mosquitoes will eat my ass alive.” He flashed her a big white smile. “That should make you feel better, right?”
It didn’t. But then Lance was firing up the engine, and the entire Cessna shook as the prop rumbled to life.
“Headset!” Lance shouted to her over the roar of the prop.
Oh my God, Blaze thought, reluctantly grabbing the headset and tugging it over her head, I am so totally going to die.
“So I got to talking with Brucey on the way here,” Lance said conversationally as he increased the throttle and the little plane lurched forward, out towards the open water. “In between shitting himself and puking all over the phone, he was kind beatin’ around the bush about tryin’ to con me into talking some sense into you.”
“Come to think of it,” Blaze said, already feeling ill as the overloaded plane started idling towards the middle of the lake, “I could probably stand another day or two in town.”
“But,” Lance said, as if he hadn’t heard her, “I think it’s awesome you bought the place. You just have to watch out for crazies, and make sure you have a baseball bat behind every door.”
“Baseball bat?” Blaze asked, swallowing hard. Very tentatively, because she couldn’t think of why she would possibly need a baseball bat in the woods, she ventured, “Bears?”
“Nah,” Lance said, “To beat all the lonely guys off of you, when they come knocking. There’s a lot of single guys out there. Now shut up for a second. Gotta make a call to the tower.” Then Blaze listened to him babble off a ritual-sounding string of words to ‘Willow traffic’ about ‘north-northwest departure’ and ‘no traffic in sight’ and waited until Lance had tucked the radio away again before she asked, “Bruce wanted you to warn me about lonely guys?”
Lance laughed, “And other things. Mostly the crazies. Now hold on, ‘cause here we go.”
And then the little plane’s engine roared and Blaze was clinging to her seat in a panic as it started rumbling across the lake like a locomotive.
“Huh,” Lance said, as the spruce on the end of the lake loomed near, “looks like we’re a bit overloaded.” And kept them barreling towards the line of trees. Then, just as Blaze was about to scream “For God’s sake, shut it down!” and wrench the controls from h
im, the plane came out of the water and they were soaring.
“So,” Lance said, once their floats cleared the tree line and they were gaining altitude over the highway and aiming out towards the mostly-uninhabited Lake Ebony on the Yentna River, “you planning on running the Sleeping Lady as a fishing lodge? Got a guiding license?”
But Blaze was stunned at how wonderful it felt to fly. She had squished her face to the window and was peering outward at the stands of birch and cottonwood below. “Oh wow,” she said, watching the plane’s shadow slide across the ground below them. “This is so cool!”
“Bah!” Lance snorted. “This ain’t nothin. Should come check out the air show this summer. That’s cool. Oh, and you’re smearing up Brucey’s glass. He hates that.”
“Sorry,” Blaze said, quickly tearing herself away.
“It’s no prob. Here.” Then Lance ducked the right wingtip down, giving Blaze a better view of the ground.
Shrieking in glee, she plastered herself to the window again.
When Lance put the aircraft back onto a level plane, he was grinning at her. “You remind me of me, when I was a kid. You ever wanna learn to fly? I also teach classes when I’m bored.”
“I would love to,” Blaze blurted, ecstatic. Then winced as reality kicked in. “Well, I’ve gotta get things at the Sleeping Lady under control first, but yeah. Maybe next year?”
“Sure, sure.” Lance glanced out at the twisted array of silty gray rivers and hundreds upon thousands of lakes and ponds that made up the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. “So my brother made me promise to tell you about the kinds of guys that live out here. Most of ‘em are out here for a reason, you know what I mean?”
Blaze tried not to groan. She had heard this rant before, from Candy, from her mom, her Econ professor, and just about every other woman who’d ever spent any amount of time out in the Bush. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Hell, any idiot decides to get frisky, I could probably just bench-press him and he’ll back off.” Not exactly the happiest truth of her existence, but by sheer luck of the draw, Blaze was more ‘manly’ than most of the nerdy men she’d shared her Business classes with.
Lance chuckled. “Okay, sure. But just watch out for the crazies.”
“What kind of crazies?” Blaze asked, frowning.
Lance shrugged. “I dunno. Bruce wanted me to say that. Made me promise to say, ‘Just watch out for the crazies.’ I think he was on NyQuil or something.” He yawned and checked his watch. “Man, you never really appreciate how much sunlight Alaska’s got in the summer ‘til you gotta fly to the Lower 48 a few times a week. Really puts things into perspective.”
“Crazies?” Blaze insisted. “Have there been burglaries or something?”
Lance laughed. “In the Bush? Hell, they all leave their keys in their 4-wheelers out there. Most places don’t even have locks. Who’s gonna burgle them? The moose?” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Nah, I think he was talking more about one guy in particular, but I’m not gonna name names.”
“Who is it?” Blaze demanded.
“Jack Thornton,” Lance said. “But I heard you hired the guy as your handyman, so you’re kinda screwed.”
Blaze felt a spasm of panic, since most of her long-term goals depended on Jack Thornton not being crazy. “What’s wrong with Jack?”
Lance laughed again. “Oh, well, you mean aside from a really bad attitude?” He turned and grinned at her, paying absolutely no attention to the air in front of him. “Well, on one of those stops for coffee at the Sleeping Lady, Jack swam out to our plane, grabbed Brucey by the back of the head and dunked him under the lake a few times. Called him a ‘prissy flyboy’ or something like that. Bruce kinda still remembers it. Brucey’s big, but he said the guy’s got gorilla-strength.”
Blaze’s mouth fell open. All she could say was, “What?”
Lance shrugged. “You want my opinion, this was back when Bruce had just got his wings and was still being a cocky asshole to everyone. Jack was out fishing and Bruce parked on his hole. On purpose. Then demanded to know what Jack was gonna do about it. So yeah. I think Brucey had it coming.”
“How long ago was that?” Blaze demanded, pretty sure that her guests would take umbrage to being dunked in a lake.
“Oh, at least ten years,” Lance said. “It was before I had my license. Brucey was flying me out for a fishing trip, all proud of himself. You ask me, I think that dunking did a hell of a lot for Brucey’s attitude. He used to be such a prick. Mellowed him out something fierce.”
“That is not acceptable adult behavior,” Blaze managed.
Lance only laughed. “Oh yeah? Try telling Thornton that.”
“You bet your ass I will. It’s my lodge, my rules.” In fact, with just that little morsel of information as a guide, Blaze would have a long discussion with her handyman about the proper rules of decorum when potential clientele, paying guests, and lawyers were concerned.
She and Lance chatted for a few more minutes about some of the eye-opening things that her only employee had done in the last ten years he’d done business with the Rogers’ family, and then Lance sat up in his chair to peer over the dash and said, “There we go. Lake Ebony. There’s your baby, up on the hill.”
Blaze, whose mind had been shocked into stunned overdrive somewhere between ‘assault’ and ‘destruction of personal property’ nevertheless had all her worries vanish in a wash of bliss the moment she saw the huge green roof of the Sleeping Lady slide into view between the spruce trees on the crest above the lake. Immediately, she found herself having trouble breathing.
Her dream. Everything she’d ever wanted in her entire life was wrapped up in that big green roof and its half-dozen outbuildings. Bought and paid for, sight unseen. Six hundred thousand dollars for ten thousand square feet, thirty acres, and all the machinery and equipment to run it as a fishing lodge. Every penny of her inheritance, gone, and then some.
Then Lance pulled the flaps and the pitch of the engine changed as the small aircraft began its descent, aiming for the deep black waters of Lake Ebony.
I’m here. Oh God, I’m here… Blaze’s heart was pounding, somewhere between elation and absolute Oh-My-Shit-What-Have-I-Done terror as she watched the last of the spring-budding treetops slip under the plane’s big floats. Hers. The Sleeping Lady was hers. It was her dream come true, and it was only a lake’s-length away.
The landing was surprisingly gentle, and once they had come to a relative stop in the middle of the lake, Lance revved the engine again and got them moving towards shore.
He idled them over to the far bank of the lake, beneath the crest where the Sleeping Lady sat like a mistress of its domain, surveying the lands around it. As they neared the shore, Blaze lost sight of the lodge through the hillside of birch and spruce trees.
When the Cessna’s floats slid into the gravelly mud of the narrow beach, Blaze was close to hyperventilating. She was here. She was either going to sink or swim, and had nobody to blame for it except herself.
…And she was already in debt up to her eyeballs, just getting here. She’d been wanting a lodge her whole life, but now she had it, and was in debt for it, and she already almost felt like puking with nerves. Her hands were shaking as Lance unstrapped himself and crawled out onto the plane’s left float. “Well,” he said, “here we are. Lake Ebony.” He pushed the pilot’s seat out of the way and gestured for Blaze, who was still staring at the woods in front of the propeller in shock, to climb out after him. “You got a ride up to the shop, or should I just pile the stuff on the beach?”
Jerked out of her stunned silence, Blaze climbed down onto the float and stood there, gripping the wing strut with white knuckles, as she stared up at the woods shielding her new home from view, trying frantically to tell herself she was not making the biggest mistake of her life.
Lance gave her an empathetic grin. “Excited?”
Swallowing, Blaze nodded down at him. This close, sharing space on the float, there really wasn’t an
y way for Blaze to back up and give him space—and thereby the illusion of a lesser disparity in height. Even now, she could see the little gears turning in Lance’s head as he realized just how big she was. At six-foot, Lance really shouldn’t have had to look up at her. Unfortunately, Blaze was about twelve inches and eighty pounds off of average, and every checkout cashier and bank teller in the world had let her know it. Some gigantic Amazon somewhere had birthed Blaze, and, once Blaze had passed between her massive thighs, the woman had left her in an alder thicket on the mountain behind her father’s house. And, having just lost their baby due to a miscarriage, her parents had taken her in, quietly raised her on their own, and could probably be sent to jail for life for not turning her over to the authorities, if they weren’t both already dead.
That was one of the many unhappy surprises that Blaze had discovered in the lawyer’s office four months ago. Adopted. It still hit like a freight train, every time she thought of it.
Then she realized Lance was still looking up at her, waiting for her answer.
“So excited I think I’m gonna puke,” Blaze managed, still trying to focus all of her attention on the textured aluminum plating between her men’s Size 11 hiking boots, attempting to force her stomach into submission.
“Well,” Lance said, “If you wanna go sit down, I’ll unload for you.”
Blaze automatically felt herself prickling at how quickly he offered to do her work for her. “I’ll be fine,” she said. She ducked her head through the door and grabbed a load of groceries from behind the pilot’s seat, not waiting for Lance to unlatch the back compartment. She normally tried not to make a big deal of it, but she wasn’t stupid—she knew that the Alaskan Bush was a man’s world, and that if she didn’t want to start a precedent of Let’s All Take Care Of The Poor Helpless Woman, she needed to start proving her competence the moment she stepped off of the plane. First impressions, her mother had taught her, were everything. If Blaze showed every man she met on the river that she was smart, capable, and willing to work, they wouldn’t patronize her, and those that did, she could simply tell them to get screwed.
Two Captains, One Chair: An Alaskan Romantic Comedy Page 34
