by Sharon Sala
This time, Ryder was more than uncomfortable.
“Look, what’s between Casey and me is strictly business,” he said. “She asked for help. I offered. It’s as simple as that.”
Tilly lifted her chin and turned away, refusing to listen to what he had to say. “You’re wrong, you know. Nothing is ever simple between a man and a woman.”
Ryder set his cup down with a thump, sloshing the freshly sweetened brew out onto the white-tiled tabletop.
“I better be going,” he stated. “The Lincoln needs gas, and I’ve got to find out where the airport is before noon.”
Tilly turned. “You go on and get your gas. You find that airport and do your job and bring Mr. Miles on home. But you just remember this. It doesn’t matter how long and how hard you work during the day, come nighttime, you and Casey Dee are going to be all alone.”
Ryder reached for his hat. He damn sure didn’t need anyone reminding him of that.
“Find yourselves some common ground,” Tilly called out as he left the room. “You hear me? You have to start somewhere. Forget the gap and look for the bridge.”
* * *
He was still thinking about that bridge Tilly had been talking about when he took the highway exit leading to the airport. A small, twin-engine Cessna lifted off directly in front of his view and he found himself stopping in the middle of the road to watch its ascent.
Even though the plane was a good half mile away and already several hundred feet in the air, his toes curled in his boots and he caught himself holding his breath until the plane leveled off. He lost sight of it when it turned toward the sun.
A car honked behind him, and he slipped his foot off the brake and drove on. But the damage had already been done. The hunger to fly was mixed up in his mind with the fear of repeating a deadly mistake all over again.
Get it in gear, he reminded himself, and began looking for a place to park. He didn’t have to fly. He was only here to give a man a ride home. No big deal. But his hands were shaking when he got out of the car, and the closer he got to the terminal, the slower his stride became. It was all he could do to make himself walk inside, but he did it.
Cool air hit him in the face, and he inhaled deeply, welcoming the change in temperature as his nerves began to settle. He paused while he got his bearings, then started toward the arrival gate of the flight on which Miles Dunn would arrive.
His nerves were strung so tight, he caught himself holding his breaths. Twice he had to remind himself to ease up. And he should have known this would happen. Just because he wasn’t piloting the planes didn’t make this experience any easier.
He settled the Stetson firmly upon his head and gave the announcement boards a closer look. Being here brought back too many bad memories. That was all. Just too many memories. And no man ever died from memories.
“Flight 1272 from Atlanta and New Orleans is now arriving at Gate Three.”
Buoyed by the announcement, Ryder took his bearings then started walking. Erica had claimed that Miles didn’t like to be kept waiting and God knows he didn’t have any desire to linger in the place himself.
* * *
Miles was hung over. His head throbbed and his belly kept lurching from one side of his rib cage to the other as he filed out of the plane along with the other passengers. Bile rose as he stared at the drooping diaper of the toddler in front of him. An all too pungent odor drifted upward, adding to the nausea he already had. That kid was carrying a load and badly in need of a change. When a sickly sweat broke out on his upper lip, he mumbled an excuse and shoved his way past them, desperately searching the waiting crowd for Erica.
He saw the Stetson first, then the man beneath it and groaned. Damn her, why didn’t she come herself?
“Here are my claim stubs,” he said shortly, slapping them into Ryder’s hand. “I’ll meet you in baggage.”
Ryder took the stubs without comment and waited beside the men’s room until Miles came out.
“I thought I told you I’d meet you in baggage,” Miles muttered.
Ryder gave him a pointed look. “Wasn’t sure you’d make it that far.”
Miles’s face turned red.
“Lead the way,” Ryder said, and Miles did.
Luggage was just beginning to come through the roundabout as Miles dropped onto a nearby bench.
“Rough flight?” Ryder asked.
Miles looked up from where he was sitting and belched.
Ryder cocked an eyebrow and stifled a grin. “Tell me which ones are yours,” he said, pointing toward the varied assortment of circling suitcases.
“Four pieces. Brown-and-green alligator. Can’t miss them.”
Ryder nodded and a short while later, pulled the last one from the rack. Miles watched with a bleary eye, unwilling to move until he had to.
“That’s it,” Ryder announced, and lifted a bag in each hand. “I’ll get these. You bring the rest,” and started toward the exit without looking back.
Miles sat with his mouth agape while blood thundered wildly through every minuscule vein in his head. He stared at the remaining two bags in disbelief. The nerve of the man! Expecting him to carry his own luggage!
Miles staggered to his feet and hefted a bag in each hand before following Ryder’s retreat.
“This just figures,” he mumbled, as he staggered out of the door. “You can’t get good help these days no matter how hard you try.”
When they started home, Miles began to relax, reveling in the cool, quiet ambience of the Lincoln’s spacious back seat. But that was before the car phone rang. After that, Mites’s homecoming took an unexpected turn.
CHAPTER 7
The car phone rang as Ryder was leaving the airport and turning onto the highway. He answered on the second ring.
“This is Ryder.”
When that slow, deep voice settled in her ear, Casey breathed a sigh of relief.
“Ryder, where are you?”
He frowned. “Casey, is that you?”
She turned away from the noise behind her, trying to block out the paramedics’ voices, as well as the police officer on the scene. “Yes, it’s me.”
“I already picked him up. Just a minute and I’ll hand him the phone.”
“Picked up who?” she asked.
“Your brother, Miles.”
“I don’t want to talk to Miles. I want to talk to you.”
Ryder’s frown deepened as her voice suddenly shattered.
“I have a problem. Can you come help me?”
Before he could answer her, the ambulance that had been parked behind her took off for the hospital with sirens running. Startled by the unexpected noises in the background of their conversation, it began to dawn on him that there was more behind her request for help than the obvious.
“Casey, what’s wrong?”
He heard her inhale, and then she spoke, and her voice was so soft he had to strain to hear her answer.
“I had a wreck.”
The car swerved beneath him and Miles began to curse from the back seat. Even though it was broad daylight and Ryder was driving down the highway leading into Ruban Crossing, in his mind, he saw light flash across a dark, storm-filled sky, heard the sharp crack of lightning as it struck the fuselage of his plane, and smelled smoke, even though the air inside the car was cool and clean.
His fingers curled around the steering wheel in reflex, and it took him several seconds to realize what he was experiencing was a flashback, and that everything was safe and under control. He took a deep breath and started over, asking what mattered most.
“Are you hurt?”
“No…at least not much.”
An odd tension settled inside his belly. Her voice was shaking. If she wasn’t hurt, then she’d at least scared herself to death.
“Are you at the hospital?”
He thought he heard a sob in her voice as she answered. “No, I’m still at the scene.”
“Easy, honey. Just tell me where you
are and how to get there.”
She told him, and only afterward realized what he’d called her, but by then it didn’t matter. He was already sliding to a stop at the intersection where the accident had occurred, and it would seem from the way the back door was flung open, he’d stopped just in time.
Miles leaned out and threw up on the right rear tire as Ryder jumped out of the front seat. After that, Casey didn’t see anything but the look on her husband’s face. She took a deep breath and started toward him.
Ryder felt sick. He could see a bump on her forehead that was already turning blue, and there was a small trickle of blood at the edge of her lip.
Wrecks. Damn, damn, damn, but he hated the sight of spilled fuel and crumpled metal. It reminded him of things he’d spent months trying to forget.
“Come here,” he said softly, and pulled her close against his chest while he surveyed what was left of her car. The front half had been shifted all the way to the right, compliments of a one-ton truck that had run a red light. “Thank God for air bags,” he said, eyeing the one that had inflated inside her car.
Her voice was shaking as she reached up, tentatively testing the size of the bump on her forehead. “It wasn’t my fault.”
Ryder caught her fingers, then lifted them to his lips in a quiet, easy gesture before cupping her face with his hand.
“It wouldn’t matter if it was. What matters is getting you to a doctor. Why didn’t they send an ambulance for you?”
“I told them I wanted to wait for you. Besides, I didn’t think I needed…”
He missed whatever it was she said next. He kept hearing her say she’d been waiting for him. That did it. Whatever hesitation he’d had about holding her close was gone. He tilted her chin, carefully surveying the burgeoning bruises and angry red scrapes on the tender surface of her skin.
“I don’t care what you think. You’re going and that’s that.”
Casey rested her forehead against his chest. How long had it been since she’d had someone upon whom she could lean? When his grip around her firmed, for the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt safe… really safe. As she ran her tongue along the lower edge of her lip, tears began to well in her eyes.
She looked up at him for confirmation. “My lip is bleeding, isn’t it?”
He wanted to kiss away the shock and the pain and the stunned expression in her eyes. He thought better of the urge and hugged her instead.
“Easy now. Let’s get you in out of this sun. You can wait in the car with Miles while I tell that officer where I’m taking you.”
“It’s probably okay for me to leave,” Casey said. “He already took my statement.”
But she did as she was told, grateful for the fact that someone was taking over. It seemed her good sense and practicality was lost somewhere in the wreckage of her car and she couldn’t think what to do next.
When she got inside, Miles was ominously silent. Casey glanced over her shoulder, wincing slightly as a strained muscle rejected the motion.
His condition would have been funny if it hadn’t been too painful to laugh. He lay stretched out in the back seat with his arm thrown over his eyes, shielding them from the sun. He looked worse than she felt.
“Rough flight?”
He groaned and mumbled something she didn’t understand. She turned around and closed her eyes, wishing that the world would stop spinning so she could get off.
Seconds later Ryder slid behind the wheel. He leaned over and fastened Casey’s seat belt without giving her a chance to respond, then glanced in the back seat at his other passenger.
“Buckle up.”
A brief, quick click broke the silence. It would seem that Ryder had made a believer out of Miles.
The trip to the emergency room was faultless, and it didn’t take the doctor long to address Casey’s bumps and bruises. They were minor. The injury that would take the longest to heal was to her peace of mind.
“While you’re at it, you may as well give this one a going over,” Ryder said, pointing at Miles who was slumped in a chair near the emergency room door.
Doctor Hitchcock frowned. “Was he in the accident, too?”
Ryder shook his head. “No. I had just picked him up at the airport when Casey called. He’s a little the worse for wear. Guess his stomach’s had a longer ride than it could tolerate.”
Hitchcock gave Miles a judgmental look. He’d been doctoring the Ruban family for years, and it wasn’t the first time he’d seen this one in a condition of his own making.
“Looks to me like he just needs a little of the hair of the dog that bit him.”
It was the word hair that did it. Miles’s stomach was too queasy for anything, including metaphors. He bolted for the bathroom seconds ahead of another surge.
Hitchcock snorted beneath his breath, but his eyes were twinkling as he glanced at Ryder.
“Casey will be ready to go by the time you bring the car around. Meanwhile, I suppose I can give the party animal something to help his nausea.”
Casey tried a smile, but her lip was too swollen to do much about it, and her head was beginning to throb. “Thank you, Doctor Joe.”
He patted her on the arm. “Don’t thank me. Thank the good Lord for sparing you worse injury.”
“Amen to that,” Ryder said quietly, and went to get the car.
The doctor stared after him, then turned, giving Casey a long, intent look. “So, that’s the new husband, is it?”
She sighed. “You heard.”
He shook his head. “Lord, honey, who hasn’t? Your sudden marriage has set the biggest piece of gossip in motion that Ruban Crossing has ever known. I don’t know what Delaney’ was thinking when he pulled that stunt, but I can guarantee it wasn’t these results.”
Casey’s eyes darkened in frustration. “I know what he wanted. He’d been after me for years to… let’s see, how did he put it…marry well.”
Hitchcock frowned. He’d known Delaney Ruban all of his life. In fact, they’d grown up together, and while Delaney had acquired more money in his lifetime than a man had a right to expect, he’d been obsessed about overcoming his upbringing as the son of a flatlands sharecropper.
“By that, I suppose you’re referring to a socially acceptable marriage, such as to a fellow like Lash Marlow?”
Her shoulders slumped. “I couldn’t do it, Doctor Joe. I couldn’t marry a man I didn’t love.”
An odd smile broke the wrinkles in the old doctor’s face. He looked toward the cowboy who was pulling that big white car to a stop outside the door.
“So, it must have been love at first sight for you two, then.”
Casey looked startled. “Oh no! It was nothing like that. Ryder is a good man… at least I think he is. But we have an understanding. I’m just fulfilling the terms of Delaney’s will. Nothing less. Nothing more. In a year, this will all be over.”
Unaware that he’d been the topic of their conversation, Ryder came up the hallway, shook the doctor’s hand, and all but carried Casey out to the waiting car.
Hitchcock had his own ideas about understandings. That’s what you say now, Casey Dee, but a year is a long, long time.
As Miles Dunn staggered out of the bathroom with a wet paper towel pressed to his forehead, Hitchcock reminded himself of the vows he’d taken to administer to all who were sick or in need of heating and took him by the arm.
“Come with me, boy.”
Miles looked out the door toward the car. He could see Casey was already seated inside. “But they’re about to—”
“They’ll wait,” Hitchcock said. “Besides, this will make you feel better.”
The doctor had said the magic words. Miles followed without further comment.
* * *
“Lord have mercy!”
If Tilly had said it once, she’d said it a dozen times since Ryder’s arrival at the Ruban estate. And she was saying it again as Joshua passed through the kitchen on his way upstairs with a
n ice bag for Miles’s head. The soup bubbling on the stove was for Casey. The tears running down her face were those of relief after she’d seen for herself that her girl was all right.
The house phone rang just as Ryder came in the back door.
Startled by the sound, Tilly jumped and the soup she was stirring sloshed over the side of the pot and splattered with a hiss onto the hot cooktop.
“Lord have mercy!” she muttered again.
“I’ll get it,” Ryder offered, and answered the phone before Tilly burst into a fresh set of tears.
Well aware that the call had to be from someone in the family, Ryder’s answer was less than formal.
“This is Ryder, what’s up?”
Erica’s complaint was left hanging on the edge of her tongue. Somehow she didn’t have the guts to say what she’d intended to say, at least not in the same tone of voice.
“Umm…I was wondering if someone was bringing up the ice bag for Miles’s poor head.”
Miles’s poor head be damned, Ryder thought, but kept his opinion to himself. He glanced at Tilly.
“Erica wants to know about some ice bag.”
“Tell her it’s on the way up.”
“It’s on the way—”
“I heard her,” Erica said. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” Ryder said, and started to hang up.
“Wait!” Erica shouted.
Ryder waited. It was her call. Her question. Her move.
“Is Casey all right? I mean, Miles said she’d had an accident.”
“Come see for yourself,” he offered. “She’s at the apartment lying down, and I think she’d appreciate her sister’s presence.”
The thought of being in close proximity with Ryder gave Erica a chill. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly leave Miles on his own. Grandmother isn’t here and when she comes in, she’s going to be beside herself that all of this happened while she was having her hair done.”
A quiet anger he’d been trying to stifle suddenly bubbled over. “There’s not a damned thing wrong with Miles. He’s hung over, not hurt. Casey is the one who could have died today.” He slammed the phone sharply onto the cradle and hoped that the disconnect popped in her ear.
