Everyone Loves a Hero

by Marie Force

  That Olivia could answer without hesitation. “Blue.” Bright, vivid blue.

  “Mmm, I love that combination. Jet-black hair, blue eyes, a pilot, and a hero—two times over now. I’m conjuring up Tom Cruise in Top Gun over here.”

  “Is Will back with that wine yet?”

  “You’re not getting rid of me that easily. Are you going to see him again?”

  “Why would I? He came into the store, got punched in the face, and left on a stretcher. I’m sure he’d like to forget he was ever there.”

  “He’ll be back,” Jenny said.

  “I don’t think so. Anyway, I’m going in early tomorrow to see if I can find out if he’s okay. I thought that was the least I could do.”

  “Oh, yes,” Jenny agreed a little too enthusiastically. “The very least. It’ll probably make the news. Check online in the morning.”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  “Let me know what you find out.”

  “Good night, Jenny. Enjoy that wine.”

  “I plan to!”

  Olivia closed her phone and shifted her eyes to the poster of San Francisco. The image of the Golden Gate Bridge with Alcatraz off in the distance was one of her favorites. If she could visit one place in the world, that’s where she would go.

  She allowed herself a few minutes to daydream before she sat up and got back to reality. Her life had no room for daydreams or romantic fantasies about pilots on white horses. Olivia had no patience for such foolishness.

  ***

  The next morning, she waited twenty minutes to speak to a supervisor at Capital Airlines. An early-morning scan of the news had yielded a brief mention of the incident but no information about his condition.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said in a clipped tone, “but company policy prohibits us from giving out personal information about our employees, especially First Officer Langston.”

  Anticipating that possibility, Olivia handed the woman the note she had written to thank Cole for what he had done. “Can you get this to him?”

  The harried woman took the envelope from Olivia. “I’ll do my best.”

  Olivia watched her walk away, wondering if the note would ever find its way to him. “Oh well,” she whispered. “I tried.”

  ***

  As long as Cole didn’t move—or breathe—he could stand the steady thrum of pain. Stretched out in a recliner, he’d discovered that even shifting to use the remote set off bongo drums in his skull that seemed to have a direct pipeline to his stomach. So he kept the TV turned off. With one eye swollen shut, he couldn’t see well enough to watch anyway.

  “Damn, man, this lasagna is amazing,” Tucker, Cole’s friend and neighbor, said as he plopped down on the sofa, his plate filled to overflowing with food that had flooded in from friends who’d heard about Cole’s “accident.” Cole didn’t have the heart to tell Tuck that the smell made him nauseous. “Where’d it come from?”

  “I think Debby made it.” Their friend Jeff’s wife was known for her Italian wizardry.

  “I should’ve known,” Tuck said between huge bites.

  When he’d left the Navy after ten years of living and working in squadrons and wardrooms, Cole had worried about making friends in his new home city of Chicago. Through sheer luck, he had bought the place next door to Tucker’s, launching a friendship that had led to a whole crowd of friends. Jeff, Tucker’s best friend from high school, Jeff’s wife, Debby, her sister, Denise, Denise’s husband, Paul, and so on. In short order, Cole had found himself on basketball and softball teams, but he had resisted the bowling league, much to Tucker’s dismay.

  So when the gang heard that Cole was down for the count, they’d responded with enough food and drink to feed an army. Thankfully, Tucker and his endless appetite were around to put a dent in it, because Cole wasn’t the slightest bit interested.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t been inundated with offers of sponge baths,” Tucker said with a sly grin. Cole’s success with the ladies, especially since “the incident” earlier in the year, was the stuff of legend with Tucker and the other guys.

  “There’ve been a few.”

  “Like who?” Tucker pounced. At five-feet-ten inches and 220 pounds, Tucker liked to say he lived vicariously through Cole.

  “Brenda called from Miami and offered to come up.”

  “Mmm, Brenda,” Tucker said with a sigh. “I like Brenda.”

  If his head hadn’t felt so explosive, Cole would’ve thrown something at Tucker. “What I want to know is how she even heard about it.”

  “Debby probably sent an email and copied her.”

  “Further proof that I need to keep my ladies away from you people.”

  “For the love of all that’s holy, please don’t do that. You know I have my needs. In fact, what I need right now is a slice of that chocolate cake.”

  “Have at it.” Cole choked back a wave of nausea at the thought of cake. He shifted carefully and sucked in a sharp, deep breath to absorb the waves of pain in his head, face, and shoulder. He’d had concussions before but never one this bad.

  “Jeez, you really look like crap,” Tucker said when he returned with the cake. “Probably just as well that Brenda won’t see you like this. It would break her heart.”

  “Very funny.”

  “So she really offered to come up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you said no? Did you tell her I’d be happy to have her?”

  “Your name was never mentioned.”

  “I bet you were lousy at sharing in the sandbox, too.” Tucker stuffed a big chunk of cake into his face. “You must’ve taken a hell of a hit if you don’t want any of your ladies around. I bet Heather would come running.”

  “She’s dating Chuck. They’re happy.” At least Cole hoped so. He’d flown Heather to cancer treatments at Sloan-Kettering in New York for a year before she went into remission and immediately professed her undying love for him. Realizing she was hearing wedding bells, Cole—who was deathly afraid of the sound of ringing bells—had quickly extricated himself by fixing her up with his friend.

  “That may be so, but she still goes all moony when you’re around.” Tucker batted his eyelashes at Cole.

  “You’re just jealous.”

  “You’re goddamned right I am. I don’t know how you do it, man. Even before your Superman act, your picture should’ve been next to the words ‘chick magnet’ in the dictionary. But now we mere mortals can only look on with envy.”

  In his right mind, Cole would’ve had a witty retort ready to shut Tucker up, but Cole with a headache the size of the Grand Canyon chose not to engage. “Is it time for more pain pills yet?”

  Tucker consulted his watch. “Another hour.”

  Cole moaned.

  “This is why I suggested a sponge bath to get your mind off your troubles.”

  “Are you offering?”

  Tucker almost spit chocolate cake all over Cole’s new leather sofa.

  “Hell no! But if you’re truly feeling desperate, I bet I could get Nutty Natasha over here in less than five minutes.”

  Cole didn’t care about the pain when he sat right up and looked Tucker in the eye. “Don’t you even think about it!” A surge of nausea took his breath away, and for a brief, heart-stopping moment, Cole thought he might throw up.

  Tucker howled with laughter. “Relax, man. I’m just joshing ya.”

  “That is so not funny. I really hope Debby didn’t copy her on the email.”

  “If she had, Nutty Natasha would’ve been here by now.”

  “No doubt.” Cole grimaced at the thought of it. “I still haven’t forgiven you guys for fixing me up with that wack job.”

  “You can’t blame us. We had no idea she was certifiable.”

  “I can so blame you.” Cole didn’t even like to think about what he’d been through with that woman. It’d been almost enough to swear him off women forever.

  Almost.

  “So you’re n
ot going to let any of them come nurse you back to health? What about Diana in Phoenix? I bet she gives good sponge.”

  Cole couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Don’t make me laugh,” he said wincing.

  “Don’t make me beg. I’ve been having naughty-nurse fantasies ever since you got smacked around.”

  “I did not get ‘smacked around,’ and p.s., you need to get your own girlfriend.”

  “Hello? You think I’m not trying? I mean, I ask you…what woman wouldn’t want a piece of this?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “If you aren’t having naughty-nurse fantasies of your own, I’m worried that you suffered permanent brain damage.”

  “No permanent damage. Don’t worry. I’m just not in the mood.”

  Tucker stared at Cole as if he’d lost his mind. “You? Not in the mood for women? Since when?”

  Since he’d met a woman named Olivia—and all the others had faded into the background in an instant. Cole couldn’t stop thinking about her waterfall of silky dark hair, her searching brown eyes, her lovely smile, and the odd sensation that had coursed through him when she touched him.

  “Earth to Cole.” Tucker waved his hand back and forth in front of Cole’s face. “What has you a million miles away?”

  Unlike in the past, Cole had no desire to tell his friend about the woman he’d met. Tucker would assume she was just a flavor of the month and make a joke that would irritate Cole.

  All he knew about Olivia was her first name and where she worked, but he wanted to know more. He wanted to rush back to Reagan and find out everything he could about her. That alone was so far out of character it should’ve scared him half to death. Instead, it filled him with excitement and anticipation.

  “I’m dreaming of pain pills. Are you sure it’s another hour?”

  “You’re down to fifty-two minutes.”

  “Fabulous,” Cole groaned.

  Chapter 3

  “Good afternoon once again from the cockpit. This is First Officer Cole Langston along with Captain Jake Garrison.” Cole paused to accept the applause he’d received on every flight since returning to work after the incident. As Jake snickered at the outpouring from the cabin, Cole continued the announcement.

  “We’ve begun our final approach for an on-time arrival at Reagan National Airport where it’s sixty degrees with high, scattered clouds and an easterly wind blowing at ten knots. We know you have many choices in air travel, and we thank you for flying with Capital Airlines. We should have you at the gate in fifteen minutes. Flight attendants, please prepare the cabin for arrival.”

  Ten minutes later, Cole eased the nose of the Airbus A320 onto the runway and deployed the thrusters to slow the airplane. Having more than a hundred people along for the ride ramped up the anxiety, and any commercial pilot who claimed not to feel a hint of relief at delivering them safely was a damned liar. In the past, when it was just him and a plane, he’d been too busy being cocky to be anxious. Now the anxiety was part of the routine.

  “Nice job,” Jake said when they arrived at the gate. At fifty-two, Jake was a seasoned pilot Cole had flown with many times. Unlike some of the other Capital captains, Jake was generous about allowing his first officers to handle takeoffs and landings. “Looks like that concussion didn’t have any lasting effects.”

  Cole grimaced. He had been the target of serious ribbing from the other pilots after his TKO two weeks earlier. Just when the uproar was finally dying down from the blizzard incident, along came Big Dude and a fist to the face.

  “Fit as a fiddle,” Cole said lightly. In truth, his shoulder was still bothering him. After two hours in the cockpit, he was ready to stretch it out before his next flight. He was ready for something else, too, but he’d spent all day trying not to get his hopes up in case he couldn’t find her.

  Thankfully, Jake was also generous about taking the shift with the deplaning passengers, knowing that if Cole went out there, they’d never get the plane cleared in time for the next flight. Since he’d returned to work, Cole had received hundreds of phone numbers folded into airplane cocktail napkins. Some of the other captains liked to send Cole out to greet his public just so they could bust his balls afterward.

  “I’m going to take a walk,” Cole said to Jake when they’d completed their post-flight paperwork.

  “Go ahead. We’ve got forty minutes to kill.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  “Don’t get knocked out.”

  “Screw you.”

  Jake’s laughter followed Cole out of the plane as he walked quickly up the Jetway into the crowded terminal. He had thought about this—about her—for two long weeks and couldn’t wait another minute to return to the scene of the crime.

  Keeping his head down in the hope that he wouldn’t be recognized, he wove his way through a stream of people who seemed intent on keeping him from his destination. An airport transport vehicle beeped its way down the concourse and would have plowed into him if he hadn’t leapt to the side when he did.

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “What is it with this place? Do I have a target painted on me or something?”

  He looked up to find a young mother staring at him while holding her baby protectively, as if to keep the child safe from the crazy pilot who talked to himself. Then she let out a squeal when she suddenly recognized him.

  “Oh! It’s you!”

  Cole offered her a sheepish grin as well as a brief “hello,” and kept walking. The newsstand was halfway down the concourse, and as he approached, he was surprised to feel a surge of adrenaline and nerves similar to those he experienced at touchdown.

  From outside the store, he saw that the Redskins’ display had been returned to its position like nothing had ever happened. Cole absently reached for the shoulder that had connected with the display case and found it still tender to the touch. He took a deep breath and stepped inside. Unlike the last time, there was no line, and the woman working behind the counter was under no duress. She also wasn’t Olivia.

  The intense disappointment surprised him. What did I expect? That she’d be exactly where I saw her two weeks ago? Well, yeah…

  “Um, excuse me.”

  “May I help you?” The clerk was tiny, of Indian descent, and spoke with a charming accent.

  “I’m looking for someone who works here. Her name is Olivia.”

  “I don’t know an Olivia. I’m sorry.”

  “But she was here…” He swept a hand through his hair and looked around the store as if he hoped to find her hiding behind one of the displays. “Two weeks ago. Right here. You’re sure?”

  Nodding, she studied him. “Someone important?”

  He shook his head, thanked her, and turned to leave the store. His stride lost its purpose as he wandered into the main terminal, thinking he might find her at one of the other newsstands. He checked two more but didn’t ask for her at either, figuring he would try again the next time he was at Reagan.

  Dejected and more disappointed than he’d been in a long time, he started back to the security line. A crowd in one of the waiting areas caught his attention. Since he still had half an hour, he decided to check it out. Over the shoulder of the man in front of him, Cole watched a young woman’s hand fly over a sketch pad, perfectly capturing the mischievous expressions of the two boys posing for her.

  “Wow, she’s so good,” a woman whispered reverently.

  The artist’s long, dark hair was held back in a high ponytail, and something about the curve of her neck was familiar. Cole skirted the edge of the crowd to get a better view.

  She looked up at her subjects and made eye contact with Cole. Her mouth formed an O.

  His heart tripped with excitement. She was even more strikingly beautiful than he remembered.

  “Can we see it yet?” one of the boys asked.

  Clearly thrown off by Cole’s reappearance, Olivia pulled her eyes off him and returned her attention to the children.

  “Almost done,” she
said. She didn’t look at Cole again as she put the finishing touches on the drawing and tore the page out of her pad.

  “You totally captured them,” the boys’ astounded mother said. “You have to let me give you something for this.”

  “No need. It was my pleasure.”

  “You’re very talented.”

  Olivia shrugged modestly. “They’re cute kids. Thanks for letting me draw them.”

  “Thank you.”

  The crowd dispersed, and Cole sat down next to her.

  “You’re an artist,” he said, and then felt like a fool for stating the obvious.

  “I dabble.”

  “That was a whole lot more than a dabble.”

  “It’s a hobby.”

  “I looked for you at the store, but the woman who was working didn’t know you.”

  Olivia’s cheeks flooded with color, which he found utterly charming. “I was filling in there, the day we… met. I usually work at that one.” She gestured to the store behind them.

  “Ah, no wonder they didn’t know you.”

  “It’s a big company. So how are you?”

  “I’m good. All recovered and back in the air as of today.”

  “Did you get my note?”

  “What note?”

  She sighed. “I wondered if it would ever get to you. The day after, I tried to find out how you were, but your airline wouldn’t tell me anything and there wasn’t much in the paper. So I gave them a note thanking you for what you did and asked them to get it to you.”

  Cole fought to hide his disappointment. He would’ve liked to have gotten that note. He would’ve liked that very much.

  “Sorry, I didn’t get it. I refused all requests for interviews this time. Restarting the media firestorm wasn’t on my to-do list.”

  She flashed a small smile that was not quite the dazzling event he remembered from the store, but it stirred him nonetheless.

  “What did it say?”

  “Um, just thank you for what you did, and I hoped you were feeling okay.”

  “I got an unexpected two-week vacation out of it.”

  “Something tells me you didn’t enjoy that as much as most people would.”