Dear Cupid

by Julie Ortolon

  When had night fallen? she wondered, looking at her watch. She barely remembered stopping in Albuquerque, and here they’d almost reached Dallas.

  Her eyes went to the curtain that cut off her view to first class. Is he still there? The thought that the man might have left the plane at one of their stops should have filled her with relief in view of her embarrassing behavior. Oddly, though, regret stirred inside her at the prospect of never seeing him again. How strange to feel such a keen sense of loss for someone she didn’t know. Or perhaps it wasn’t. She knew all about the expectations, hopes, and dreams that filled one’s mind upon meeting someone new. She just hadn’t experienced them personally in more years than she cared to consider.

  Overhead, the Fasten Seat Belt sign dinged and the flight attendants made their way down the aisle collecting cups and asking passengers to return their seats to the upright position.

  “Oh, dear,” the mother across from her whispered. “Do you think there’s a problem?”

  “I’m sure everything’s fine.” Kate smiled, hoping she looked more confident than she felt.

  The plane took another hard bounce just as the captain’s voice came over the intercom. He sounded surprisingly cheerful in contrast to the rising tension among the passengers. “Sorry about the bumpy ride, folks. Looks like we’re in for a bit of turbulence as we make our final descent into DFW, compliments of that little thunderstorm you’ll notice if you look out the windows to your left.”

  Kate glanced to her left as a blade of lightning cut through the storm clouds to the north. A stab of fear echoed in her stomach. Living in Texas all her life, she’d grown accustomed to thunderstorms—but watching one approach while twenty thousand feet in the air was a whole different matter.

  “Now, before anyone gets alarmed,” the captain continued, “the tower assures us we’ll arrive at the airport well ahead of the storm. Unfortunately, we’ll be the last plane to do so for a spell. All other flights have been canceled until further notice.”

  The murmurs of the passengers increased, nearly making Kate miss the rest of the captain’s words.

  “If the Metroplex was not your final destination, please go to the main ticket counter after you deplane to reschedule your connecting flight. On behalf of the airline, the crew and I would like to apologize for the delay in your travel and wish you a pleasant stay in Dallas.”

  Pleasant stay in Dallas! Kate gaped at the intercom. She couldn’t stay in Dallas. She had a son who expected her home. And she’d promised Linda and Jim, the friends who were keeping him, that she’d only be gone one night.

  All right, no need to panic, she told herself. As soon as they landed, she’d call Linda and let her know she’d be a day late. Which would put her another day behind in answering Dear Cupid e-mail. As if she weren’t under enough pressure, the whole situation was going from bad to worse. In fact, it was terrible!

  ~ ~ ~

  It was perfect. Absolutely perfect! Mike suppressed the urge to laugh as the plane descended toward the runway. Here he’d been racking his brain throughout the flight for a way to approach the woman in red—no, Kate, he reminded himself, her name had to be Kate—and now he had the perfect opportunity handed to him.

  After the way she’d snubbed him while boarding, he’d nixed his first plan to go back into coach and simply introduce himself. No matter how he played that scene in his head, he never got a sense of rightness in his gut that told him “this will work.” Instead, he pictured himself standing in the aisle like some idiot staring down at her with nothing to say. Or worse, blurting out something stupid like “Will you marry me?” God, what he wouldn’t give for a good scriptwriter. Not that shyness had ever been a problem with him. He normally felt easy around women. With her, however, he felt as tongue-tied as a teenager with his first crush.

  If he went back into the coach section, he’d blow it. He knew that the same way he knew when a special effect would or wouldn’t work. He just knew. Just like he knew the woman in red was “it.” His future wife. The mother of his unborn children. Or child, he amended. He was getting started a bit late in life to have more than one child. Well, two maybe, he decided as the plane touched down. Two would be good.

  His second plan had been to wait until they landed in Austin, then strike up a conversation as they walked toward the baggage claim. He’d even worked part of it out in his mind. First, he’d hand her the card, then he’d mention the phone number and ask if she lived at the lake. From there, he’d figured he could wing it.

  To be stranded together in Dallas, though, now that was far better than anything he could have arranged.

  As the plane rolled to a stop, several passengers leapt to their feet. Overhead compartments popped open as people grabbed for briefcases and overnight bags.

  “I need to call my wife,” the businessman in the window seat beside him said, frantically pulling out his mobile phone. “If I don’t get in tonight, she’ll think the plane crashed, with me on it. You know how women are.”

  Mike snorted at the thought of any man claiming to know “how women are.” He’d grown up with three younger sisters, and he still didn’t have a clue. Tuning the man out, he reached for his duffel bag. He had to come up with a new plan before Kate came through the curtain.

  “Do you suppose they’ll put us up for the night?” the businessman asked, phone to his ear, apparently not getting an answer. “Not at some fleabag, though, I hope.”

  Ignoring him, Mike craned his neck as the curtain opened, but with all the people filling the aisle, he couldn’t see her. To his frustration, the flow of bodies carried him off the plane. He’d have stopped on the ramp to wait for her but the businessman, who’d been a total stranger mere moments before, seemed to have attached himself to Mike in that odd way people do in a crisis. He needed to shake the guy, and quickly. When they reached the gate area, he stepped to the right and turned to watch the departing passengers.

  “What’s wrong?” the man asked.

  “Nothing, I, um ...” Mike’s mind raced. “Forgot something. On the plane.”

  “Oh?” The businessman glanced down at the duffel bag in Mike’s hand.

  “My sunglasses,” Mike improvised. “Why don’t you go on to the ticket counter, before they run out of decent hotel rooms?”

  “Oh. Right” The man hurried off down the concourse.

  Mike breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to the stream of departing passengers. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of orange hair heading in the other direction. He rose up to see over the crowd just as the throng of humanity swallowed up a shapely figure in a red suit.

  Frantically he pushed his way forward. “Sorry! Excuse me! Pardon me!” Then he saw her, several yards up ahead.

  “Kate!” he called, hoping like hell that really was her name. Her head turned and a frown creased her brow. Bingo, he thought, and raised his arm to get her attention. “Kate!”

  Her gaze connected with his and her eyes widened. Color flooded her cheeks before she whirled around and increased her pace. He started after her, only to run into a small Asian woman loaded down with luggage. “Sorry,” he said as he steadied her with one hand and reached for her fallen bags with the other.

  The woman scalded him with a stream of Japanese as he thrust the luggage back into her arms. He turned and jumped back as a cart cut in front of him, nearly running over his Reeboks. By the time it cleared his path, Kate had disappeared.

  He took off at a jog, wondering why a woman would flirt so outrageously with him in L.A., then run from him in Dallas. And she had run, he had no doubt about that. If only he could catch her and explain ... Explain what? That he thought he might be in love with her? Lord, he sounded like a nutcase, even to himself.

  After several gates, the concourse opened up into a larger area with corridors leading off in several directions. His heart raced as he turned around, looking in every direction.

  No! She couldn’t have disappeared.

&n
bsp; Yet, no matter how many times he turned in circles, he saw no trace of her. She was gone. Vanished. He’d met the woman of his dreams—and lost her!

  Or had he? Pulling the card from his pocket, he studied the phone number on the front. A smile settled over him. Ah, Kate, you only thought you could get away.

  ~ ~ ~

  Kate peeked around the wall that hid the women’s room from the concourse and breathed a sigh of relief. She’d lost him, thank goodness. Only, why on earth had the man chased her? And how had he learned her name? Could she have mentioned it while they were flirting? Not that it mattered. Once she was home, she could forget all about the forward way she’d acted with a total stranger.

  Digging her phone from her purse, she punched the preset for her friend Linda. More than anything, she wanted to be safely back in her little lakeside cabin with Dylan sleeping soundly in the loft. For tonight, though, she’d have to settle for a phone call to her son.

  Tomorrow, she’d worry about getting her life in order—with or without any romance.

  Chapter 3

  Dear Cupid:

  My boyfriend says he loves me, and that if I love him, I’ll sleep with him. I’ve told him over and over that I do love him, desperately, but that I’m just not ready. The problem is, a lot of the girls at my school do put out I’m so worried I’ll lose him if I don’t. What should I do?

  Desperate and Worried

  Dear Desperate and Worried,

  You’re perfectly right to say no until you’re comfortable with the thought of physical intimacy. In fact many school-age girls—and boys—share your conviction to wait. Polls show virginity is the in thing, so your classmates aren’t as experienced as you might think.

  As for your boyfriend, if he truly loves you, he’ll respect your feelings and stop pushing. If he doesn’t, you may need to look for a new boyfriend.

  Cupid

  KATE reread the letter on the computer screen. The mild tone of her response to Desperate and Worried pleased her, since what she’d really wanted to tell the girl was that her boyfriend was an immature jerk who couldn’t tell his heart from his hormones! She sighed at the small burst of anger. Obviously her attitude toward men still needed some work, but at least she was trying.

  She hit send just as a knock sounded at the front door.

  “I’ll get it,” Dylan hollered as he clambered down the ladder from the loft in the cabin’s main room. A moment later, she heard her friend Linda’s voice. Linda was more than a friend, she was also Kate’s landlord and next-door neighbor.

  Grateful for the interruption, Kate rose from the desk wedged into the corner of her bedroom and stretched her back. Though minuscule in size, the room perfectly reflected her personality. Pillows trimmed in gold tassels lay in a mound on the champagne colored bedspread. The furniture ranged from Queen Anne to Louis XV and the artwork, mostly inexpensive posters bought from a craft store, depicted the works of da Vinci, Renoir, and Gainsborough. Though she’d decorated the room on a shoestring, she loved every old-fashioned inch of it.

  “Hey there, big guy,” Linda was saying to Dylan as Kate joined them in the room that served as living room, breakfast nook, and kitchen. “What are you doing home on a school day?”

  A deep-chested cough cut off Dylan’s reply.

  “We had a little episode last night,” Kate said by way of explanation, intentionally downplaying her son’s frequent and terrifying asthma attacks.

  Alarm flashed across Linda’s face, but quickly vanished at Kate’s warning look.

  “Well, I don’t know.” Linda bent as far forward as her heavily pregnant body would allow. “You look pretty chipper to me, kid. You wouldn’t be playing hooky, now would you?”

  “Nah.” Dylan giggled as Linda attacked his ribs with tickling fingers. The two made quite a picture, Kate thought, both as little as pixies, but Linda’s healthy tan and blond hair contrasted sharply with her son’s milk-white skin and jet-black curls. As for their laughter, the sound made her smile. Since moving to the lake, Dylan had slowly started coming out of his shell.

  “Speaking of people who look chipper,” Linda said to Kate as she straightened. “You’re sure looking better today. Yesterday, when you picked Dylan up, you looked ready to collapse.”

  “I felt ready to collapse, and still do,” Kate admitted as she headed for the kitchen area of the rustic fishing cabin that had been in Jim’s family for generations. Linda and Jim had even lived in it for the first few months of their marriage, until Jim finished building his bride a more suitable house up the hill. Since then, Kate had rented the cabin and been thankful for a place she could afford, no matter how small. “So, how about joining me on the deck for some iced tea?” she asked.

  “As long as I can sit down to drink it.” Linda sighed with one hand at the small of her back, making her pregnant stomach protrude.

  “Me too,” Dylan said. “I’m tired of sitting around inside.”

  “Hmmm, I don’t know.” Kate studied him. His breathing still sounded wheezy to her. She picked up the peak flow meter, which sat on the counter next to his numerous medicine bottles. The plastic tube allowed her to monitor the air flow to his lungs. “Let’s see how you’re doing.”

  With a dramatic sigh, Dylan came over and blew three times as hard as he could into the mouthpiece. Turning the tube sideways, Kate noted the final reading. “Sorry,” she said, trying not to look too worried at the low number. “Not quite good enough to go outside in all those yucky pollens.”

  “Oh, Mom!” He slumped in disappointment. “Staying inside is boring.”

  “How about I let you play Goosebumps on my computer?” she offered.

  His eyes brightened. “You mean it?”

  “You betcha. But only while Linda and I are visiting. Then I’ll need to get back to work. Okay?”

  “Hot dog!” He dashed toward her bedroom with enough enthusiasm to make her laugh. Her smile faded, though, as she remembered how he’d struggled for every breath the night before.

  “I never should have left him,” she whispered, turning to fill two glasses with iced tea. “I know how any stress can trigger an attack.”

  “Ka-ate.” Linda sighed in exasperation. “You’re beating yourself up for nothing. He was fine while you were gone. Really.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, desperate to allay her guilt.

  “I swear,” Linda insisted. “When I picked him up from school, you’d have thought the kid was on vacation. We stopped for burgers on the way home. Then he and Jim spent the evening in the workshop doing he-man stuff with hammers and saws.”

  “Saws?” Kate’s heart dropped. They’d let a seven year-old boy who couldn’t tie his own shoes near finger-severing blades? And all that sawdust? No wonder he’d had an asthma attack.

  “Would you stop it?” Linda gave her a stern look. “You keep saying you want Dylan to live a normal life, then you turn right around and try to seal him in a glass bubble.”

  “You’re right,” she said, trying to convince herself. “I just ... worry.”

  “I know.” Linda’s look turned sympathetic. “But Dylan is going to be fine, and it’s far too pretty a day to waste on worry.” Taking one of the glasses, Linda led the way to the back deck.

  The warm spring air flooded Kate’s senses as she followed her friend outside. Sunlight dappled the stretch of land that sloped down from her cabin to the water’s edge. Beneath a stand of oaks, a herd of deer munched on acorns and stripped the lower branches bare.

  Settling in one of Jim’s handmade wooden chairs, Linda propped her glass on her rounded belly, let her head fall against the chair back, and sighed in relief. “So, you want to tell me about your meeting with Gwen?”

  Instantly deflated, Kate sank into the other chair. “She put me on probation.”

  “Probation?” Linda frowned.

  “That’s better than outright canceling my column.” Kate shrugged.

  “Cancel you!” A militant light flashed in Li
nda’s eyes. “That’s absurd. If not for you, Gwen wouldn’t even have an online magazine.”

  Kate hid a smile at her friend’s vehement reaction. They’d known each other barely three years, yet Linda was her staunchest supporter. In fact, they’d met when Linda had written to her asking for advice on how to attract the eye of the building contractor who was remodeling the bank where she’d worked at the time. She’d claimed that every time she saw him with his mile-wide shoulders and tool belt slung low on his trim hips, her heart melted right to her toes. Yet if she tried to talk to him, he just stared at her as if she were an idiot.

  Little had Linda known that Jim was also writing to Cupid, pleading for advice on how to ask out the pretty bank teller who looked so delicate that the mere thought of touching her with his big, callused hands scared the hell out of him.

  If not for Cupid, they both claimed they never would have made it to their first date, much less gotten married. When they finally figured out the other one had been going to the same source for help, they’d laughed until their sides ached, then invited Cupid to the wedding.

  Kate had been delighted by the invitation. While it wasn’t the first or last she’d received, the wedding had been the closest to where she lived so she’d decided to attend. The three of them had been fast friends ever since.

  “How can Gwen even think of canceling you?” Linda asked, eyes blazing. “After everything you’ve done for her. Why, you practically gave her the idea of starting the magazine.”

  “It’s business.” Kate made a valiant attempt to look as if she didn’t care. In truth, the current strife between her and Gwen made her stomach hurt almost as much as it had during her divorce. Because it didn’t feel like business. She and Gwen had been friends since they’d roomed together in college. “Gwen says my responses to letters have become more of a forum for male-bashing than romantic advice.”