The Way Home oj-2

by Cindy Gerard

  “Outing?”

  He draped an arm over her shoulders and walked her down the steps toward the shore. A light breeze made a rustling sound through the ash and maple leaves that had started to turn but had not yet fallen. The foliage hid all but glimpses of the water in the bay until they were almost down the hill, so the yellow float plane moored by the dock took her by surprise.

  “Whose plane?” she asked when she spotted it.

  “Remember when you told me about the guy in Vermillion? The one who retired? I looked him up. This is his plane.” He grinned at her.

  She walked down for a closer look. “What are you doing with his plane?”

  “Thinking about buying it.”

  That whipped her head around toward him. “Buying it? Why would you buy it?”

  “Because it’s for sale?” When that feeble reason earned a scowl, he laughed. “Planes are my thing. Come on. I want to take you up in her.”

  “Oh, no. I’m not going up in that thing.”

  He laughed again. “Why not?”

  “For one thing, it’s a wreck. For another… commercial is more my style.”

  “OK. The body needs a little work, I’ll give you that. But the engine’s sound. I wouldn’t suggest you go up with me unless she was perfectly safe. Heck, I flew her up here from Vermillion.”

  She gave the plane another once-over. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “You aren’t seriously afraid?”

  What she was was horrified. Planes might be his thing, but heights had never been hers. “In a word, yes.”

  “We’re going to fix that right now. Come on. Sit in her with me.”

  “And you won’t take off?”

  “Not unless you say it’s OK.”

  Because she didn’t want to disappoint him and because she trusted him, she let him help her out onto the float, grabbed the wing strut, and climbed up into what could loosely be called a cockpit. She slid under the yoke in the pilot’s seat and into the shotgun seat.

  He climbed in after her, shut the door, and settled in.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a relic.” The leather in the two front seats was worn and split. The instrument panel looked like something out of World War I, and the four passenger seats in the back practically sat on the floor. “I see a lot of duct tape.”

  “She’s nicely broken in.” He grinned at her horrified look. “OK. So she’s a fixer-upper. But it’s all about the engine, and the guy who owns her has kept it in excellent shape. She’s got a lot of hours, but with a bird like this, that’s a good thing.”

  “Um, Ty.” She craned her neck to her left, then her right. “We seem to be floating away from the dock.”

  “That’s because I cast off before I got in. Don’t worry. I’m only going to scoot around on the water, let you get a feel for how she moves.”

  “And then you’re going to try to talk me into taking off.”

  “That would be the plan, yeah. Relax. You’re in good hands. But you might want to buckle up.”

  She was about to spout a comeback when he cranked the engine. It hiccupped and coughed, then engaged and revved like a rubber band on a bicycle spoke, before really kicking in and negating any chance of talking.

  He reached above him, grabbed a pair of headsets, and handed one to her. Following his lead, she put one on, fastened the seat belt, then groped for something to hang on to as he maneuvered away from the dock and out into open water.

  For several long moments, they did exactly as he’d promised. Jess couldn’t shake a mental image of a damaged dragonfly skimming along the water’s surface.

  “How ya doing?” he asked into the headset.

  “We’d better go back. I think I left something cooking on the stove.”

  “Come on, Jess.” He reached over and squeezed her thigh. “Have a little faith. It’ll be fun.”

  She pinched her eyes shut and, because it was so important to him, gave him a quick nod.

  “That’s my girl!”

  He didn’t give her any opportunity to change her mind. He throttled back, and the plane responded, picking up speed, and finally, with a dip in her stomach, they were airborne.

  “Don’t pay any attention to the vibration,” he told her. “It’s only wind resistance. It’s all good.”

  “What about the groaning?”

  She heard him laugh. “I thought that was you.”

  “It is me. Oh, my God, I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”

  “Open your eyes. Look at this view.”

  On a deep breath, she forced herself to look. And while the sight of the lake with its many fingers, bays, and islands a few hundred feet below them had her gripping her handholds tighter, she had to admit, it was stunning.

  Gradually, she relinquished her white-knuckle grip and, to her amazement, started enjoying the flight, even pointing out landmarks to him and discovering bays she hadn’t realized existed. That didn’t mean that every time the plane hit a little air pocket and they dropped a few feet, the butterflies didn’t take flight again.

  “Do you love it?” Ty crowed through the headset.

  What she loved was his excitement. “Love is a strong word. But yes, it’s growing on me.”

  “What about me? Am I growing on you?”

  Oh, yeah. He was not only growing, he’d taken root and was flourishing.

  “Depends on if you get me down from here safely.”

  “I can do that,” he promised, and fifteen minutes later, after one last buzz of the lake, he did.

  The pontoons kissed the surface of the lake with a swoosh of parting water in a soft-as-silk landing.

  She couldn’t help but grin as he expertly taxied the little plane back to the dock and gently beached it.

  “You did great, Jess.” Ty beamed at her after they’d unbuckled and stowed the headsets. “Sit tight. I want to tie up before our wake washes in and lifts her off the sand.”

  He stepped out onto a pontoon, grabbed the wing strut for balance, and expertly plucked a tie line out of the water. After securing it to the strut, he walked to the back of the pontoon and did the same.

  He helped her out and up onto the dock, then followed. “So what do you think?”

  “It was fun. I admit it. But I still don’t understand why you’d want to buy it.”

  He took her hand and led her to a log bench that faced the water. “What if I said I wanted to start a fishing charter business up here?”

  She hadn’t fully processed the implication of his words when her heartbeat spiked, her hands started to tremble, and a light-headedness hit her hard enough to make her dizzy.

  He was talking about much more than purchasing a rickety six-seater float plane. He was talking about a commitment. He was talking about a future.

  “Whoa. I recognize that look. Take a deep breath. Let’s back up a second.”

  Now she was confused. He wasn’t talking about a commitment?

  “Look. I’ve blindsided you twice. Once in the dead of winter. Once in July when I showed up again unannounced. It’s not my intention to do it again.”

  “Too late.”

  He smiled and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “OK. So I have a little trouble in that area. But there’s no pressure here, Jess. I want you to know what’s on my mind. And I want you to think about how you feel about it.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “I want to make a life up here. With you.”

  Heart racing, she looked up at him.

  “I want to marry you, Jess. I love you. I think I fell a little bit in love with you the first time I saw you.”

  Her voice got trapped somewhere in the wellspring of emotions knocking around inside her. Elation. Fear. Excitement. Fear. Joy. Fear.

  She didn’t want to be afraid. Not of him. Not of them. And yet… was she ready for this? Was she capable of this?

  “Like I said, I didn’t want this to be another blindside, but sweetie, I’ve tried to make it cle
ar that I’m crazy about you.”

  He tipped her face up to his, and she could tell he was doing his best not to laugh at her.

  “Not talking, huh? That’s OK. I know you need some time to process the idea.”

  She needed more than time. She needed oxygen.

  “So… I’m going to fly the plane back to Vermillion, OK? I need to get her back before sundown, and it’s about a thirty-minute flight. How long is it going to take me to drive back to Kabby? Hold up your fingers if you can’t talk.”

  “Thirty-five… forty minutes,” she said numbly.

  “OK, then. I’ll see you in a little more than an hour. I’ll stop and pick up something for dinner, so don’t cook. Jess?” he added when she stared at him. “See you in an hour?”

  She nodded, leaned in to him as he pressed another kiss to her forehead, then watched him walk to the plane.

  She was still watching the sunlight glint off the wings in the far, far distance when Shelley walked up beside her.

  “Hey,” Shelley said in that quiet way she had of hinting that she knew something was up.

  “Hey.”

  “You OK?”

  She breathed deeply and looked at her hands clasped together on her lap. “I’m not sure.”

  Shelley sat down beside her. “Is that a good not sure or a bad not sure?”

  She looked at her friend. “Not sure about that, either.”

  Chapter 19

  “NO TALKING.” TY GRABBED HER hand when he finally arrived at the store shortly after closing time and led her straight up the stairs.

  It had taken him more like two hours to make the drive from Vermillion to the store. Judging by the look on his face, she suspected he’d timed it that way.

  He wanted to be alone with her. He wanted her in bed.

  “No talking,” he growled again, dropping their takeout dinner onto an end table and walking her to the bedroom, where he stripped off his clothes and hurriedly helped her out of hers.

  “Only this,” he murmured, lowering her onto the bed and covering her naked body with his. “Only this.”

  Only, however, did not belong in the same breath with the this he had in mind. Because he didn’t only make love to her. He didn’t only drive her to the brink of madness, then shove her over the edge into free fall. He didn’t only do anything.

  He destroyed. He possessed. With his hands. With his mouth. With the strength and the fire of a man who would do anything to please his woman.

  When he knelt between her thighs and ran his hungry hands from her breasts to her belly and finally to the heat of her, he demanded, “Open for me.”

  A thrill shot through her, and she opened her legs and let him pull her to the edge of the bed, let him drape her thighs over his shoulders as he knelt down to the floor. Let him devour her with his mouth and his passion as he brought her to a lush and powerful climax that both shattered and restored her and had her screaming his name as pleasure so exquisite it scared her fired through her body.

  She was still coming down when he dragged her to the floor with him, positioned her over his heat, and took her there again, only then giving in to his own release.

  WHEN THEY’D RECOVERED enough strength to move, they crawled back into bed and burrowed under the covers, wrapped in each other’s arms.

  Several long, luxuriant moments passed while their breathing settled and their heartbeats slowed.

  “OK,” he whispered against her hair. “You can talk now.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  She felt his smile before he tipped her face back so he could look into her eyes. “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “So. How are things?”

  She laughed. “Things may never be the same again.”

  “Can’t tell if that’s a complaint or—”

  “We’ll go with or.” She lifted a hand that felt like lead and caressed his cheek. “We will definitely go with or.”

  He tucked her head back beneath his chin and held her close.

  How she felt lying here with him, naked and spent and steeped in the wonder of his strength and heat, was something she treasured. Nothing else mattered but these moments. Nothing else counted but this feeling. She didn’t want to catalogue or define it. She didn’t want to think outside this little pocket of intimacy. She wanted to live it, breathe it, be lost in it. For a long time, that’s what she did. Until it occurred to her that he was probably starving.

  “Are you hungry?” she whispered into the silence.

  “You think I’m lying around like a slug because you wore me out? Hell, no, woman. I’m weak from starvation.”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you have a teensy-weensy theatrical streak?”

  “Minored in musical theater in college.”

  That brought her up onto an elbow. “Seriously?”

  “I’m liable to break out in show tunes at a moment’s notice.”

  Now she knew he was kidding. “I’ve heard you sing in the shower. I was not impressed.”

  “You were impressed a minute ago.”

  She laughed. “Yes, I was. And I hope to be impressed again after I feed you.”

  “Count on it.”

  She leaned in and kissed him, then got out of bed and reached for her robe.

  By the time he joined her in the kitchen, she had the food on the table.

  “Looks good,” she said.

  “Kentucky Fried. Nothing but the best for my lady.”

  He’d pulled on his jeans and shirt but hadn’t bothered to button it. His hair was mussed, his eyes were sleepy, and his lips were swollen from kissing her—and other things.

  And he really was hungry. He dug in as if he hadn’t eaten in a week.

  Soon, however, the elephant in the room refused to take a backseat to polite table talk.

  “You know, you’re killing me here, Jess. Say something.”

  Suddenly, they were back on the bench by the lake, and he was wanting to make a life with her.

  “Yes,” she said, feeling and sounding breathless, as if she’d just stepped off a cliff.

  “Yes… what?”

  A nervous laugh burst out. “Well, I may be a little slow on the uptake, but wasn’t there a proposal mixed in somewhere with wanting to buy a plane?”

  A slow, pleased smile spread across his face. “No. That wasn’t a proposal. That was a preamble.”

  He shot up from the table, disappeared into the bedroom, and came back with a small blue box in his hand.

  He got down on one knee in front of her, opened the box, and held it out to her.

  She pressed a hand to her chest, stunned by the extravagant emerald-cut diamond that winked at her from inside the Tiffany box.

  “This is the proposal. Although, I’ve got to tell you, I didn’t imagine myself half-naked when I made it.”

  She lifted the ring out of its satin mooring with trembling fingers. Met his eyes.

  “I love you, Jess. Will you marry me?”

  “You’re really sure about this?”

  “Never been so sure of anything in my life.”

  “Then yes.” She threw herself into his arms. “Yes, I love you, too. And yes, I’ll marry you.”

  “DID YOU EVER think about having kids?” Ty asked later, after they’d made love again. “You and J.R.?”

  It was a fair question. “J.R., well, he’d seen a lot of ugly things. A lot of troubling things. He didn’t want to bring a child into the world he knew.”

  “What about you? What did you want?”

  “I tried not to think about it.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “You want to know what I think? I think you’d make a great mom.”

  She turned her head on the pillow so she could see his face. The expression she saw there told her what she wanted to know. “And I think you’d make a great daddy.”

  He grinned. “I hope so.”

  So easy. Again, everything was so easy with him.

  “I want to te
ll you something,” she said. “And I don’t want you to think that I’m speaking badly of J.R.”

  “I know you’d never do that.”

  “I loved him. I did. As best as I could, at least. But I never really understood him. You know, growing up here, it’s pretty confining. You’d be amazed how many married couples started out as high school sweethearts. You might say it’s a tradition.

  “Anyway, that’s how it was with J.R. and me. We fell in love as kids and never really got to know each other as adults. It seemed like he was deployed all the time. And when he wasn’t, he was still all about the Army. It took me a while to realize that no matter what, I’d always come second with him. I’d reached a point before he died where it wasn’t enough.”

  He remained silent, giving her time to get this off her chest.

  “We fought before his last deployment. I wanted him to resign after his hitch was up. I told him I wanted us to be a couple, that I was tired of leading two separate lives and that if he didn’t resign, I was leaving him. I don’t even know if I meant it, but when he made it clear that wasn’t going to happen, I started seriously thinking about leaving. We went to bed angry. In the morning, he was gone. I never saw him again.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah. Me, too. I did love him. And in his own way, I know he loved me. But it was never easy. He was a good man. I want to make that clear. A good provider. A good soldier. A good friend… to everyone but me.”

  The truth was, he had often shut her out, and the deep connection she’d always thought they would make in time had never come. She’d tried. She’d followed him from post to post, but when his deployments became more frequent, his emotional distance became more pronounced.

  “It won’t be like that with us, Jess.”

  She turned in his arms so they were nose-to-nose. “I know. Promise me. Promise me that you won’t ever leave me to fight someone else’s war.”

  “Try to get rid of me, see what happens.”

  “You’ll sing show tunes?”

  He squeezed her hard. “Worse. I’ll do my Elvis impersonation. Thang ya. Thang ya verra mush.”

  He could joke all he wanted, but he needed to understand something. “It takes a special kind of person to live up here. Especially in the winter. Winters are long and cold and isolating.”