The Wedding Rescue

by Dianne Castell

  She swallowed a whine. Maybe she should tell him heights weren’t exactly her thing. But then maybe he wouldn’t fly her and his date with Savannah would happen after all. She forced a chuckle. “Yeah, what was I thinking? Silly me. Biplanes are blooming terrific.”

  A half hour later she was headed skyward, white-knuckled, leaving safe green pastures behind. She felt sicker than she’d been ten years ago when she’d ridden the Ferris wheel at the Kentucky State Fair.

  “Isn’t this great?” Tanner called from the back. “Look at the silver in the trees. I don’t remember seeing that before.”

  Wind twisted her hair. It would take a month to get the knots out. She sure as heck wasn’t about to look at any trees; she’d keep her eyes on the sky. As long as she didn’t look down she could pretend this little scene was simply blue paint on a wall and she was sitting in front of a big fan…until the plane dropped, then rose, sending her stomach to her throat.

  She glanced back at Tanner, wide-eyed, sure her hair now stood straight on end and was perfectly white. “What was that?” she yelled over the drone of the engine.

  “Turbulence.” He hitched his chin to the side and she noticed a gray puff of cotton. A storm? Oh, no. No, no. Not a storm. Mother have mercy. She didn’t mind dying so much—that would happen sooner or later—it was dropping from the sky like a giant bucket of cement that scared the spit out of her.

  This was her punishment for calling Tanner a snob and for all the lies she’d told him. If he ever found out and if God happened to be keeping track of them…Oh, boy!

  Tanner tapped her back and she turned around. He pointed down. They buzzed a water tower with Davey’s Junction written in faded black letters. She swallowed a burp and yelled, “Look for a red windmill that way.” She pointed west.

  The plane banked in that direction, getting lower to the earth—lower was good as long as it happened gradually. They circled the windmill, lower still, trees skimming underneath the plane, then next to it. Then they were bumping over pasture and coming to a halt. She unhooked her harness, scrambled over the side, slid to the ground, falling face-first into the grass. She kissed it.

  “Are you all right?” Tanner knelt on one knee, turning her over. She flipped onto her back, arms and legs spread like a big X, trying to catch her breath and waiting for the world to stop spinning.

  “If you had waited a minute, I would have helped you down and—”

  She threw her arms around his neck and held tight, pulling him off balance and collapsing him on top of her. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you for getting us down. I wasn’t ready to die.”

  He went completely still. Was he dead? “Tanner?”

  She relaxed her grip, letting him push up on his elbows. He gazed down at her, his eyes brown as the finest Kentucky bourbon. The little cleft in his chin and his mouth inches from hers, his breath feathering her face.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on here? I’m not complaining, mind you, though it’s a bit unexpected.”

  “I—I hate flying. Really hate flying. I’m…grateful for being on the ground. That’s all, nothing more.” Although with Tanner on top and the rise and fall of his steely chest against her breasts and his hips snuggled against hers, this was not a that’s all situation no matter how much she tried to convince herself or him that it was.

  He raised his brow. “Is this how you thank all pilots that bring you back to earth?”

  She swallowed, trying to lie very still and to not move her hips or any other suggestive parts and not get excited. This situation had excitement written all over it. “There have never been any other pilots.”

  “Yoo-hoo,” came from the barn some feet away. “Charity? Is that you on the ground under that young man? Sure hope I’m interrupting something good. The Ridge could do with a bit of gossip. Been too darn quiet around here. Everybody’s behaved themselves lately. What’s the fun in that?”

  Tanner pushed himself up and Charity scrambled after him. They both stood, brushing themselves off, avoiding each other’s gaze. Charity pointed to the plane. “No gossip here. I sort of fell when I got out. Slid from the plane like a snake on a wet rock. Tanner came to see if I was okay.”

  Alvena Cahill smoothed back her curly salt-and-pepper hair and looked from Charity to Tanner. Her gray eyes flickered with interest as she smiled. “Well, now, I’m sure he did. Very gentlemanly of him to come over and take care of you like that.”

  She looked at Tanner. “Welcome home, boy. I suppose you’re here for Nathan’s wedding, and a jim-dandy one it’s going to be, too. Whole town’s twitterpated. Bought myself a new dress over in Louisville.”

  Tanner shrugged. “Nathan and Savannah aren’t exactly the perfect match, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the wedding was called off and—”

  Alvena threw back her head and laughed. “Perfect match? Since when does that have anything to do with falling in love? Love happens when it’s good and ready to, and there’s not one single thing anyone can do to stop it. Now where’s my medicine, so you two can get back to falling out of airplanes?” She winked. “Fell out of a few things myself when I was young.” She laughed again. “And even some when not so young.”

  Charity handed Alvena the package. “Don’t add sugar, but use a little white corn syrup to tempt the horses into eating. The yeast mixture should make them feel better in a day or so. Let Mama know how it’s working.”

  Alvena’s smile faded. “I’m banking on it working real good. The vets around here are calling in some experts at the university to figure out this problem we’ve got brewing. Trouble is, we don’t have time for their figuring. We got problems now. Mares are getting ready to foal, and if they aren’t in good health, things could get mighty complicated.” Her smile kicked up a notch and she patted the bag. “But I’m sure this will take care of things. Your mama’s the best. She’s the one who these vets need to talk to. I baked you one of my Dutch apple pies to take with you.”

  Alvena headed back to the barn as Tanner glanced at the sky. “Well, Kentucky Girl, are you ready to go? It’s clouding up. If you want a smooth ride, we better move on.”

  Charity looked at gray puffs overhead. Her stomach lurched and her knees went to jelly. “See you around, flyboy. I’m walking. You can drop my pie off later. Thanks for the lift.”

  Chapter Five

  Tanner snagged her arm as she strode past him on her way back to MacKay Farms. “Wait up, Kentucky Girl. If you try to walk home, you won’t get there till next week, and what makes you think Alvena’s pie is yours?” He hitched his chin at the biplane. “You know the real reason you don’t like to fly, don’t you?”

  “The pie is mine and I don’t like flying because I’m suspended in air by air and that makes no sense at all?”

  “Not quite. You don’t like it because someone else is doing the flying.” He gave her a smug look. “You’re at someone else’s mercy, and you can’t stand the thought. It’s a control thing.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  He arched his brow, looking every inch the confident rogue in faded jeans and mussed hair. She doubted if any male on earth fit the part as well as Tanner Davenport. Maybe because he’d been a rogue his whole life.

  “All right, it’s not ridiculous. I’m a little controlling.”

  He studied her through half-closed lids.

  “Okay, I’m a lot controlling. Happy? But I still hate heights.”

  “Come on, sissy pants, fly with me. I haven’t lost a passenger yet.”

  “Sissy pants? You called me ‘sissy pants’?”

  He grinned and folded his arms. They crossed his very muscular chest, which had pressed against her minutes ago and made her hotter than a pump handle in July.

  “Got to think of some way to get you in that plane. Thought maybe a dare would do it.”

  “Since Puck’s driving Mama to Louisville today, I’ll bum the old truck Alvena has around back and return it tomorrow.”

  He made chicke
n sounds. She hated chicken sounds. She hated flying even more. She gave him a superior look. “Nothing you can do or say will change my mind. I am not flying in that…that contraption.”

  Minutes later she sat in Alvena’s spluttering truck as Tanner stared at her through the open window.

  “So it runs a little rough and has a few minor idiosyncrasies.”

  “Like not getting out of third gear and no headlights?” he said, grinning.

  Did he have to grin? She couldn’t think when he did that…except about the grin. And maybe his eyes. She thought a lot about his terrific brown eyes. And his hair. She bet it would feel great running through her fingers. Then there was that kiss. She’d never forget Tanner kissing her if she lived to be a hundred. ’Course she’d never forget him dropping her in that trough, either.

  There wouldn’t be other kisses. Getting involved with a man who made his home on an iceberg was nuts. She and Tanner had nothing in common—not where they lived, not their stand on this wedding, not what they intended to do with the rest of their lives. Except there was that darn kiss, which they had in common big-time.

  She turned back to the steering wheel and away from Tanner and his grin and memories of the kiss. “I’ll be home before dark. If I do have problems I can walk away from them and not have to wish I could grow wings. I have a cell phone and I know every farm between here and home, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Bet that cell phone works real great in these mountains, and think of all the land separating the farms around here. What if this hunk of junk conks out in between?” He raked his hand through his hair and shook his head. “I’m not making any impression on you at all, am I?”

  Ha. She looked at him and smiled. Darn it, she shouldn’t have looked.

  “Guess this makes you a full-fledged member of the if-God-wanted-us-to-fly-he’d-have-given-us-wings club.”

  “Amen.” Least she wouldn’t be with Tanner and she could get herself under control and figure out how not to be so affected by him before they met up again. She could also try real hard to forget about that kiss.

  She slid the truck into gear, gave Tanner a little finger wave goodbye and chugged off into the hazy afternoon.

  TANNER HAD NO TROUBLE spotting the faded red truck meandering along the curvy back roads. He’d followed her by air for the past two hours, telling himself this was stupid, dumb, idiotic. Nothing would happen to Charity MacKay. She knew these roads like she knew the bloodline and birth order of every horse on the Ridge, but he just couldn’t let her fend for herself in that pitiful excuse of a truck. He had to keep an eye on her. Besides, she took his pie.

  He did a wide circle, enjoying the warmth of the late-afternoon sun when it peeked through the clouds, the pink and purple wildflowers, the budding trees surrounded by lighter shades of grass. Funny how he never noticed the different color from the ground, only from the air. He swooped low over Thistledown, canvassing the farm front to back from the big red-brick house and stables on one end to the original Davenport cabin his granddaddy built at the far end. Tanner did a barrel role, a salute to granddad, a gutsy man. The engine missed.

  Now what? Tanner checked gauges and listened to the steady rhythm, except it wasn’t so steady. Hellfire and damnation. If he wasn’t running out of gas, something else had to flare up. Fuel pump? He’d checked the damn fuel pump. Twice. The engine spluttered again and died. Full engine failure. And he’d been worried about Charity’s damn truck breaking down. The gods of irony, sarcasm and mockery were, no doubt, laughing their butts off.

  He banked to the left, thankful he was in a biplane that could glide, and searched for terrain more hospitable for an emergency landing than a hill and a hollow. He spied a pasture. Short, but the best thing available. He banked again, eating up speed, letting the plane slow so as not to run out of pasture, but not slow enough to lose control. The wheels touched; the three-point landing into the soft grass rattled every bone in his body. He applied the brakes and the Starduster coasted to a stop short of a tree line. He puffed out a breath of air and gazed skyward, offering thanks.

  In reply he got a clap of thunder in the distance, echoing through the mountains, telling him he was screwed. The gods were not letting up. He looked west and spied a line of black clouds. The front was moving in faster than he’d expected. He tossed the tie-downs from the plane, then the chalks to keep the Starduster in place. But what the hell would he tie it to?

  “See, see.”

  Charity? He spun around and there she stood. Beautiful and windblown and looking like the queen of Flying is for Dummies.

  She spread her arm wide. “What did I tell you about nothing keeping you up in that sky except air?”

  “Where’d you come from? How’d you know where I was?”

  Her eyes rounded. “Good gravy, Davenport. You’ve been circling over me like some vulture.”

  “Try guardian angel.”

  “Ha! Angels don’t fall out of the sky. I heard your plane suddenly sound as if it had a two-pack-a-day habit, then die. Figured you had to be around here somewhere and since I didn’t see a big ball of fire, I figured you survived whatever happened.”

  The color suddenly drained from her face and she grabbed the front of his shirt in her fists. Her body was close to his, her voice low and ragged. “Don’t ever do that again. You scared the hell out of me, Tanner.”

  Raw emotion sparked in her eyes. Trees, grass, insects seemed to freeze in place. Her hands felt warm, secure, caring. His heart skipped a beat and he swallowed hard. Been a long time since somebody besides Nate cared. “Yeah, scared the hell out of me, too.”

  She grinned. Her grin seemed forced, killing the moment, putting their relationship back on shallow ground and she let go of his shirt as if it were made of hot coals. This was good. Shallow he could handle, and from the looks of it, so could Charity. They didn’t know what to do with that raw emotion stuff. Such as the kissing. That really added to the problem. There wasn’t one thing shallow about that kiss. How could two people be attracted and have so little in common?

  She put her hands to her hips. “So what do you have in mind, Mr. Top Gun?”

  He thought, Not get involved with Charity MacKay and get my sorry butt back to Alaska. He said, “Drive the truck over here. Then we’ll pull the plane into the trees and tie her down. If a wind gets under the wings she’ll somersault and it’s goodbye plane. It looks like a storm’s heading our way.”

  “We pushed the plane before. Can’t we do the same now?”

  “Grass is too high. She won’t roll worth a damn.”

  He followed Charity back to the truck parked on the roadside. He slid in beside her, keeping distance between himself and her tempting body. She put the bag-of-bolts into gear and headed for the Starduster.

  “Since my truck is saving your plane,” she said as they bounced over the gully and into the pasture, “you owe my truck an apology.”

  “It’s not your truck, and I don’t apologize to inanimate objects.”

  “Oh, boy. You just had to go and say something stupid like that, didn’t you? Bad karma, Tanner. If you don’t treat things right, they poop out on you. Like getting your car washed. Doesn’t your car always run better after you wash it? That makes for good karma.”

  She pulled up to the Starduster. He threw the tie-downs and chalks into the bed, tied the plane to the hitch and got back in the truck. Charity started up and he cautioned, “Not too fast. Can you help me tie her to the trees before the storm sets in?”

  “I’d be glad to. But then what will we do?”

  “Drive home and get my tools to fix the plane.”

  “Sounds like a plan, except for one little thing.” She pulled up to the trees.

  “And that would be?”

  She nodded at the dashboard. “We’re out of gas.”

  “Gas? Impossible.” He tapped the glass over the gauge. “It showed full when you left. I checked.”

  “Well, it isn’t now.” She
gave him a superior look. “You should have apologized.”

  “The gauge was probably stuck. Damn. I should have known. Nothing else works right on this thing.” He raked his hair, thunder boomed, a fat raindrop hit the windshield. “When we don’t show up, Mama Kay will call Alvena and they’ll realize something’s happened and come after us.”

  “You have been away for a while. What will happen is, Alvena will tell Mama about you and me falling out of the plane and into the grass. Mama will tell Alvena we were in town together, and they’ll both think we’re off somewhere playing kissy-face and not worry one lick.”

  She heaved a deep sigh. “We’re going to be here till this blasted storm blows over. Then we can walk home. It will only take us an hour or so if we cut across the hills to Thistledown on the other side.”

  She glanced at the sky. “Storm’s just getting some teeth now and it’s getting late. We’re going to be out in this mess all night. Hope Mama and Puck mind the horses.”

  “You know they will.” Thunder rolled, winds kicked up, drops of water plopped onto Tanner’s head. He touched his wet hair and frowned. “It leaks.”

  “You didn’t apologize.”

  “We’re on the backside of Thistledown. There’s a cabin there, we’ll make for that. It can’t be worse than this hunk of rust.” Two more drops hit his head.

  She eyed the drops sliding down his forehead then onto his nose and said, “When we get to the cabin, I’ll give you a lecture on karma. In the meantime, do us both a favor and keep all disparaging remarks about the cabin to yourself. I’d like for it to stay standing till this storm is over.”

  The wind whipped around them as they got the tie-downs from the back and anchored the plane. Charity MacKay wasn’t just beautiful—along with being a smart-ass—she was more capable than anyone he’d ever met. He could think of a dozen women who, if stranded in a storm such as this, would yell and cry and carry on like some wounded animal. Not Charity. She pitched in and did the job. That’s what she’d been doing all her life and he admired her to no end for it.