Come Fly With Me

by Janet Elizabeth Henderson

  It was hard not to laugh at his earnest expression. “Bain called you, didn’t he?”

  “I think so. I remember someone whining about you cockblocking him, and he’s the only person I know who uses that term. Too much American TV.” Brodie lifted his head again. “Do you know what his favorite show is?”

  “I dread to think,” Katya said drolly.

  “Friends! He still has a thing for Rachel.” As he collapsed into giggles, Katya picked up the med bottle. It was a whole lot lighter than it’d been when she left.

  With a sigh, she kicked off her shoes, ready to curl up in the armchair for the night and watch over the idiot she’d once married.

  “The room’s spinning,” Brodie said. “I can’t feel my face.” He poked at his cheeks.

  “Stop touching it. You’re already bruised enough.” Katya lifted the thick hand-knitted throw from the back of the chair and wrapped it around her knees.

  “Remember that time you fell out of the tree and hit a bunch of rocks?” Brodie said softly. “We were what? Fourteen at the time? You had bruises all over, but it was the black eye that had us worried the most. We thought your dad would see it and come after me with his shotgun.”

  “But he didn’t.” She smiled at the memory. Like every other memory from her youth, Brodie stood front and center. There was so little of her childhood that didn’t involve him one way or another.

  “Not that time, anyway.”

  “No.”

  The episode seemed funny now, but when she was sixteen, she’d thought her dad was going to kill her boyfriend. If she closed her eyes, she could still see him, running down the hill toward the loch, jumping fences and cutting through fields as he chased after Brodie. In the end, he’d run out of breath and fired his gun anyway, not expecting to hit Brodie but hoping to scare the crap out of him. It was a sheer fluke that Brodie’s backside became a target.

  He lifted his head to grin at her. “He kept shouting about me stealing your innocence. I seem to recall it was you who’d talked me out of mine.” His head flopped back down again. “Maybe I should have told him that at the time.”

  Katya burst out laughing. “Only if you’d wanted him to aim at your head.”

  They lapsed into silence, and Katya wondered if Brodie had fallen asleep. Snuggling under the mohair blanket, she marveled once again at the tasteful décor of Dougal’s hotel. It stunned everyone who’d met the man before being shown to their room. They expected to be confronted with disco-Santa-themed décor, but instead, it was classically elegant—all creams and whites with the occasional rich red tartan accent. Katya planned to ask him for some tips when it came to decorating her forever home.

  “Come to bed.” Brodie sounded as though he was already half asleep. “It feels weird having you over on the chair when there’s a bed here big enough to share.”

  The faint glow coming from the bathroom cast soft shadows over the room. She really should turn off that light. “I’m okay here,” she said.

  Old buildings were infinitely better than new in Katya’s opinion. She loved the high ceilings and tall windows of the hotel, delighted in the oddly shaped rooms—as if the architect had indulged in one too many whiskies while on the job. Old buildings had history. A sense of belonging. She’d missed that while she was away. For years, she’d wandered through countries and towns, feeling rootless, hunting for a reason to return to Invertary.

  Hunting for a biplane like the one her great-gran flew.

  “Well, I’m no’ okay over here alone.” Brodie’s deep brogue was rough as he fought sleep. “I’m only asking that you lie beside me. I promise I’ll no’ cop a feel.” She smiled at the teasing in his voice. “It’s been too long since I slept beside someone…since I slept beside you. I’m tired of being lonely at night, Kat.”

  “Am I to believe that none of your many girlfriends ever spent the night? Or that you didn’t sleep at their place?” They were questions she should never have asked if she cared as little about Brodie as she professed. But the darkness and his sleepy voice made her blurt out what she was thinking.

  “Haven’t spent the night with anyone since you.” He paused. “It’s weird that sleeping beside another woman felt like more of a betrayal than anything else I did.”

  “I know what you mean.” Her nights had always belonged to Brodie, and the few relationships she’d managed to have over the years had never understood. Not that there were many, and the ones she’d started had never lasted too long.

  “Lie beside me, Kat,” he purred. “Promise I won’t tell if you don’t.”

  Brodie was just too much of a temptation to resist. “I’m going to regret this,” she muttered as she took the blanket to the bed. “Move up, so your head’s on the pillow. You’re hanging off the end right now.”

  His smile was pure ambrosia as he shuffled up the bed, still wearing only a towel. As he made space for her, Katya climbed onto the bed beside him, pulling the soft throw over herself and holding it up as an offer to share.

  “I don’t need it,” he said. “It’s warm enough.”

  He rolled onto his side to face her, and they lay like that until they fell asleep. A sliver of space between them, their eyes on each other’s faces.

  25

  January 1946

  Scotland

  * * *

  The Highlands were as beautiful as Ben had promised—the hills as emerald-green, the water crystal blue, and the air as fresh as an alpine spring. Of course, Natasha was smart enough to realize she was looking at it through the eyes of a desperate woman. One hoping for a new beginning, a second chance that didn’t involve death, starvation, and destruction. But even knowing her reaction was colored by her experiences, she still believed Scotland to be paradise.

  Invertary, too, was as picturesque a town as she’d ever seen. Rows of whitewashed houses ran alongside cobblestone roads, down from the hills to the wide expanse of water nestled in the valley. Scotland didn’t have lakes, she’d learned, but lochs. And this loch dazzled in the midday sun as they traveled the last part of their long journey on the back of an old truck.

  “Well, what do you think?” Ben asked as they bumped along the road into town.

  She smiled at the note of anxiety in his tone. “I think it’s wonderful.”

  His face relaxed for the first time in weeks. It seemed the farther they got from Germany, the more uneasy he’d become. They’d spent their days tense, alert for any sign of trouble, even though the last leg of their trip had been through Britain. His mood turned particularly sour during their time in the disembarkation camp on the Anglo-Scottish border, and it grew darker after they were processed by the military dispersal unit in Edinburgh.

  Since their time at the demobilization centers, Ben had scarcely slept; instead, he spent his nights whispering to her in the dark, recounting stories about everything he’d seen and done. Asking questions about her darker experiences during her years spent fighting, obsessing over every new piece of information they learned on their journey to Scotland.

  Ben rarely wanted to talk about anything but the war anymore. Stories of his childhood or plans for his future seemed long gone. Talking over the horrors seemed to be his way of coping now they weren’t living day-to-day anymore. Natasha had noticed the adrenaline fade from her body too. But unlike Ben, in her, a sense of thankfulness and a need for joy had replaced it.

  She wanted to bury the past and live her future to its fullest. Whereas Ben constantly wanted to analyze the past and come to some understanding about what it all meant. Natasha didn’t believe that was something they’d ever discover. As he grew more inward-looking, she became more outward-focused, and all talk of possibly spending the rest of their lives together ceased. The silence caused Natasha to assume they would file for a quiet divorce as soon as they reached Invertary, but when she’d tried to bring up the topic with Ben, he’d given her a dark scowl and refused to discuss it.

  Now she wasn’t sure where she stood or what
they would do.

  As the truck came to a halt at the side of the road abutting the loch, a group of people lingering on the opposite corner let out a whoop of pure joy. A man broke away from the rest and ran toward their vehicle. He was big, wider in the shoulder than Ben, with wavy rust-colored hair that fell across his forehead. He wore a faded blue shirt, gray trousers fitted with braces to keep them up, and massive boots. And his smile was as dazzling as the water behind them.

  “Ben, you old bastard,” he shouted. “You didnae die!”

  For the first time since the day she and Ben met, his face brightened considerably, and the years fell from him. “Tom Savage. Have you run my farm into the ground yet?”

  “Technically, the ground is where you want a farm to be.” Tom beamed at them. “Now get down here and let me welcome my best friend home.”

  Natasha sat there stunned as the two men embraced, slapped backs, and hurled amused insults at each other. Tom Savage’s joy was contagious, and she found herself laughing along with them. Everyone in the group seemed to gravitate to Tom, and he, in turn, effortlessly pulled them into his fun. The best part of all was seeing Ben laugh with his friend. The sight made the knot of tension deep inside her stomach loosen ever so slightly.

  “Now, who’s this?” Tom said when his eyes fell on Natasha. “Don’t tell me you’ve brought me a present.” He clapped Ben on the back. “Get down here, lassie, and say hello to Tommy.” He spread his arms as though expecting her to jump from the back of the truck into his embrace.

  “This is Natasha,” Ben said, his smile fading. “A friend from Lithuania.” As agreed, he was keeping their marriage a secret until they decided what they were going to do about it.

  As she made her way to the edge of the truck, Tom beamed up at her, his warm brown eyes sparkling with secrets, and fun, and happiness.

  “I don’t know where this Lithuania is, but she’s fair bonny,” Tom said. Obviously, she wasn’t moving fast enough for him because he reached into the bed of the truck to clasp her waist with huge hands and lifted her right off it. “Welcome to Scotland,” he boomed before wrapping his arms around her and spinning until she laughed so hard her face ached.

  Natasha couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so carefree.

  When he stopped spinning at last, Tom grinned at Ben. “I like her,” he said with a wink at Natasha. “Can I keep her?”

  Her face burned at the thought, even though she knew it was a joke. As the crowd roared with laughter, she caught Ben’s eye, and that knot in her stomach tightened again. He was staring at her and Tom with the same suspicious look he got when discussing the conspiracies of the war.

  It was then she knew there was something deeply wrong with her friend.

  26

  The scent of springtime in a forest woke Katya, and she nuzzled into the source of the fragrance, inhaling deeply. There was a firm, warm expanse of skin under her palm.

  Oooooh, it felt soooo good.

  And familiar.

  Through a sleep-induced haze, her fingers explored the indents and contours of the muscles beneath them. Oh yeah, that felt good. Wondering if it tasted good too, she ran the tip of her tongue over the skin resting against her nose. Delicious.

  A deep moan rumbled from the playground pressed against her, vibrating through her body. A large hand slid up her back and under her T-shirt to caress her skin. The touch made Katya snuggle closer to the body beside her as her leg lifted over his thigh.

  She was wearing jeans. Why was she wearing jeans?

  With a groan of frustration, she ran her hand down the rippled abs of her bed partner—encountering no obstacle. Only decadently naked man.

  With a smile against the corner of his stubble-covered jaw, she tripped her fingers over curled hair to find the smooth, satin length of him. Without hesitation, she wrapped her hand around him.

  His back arched as he aimed a guttural noise at the ceiling.

  Katya’s mouth watered at the feeling of his firm erection in her hand. She needed more. She had to get out of her clothes. She had to—

  “Kat,” the voice growled.

  And with that, she was wrenched straight out of the delightful gray area between sleep and wakefulness. Her eyes flew open—to find Brodie naked beside her.

  Her hand wrapped around his dick.

  With a squeal, she scrambled out of bed. “What the hell, Brodie? You’re naked.”

  “Aye.” His morning-rough voice sounded more than content with the situation as he turned his head to look at her. “Hey, Kat.”

  “Don’t…don’t you Kat me!” She pointed at his morning hard-on, which was saluting her. “Put that away.”

  “Oh, there are places I’d rather put it,” he drawled.

  Her eyes snapped from the offending member to his face. He was grinning at her. The dressing had fallen off the bridge of his nose during the night, but there was still purple and blue bruising around it and his eyes. He looked like a demented raccoon.

  “This isn’t funny.” Katya tried to regain some semblance of composure. Which was almost impossible with him stretched out on the bed like a feast for a starving woman. How long had it been since she’d had sex? Scratch that, how long had it been since she’d had Brodie?

  No. Don’t think about it!

  Holding up a hand to shield her view of his very impressive erection, she tried to reason with him. “I apologize for…uh…fondling you. It seems I wasn’t properly awake.”

  Dark, tempting eyes danced at her. “I’m okay with the fondling. Feel free to carry on.”

  “Be serious, Brodie. We aren’t doing this?” Damn it. The bloody words had come out as a question, and judging by the smile quirking the corner of his lips, he’d heard it too.

  “Doing what?” His hand slid over his abs, moving oh so slowly, tempting her to follow its journey south.

  “Stop it.”

  “Stop what?” His eyebrows lifted in a parody of innocence.

  “You know what!” Tempting her. That was what.

  “Not like it’s anything you haven’t seen before.” His hand disappeared behind the section she’d blocked from her view. But she saw his arm move and his jaw clench, and she knew he was stroking himself.

  She should have run from the room, but her feet remained rooted to the spot with want. Unadulterated, desperate longing.

  Without warning, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat facing her, making her adjust her outstretched hand to hide the full glory of his new position. Katya found it difficult to resist. To stand strong. They had a lifetime of familiarity between them, and her body had been suffering withdrawal from his for a decade.

  “Come on, Kat, come back to bed,” Brodie teased. “You know you want to.”

  Oh, yes, yes, she did.

  “No. Sleeping together would only make things between us even more complicated.” She sounded weak. Hell, she felt weak.

  The expanse of his muscled shoulders was an enticement she longed to explore. Her fingers itched to compare how he felt now with how she remembered him. Oh, dear heavens above, those abs! He’d always had them, but now, they were more manly…

  Yeah, she wasn’t making any sense.

  None.

  “Kat,” he said softly, still sounding amused, “nothing could make things more complicated between us. So, I’m going to say to you what you said to me all those years ago when you sweet-talked me out of my virginity—stop being such a big baby and get over here.”

  “Brodie,” she whined as she stared up at the ceiling. “It isn’t smart.”

  “When have we ever been smart?” His hand curled around hers, gently pulling her toward him.

  Katya kept her eyes on the ceiling. “I should go before this gets out of hand.”

  “But you don’t want to.” He pressed a kiss to the middle of her palm, making what brain cells she had left cease to function. “You want to see how I’ve changed, the same way I want to see what’s different about you
.”

  She looked down at his eyes—no further. Mostly.

  She shrugged. “I am a little curious,” she admitted.

  “Bet you want to know if it’d still be as good between us as you remember. I know I do.” He tugged her closer until she stood between his spread legs. “I’ve been dying to get my hands on you since you first drove into town.” His grin was both boyish and charming at the same time, his eyes dark with lust. “Your boobs are bigger, aren’t they?”

  Katya couldn’t help the laugh that escaped. This was who they’d been when they were together. No shame—only open curiosity and a reckless disregard for propriety.

  As though reading her mind, Brodie rested his hands on her waist, underneath her shirt. “You were always flashing your boobs at me when we were kids. Remember how mad you were when I wasn’t impressed by your first bra?”

  “It was really pretty, but you just rolled your eyes and asked if it would help me play football better because you reckoned I sucked at it.”

  “To be fair, I did hope it might streamline you and speed you up a bit.” His hands glided to the underside of her breasts, and his thumbs stroked along their curve. “They are bigger, aren’t they? Are you going to tell me, or let me find out for myself? I’m a fair man; I’ll swap information if you like.”

  “Does your dick still curve toward your belly?” The words came out before she could censor them.

  “You were staring at it a minute ago, so you tell me.”

  “It was only a glance.” Mostly. “And it was the wrong angle.”

  Grinning, Brodie looked down. “I think it might have gotten worse. At this rate, it’s going to make a circle by the time I’m seventy.”

  She couldn’t help but glance down too. “You’re lying,” she said breathlessly. “It’s exactly the same.”

  “You think?” Dark eyes met hers. “Maybe you should do a more thorough investigation, to make sure.”

  “This is crazy,” she whispered, dragging her gaze back to his face.