Lost and Found Groom

by McLinn, Patricia

  “Yes, sweetheart. Planes are in the sky.”

  “No. No. Plane! Mat’ew–plane!”

  “Plane? You saw a plane? Oh!” Kendra spun around to Daniel, walking leisurely toward her. “You took him up in a plane! You had no right–”

  “Don’t be so fast to judge, convict and execute. We–”

  “Pop’ler, Mommy. Vrrrrm-vrrrrm-vrrrrm!” Matthew tugged at Kendra’s jeans. When she didn’t respond immediately enough for him, he looked to Daniel. “Pop’ler? Dan’l, pop’ler?”

  “That’s right, Matthew. That’s the noise a propeller makes.”

  “Pop’ler,” Matthew nodded. “Pop’ler, Mommy!”

  “Daniel, how could you–”

  “I know questions are your strong point, but how about if you hold off, Kendra? I think you’ve got someone right now who’d like to tell you what he discovered this afternoon.”

  Kendra glared at him long enough to convey she didn’t appreciate the crack about her asking questions, or for being found lacking in paying attention to Matthew. Then she crouched to face her son.

  “You heard a propeller, Matthew?”

  He nodded emphatically, his dark eyes, as warm and compelling as his father’s, shining with excitement. “Pop’ler, Mommy!” Matthew prattled on with words tumbling over each other so rapidly that even she, who’d heard each of his words first–until today, she thought with a jolt–had difficulty making them out. Although propeller, plane, sky and vrrrmm reoccurred. Along with another word.

  “Roof?” she repeated tentatively.

  “Rufus Trent,” Daniel filled in. “He owns the airport, and some planes. He showed us around, and let Matthew sit in a cockpit.”

  And now she recognized another of her son’s new words–pilot.

  “Mat’ew pilot!”

  He reached up toward Daniel, both arms raised, small fists opening and closing in the universal sign for “Gimme.”

  Daniel reached into his light jacket and pulled something out. A couple of quick movements of his long fingers, and he handed over to Matthew a balsa wood plane.

  “Me pilot!” Matthew exulted, running down the driveway making his version of engine noises.

  Kendra glared at Daniel, hands on hips.

  He shrugged, but didn’t sound the least apologetic. “He wanted a plane. He said he didn’t have one.”

  She wouldn’t be sidetracked. “Explain,” she demanded as soon as Matthew was out of earshot.

  “Explain? You make it sound like I’ve committed a crime.” His frown matched his tone–irked. “I took him by the Far Hills airport. I wanted to introduce my son to something I love. That’s no crime.”

  His expression shifted, allowing in a glint of joy. “He loved it. Rufus has a couple nice little planes. Nothing fancy, but he keeps them spit and polish, inside and out. Matthew and I got inside, and he saw the instrument panel and even tried the throttle. But we never left the ground, Kendra.”

  “You told me before you two left that you wanted to show Matthew where you’re staying.”

  “I said I wanted to show you both where I’m living.” His emphasis disputed her less permanent word. “You said you had too much to do.”

  She did have work to do, but it had been the resemblance to a family outing that had kept her from saying yes when Daniel showed up at her door in his newly repaired car with sandwich makings and ready-made salad for lunch. When Daniel had said in that case he’d take Matthew, she hadn’t been able to think of an excuse to say no, since Saturday night seemed to have gone well from what she could see and from Ellyn’s breezily incomplete comments.

  “You live at the airport?”

  “Yeah. I told you I rented a place. I rented it from Rufus. The operation’s run out of an old house–offices, a lounge and the radio room. There’s living space upstairs. I’ve got a room, my own bathroom and run of the kitchen. Works out for both of us–he likes having someone around because of the equipment, so the rent’s real reasonable.”

  “And it happens to be at an airport.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, that’s a bonus. So, with all the work you had to do, what are you doing out here with the binoculars?”

  She ignored the gibe. “There are reports of forest fires in the Big Horns. I’m seeing if I could spot anything.”

  “Could you?”

  “Smoke from the far side.” She brushed that topic aside, coming back to the real issue. “I don’t want Matthew around airplanes. Or airports.”

  “Flying is what I do, Kendra.” He said it with deliberate emphasis. “I’m his father, and whether he knows that or not now, someday it’ll be important to him to know about me, about my flying.”

  “You don’t know what it would be like for him . . . if you don’t come back.”

  He took her hand, she tried to pull away. He held on, clasping it between both of his. “Or if you don’t come back.”

  “Me? I don’t take risks.”

  “You live. That’s the risk. You could–”

  “You’re going to say I could be hit by a truck, or struck by lightning. True. But I don’t court risks, Daniel. I don’t go meet them more than halfway. You fly into danger for a job.”

  “So did you.”

  “I did? How do you figure that?”

  “You walked into a hurricane for your job. I remember you talking about taking calculated risks to get the story of Taumaturgio. You seemed to think that was reasonable.” Before she could formulate an answer, he went on, “Kendra, you can’t tell me you don’t know how it feels. You wanted that Taumaturgio story so much–I could see it. Why do you think I followed you to La Baja?”

  She gave him a look meant to be quelling, and tugged at her hand. He ignored the tug and grinned, obviously interpreting her expression to his own advantage. “Well, yes, that too. I can’t say that your appeal didn’t figure into my following you.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” But her protest didn’t stop the heat of certain memories from traveling through her body. “You followed me because you were playing savior to the world and you thought I’d be a danger to your plans.”

  His grin evaporated. “You were in danger.”

  “All right, all right. I know. It was the stupidest thing I’d done in my life.” She gave him a cutting look. “To that point.”

  He ignored the implication. “I hope you didn’t do anything riskier. A storm like that–it’s like a wolf on the hunt. It’s going to tear into someone, you never know who or where. And yes, I worried about you. You were a stranger to hurricanes and a stranger to Santa Estella. I could also see the determination in you to find out all the secrets of Taumaturgio–that worried me, too.”

  “So, you could have let the hurricane deal with me. That would have ended all your worries.”

  “Right.” He used his self-mocking tone. “Wouldn’t look good for Taumaturgio, defender of the weak, champion of the downtrodden to let a gringa reporter drown because it was convenient.”

  “You talk as if Taumaturgio were a separate person.”

  He released her hand. “Still doing the story, Kendra?”

  Body language, tone and words all screamed that she’d stepped into hidden territory. For a moment, she felt as if she had her foot raised, poised to step over some invisible threshold, about to venture into a realm that stretched unseen ahead of her. The realm of Daniel Delligatti. Not solely the facts he’d chosen to tell her to this point or the glimpses his lowered defenses had allowed her to see, but into other emotions he’d skirted away from.

  “No. I’m not doing any story.” Her words came out almost breathless, as if she’d truly stepped back from a precipice. “We’re off the subject, anyhow. The subject is your job. And flying.”

  “My job. I don’t know . . .”

  Her heart jolted uncomfortably against her ribs. Something in his voice . . . almost as if returning to his job were in doubt. But he lived and breathed his job, the flying and the danger.

  She treated his
words with the levity they deserved.

  “What? You’re trying to tell me this was such a great government job that you could afford to retire at thirty-two–” His left eyebrow quirked. “Yes, I got your age from my sources. Don’t change the subject again. You’re going to be a full-time retiree?”

  “No.”

  She exhaled. Just as she’d thought. He’d go back to the job he’d had before Taumaturgio. He’d be off somewhere far away, where she wouldn’t be even tempted to cross into that other realm.

  *

  Kendra avoided any more direct contact with Daniel until Friday afternoon and the co-op’s party to celebrate all the birthdays that fell in the month of October.

  On that day, as many parents as possible were pressed into service to help with the cake, ice cream and games. As Fran said, kids, sugar and excitement were a highly combustible combination.

  Kendra kept most of the room and the ever-flowing mass of kids between her and Daniel during the festivities.

  She’d returned to the main room from attempting to clean up a four-year-old girl who’d tried to shower in juice, and spotted Matthew sitting on the floor beside his pal, Jason. Apparently they were playing a two-year-old’s version of keeping up with the Joneses.

  “My t’uck,” announced Jason, waving a green toy in his fist.

  “My t’uck.” Matthew snatched up a red one from beside him.

  “My new shoes.” Jason patted his Velcro-closed footwear.

  “My new shoes,” Matthew repeated, not entirely truthfully.

  “My sweat-ah.” Jason poked his tummy, covered by a blue sweatshirt.

  “My sweat-ah.” Matthew’s, also blue, truly was a sweater.

  Jason widened his scope, searching for the next item.

  “My Mommy,” he declared triumphantly, waving his arm in the vague direction of his mother, a petite blonde busy placing ice cream-sloppy paper plates carefully into a garbage bag.

  Matthew levered himself to his knees, scanning the room. Spotting her, he shouted with such glee that she couldn’t stop an answering smile. “My Mommy!”

  Jason pointed to the man holding the garbage bag for his mother. “My Daddy!”

  The next moment strung out like a series of still photographs, each etched into Kendra’s heart.

  Matthew’s hesitation, followed by a kind of confusion. Jason clambering to his feet and trundling across the room, shouting, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” knowing somehow that he’d won, yet innocent of any malevolence. Matthew flopping back to sit on the floor, his face creasing into a pucker of uncertainty.

  Kendra took a step toward him. But that brought Daniel into her line of sight and stopped her cold. His expression was so utterly shut down that she knew he had witnessed the episode. How could his face show no emotion and yet she felt such overwhelming blame?

  She started toward Matthew again, but Daniel’s curt gesture ordered her to stay still.

  Movement from Matthew caught her attention. He’d put his thumb in his mouth. His left hand idly stroked the top of the truck by his side. Then he started to move it back and forth, gradually shifting his focus. In another minute, his thumb was out of his mouth and she heard his “Vroom-vroom.”

  She walked out of the room, not stopping until she’d reached the open side door, drawing in slow, calming breaths.

  She wasn’t surprised when Daniel spoke from behind her.

  “Don’t you be the one to let him know it’s a big deal, Kendra. He’ll understand soon enough that it’s a big deal that he doesn’t have a Daddy. If he doesn’t, the other kids will let him know.”

  She squeezed her eyes tight against the pain buried so deep in his calm voice. He knew exactly how it felt to learn that, to understand what it meant not to have a daddy. Or a mommy.

  “We’ve gone over this.” It came out fairly steady.

  “Yes, we have. You don’t want Matthew to know he has a father on the chance that father might not come back someday.”

  She twisted around to find him leaning against the opposite doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest.

  “Daniel–”

  “I know, I know. Give you time.” He uncrossed his arms, and pushed away. “At some point, Kendra, time’s going to run out.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A week later, Daniel sauntered in, bigger and more alive than anyone else in the basement room.

  Kendra firmly reminded her accelerated heartbeat that was because most of the occupants of the room were under four feet tall and less than a decade old. It didn’t help.

  That had been happening more and more often.

  She never should have let things get so carried away that night of the country club dinner. She knew the power of her attraction to him. She knew how it could shut down her brain and her common sense. She’d had proof of that not only in the middle of a hurricane, but in her own home. She had to be more careful.

  “Dan’l!”

  Matthew launched himself with no care or caution. Before Kendra could even gasp at the foolhardy leap, Daniel had caught Matthew in the air and swung him up to eye-level, boy and man who looked so alike grinning at each other.

  “Easy does it there, Matthew.”

  No one seeing the two of them now could doubt the relationship. Kendra thought she detected a couple of glances from parents dropping off children or preparing for a tour of duty at the babysitting co-op. Marti’s look from across the room was more than a glance, though her expression gave no hint of what she was thinking.

  Matthew was so young, surely that would protect him–from the gossip and from his own wondering about his father–until she’d figured out the best way to tell him. The best way to make sure he wouldn’t be hurt.

  Her son’s delighted squeals brought her back to the moment, and Daniel spinning the boy around.

  “Daniel, be careful! He could fall!”

  Daniel slowed his circles to a stop. “I’ve got a good hold on him. He won’t fall.”

  “Mo’, Dan’l! Mo’!”

  Daniel shook his head. “Sorry, fella. Your Mom says no.” As he put Matthew down, he softened the refusal with a smile that had Matthew mirroring the expression.

  “I go play,” the boy announced once he’d been set on his feet.

  “There you go, Matthew,” Daniel approved. Then he repeated in a lower tone that reached only Kendra’s ears, “There you go.”

  Three short words transported her to the middle of a hurricane, holding onto the only sane thing in a wild universe–him. She could feel his hands stroking her back, could almost reach out and touch his warmth, his reality.

  And when he met her gaze, she knew he recognized her thoughts.

  She bent her head, pretending great attention to straightening the straps of her tote bag she’d set on a chair.

  “How are you, Kendra?”

  “Fine. What brings you here?” She kept her inquiry briskly impersonal. “I thought you’d finished your co-op duty for the week.”

  “I did.” He grinned, looking boyish and extremely pleased with himself. “I knew you’d signed up for today. That’s why I came.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah.” He stuck his hands in his jeans’ pockets. “I want to ask you something. Rufus is letting me use a plane this afternoon–”

  Her throat constricted. “You are not taking Matthew in a plane.”

  “Kendra, I wouldn’t even consider it if I hadn’t checked it out myself. It’s a solid plane. It’s perfect flying weather, and that might not last – they’re calling for rain by the end of the week. You have to know I’d never take chances with Matthew.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  His dark eyes considered her. She broke the connection, only to discover the adults in the room were all watching them.

  “Then you come, Kendra. Let me prove how safe it is.”

  She recrossed the straps. “I have too many things to do. After we leave here, I have to make calls for a story and I have errands.” />
  “A couple hours. That’s all. I can show you what Far Hills looks like from the air. Have you ever seen the ranch from an entirely different angle? Have you ever seen the sky from a new angle? Let me show you what it’s like, Kendra. I’ll prove to you it’s not dangerous.”

  “No.”

  “Kendra–”

  “No. The answer is no. I’m not going flying with you.”

  “I’ll go.”

  All eyes turned to Marti. But Kendra’s gaze quickly shifted to Daniel. He was as stunned as she was.

  “I’ll go flying with you this afternoon, Daniel. If Kendra will take care of Emily. And if it’s okay with you.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly, then the corners of his mouth lifted. “This should be interesting.”

  *

  Marti Susland let out a long, uneven breath.

  She hadn’t said much since she’d followed him from town to the airport, except to pass a few pleasantries with Rufus. The lack of conversation suited Daniel. He was wrestling with a problem.

  Talk about the chicken and egg. How could he get Kendra to change her mind about flying if he couldn’t get her to change her mind about flying?

  Marti had watched Daniel’s preflight check–first outside the plane, then inside–without comment, but with great attention. He’d heard one sharp drawn-in breath on takeoff, but otherwise, nothing.

  Maybe discomfort about flying in small planes ran in the family. So why had Marti asked to come?

  “This is . . . magical.”

  He felt his smile stretching across his face, and when she turned toward him, he saw an answering smile creasing her face.

  “Kendra once told me the only way to see Far Hills was on horseback,” he said, “but I think this is pretty good.”

  She nodded. “She should see it like this. I’ve flown over on flights out of Billings, but it was no more than a speck. On the ground, I know every foot, but up there I couldn’t tell what was where. But this . . . Oh–there’s the home ranch.”

  He banked the plane to the right to give her a better view of the cluster of trees and buildings forming an oasis in the contoured sweeps of range and fields.