Читать книгу May The Best Man Wed - Darlene Scalera - Страница 12

Savannah didn’t see Cash the next day nor the next, but when she opened her office door on the third morning, she found him once more behind her desk. She didn’t even miss a step as she walked into the room and was thoroughly pleased with herself.

She smiled cordially. “How’s George doing this morning?”

The amusement increased on Cash’s face as if he enjoyed her. “Not bad.”

She set her briefcase on the desktop, sat in the chair opposite. “Still worried about Velma’s knee, I imagine?”

Cash nodded. “But his daughter is coming in from the west coast day after next for the operation. He’s happy about that.”

Savannah arranged her hands in her lap. In the last two days since she’d seen Cash, she’d decided his sole aim was either to incense or entice. So realized, his efforts lost all power over her.

“His daughter lives quite a ways away.” She could play.

“California. Married not long ago. Nice fella. Lawyer. George’s other daughter works in Seattle, married three years. Her and her husband made a killing on an upstart dot-com company two years ago.”

“I’ll bet George and Velma are campaigning like mad for grandchildren then.”

Cash smiled, a smile not made for morning but for night and smoky music and the beat of something rare in the air.

Savannah gave him a polite half smile she knew suffered in comparison. “A second bright and early morning meeting in the same week? You keep up this ambitious schedule, and you’re going to ruin your reputation.”

“Or yours.”

Her gaze stayed steady. “Do tell, Walker, what brings you out once more at this unusual hour?”

“McCormick called me last night around 1:00 a.m.”

She was grateful to be sitting down. A thousand urgent questions rose. She refolded her hands, waited for Cash to continue.

“He’s at the lodge in Colorado.”

She seized this small satisfaction. “When is he coming home?” She was thankful there was no shake in her voice.

“He didn’t say.”

“He didn’t say?” Still she kept her voice even, her gaze level. “What did he say?”

“He’s conflicted.”

“Conflicted?” Her voice sounded foreign, her world suddenly held together by precarious threads. She sat very still and stared at Cash, afraid to shift her gaze and set off an avalanche. The colors of his eyes tempered. He knew, she realized, had learned a long time ago—all is nothing but shifting sands, winds of fate. It had been the birth of his wild heart.

She pressed her sweating palms against the smooth surface of her skirt as she stood. She moved to her briefcase upright on the desk and opened it. Cash watched her.

She removed several files from the case and piled them on the desk. Plucking a pen from the silver cylinder on her desk, she set it before Cash. He looked at it curiously. She ripped a piece of paper from the notepad next to the pens and slid it toward him.

“I’ll need directions to the lodge from the Denver airport.” She riffled through the papers in her briefcase, leaving those that could wait, removing those that would have to be brought with her. She would give her tapes, along with detailed instructions on what needed to be done for the wedding until she returned, to her mother and her assistant.

Cash tapped a rhythm on the desk with the pen. “You’re going out to Colorado?”

“I’ll fly out on the company plane, I hope by noon.” She slapped another folder onto the pile. “One, two, at the latest.” She glanced at the blank sheet of paper before Cash. “Just give me the lodge’s name. My secretary can get me the directions.”

The beat of the pen stopped. “You know what you’re doing?”

“Always.” She lied.

Cash crumpled the paper in his fist. “I’ll drive you up to the lodge from Denver.”

She looked at him across the wide desk. “Not necessary. I’m perfectly capable—”

“That I don’t doubt, Slick, but the only reason I came back here is for my brother’s wedding and—”

“There’ll be a wedding.”

He nodded, agreeing although she suspected he was humoring her. “At that time, I’ll come back, put on a monkey suit and do the Macarena until there’s no more booze or pretty ladies left.”

He stood, shot the crumpled paper into the wastebasket. “But until then there’s not much reason for me to be hanging around.”

“Did you know he was in Colorado?” She doubted he’d tell her the truth, but she wasn’t convinced he would lie either.

He stood so much taller than she and much too sexy a man for early morning. McCormick was her height, never giving her the need to toss her head as she did now, letting her hair sway, her throat lengthen.

“I’m not the enemy, Slick.”

He wasn’t an ally either. They both knew it.

He went to the door. “Listen, I’ve already made plans to go back to Colorado today anyway. If you want to fly out together and I’ll drive you up the mountain from the airport, leave a message at the house with the flight’s time and where I should meet you.”

“There’ll be a wedding,” she felt compelled to say one more time although he was already gone. She listened to the low murmur of his voice, the answering laughter of her receptionist, who for the first time in her career must have come in early. Savannah’s sense of a world upside-down increased.

“There’ll be a wedding,” she muttered, returning to her reports. “So prepare to macaroni, Walker.”

SAVANNAH COUNTED five rows back, neither too near the front of the cabin nor too far back. She took out several reports and her microcassette recorder from her briefcase before stowing it in the overhead compartment. As soon as she sat down, she buckled her seat belt, adjusting it around her hips, leaning forward to check for minimal slack. She straightened, rattled the seat back, then the ones to either side of her, making certain all were locked in position. Next she checked the latches by giving all the trays in front of her a firm tug. All appearing secure, she evened the pile of reports on her lap, clutched her recorder and bent her head to review the figures on the top printout.

Cash plopped down in the seat next to her. His weight involuntarily swayed her toward him. His body was too big beside her in such narrow seats. Savannah focused on the report. Cash reached up to the overhead controls, flicked the lights on, off, twisted the air vents all the way open. The reports on Savannah’s lap fluttered.

“Cash.” She slapped her palm on her papers as they prepared for liftoff.

Her head came up. An air stream blasted her full in the face. She jerked back. She reached up and wrenched the air nozzle closed.

“Fresh air. Very important when flying. Cabin air can be very drying. Plenty of liquids is good, too.” Cash reached toward the nozzle.

Her hand clamped his wrist. “I’ll take my chances, thank you.” The strong beat of his pulse pressed against her fingertips. She let go. She looked pointedly around the empty cabin. “You do realize we’re the only passengers.”

“Are you flirting with me, Slick?”

She meant to count to ten, got as far as five. “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in your own row where you could stretch out, take a nap or do whatever you do?”

He smiled but didn’t move.

“I have work to do.” She returned to her report, clicked the recorder to make a note.

He propped his elbow on the armrest and leaned over to scan the report on her lap. His arm pressed against hers. The fine hairs of her flesh might as well have been exposed nerves.

“Let’s see what we’ve got here. A Second Quarter Departmental Survey on the Effective Utilization of Potential Product Preferences,” he pretended to read, “as Defined by Targeted Consumer Dynamics within the Mid-Atlantic North American Quadrants Including but Not Excluding Those Market Bases—”

“Okay, okay.” Savannah snapped off the recorder. Her other hand gestured surrender, and let her slide her arm away from his. “You talk the talk, Walker.”

“Please. You’ll make me blush.”

“McCormick said you had a brilliant business mind.”

“Merely an example of that ‘younger sibling’ infatuation championed by my mother the other night.”

“McCormick said you were a natural—much more so than he could ever expect to be.”

“I was the oldest son. My father had annual reports read to me while I was in utero.”

“What happened?”

He made his features into a stern mask. “I was a grave disappointment.” Pain flashed in his eyes, belying the doomed baritone of his pronouncement.

“Seven years is a long time.”

He rested his head against the seat. “Depends on your perspective, Slick.”

“And what’s your perspective, Walker?”

He inclined his head to her. She saw the amber and gold in his green eyes.

“That a lifetime isn’t long enough, Slick.”

She studied his face for an extra beat before turning to her papers.

“You ever fly, Slick?”

She wasn’t going to get any work done. “Of course.”

“How ’bout fly the plane yourself?”

“Be the pilot?” The alarm in her voice gave him his answer. She tried to focus again on the figures in front of her only to sigh and raise her gaze to him. “I suppose you have?”

“Flew my first solo about five years ago.”

The idea of voluntarily putting your entire existence thousands of feet in the air was incomprehensible to her. “Why?”

“Why?”

“Why’d you learn to fly?”

“Simple. Because we’re not supposed to.” He smiled the smile that forced her to stare at him.

“Not supposed to what?”

“Man’s not supposed to fly.”

“I agree with you there.” She returned her attention to the numbers on her lap.

“Yet we do. Some buttons, some fuel, a machine and, there you be. Breaking all kinds of natural laws. Man just can’t resist.”

She drew up, looked aghast as his strong arm reached a breath away from her breasts. He slid up the shade on the small side window that she’d purposely left closed.

He settled back in his seat. She breathed again. “Shouldn’t be at all.” He smiled at the patch of view exposed by the side window. “Moving above the earth higher and faster than you ever dreamed, steering right into the clouds, coming out above them. The light like heaven.”

She turned her head to the window, but she didn’t see what he saw.

“Everything else falls away. The boundaries, the shoulds, shouldn’ts, everything you thought you knew, thought you understood…no more.” He leaned his head on the seat, closed his eyes. “Then comes the big trick when you’re up there among the clouds and the light, and you have to make yourself think you’re in control when you now know you have no control at all. And never really did. No one does.”

He was quiet, and she thought him done. Still she stared at him.

“What’s it like?”

His eyes stayed closed. “You’re scared beyond imagination, beyond everything, exhilarated, sweating and feeling as if you’ve never tasted one pure breath until that moment. You ever feel that, Slick?”

Once. She was unable to look away from his face. When I opened my office door four mornings ago and found you. The fear washed over her as frightening as it’d been the first time. His eyes opened.

She had been afraid then. She was afraid now.

“No,” she lied.

“Nooo?” He repeated the word with a sad drawl. “Never? Not one moment when everything became confusion and chaos yet so clear and real you didn’t know if you wanted it to end or to go on forever?”

She shook her head.

“Not even when you fell in love?”

“Love?” She declared flatly. “Sounds like lust to me.”

He tipped his head back and laughed so boldly she found herself smiling.

“Ms. Sweetfield?”

The assistant pilot stood at the front of the cabin. Savannah stopped smiling as if she’d been caught doing something wrong.

“We’re number two in line for takeoff.”

“Thank you.”

The assistant disappeared back inside the cockpit.

“Bet you don’t know his first name either?”

Her eyes met his of emerald. “Are you going to move or am I?”

“Stan.” He rose to plop into the row directly across from her. He reclined, sprawling his long legs out into the aisle. “How’s this?”

“You should put your seat in an upright position.” Savannah tucked the microrecorder into her purse, made sure her cellular was turned off.

“Did you turn your cell phone off?”

Cash shook his head. “Don’t have one.”

“You don’t have one?”

“Hate the damn things. Reception doesn’t work half the time in the mountains anyway.”

Savannah set her paperwork on the floor underneath her seat, placing her purse flat on top. She checked the trays in front of her a final time. “Law, I couldn’t survive.”

“It’s a primitive lifestyle, but I’ve adapted. Man versus nature and all that, you know.”

“Yes, you’ve got that caveman mentality about you.”

She didn’t hear Cash’s reply. The plane began to taxi. She clasped the armrests, braced herself against the seat.

“Ahhh, my favorite part,” Cash declared.

She glanced over. “Put your seat belt on.”

The plane moved forward.

“It starts so slow, you don’t think its ever going to happen.” His voice was like poured wine.

“It becomes stronger little by little. The power, the strength surrounding you, building, starting to surge.” The plane gained speed. “Faster and faster.”

As if in response, the plane quickened. Savannah tightened her grip on the seat’s arms. The air outside began to moan.

“No more than wind now. On the edge. Not here. Not there. Unable to know if you can stand it.” All was Cash’s voice and the scream of air and the assault of speed.

“Deciding it can’t happen, it can’t be possible.” The plane heaved. “One last thrust.” Anticipation swelled Cash’s voice. A final jerk of metal and defiance slammed Savannah into her seat. The plane lifted.

“And you’re flying,” Cash sang out.

Savannah grabbed the bag from the pouch in front of her and threw up.

“Slick, you okay?”

She shot him an angry glance only to find him leaning across the aisle, offering a wad of tissues. She grabbed them, waving him away, then bent toward the bag as round two began. His weight was again beside her, the tentative pat of his hand on her rounded back.

“Go away.” She wiped her mouth with a tissue, threw it into the bag.

“Don’t like flying, do you, Slick?” His fingertips rubbed a light circle between the broken wings of her shoulder blades.

She patted the beads of sweat from her forehead, her upper lip. “I prefer my feet on the ground.”

She couldn’t help but appreciate his chuckle. “Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”

She glanced sourly at him. He patted her back.

“You should have your seat belt on,” she scolded, then twisted her head away. Oh no, round three.

WITH THE TWO-HOUR time change, the plane landed at Denver International Airport at almost the exact same time it had departed Atlanta, a fact that gave Savannah an odd comfort. The plane was needed back in Atlanta tomorrow but would layover at the airport for the night. Savannah would call in the morning to say if there’d be passengers or not. She was not leaving Colorado without McCormick.

“You ever been to Colorado, Slick?” Cash maneuvered out of the airport’s parking garage.

“I was at a seminar at the Brown Palace Hotel two years ago.”

“You’ve never been to Colorado then.” He turned right as they left the airport and onto the interstate heading west. At first, Colorado was only the endless tangle of traffic, the flat suburban sprawl, the strip shopping centers that surrounded all major cities. But when, worn from the flight and feelings, Savannah closed her eyes, she found the strong gold light of the western sun dancing beneath her lids. When she opened them, the city had fallen away and the Jeep was angling upward as if she and Cash were about to take flight again.

They moved into the mountains, the roads becoming as narrow and sharp as the terrain they traced. One-eighty curves were announced by no more than the bright display of an upside-down U on shivering signs. Still the turns leapt up like gleeful gremlins before twisting into the mountain’s blue shadows.

Up they climbed, the high wall of gray and green always beside them, so vast and close, the evergreens seemed to lean over the car. Yet Savannah only turned her head and there was nothing. No more than air and rusting guardrails angled toward the road’s edge as if in homage to the abrupt drop beyond. They climbed, the air becoming finer, lighter, bringing a dizzying clearness to the hard edges, steep planes. Here was none of the slow liquid heat of the South.

They turned off the interstate and moved straight into a deep V of green. Along the way, Cash pointed out various places, points of interest, but Savannah spoke little. When she did, it was a near-whisper, as if the mountains’ silent presence was already as strong and deep as a beat in her blood.

Cash made a sharp left turn onto an unpaved road snaking into the aspens and pines. At the corner, Savannah spied a propped half log. On its smooth side, Lost Ridge and an arrow were hand-painted in white. For a mile or more, the Jeep bumped along through untamed growth, climbing and dropping, until the green suddenly broke into a clearing blanketed with red, yellow and purple wildflowers. At its end was a towerlike structure with a clutter of vehicles and equipment in various stages circling its base. Several golden dogs came bounding toward the Jeep as it passed.

The raw road threaded past a dozen scattered homes of weather-darkened wood or thick logs, some one-story, others two, all with wide porches and many unshuttered windows. Farther on, set low as the land dipped, a cluster of buildings sat closer together, crowned by the bell tower of a simple white structure. “Downtown Lost Ridge,” Cash noted.

The vehicle veered away from the town’s center onto another dirt road that fell rapidly only to climb until it crested a flat plain. There, clinging to a hill’s steep side as if suspended in a sea of this magic mountain air, was a large, sprawling lodge.

Cash parked, turned off the engine, gazed out the window a moment as if, like Savannah, seeing everything for the first time.

“The town was originally a ghost town like others after the mines closed, but was re-incorporated in the 1980s to create the zoning to keep the growing ski resorts from coming in.”

She followed Cash up the wide timber steps to a long, split-rail porch.

“There’s about fifty of us. Homesteaders come and go. Population swells during ski season.” He opened the front door, inviting her to enter.

She stepped into a sense of immense, unbroken space. The first floor seemed one wide-open room swirling around a massive stone hearth stretching high to the cathedral ceiling’s great beams. Everywhere light leapt and danced, splaying from the wall of windows to bounce off the burnished floorboards onto the glossy log walls and the copper lamps hanging above. Fire moved golden like a great wind in the hearth. She imagined a couple entwined before it in the dark, a woman’s head resting on a man’s shoulder, his arms wrapped tightly around her, his cheek on her hair. What a shame she and McCormick couldn’t stay here longer to celebrate the end of this odd journey. Perhaps, if they were careful with their respective schedules, they could return here next year. An anniversary celebration.