Operation

by Barbara Bretton

  A huge gust of wind slammed into the aircraft broadside and, muttering a curse, the pilot brought the plane to a screeching halt.

  “I told you so.” The words popped out before she had the chance to think about what she was saying. Terror will do that to a woman.

  He unbuckled his seat belt, then stood up and faced her. He towered over her. His wide shoulders seemed to block out all light. For the first time she wasn’t thinking about the way he’d looked naked. She was thinking about the way he’d look when he pleaded temporary insanity after they charged him with her murder.

  His voice was a controlled roar. “Say no more until we’re up or I won’t be held accountable.”

  “Up?” Her voice rose to match the word. “Are you crazy? How much more of a warning do you need?” She knew she was playing with fire but he was the one who’d lit the match.

  “The winds shifted. There’s no cause for alarm.”

  “That wind almost blew us halfway to Glasgow.”

  “We were in no danger. I’ve been flying for twenty years without incident.”

  “There’s always a first time.”

  “Aye,” he said darkly as he sat down. “For many things.”

  “You know what,” she said, unbuckling her seat belt. “I think maybe I should find myself another pilot to take me to Stewart’s castle.” Even if it meant she had to spend the night in a deserted airport. There was something too driven about this man, too determined to buck the odds, for her taste.

  The plane lurched forward once again.

  “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” she said, moving toward the cockpit. “Stop so I can—”

  “Too late,” he said as the plane gathered speed.

  “We haven’t taken off yet. Just stop and I’ll—”

  The nose tilted upward and they were airborne.

  “What on earth is the matter with you?” she demanded. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “If you want to get to Glenraven, then this is the way to do it.”

  The plane’s engine whined as the pilot urged it to climb higher and faster through the dark, menacing clouds. She’d been aboard jumbo jets that took a beating going through clouds like these. What chance would they have in this little bucket of bolts?

  The plane trembled then bucked violently as they broke out of the clouds, and a small whimper of alarm escaped her lips.

  “You’d better sit down.”

  “I’m fine,” she said as she pressed her eyes tightly closed. “I know all about CAT.”

  “Do you now?”

  The plane shimmied, and she forced cool air into her lungs. “Clear air turbulence,” she said. “It’s nothing to worry about. It just feels like you’re in trouble even though you’re not.”

  “And where did you learn this fact?”

  “My fear of flying class.”

  His laugh was wonderful. Dark and rich and genuine. She hated those fake laughs she heard sometimes in the boardroom of Wilde & Daughters Ltd. This man had the kind of laugh that took you by surprise and made you want to hear it again.

  The plane dropped a few feet, steadied, then dropped again.

  “Oh, my God—”

  “Sit down,” he ordered, pointing to the seat next to him.

  “I’ll sit down when I’m ready to sit down,” she said, wondering how she was going to make it to the seat she’d abandoned. Almost on cue, the plane reared like an unbroken horse.

  “Ready now?” he asked.

  “I think so.” She sank down next to him and fastened the seat belt with trembling fingers. “Clear air turbulence never lasts long.” She knew that she was babbling but it kept her mind off the fact that she was a mile above the earth in a plane that was roughly the size of her father’s Caddy. “They used to tell us that in class to trick us into getting on the plane in the first place.”

  “They were right,” he said in that mellow Scots voice of his. “Clear air turbulence is all bluster and no might.”

  “So I have nothing at all to worry about,” she went on. “Another minute or two and it’ll be clear sailing.”

  “Aye,” he said, “clear sailing if I can restart the engine.”

  Chapter 2

  “That’s a joke, isn’t it?” Sam asked, her eyes wide with fear. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

  “Ice in the carburetor. We most likely picked it up in the cloud cover.” He obviously didn’t believe in sugarcoating the truth.

  “We shouldn’t have taken off,” she said. “I told you the weather was too risky.”

  “Quiet,” he ordered. “I need to think.”

  Thinking’s good, she agreed silently. Especially if he thought up a way out of this mess.

  She clasped her hands together tightly and rested them in her lap. Her right foot drummed a tattoo against the floor of the plane. Rat-tat-tattattat. Rat-tat-tattattat. She waited for her life to pass before her eyes. That’s what they said happened when a woman was about to meet her Maker, a parade of First Communions and first teeth, of best friends and forgotten lovers, all marching before you in review as you got ready to breathe your last.

  So why was it the only thing Sam saw when she closed her eyes was the way the pilot had looked in the glorious altogether?

  She saw his broad shoulders, the rippling muscles of his back, the powerful legs—

  Good grief, what was wrong with her? She was a woman of substance. She prided herself on her serious nature, her attention to detail, her unwavering focus on the important things in life. She wasn’t the kind of woman who made a habit of ogling naked men. She usually didn’t even find them that attractive. All of that anatomical detail seemed a little excessive to her, as if nature had gone a tad overboard with the design.

  A few years ago she’d attended a bachelorette party for an employee at one of those male strip clubs. She’d been downright shocked by the way her normally cool, calm and collected staff turned slack-jawed at the sight of the G-stringed dancers. There was something so calculated about the whole experience that it was about as erotically stimulating as a triple root canal. All around her, women stomped and cheered and practically drooled over those perfect specimens while Sam wished she’d brought a good stock report to read.

  Wouldn’t you know it? She finally figured out what all the fuss was about and now she’d never have the chance to act on it.

  A cosmic joke, that’s what it was. One giant gotcha before the lights went out for good.

  She inhaled sharply as the nose dipped toward the cloud cover. It took her a second to realize the pilot was talking to her.

  “…and so I had my fortune read when I was a young man at university,” he said, manipulating various dials and levers in what seemed to Sam an alarmingly random fashion. “Did you ever have your fortune told?”

  “I don’t believe in that nonsense,” she said, forcing herself to ignore the deep and utter silence from the engine. “No one can foretell the future.”

  “Sophie could.”

  Her left brow arched. “Sophie?”

  “A dark beauty she was in her prime.” He paid no attention to a horrible grinding noise on the left. Sam struggled to do the same. “All said she had the gift.”

  “The gift,” Sam repeated.

  “The gift,” he said solemnly. “The veil between this world and the other was thin as smoke to Sophie. She knew all.”

  The engine clicked three times in quick succession then fell silent again. A bead of sweat formed on the pilot’s right temple. That was the kind of thing you didn’t see when you were safely ensconced in first class on a jumbo jet heading for L.A. She could go a long time before seeing it again.

  Still, he was going out of his way to be kind to a total stranger who was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Maybe he was right. If they talked, she wouldn’t be able to think.

  She forced her voice into the bright and cheerful range. “So tell me more about Sophie.”

  He met her eyes and she saw som
ething that might have been gratitude. “To this day I don’t know much about her, but she knew all there was to know about me.” He paused a beat. “More even than you, lassie.”

  The image of him, stark naked and glorious, rose once again before her, and her entire body was suffused with sudden heat. “I’m sorry. I should have let you know I was standing there.”

  He grinned and she found herself grinning back at him, despite her fear. “Looking’s not a crime.”

  “Now you tell me,” she murmured. “You were talking about Sophie…”

  He tried the engine again, and again nothing happened. A second bead of sweat joined the first. “She knew I was the one who broke the parson’s window on Easter Sunday.”

  “And I suppose she told everyone.”

  “Worse,” he said. “She held it over my head, the sorceress did. Made me weed her garden every day until the first frost as punishment.”

  “A witch,” Sam agreed as he twisted another set of dials. Please, God, she thought. Please, please!

  “And myself so young and innocent.” The engine came within a hairbreadth of catching but failed once more.

  “What else did she see?” Sam asked. Fire, flood, famine…plane crashes.

  “She saw a long and happy life.”

  “Can you trust her?”

  “Ask me again in thirty seconds.”

  She didn’t have to. His words were drowned out by the wonderful, welcome whine and rattle of the plane’s engine as it finally kicked in. The nose angled up and they rose through the rain, above the treetops, and bounced their way through the clouds.

  “You can breathe again,” he said. The relief in his voice was unmistakable.

  “I’m trying to but my lungs won’t cooperate.” She swiveled in her seat and looked at him. “Was it as close as I think it was?”

  “Closer.”

  His face was in profile. The large proud head. Strong jaw. Straight nose. Lashes long and thick enough to make a woman weep with envy. She felt a fluttering in the pit of her belly and turned away.

  “What brings you to Stewart’s castle?” the pilot asked after a few minutes of silence.

  She considered lying to him but thought better of it. “Business,” she said.

  “Not romance?”

  “From what I’ve heard, Mr. Stewart isn’t looking for love. A gallery owner in Glasgow told me he never leaves the castle.”

  “And who else did you talk to?”

  “A banker in Edinburgh, a collector just outside St. Andrews. Believe me, there are lots of stories out there about the elusive Mr. Stewart.” A thought occurred to her. “You said you know everyone in Loch Glenraven. That must mean you know Stewart.”

  “Our paths have crossed,” the pilot said carefully.

  She waited for him to say more and when he didn’t, she prodded, “So what’s he like? Did you ever fly him anyplace? Have you ever been inside the castle? Is he young, old, somewhere in between?”

  “You ask too many questions, lass. Best you find out on your own.”

  “Would you introduce me to him?” It would save her the trouble of scaling the castle walls.

  “I canna do that. The people of Glenraven respect each other’s privacy. I’d do nothing to betray any one of them.”

  Tall, dark and honorable. It was a good thing Sam was the practical type. If she was the least bit romantic, she’d be half in love with him by now.

  * * *

  SO THEY WERE TALKING about him in Glasgow and Edinburgh, were they? Duncan Stewart hid his dissatisfaction behind the business of flying a plane. They were there to display and sell his work, not spread gossip from the Borders to the Highlands. He revealed his heart in his work. That should be enough for the vultures.

  But it wasn’t. They wanted the hows and the whys of each piece he sculpted, wanted them so badly they were willing to dig into the layers of his past to find them. But no matter how hard they tried to find his castle, no one had managed to until now.

  “And who was it who told you about Glenraven?” he asked. “The Edinburgh banker or the St. Andrews collector?” He’d trusted them all.

  “Neither one, actually.” She had an easy way of talking that made every word sound the gospel truth. He pitied the man who loved her. One look into those clear blue eyes and he would believe the world was flat if she told him it was so. He was immune to that now and glad for it. “I figured that out myself, but I wasn’t certain until you confirmed it.”

  And damn him for the fool he was. She’d worked some manner of sorcery on him. He wasn’t one to let down his guard that easily.

  “You narrowed it down to Glenraven on your own?”

  “Serendipity,” she said, her drawl sliding up and down the word. She told him how she’d bought some newspapers at a kiosk in Glasgow and by chance happened onto a story about the Glenraven library. One of his earliest works, uncredited, was on display in the lobby, and she had recognized it as a Stewart at once, despite the grainy black-and-white newspaper photo.

  It occurred to Duncan that he could save them both a great deal of time and effort if he told her who he was and why she was on a fool’s errand, but she was so lovely, so animated as she told him of her plans, that he couldn’t seem to find the words.

  * * *

  SAM WAS in mid-sentence when she realized the pilot was no longer listening to her. The look on his face made her blood run cold. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her heart pumping harder. “Is it the carburetor again? More ice? You can handle that, right? Ice isn’t a big problem, is it? You know how to handle it, right?”

  “The electrical system is out,” he said, his words clipped. “I canna get a reading on anything.”

  “The engine’s still running, isn’t it?” The engine had to be working. She didn’t even want to think of what it might mean if it wasn’t.

  “We have nothing, lass.”

  “Nothing? We can’t have nothing. We have to have something. If we don’t have anything that means—”

  His expression was grim. “We’ll glide to a landing on the other side of this mountain. We have no other option.”

  “Glide to a landing on the other side of the mountain! You can’t even see the mountain.” She leaned as far forward as the seat belt would allow and peered out the window. All she saw was dense, icy fog, swirling everywhere.

  “Tis there, lass. Of that I’m certain.”

  “And you think we’ll sail right over it and glide to a landing on the other side.” Did he also believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus?

  He grunted something she assumed meant yes.

  “Is there an airport on the other side of this mountain?”

  “I wish I could tell you there was, but I’d be a liar.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a lie right about now.”

  If he got the joke, he didn’t smile. Her stomach twisted into a sailor’s knot

  “You’re in the Highlands. The best we can hope for is some open land with room enough.”

  She’d seen enough of the Scottish terrain to know that what he was hoping for was a miracle. The Highlands weren’t Texas. The odds of finding a flat, treeless plain were about a hundred to one.

  The sailor’s knot in her stomach tightened.

  The nose of the plane dipped into the top of an icy gray cloud. The cabin began to shake, as if gripped by a giant unseen hand. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Don’t cry, girl,” he said gently. “All is not lost.”

  “I’m not crying,” she managed to say, determined to ignore the fact that she was lying through her teeth.

  “You have no need to worry,” he went on in that whiskey-and-honey voice. “It can’t be my time yet. The beautiful Sophie saw me surrounded by children with a loving woman by my side, and none of that has yet come to pass.”

  “I hope Sophie was right,” she said, closing her eyes as they dived deeper into the cloud cover in their glide toward earth. Random thoughts and disjointed images played
leapfrog inside her head. Words of love from a man of strength and character, a lapful of babies, the kind of life no one in her family had managed to achieve—all the things she’d told herself she didn’t want or need suddenly rose up in front of her, beckoning her forward.

  “You were right before,” the pilot said as the plane angled down toward the mountain. “I should have listened to you and waited for the weather to pass us by.”

  “Don’t give me too much credit.” She forced a weak smile. “I’m a coward, remember? I would have advised the same thing during a spring shower.” Careful, cautious Samantha Wilde, still waiting for her life to begin.

  “There’s nothing of the coward about you.”

  “If you knew me better, you wouldn’t say that. I’m afraid of everything.” Planes and snakes and marriage, and that was just for starters.

  “Maybe,” he allowed, “but nothing stops you.”

  “Now you’re sounding like your friend Sophie. Unless you’re psychic, you couldn’t possibly know that.”

  “I know what I see, and I see you here next to me despite your fears.”

  “Maybe I’m crazy,” she said, feeling her carefully constructed defenses being to crumble.

  “Or passionate.” He said the word the way it was meant to be said, all sibilance and heat. Too bad it had about as much to do with her as moon rocks.

  “Nobody has ever called me passionate before.” Not even her former fiancé, John Singleton Reilly, which was one of the reasons he was her former fiancé. “I’m the practical one in the family.”

  “Practical women don’t chase a man all the way to the Highlands.”

  “I’ve never chased a man in my life.” She fairly bristled with indignation.

  “You’re chasing one now.”

  “It’s not the way you make it sound.”

  “And how do I make it sound?”

  “Like—” She hesitated, then decided to hell with it. In a few more minutes, none of this would matter any longer. They’d either be dead or so happy that neither would even remember this idiotic conversation. “Like I’m looking for a lover.”