Noah Worthington was the last person she had expected to see today. When he’d disappeared from her life twenty years ago, she’d waited for him. She’d waited longer than she cared to admit, even to herself. She hadn’t dated anyone else in college. She’d gone into a dating moratorium after he left. Then, after graduation, she’d gone through a phase of serial relationships until ending up in a five-year engagement that had ended four years ago. She’d gone back into her no-dating phase with the exception of a couple of dinners here and there. She’d never even joined a dating website service.
It was as if Noah had taken it all out of her.
She took a seat in the waiting area and found herself studying the pilots as they, too, waited for the plane to arrive.
She wondered again, as she often had while raking in frequent flyer miles, what kind of life they had. Even though they were a little like taxi drivers, as Noah had so oddly pointed out to her so many years ago, they had professionalism and respect and an aloofness from the rest of the world.
Very few were invited into a pilot’s world. Flight attendants seemed to have the most direct route. From her view in first class, she’d watched a romance or two unfold between pilots and flight attendants. She had yet to see anything more than cordial interaction between pilots and passengers. And to think that she’d been a part of that world once. At least to some extent. She’d been on the ground floor of a pilot in training.
Did their wives feel part of their world, or did they feel like they perched on the fringe of an elite group? Only the elite group got to travel around the world with the lives of innocents in their hands.
As she allowed her musings to keep her from thinking directly about Noah, a pair of tall, blonde flight attendants walked up to the pilots and after quick hugs all around, they moved into the pilots’ private world.
Drug reps are more private, more competitive. She knew a few of them, but they were reluctant to trade secrets. Too much at stake. There were exceptions, of course, mostly among the more seasoned ones like herself. It seemed that the more knowledge they had, the firmer their hold on the industry, hence, they were less afraid of losing it.
Savannah knew that she was moving into that point in her career where she would have to start looking for different options. It was a daily struggle to keep up with the constantly changing drug market and the technology required to make the presentations.
The young reps just out of college came readily equipped with what she thought of as updated software. As with her iPhone, Savannah had to constantly make updates to her brain. And it wasn’t just technology and drugs. In order to establish rapport with the doctors younger than she was, she had to stay up with current culture. She had to know which movies were popular and which restaurants were popular in an area. Even what music people were listening to. And that didn’t even begin to touch on what she had to keep up with in the political world. Who was supporting what movement. Such as the medical psychologists. Louisiana and New Mexico were allowing psychologists to write prescriptions. Several other states were right behind them. She had to be able to either support the idea or not depending on who she was interacting with.
All these things were taking their toll.
How dare Noah Worthington waltz back nonchalantly into her life!
Hearing them call for first-class boarding, she gathered up her bag and was ushered through the gate. Following a couple down the corridor, she watched their heads tucked together, laughing at things unique to them, the rest of the world nonexistent.
A pang shot through her heart as they sparked unbidden, but now newly evoked memories of her year with Noah. They, too, had often walked hand in hand, oblivious to the rest of the world.
She followed them into the plane, and she sat across the aisle from them in her own private first-class seat. She always booked a single seat when possible. She enjoyed the privacy to read, work, or just rest her mind. Resting her mind often meant preparing herself for upcoming meetings.
She heard bits of the couple’s conversation.
“Did you see the look on your father’s face when his ex-wife asked him to dance?”
“I can’t believe Meredith caught the bouquet. She’s already thirty. Everyone knows she’ll never get married.”
Savannah smiled to herself. A happy couple on their honeymoon. This should be an interesting flight.
She accepted a bottle of water from the flight attendant and settled into her space. Flying at least once every couple of months, she was comfortable here. She had all the rules down. Drink lots of water. Stand up every hour. Avoid alcohol. Well, at least on the flight itself.
She took out a highlighter and a stack of notes. It was about time to unplug from the world for a few hours. But first, she sent a quick text to her mother, another to her sister, confirmed two appointments for next week, and set up a meeting with a new doctor she’d been assigned.
As the plane taxied down the runway, she turned off her phone and iPad, sipped her water, and relaxed a few minutes before getting to work. She used the sway of the plane to prepare her mind to focus on reading. The muted laughter of the couple next to her, snuggled in together now beneath a blanket provided by the flight attendant, faded into the background.
And Noah Worthington’s face invaded her thoughts.
He looked better, she mused. He was nearing what Savannah considered a man’s prime.
Handsome. Mature. Successful.
The very same profile of many of the men she dealt with on a daily basis. She had refined her interactions to an art. She knew how to get a man’s attention and how to keep it. She knew what to say to keep his focus in the midst of a busy day long enough to have him agree to use her medications. She also knew when to let him down easily enough, leaving him looking forward to their next meeting without feeling rejected. In fact, she’d never dated a doctor, or nurse, or anyone in the health sciences. Her five-year engagement had been to the construction manager who’d built her house on Lake Martin. She kept business and pleasure in two completely separate compartments.
Savannah Richards was good at her job. She knew her science. She knew her marketing techniques. She preferred solitude, but was good at social interaction.
She hadn’t, however, been good enough at social interaction to keep the interest of Noah Worthington.
Noah gathered up his iPad, tossed a tip on the table for the food he had barely touched, and rushed out of the club. He had a flight to Dallas, and then one back in the morning.
Then his schedule was going to change. He had somewhere unexpected he needed to be.
He made his way down the concourse, into the terminal, and onto the plane. His copilot, a woman named Michelle, was running late from a delayed connection, so he had a few minutes to himself to reflect on the conversation he’d had with his ghost from the past. He knew exactly when his divorce hearing was – December – but he hadn’t wanted to talk about it with her.
Whether intentional or not, she’d presented him with a puzzle, and Noah Worthington could not resist a challenge. Especially not one wrapped in such an appealing package.
She’d said she was going to be in New York for five days. The thought of finding someone traveling to New York was daunting to say the least.
He began checking the weather. Skies were clear so the routine check allowed him to think about Savannah Skye. He smiled at the name she obviously no longer used. He’d always thought how ironic and convenient that both the girl he loved and the place he loved to be had the same name. Skye.
So she was a sales rep. What would a sales rep be doing in New York? Assuming she didn’t live there, it was unlikely she would have clients there. “Aha,” he said, picking up his iPad.
“Aha what?” Michelle asked, taking her seat next to him.
“You decided to show up for work?” he asked, pulling up Google.
“You know how I am. Always trying to avoid a flight.”
“Yep,” Noah said. So far, he’d fo
und no gatherings of drug reps in New York. Did drug reps even gather? Perhaps drug companies sponsor events. He googled drug companies and immediately found a list of twenty-five companies. This was going to take awhile.
“So what’s her name?”
“What?” Noah asked, after a few more clicks.
“Who is she?”
He stopped, looked up blankly at his friend, and shook his head. “Who?”
“I haven’t seen you this distracted since you had that crush on the brunette from Idaho.”
Noah laughed and put his iPad aside to continue going through the preflight checklist with this copilot who had, over the years, become a friend of sorts. She was physically attractive, he supposed, but he’d never thought of her that way. She was tall, thin, and blonde; hence, she had a never-ending run of men. But it wasn’t her looks so much that kept Noah at bay. It was her personality that doubtless came from the daily battle of trying to fit into a man’s world.
“Back on match.com?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“If you need a date, I can hook you up with a flight attendant.”
“I’m good on my own. Thank you.” He had made the mistake of allowing Michelle to hook him up once. One time too many. The match.com thing hadn’t been for him either. He told himself that after seventeen years of marriage things had changed far too much in the dating world. It was a little more difficult to admit that he couldn’t find anyone he could have a conversation with who he also wanted to kiss.
“Just say the word,” Michelle said.
Noah preferred a woman who spoke like a lady. More times than not, Michelle’s words could just as easily have come from a man.
“No crush,” he said, needing to keep his thoughts about Savannah as far away from Michelle as possible. “Just information seeking.”
“OK,” she said. “Looks like we should have an uneventful flight.”
“The only way to fly,” he said, automatically, truly not in the mood for pilot banter at the moment.
Chapter Two
BEGIN AGAIN
Noah sat in the cockpit of his plane, a Cessna Mustang with gray interior, running down the preflight checklist. He would be in New York by evening. It was already Thursday. That left only four days not only to track Savannah down, but also to convince her to spend time with him. He frankly didn’t care if it was no more than going out for a cup of coffee.
The plane was new – he’d only had it a few months, and had only flown it three times – but he was already in love with it. He liked the idea of having his own space. No pilot banter. No crude jokes. No forward flight attendants.
Noah supposed he was not the typical pilot. He loved flying. Passionately. He just didn’t care for much of the culture that went along with it.
He taxied out to the runway and waited his turn. It would be a little while, but he didn’t mind. He still had internet.
He’d run into a dead end with the twenty-five drug companies he’d found online. Nothing seemed to be going on in New York that would attract a drug rep. Her words kept replaying in his head. You know enough to find me.
Had she been to New York before? That was a place she had always wanted to go. He recalled a cool fall Saturday they’d spent on Lake Martin on his boat. He winced at the memory of telling her the boat belonged to a friend.
There were so many things he hadn’t told her.
The weather had been perfect. A soft breeze. The sun warm but not hot. The leaves on shore starting to turn. The water calm. They were anchored in a quiet cove, difficult to find this time of year. But Noah knew the lake inside and out. When he wasn’t in the air, he had been in the water. His mother used to joke that he’d had something against land.
That’s how it had been, anyway, before he met Savannah. After that, all bets were off. Even when he’d been in the air, he felt her pulling him back to her. Actually, now that he thought about it, he hadn’t gone out in his boat again that year without taking her with him.
He’d brought a blanket and she had lain with her back snuggled against his chest.
They had nothing to do that day. Mid-terms were over, and they were on a break. It was Saturday, so she wasn’t at her student worker job.
“I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be,” he’d said.
“Really? I can.”
He hadn’t answered right away.
“I’d want you with me,” she added quickly.
He laughed. “I wasn’t fishing. I was just trying to think of someplace better.”
“Not necessarily better, just different.”
“I’m listening.” He kissed the top of her head. He loved the way her hair smelled. He didn’t tell her that, of course.
“San Francisco seems nice.”
“California? That’s like a whole different country out there. People are different.”
She shifted, to glance at him. “How do you know?”
“I’m a pilot.”
“Have you been there?”
“No. But I hear things.”
“OK. New York then.”
He stroked her arm, instinctively holding onto her as a wave from a jet ski hit them. “Too big.”
“That’s what makes it so cool,” she said. “So much history and so much energy right there in such a small space.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s so big that most of it is in the sky.”
He chuckled. “You like the idea of people living in the sky?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Don’t you? I mean of all people you should like it. You love riding in the sky, why not live in the sky?”
“That’s an interesting concept, my love.” He took her hand, held it in his, marveled at how much smaller it was than his. How soft. “And very perceptive of you. I do love everything related to the sky.” He waited a beat. “Savannah Skye.”
“I have my moments.”
“What would you do in New York in the sky?”
“I’d spend the day at the Empire State Building.”
“It’s not the tallest.”
“Doesn’t have to be. It’s one of the oldest and has a wraparound view.”
“They have a restaurant that turns while you eat.”
“No way? How do you know that?” She shifted to glance at him before settling back against him.
“You have so little faith in how much I know.”
He felt her laugh against him. “I don’t think you know as much as you think you do.”
“What would you do on the Empire State Building?”
“I’d look around at everything. I’d even look through those telescopes they have. And…” She squeezed his hand. “I’d let you kiss me.”
“Well,” he said, pulling her around to face him, “Since you’re taking me with you to your land in the sky, I suppose we’d better make sure we’re in good practice.”
She always smiled when he went to kiss her. It had bothered him at first, so much so that he’d once asked her about it.
“Why do you smile when I kiss you?”
She’d looked a little perplexed. “Because I like kissing you.”
The voice on the radio indicated it was time for takeoff. Pulling himself out of his memories, he went to work. As he left the safety of land, his thoughts left the safety of the past.
Had she been to New York before? Had she been to the Empire State Building? Had she kissed someone there?
He should have been the one kissing her on the Empire State Building.
After landing in New York, he had to wait again in a line of planes for his turn to get to a parking space. He opened his iPad and went for a broad Google search this time - medication conferences.
It took no more than a few keystrokes for him to feel the jolt of success.
There was a psychopharmacology conference going on right now at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York. The American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology. She hadn’t said she had a specialty. It made sense though. Afte
r all, he was certified to fly only certain types of airplanes.
He scrolled through the program and grinned like a cat who had just stuck the claws of his paw into the tail of a mouse.
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Love’s Second Chance Series
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Wholesome Contemporary Romances by Kathryn Kelly
Begin Again
Love Again
Falling Again
Time Travel Romances by Kathryn Kelly
Twist of Fate
When the Stars Align
Once Upon a Christmas
Historical Romances by Kathryn Kelly
Love Always
Beyond Enemy Lines
Hearts Under Siege
Hearts Under Fire
In the Beginning (Love's Second Chance Series) Page 3