Airman to the Rescue

by Heatherly Bell

  “Why would it be me? I figured it was something you said to her.”

  If Matt wasn’t mistaken, Hunter sounded almost accusatory. Defensive.

  Of Sarah.

  A surge of pride kicked Matt hard in the chest. This was his son, his boy, and he felt protective about Sarah already. Not bad. Maybe he and his son were more alike than he’d realized, going beyond the obvious physical likeness.

  Matt shook his head, fighting a grin. “I didn’t say anything. Not this time, anyway.”

  “Huh.”

  If Matt wasn’t mistaken, Hunter wasn’t buying it. “Look, I should probably explain what just happened there.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “See, Sarah and I—”

  “I know. You’re just good friends.”

  Matt cleared his throat. “It’s not what you think. Well, it’s probably not what you think. She’s... See, the thing is...”

  “You like her. Anyone would.”

  “What do you mean anyone would?”

  “Uh, hello? Take a look at her.”

  “Yeah, but here’s the thing—I don’t just like her because of the way she looks. That would be wrong.”

  “Why?” Hunter looked completely puzzled.

  No wonder, since Matt was clearly talking out of his own ass. “What I’m trying to say is there’s a lot more than her looks I like. And that’s how it should be. When it’s...right.”

  Hunter squinted at him. “But what else is there?”

  A trickle of sweat rolled down Matt’s back. “When you like a girl it should be for who she is. She’s someone you can talk to, feel comfortable with and spend time with.”

  “And you like her.”

  “I do like her. But she’s going back to Colorado. She and I have decided we’ll just stay good friends.”

  Hunter nodded. “Seems to be going well.”

  “Yeah.” Matt sighed, catching his son’s deep sarcasm.

  So well.

  He had a feeling he was supposed to impart some more Dad-like wisdom to his son here. Something deep and profound. Wise. But he had zip. How was he supposed to resist a woman who fired him up the way Sarah did? A woman who challenged him, made him laugh, made his heart hurt for her and drove him bat-shit crazy with her stubborn streak. She made him want to slay her dragons. Fix everything in her way. Except that some things couldn’t be fixed, and he knew that better than most people did.

  Minutes later, Sarah came out of the bathroom, a smile plastered on. She looked fresh-faced, like she’d taken some time to clean up.

  “Boy, those allergies are getting to me! Summertime, right?”

  Matt and Hunter exchanged a look. In a few short seconds, they had an entire conversation, and in that conversation they’d both decided to play along with Sarah.

  Because that’s how much they both liked her.

  “You should take some antihistamines,” Hunter said. “That’s what I always take.”

  “Good idea!” Sarah said, her fake enthusiasm full tilt and coming close to overkill.

  “Hey, Hunter,” Matt said, standing. “Help me move these boxes into Sarah’s bedroom.”

  “What’s in these?” Hunter asked, picking up a box and carrying it into the room.

  “Lots of junk I need to go through,” Sarah said. “I told you my father was a pack rat. He kept everything.”

  The statement spoke volumes. When Matt had first helped Stone clear out the bedrooms after Mr. Mcallister’s death, they’d both been surprised at how much the old man had accumulated over the years. Matt had held his tongue, but wondered with a small amount of judgment why, if Mr. Mcallister was the saving kind, there hadn’t been anything of Sarah’s lying around. He’d told himself it was the move Mr. Mcallister had made to Fortune after Sarah had stopped visiting him. Still, he’d thought a father should have some memory of his daughter. There had been boatloads of Stone as a new Air Force recruit and throughout his career, and a few scattered photos in frames of Sarah and Stone when they’d been small. None of Sarah older, and certainly not grown.

  Matt realized it had bothered Sarah to discover that, but now he wondered if Mr. Mcallister had ever had any recent photos of her sent to him. The discovery of the hidden boxes made one thing clear to Matt: Sarah’s father had never been able to part with the memories he had of her. As a single father, Matt understood making tough and raw choices. He’d never liked the idea of sharing custody of a kid, forcing them to live three days of the week with one parent and the rest with the other.

  It wasn’t because, as Joanne had often accused, he wanted weekends so he could be “fun and carefree Dad” and never experience parenthood in the trenches. Matt thought he might have been the only single father in California to feel this way, but he wasn’t interested in tearing his son in half.

  Now Matt began to wonder if he and Mr. Mcallister might have had a lot in common.

  * * *

  SARAH TURNED FROM the “throw away” bag to the “keep” pile. In the “throw away” plastic garbage bag were all the moth-eaten, spider-and rodent-trampled clothes and toys from her childhood. Sentiment aside, she would have to let those go.

  But there were still too many items in her “keep” pile.

  Too many old and faded drawings of the past. She forced herself to crumple up a childish drawing of a red barn that held no special meaning she could discern. The stick figure drawings of her fishing side by side with her father, scribbles that they were, would remain.

  And so it went.

  She’d been at this exercise for a couple of hours, avoiding the inevitable. She would have to call Mom. Having already missed three text messages from her between last night and this morning, it was time. Not to mention long past the stage for the two of them to have a difficult conversation.

  Sarah didn’t want to put the blame on anyone else. She’d done that for far too long and it hadn’t done anything but make her miserable and angry. Walking through her life only half-alive. Unable to love and be loved. Shifting the blame from her father to her mother would accomplish nothing, other than the simple fact that she would have someone still alive and present with whom she could discuss the most painful parts of her past.

  Sarah picked up the phone lying on her bed. It was dinnertime, which would make it early evening in Colorado. Matt and Hunter had gone out to get dinner. She would have several uninterrupted minutes, so she dialed Mom.

  “Hi, honey,” she said. “Do you have your flight scheduled yet? I’d like to make plans to take the day off work and pick you up.”

  “No.” Sarah took in a deep breath. “I haven’t bought a ticket yet.”

  “You’re so busy. Maybe I should do that for you.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t have a date yet.”

  “I see. You don’t want to make a firm commitment to leaving with a commercial plane reservation that might lock you into a date.”

  “Don’t—”

  “Make you face the truth? You don’t want to come home, honey. Admit it.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to come home. I mean, I have to—”

  “Have to, or want to?”

  Have to. My life is there.

  “Why are you even asking me this? You know I have to come home. I have a condo, a job and a life in Fort Collins.”

  “That’s true. You can’t just abandon it.”

  Or abandon her. She’d been there for Sarah. Been there for those awful teenage years in which Sarah had been scarcely human. She’d colored her already dark hair a shocking shade of black, painted her fingernails in alternating colors of black and bloodred, and listened to loud, head-banging heavy metal music. Gone temporarily insane and boy-crazy, broken her curfew and lied to her mother every chance she’d had.


  They were tough years during which Sarah earned a reputation with boys. One that had been nasty and hurtful. She’d been seeking love and not just sex. Even so many years later, she still felt disgust for having missed the mark so badly. Yes, she’d gotten part of what she’d wanted from boys—plenty of attention. But eventually she’d wound up feeling even more dead inside than when she’d started.

  It was Mom who’d said that Sarah could choose to start over while away at college. Wipe the slate clean. She could reinvent herself and leave the past behind where it belonged. Exactly what Sarah had done. She’d dropped the wild and crazy hair for a neat librarian’s bun. Gone from contacts back to her glasses and dressed conservatively every day of her college career.

  Funny how everyone still believed she was the frigid prickly porcupine she’d dressed like on the outside, and never quite seen the real her. Except for Matt. From the moment he’d first laid eyes on her it felt like he’d seen right through her. He’d noticed that the outside didn’t quite match the inside of her.

  “Sarah?”

  “I’m still here.”

  During all those rough-and-tumble years, Mom had never given up on Sarah. How could Sarah give up on Mom now? She thought she needed Sarah in Fort Collins, for whatever misguided reason she believed. Sarah didn’t always understand why. Mom had her tight-knit group of girlfriends and though she’d never remarried, Sarah knew she’d tried the speed dating thing a time or two. Laughed about it and said one day she’d write a book about her experiences.

  “I found more boxes in the attic,” Sarah said.

  “Not surprised.” Mom snorted. “Your father put the ‘rat’ in pack rat.”

  Sarah ignored that. “This time they were mine. My old drawings and cards, even my old clothes. He kept everything.”

  More silence, and then Mom spoke. “That’s good. Isn’t it?”

  “It means a lot to me. Did he ever ask you why I wouldn’t come to see him again? I never asked before and I’m sorry to ask you now, but I really need to know.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong is that I just realized everything that happened between Dad and me was my choice. I used to think he didn’t want me around, but the truth is that maybe he loved me the right way. Without conditions. He just wanted to give me what I wanted. He wasn’t going to force me to visit him if I didn’t want to. He tried to do his best, and he probably thought eventually I’d come around.”

  “Is that what you think? That your father was being noble?”

  “Matt seems to think so.”

  “Matt Conner?”

  Mom had met Matt when she’d come out to visit a month ago. “Yes. Do I know any other Matts?”

  “You tell me something first. Is Matt the real reason you’re still there?”

  Sarah sucked in another breath of what little hot air remained in this room. She’d never been good at lying to Mom. “Maybe a little? But also there’s Stone. He and Emily are getting married. They’ll probably have children before long.”

  “Who you can visit.”

  It wouldn’t be the same. Matt would move on, and so would everyone else. He’d eventually find a nice woman that wasn’t his best friend’s sister. Someone who wasn’t leaving town. Someone who believed in love. Life in Fortune would resume its natural rhythm without her, something she’d always realized on some level. She didn’t understand why that bothered her so much now.

  It took a minute for Sarah to realize that Mom had skillfully diverted her question about her father. “You didn’t give me an answer.”

  Mom sighed. “Of course your father wanted to know if he’d done anything wrong. So did I when Stone didn’t want to visit me anymore. But we decided to leave our children out of grown-up matters. We didn’t want either of you to feel torn or forced to spend your summers away from the friends you had. At some point we understood it would be your choice. Stone had a job the summer he stopped. Probably a girlfriend or two.”

  “But that’s not why I stopped visiting.”

  And God how it hurt right now, thinking of her father asking whether he’d done anything wrong.

  That last summer, Sarah had felt left out. The third and unneeded wheel. She’d been excited to see Stone and hoped he’d build her a fort again, out of blankets and chairs where she could sit and draw for hours. He’d been too busy with his job and his friends, and she’d been the tag-along little sister always in the way. Suddenly that summer fishing hadn’t held the same attraction, and neither had the slimy, disgusting worms. Plus, Dad had started aviation lessons in his spare time and talked nonstop about airplanes and the kind of mechanical stuff that made Sarah glance out the window and daydream. She hadn’t come to California to meet new people, not that any kids her age seemed to have any interest in her. She’d come to see Stone and her father and that summer neither one of them had any idea what to do with her.

  “It was me. I abandoned him, and not the other way around.”

  “Oh, honey, no. Don’t blame yourself. You were just a kid.”

  Right, right. Sixteen-year-old Matt hadn’t planned on Hunter, either, but at least he’d had many days since then to make it up to his son. And he was a wonderful father too, the kind who loved his son unconditionally. No expectations.

  Just like James Mcallister had loved.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  BY MONDAY MORNING, Sarah was back for her shift at the airport and serving Judge his coffee as he read his paper. When she’d left this morning, Matt and Hunter were already gone. She had no idea what Matt’s plan was for Hunter, but he hadn’t left him alone at the house. Then again, she assumed that would have had to involve a certain amount of trust and she could see why it would be in short supply.

  She was still trying to process the knowledge of the boxes. Not to mention still working through the fact that Matt had almost kissed her. Again. But the almost kisses had to stop. They were either going to do this, or they were not. But as wonderful and drop-dead sexy as Matt had been all weekend, Sarah had to wonder if he was attracted to her or her mess. He had a clear case of white knight syndrome and she had to face it; since the day she arrived in Fortune, she’d given him plenty of material.

  “I heard your contractor was arrested,” Judge said. “Is that why you asked about suing someone?”

  “Sort of.” Sarah poured coffee grounds into an empty filter. “It’s been taken care of, though.”

  “Excellent.”

  “I do have a question for you. You have teenage sons, don’t you?”

  “Three of them, thanks.” Judge sighed. “And don’t get me started.”

  “What do teenage boys like these days? Besides their iPhones.”

  Judge looked up from his paper. “Teenage girls. Some things never change.”

  Sarah laughed. “I was thinking something more along the lines of skateboarding.”

  She wished she could think of something to redirect Hunter’s energy. On the one hand, maybe she should just stay out of it and let Matt handle it. It’s just that she’d noticed the tight lines of tension around his mouth whenever he spoke to or about Hunter. Not that she had spent an inordinate amount of time studying Matt’s mouth, but okay, yes. She had.

  After Judge had left on his chartered flight with Stone, and they were experiencing their midday lull, Sarah closed up and went to the Magnum Aviation office suites to check in with Emily and Cassie. This was her second job at the airport. Sarah helped by checking weather patterns for the following week, making copies of flight plans, following up on fuel tags that Jedd brought in and filing.

  Now that Emily had more than her sport pilot’s license she was taking more flights. Since Cassie kept threatening to retire at any moment, someone needed to keep up with most of the administration. And there was a comfort for Sarah to be part of h
er father’s old business. His stamp was still everywhere, from the old-fashioned fishing pole that hung on the wall to the framed photo of “Captain James” posing near his prized Cessna.

  “Ah, there she is.” Cassie smiled when Sarah walked in. “Our resident angel.”

  Cassie was Emily and Stone’s right-hand admin, and had been the backbone of the flight school when her father, James Mcallister, had owned and operated it. She was close to retirement, but had agreed to stay on until Stone and Emily had fully transitioned the business from a small and unimpressive flight school to the charter company they’d formed.

  Sarah wasn’t sure there would ever be a time when she’d be ready to say goodbye to Cassie. In some ways the woman had understood James Mcallister better than even Stone had. She called Sarah and Stone’s father an old fart without the slightest tinge of regret in her voice and often mused out loud about his ridiculous filing system. But it seemed clear, in every nuanced word and memory of James Mcallister, that she’d loved and respected the man.

  “Why am I an angel?”

  “We heard.” This was from Emily, sitting at the desk next to Cassie’s. “About Hunter.”

  “Matt was in this morning and mentioned it before his flight,” Cassie said. “We had to pull it out of him but, well, this is what we do. He finally confessed. You didn’t just take our Matt in—you took in his teenage son.”

  “Not a problem.” Sarah smiled. She enjoyed Cassie’s praise, even if this instance of it wasn’t well deserved. “Any one of you would have done the same in my position.”

  “Sure,” Emily agreed.

  She would have, too. Sarah believed it. Cassie she felt less certain about.

  “Hmm,” Cassie said by way of an answer.

  Sarah would go ahead and guess that was a big fat Hell, no. “Where is he, by the way? They both left early this morning.”

  “Matt dropped Hunter off at his father’s apartment complex. He thought the two of them could get better acquainted.” Emily opened up a laptop. “And Matt had a chartered flight this morning to Arizona. He should be back soon. They hired him to wait until it was time to come back.”