CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Eva Shaw, you are the mentor everyone dreams of. Your teaching, advice, and friendship have changed my life. Thank you.
Jennifer Lawler, thank you for believing in Broken Wings, Soaring Hearts and bringing me into the Crimson Romance family.
Julie Sturgeon, your editing is right on. I don’t know how you do it but you are amazing. Thank you.
CHAPTER ONE
“Hailey Holman, you are the most unreasonable child God put on this earth.”
Hailey wiggled her slender frame from beneath the twin engine Brown Skycat IV. A film of gray dust mixed with drying Texas mud coated her dark shoulder-length hair and ran down the entire backside of her denim work shirt and jeans.
“Oh? You think?” Like she’d never heard that before. She made a playful lunge at her mother’s starched yellow apron. “As you remind me daily, I am my daddy’s daughter.”
“Stop that!” Rinnie Holman squealed and dodged her daughter’s greasy grasp. “Call it off. I mean it. That man has no business coming here.”
“If you’re referring to Jack Stinson, ‘that man’ is coming in for an interview, and he might just have all sorts of business here.” She narrowed her eyes in mock sternness. “And I expect you to be on your best behavior.”
Hailey turned and plucked a towel from the wooden workbench to scrub at her hands, examining yet another broken fingernail. Seven down, three to go. Her nails looked like they’ve seen the ugly side of a cheese grater. If her mom and sisters got a look at the shape her toes were in, there’d be an emergency pedicure intervention. A crisis of infomercial proportions. Thank goodness her work boots kept that scary secret.
“Do you think I’m playing, Hailey?” Her mom’s sharp words broke Hailey’s random thoughts. “He is not welcome here.”
“Mom … ” The vibrating cell phone in her pocket saved them both from another “I have to do this and it really is for the best” speech. She slung the towel over her shoulder and dug for the phone. “Hello.”
“Ms. Holman? Jack Stinson.”
The voice she’d been anxious to hear. Don’t back out, don’t back out. She projected her thoughts at him: Do. Not. Back. Out.
“Hey, Jack. Where are you?”
Her mom let loose with an exasperated sigh loud enough to scare buzzards off their roadside dinner in the next county.
“Just turned onto two-twenty.”
Hailey swiped her glistening forehead with the end of the towel on her shoulder. “Great. You’re about forty-five minutes out. You’ll lose cell service for the next forty minutes of that, so better make any last minute calls while you can.”
“Thanks for the warning. Looking forward to meeting you and seeing the operation.”
“I feel the same. Drive safe!”
Hailey flipped her phone closed and eyed it with disbelief. I feel the same? She shook her head at herself and tucked the phone back into her pocket, pulling the towel from her shoulder and tossing it aside to rest on the workbench.
A faint warmth crept to her cheeks. How un-Hailey like. The butterflies swarming around in her stomach must have eaten up some brain cells. She turned her attention to intentionally pretending to ignore her mom’s outraged glare.
The glare. Her mom was famous for it. Within the family circle, of course. Nobody in the community ever saw it. Hailey knew it was intended to poke a hole in the resolve in her heart. By now her mom should know nothing was going to displace the determination — or the excitement — whirling around inside of her.
“Mom, it’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
“Call him back right now. He’s not coming here.”
“Can’t. He’s already in the dead zone. No service.”
“What do you know about this person? He could be a thief for all you know. Or a killer. Is that what you want? You could be putting me and your sisters in grave danger.”
“He’s not a thief. Or a killer, Mom.” Her voice was kind but firm. “We’re not in any danger. You know good and well I’ve checked him out.”
“How? On that intranet thing? People lie about everything on there all the time.”
“Yes, they do, Mom. You are so right.”
Rinnie’s argument was momentarily defused.
Hailey continued. “And I’ve helped Dad run this place since I could crawl up into the cockpit with him, so again, Mom, you can’t give me one good reason why I can’t run the business on my own. With the help of Mr. Stinson. Hopefully.”
“Run it on your own? What makes you think that?” her mom scoffed. Distressed eyes seemed determined to pierce Hailey’s heart. “You’ve been gone since August.”
Hailey’s mouth fell open in automatic self-defense, but no words followed.
It was true. When she left in August to attend the University of Houston, she had no idea that two months later, her life — all of their lives — would be changed forever. It wasn’t her idea to continue her education in the first place. It was Dad who had convinced her she had to do it.
Maybe it was because after working together full-time for awhile, he sensed a restlessness in her that she herself was unaware of. Or maybe it was because her mother had never given up on the idea Hailey would go to college and pursue a “meaningful” career — as in something that would tie her to a desk, with four walls painted a seriously practical shade of taupe. To Hailey that would be a jail sentence. Torture. She knew she’d end up climbing those perfectly painted walls.
But Web Holman had insisted, so she went. If his oldest daughter planned to make the business her life, she needed an education to go along with all that on-the-job training she’d gained after high school. She’d chosen business administration. It seemed the best fit to benefit the family business they both loved so much. So that was the plan. But by mid-October, he was gone.
Hailey gave her mom a tender smile and fought to keep stinging tears in check. No one ever talked about it, but her dad had confided in her once when her mom was on a tangent: ‘Honey, your mom has a good reason to be scared of our flying. She won’t share anything about it but she was in a plane accident many years ago.’
Hailey had questioned him many times, wanting to know more. All he would say was “please don’t mention it: just respect your mom’s feelings and try to understand where she’s coming from.”
In Hailey’s eyes, God had already shown her mom how He would protect them. To live a life filled with fear? That was wrong. We have to have faith. “Flying and planes are in my blood. I’m just like him, remember, Mom?”
Her mother stood in quiet reflection, tugging without mercy at Hailey’s heart. “You got his pig-headedness.”
The sudden tenderness in her mom’s voice caused her to look squarely into the older woman’s eyes.
“Mom … ”
“You’re going through with this.” It was a statement edged in distressed resolution. “After all my begging and pleading and reasoning. You’re going through with it. Oh, Hailey. You cannot run this airport without your father. And I am so weary of trying to beat that point into your stubborn head. Can you not hear what I’m saying?”
Hailey sucked in a deep breath and released it through puffed cheeks. Leaning against the Skycat, it seemed like she was the only one who wasn’t trying to run away. How could everybody else just want to give up on what dad had worked so hard to build? Isn’t that what was really important, now? He’d put everything he had into this business. How could her mom — and the rest of her family for that matter — not see?
“Hailey! I’m waiting for an answer.”
She returned her attention to the woman before her. Her mom standing with defiant hands on narrow hips. A scene becoming more and more familiar these days.
“Yes ma’am?” Hailey stomped a puff of dust from her work boots. “Did you just say lunch is ready?” She tried to bedazzle and shift her mom’s mood with an extra toothy smile.
“No, lunch is not ready,” came her mother’s exasperated reply. “I’m not feeding you another meal until you come to your senses. And stop smiling like that.”
“Like what?” She kept smiling, with an urgency to rekindle the playfulness that held the anguish at bay. It was Hailey’s way of dealing with the sadness. That, and a five-pound bag of chocolate kisses never hurt either.
She gave her hands one last wipe against worn jeans, looped an arm through her mom’s, and took a step across the concrete floor, giving the older woman’s arm a playful tug. “Come on, Ms. Rinnie. I’m too weak from hunger to carry you.”
The set of Rinnie Holman’s jaw made Hailey unwind her arm and wrap it gently around the thin, rigid shoulders instead. Leaning her head against graying curls, she lifted her own eyes to scan the enormous Texas sky filtering through the double metal hangar doors.
A much needed early morning rain had settled the normally dry and dusty earth surrounding them, but Hailey knew that even in mid-April, the scorching southern sun would soon bake the soil and the air will be humid and broiling again.
Six months. It seemed like six minutes and at the same time six-hundred years. She could still hear his deep voice boom across the yard at her, urging her to look up — look up and see that God had blessed them with yet another beautiful day. Storm or sunshine, it was always another beautiful day to Dad.
She usually had to agree. And if she didn’t right off, he had a way of making her realize it before the day was through and God “pulled the starry curtain of night down on their little piece of the earth” as he was fond of saying.
A smile touched her lips. Her dad was an adventure-maker. A risk taker. A godly man. Not a soul who knew him questioned Web Holman’s integrity for a moment.
If only her mom’s eyes would open. If only her mom could see the promise of another beautiful and inspiring day canopied by an endless sea of dreamy blue sky. Why couldn’t she grasp the magnitude of the opportunity they had here?
Sometimes it was hard for Hailey to remember that the same hangar and everything in it that held an enormous source of strength for her, held a great deal of pain for her mom. Even that vast, azure sky seemed to trigger her mom’s sorrow.
Hailey had spent countless hours with her dad, soaring into the wild blue yonder. It was there that she learned how much her dad loved their Creator, and there that he passed that love on to her, filling her heart and mind with stories of God’s grace.
Her attention returned to her mother, following the older woman’s gaze across the yard to the house the Holman’s called home even before the birth of their oldest daughter, twenty-six years ago.
Just last night Hailey had broken the news to her mom: she’d placed an ad in a trade journal, hoping to find a replacement for Mr. Edwards, the airframe and power plant mechanic who’d worked for her dad.
That went over like a sack of tators on a waterfall.
“Why do you insist on doing this?” Her mom interrupted Hailey’s thoughts again, digging a tissue from her apron pocket and dabbing quickly at tears forming in her hazel eyes. “Your father wouldn’t want you to do this either,” she warned, tucking the tissue back into her pocket.
“We both know better than that, Mom. The plan was that I would come back to help Dad with the business, remember? And that’s what I’m doing. Only … without him.”
She breathed away the tightness in her chest as she remembered the day two months before his death. He had stood at the head of the dinner table, chest puffed proudly, with that familiar twinkle in his eye, making the grand announcement: “When Hailey returns home an educated lady, she’ll take my place as president and CEO of The Blue Yonder Flyers.”
Hailey had immediately protested. That was, and always would be, his position. She just wanted to be there to help him. To share the business with him. To do the job they both loved.
She certainly wasn’t sticking around because she loved Barnes, Texas. Hardly.
Barnes, Texas, population seven hundred, thirty-three. Seven hundred, thirty-five if Paul and Neal Watson counted as human beings. Hailey’s cheeks warmed. Dad never let her get away with talking bad about anyone, even if it was about those sorry, good for nothing …
Rinnie interrupted Hailey’s thoughts again as she wheeled to face her, grabbing her daughter by both shoulders. “Your father is gone and things have changed around here. It’s useless to hang on to what might have been. It’s over, Hailey.” She ripped the words out emphatically.
“Mom, I’m sorry, but this business is Dad’s dream. Mine and his.”
The weariness in her mom’s eyes stabbed at Hailey’s heart, but she knew what she had to do. “Don’t you understand that it’s my dream and God’s plan for my life?”
Her mom’s hands dropped heavily from Hailey’s shoulders. “It may have been some dream to the two of you, but for the past twenty-nine years, it was my nightmare. I prayed every day he’d stop flying. And as for your life plan, have you bothered to ask the Lord or are you so full-steam ready to have it your way that you’ll do this regardless!”
Hailey felt an instant rise in blood pressure. “Mom!” The sound of her own voice rose to meet her level of frustration, and she pulled in a full breath to calm herself, adding as softly as she could, “I know God’s plan for my life, and I’m sorry if His plan and your plan don’t match.”
Her mother’s eyes blazed. “Is this the way you honor your father’s memory? By dishonoring your mother?” The anguish in her mom’s voice was almost enough to start the emotional avalanche unsteadily perched on top of Hailey’s heart.
Focus on the goal, she reminded herself, and everything will work itself out. It’s up to me to keep the dream alive. It’s the only way to keep Dad with us. Mom will come around. She has to.
“Mom, I love you so much. And I’m sorry you can’t seem to understand what I know in my heart I have to do. If I could go back to October and change things, I would. Things might have been different if I had … if I … ” she fought to steady her voice as she searched her mother’s face. “Can’t you just be happy that we have a part of Dad here?”
Her mom’s stony silence answered loudly.
But Hailey couldn’t give up. “You know flying had nothing to do with his death.” She halted, searching her mom’s face for a shred of understanding that obviously hadn’t come in years. Ever hopeful, Hailey prayed for something, anything, that would finally break that one impenetrable wall between mother and daughter. She wrestled with the lump in her throat.
“Mom, he had a heart attack. He could have had it sitting in the front row in church.”
“That’s enough!” Rinnie Holman covered her ears with her hands, as if not hearing the words could erase the heartbreaking loss they shared. “I won’t hear another word about this airport, and that’s final.”
Without giving Hailey another chance to speak, Rinnie dropped her hands from her ears and twisted away from her daughter, stomping toward the well-worn trail leading to the white one-story farmhouse.
Hailey allowed her heart to follow her mom’s deliberate steps along the yellow path of bricks between the metal building and the house. Caked and dirty now, she knew that as soon as the scorching Texas sun came back around to dry the mud from the early morning shower, her mom would carefully sweep clean each step, leaving a fresh bright path linking the two parts of her life.
She shoved her hands deep into her blue jean pockets and watched Rinnie, the ang
ry steps pounding in rhythm to the beat of Hailey’s broken heart. A deep sigh escaped Hailey’s lips as the heavy metal storm door slammed.
Hailey let out another deep sigh. Her mom would come to realize this was meant to be.
Her heart burned with renewed determination. “And there’s no messing with what’s meant to be,” she promised with a determined tug of the heavy storm door leading into the kitchen of the home where she was raised.
CHAPTER TWO
He leaned forward and rested strong forearms across the padded steering wheel of his Jeep, stretching his neck from side to side. Jack Stinson felt like an escape artist.
“Escaped.” The word tasted ominous. But good.
He ground the word out again through clenched teeth. “Es … caped.”
His grip tightened on the steering wheel.
If it wasn’t for the Stinson stubborn streak he’d come by so honestly, he never would have lasted five years with his dad in the first place. Watching the business turn into something he didn’t recognize was torture.
“Something had to give. And it was no longer going to be me.”
He let his eyes survey the unfamiliar road before him. “I’m talking to myself,” he stated bluntly, slipping dark shades from his eyes to rest on top of his head.
“Who does that?” Squinting through weary eyes at the green pastureland around him, he kept on talking. “Anybody who’s been around Marshall Stinson too long, that’s who.”
Jack fought the dull ache in his heart. Deep down, he was more sad about leaving than he wanted to admit, even to himself. But if he’d stayed … if he’d stayed he’d have become another paper war casualty. Buried beneath mountains of forms and templates, waiting for the inevitable landslide. Buried and trapped. Never to be heard from again.
“Okay, now that’s real dramatic.” He covered his strained eyes once again with the shades. “I’m done with all that drama.”
The anxious drone of wheels against highway failed to drown the sound of his dad’s enraged voice. “You walk out that door, Jack, and you will no longer be worthy of the Stinson name. You forfeit all rights to Brown Aeronautics and to this family.”
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