* * *
The pilot was a tall, rangy man in his mid-fifties, his face tanned and lined from too much time in the sun. He wore a red flannel shirt over a black T-shirt, tucked into a tight pair of blue jeans.
“I’m Duke Milligan. You must be the injured girl, huh?”
Ariel bit her lower lip. She wasn’t sure which comment she was trying to prevent from emerging—the fact that she didn’t believe anyone, no matter how macho, could be named Duke, or the fact that she hadn’t been a girl in a number of years.
“I’m Ariel Summers,” she said, keeping her voice level.
He nodded, as if he had already known that. “Vari said I was to help you out.”
Vari must have been the man who had used the radio.
“My stuff is inside,” she said. Then she frowned. “But could you help me with something else first?”
Duke Milligan glanced at a scratched analog watch. “I’m already off-schedule.”
“It’s just that the man who found me isn’t here, and I wanted to say good-bye—”
“Miss, I’m sorry, but I’ve got some paying customers arriving in fifteen minutes, and I’m going to have to explain to them already about being late. Once the heat of the day starts, flying over these mountains gets a bit dicey, and I—”
“It’ll just take a minute.” She indicated her foot. “I can’t look for him myself. Would you just walk around the house, maybe, see if you see him?”
He let out a small sound that sounded like a cross between a sigh and a Bronx cheer. “If we go as soon as I get back.”
“I promise,” she said.
He shook his head slightly, then went around the side of the house, walking with great speed and determination.
He wouldn’t find Darius. Ariel knew that. If Darius had been nearby, he would have come when she yelled his name. But she wanted to make sure. The entire morning had unsettled her, and she wanted to have one final chance at finding him.
She made her way back into the house. She had to pack yesterday’s clothes in her backpack. As she passed the table, she grabbed the note and placed it in the pocket of her shirt.
When she reached the guest bedroom, she stopped and stared at the antique desk. She had a sudden, very clear sense that the note she held had been written on it, using some of the old paper and the inkwell.
But that didn’t make sense. She was a light sleeper. She would have woken up.
“Hey!” Duke yelled from the front door. “Ain’t nobody here but us chickens.”
“How original,” she muttered.
The screen door banged. She still stared at the desk. Duke joined her. “This your stuff?”
“Yeah.” She hadn’t put the clothes in it, but he was already unzipping the pack, shoving the clothes inside.
“Can you walk to the plane?” he asked. “Or do I gotta carry you?”
The idea of being carried instantly lost its appeal.
“No,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Then let’s go,” he said.
“I can’t move all that fast.”
He slung her backpack over one shoulder as if it weighed less than a pound. “Do your best.”
And then he disappeared down the hall.
She went to the desk, pulled the chair back, and grabbed a piece of vellum. Putting her crutches aside, she sat down in the very seat that Darius had used while she slept and slid the inkwell toward her.
The pen had been meticulously cleaned. She uncapped the inkwell and dabbed the pen in it, and then wrote:
Dar—
Thank you for everything.
She paused. There was so much more to say—You kiss like a dream; you look like a dream; I’ve never met a man like you; call me when you return to civilization—but she wrote none of it. It all sounded too high school, and she was feeling much older than a high-school girl right now.
Finally, she scrawled:
I hope we meet again soon.
Ariel
Outside, she heard Duke bellow. She tapped the end of the pen against her lips.
If only she had a phone number to give him, some way of contacting her. But her furniture was in storage and she no longer had an apartment. She had let her cell phone account lapse, and she didn’t know where she was going to end up.
Duke yelled again.
She sighed, capped the inkwell, and wiped off the pen. Then she put the note on the bed.
“Hey!” Duke had come back inside. He was standing in the doorway, looking cross. “I thought you were coming outside.”
“I was,” she said. “I just remembered I hadn’t thanked him.”
“Done now?” Duke asked.
She doubted she would be done with this one for a long time. But she nodded anyway and let herself be led back to civilization.
* * *
Darius waited until he could no longer hear the drone of the plane’s engines before straightening his legs. He waited until the sun had moved across the horizon before standing up. He waited until the shadows were so long he could barely see before returning to the house.
It still felt empty.
Although he caught a trace of her scent, still lingering in the air.
He clapped his hands, commanding “Lights” as he did so. He wasn’t willing to monkey with generators tonight. He would make things as easy as possible.
All the lights in the building sprung on. The eggs still steamed on the table, and he cursed silently. He had spelled them to stay hot and fresh, but apparently the spell had gone slightly off—making them stay the way they had been when he set them there.
He hoped she hadn’t noticed that.
A half-eaten muffin sat on the plate, and an orange juice glass lined with pulp sat beside it. Otherwise, all the food he had made so meticulously during his long sleepless night went uneaten.
The rose still rested in its vase, wilted and looking defeated.
But his note was gone.
He had wanted to say so much more. But he couldn’t. And now she was gone. Unreachable, unless he went into McCall on his own, checked the hospital, and found out where she was going to spend the night.
Instead, he sank into the chair she had used just that morning and touched the half-eaten muffin. She was gone.
A quick snap of the fingers would bring her back. She’d be surprised, but he’d explain it. All of it. The magic, everything.
A quick snap of the fingers.
So simple even Cupid could do it.
Cupid.
Darius clenched his fingers. This had all been planned. A test from the Fates, along with a small warning, to see if he had really learned his lesson. Would Darius put himself and his own interests first, or would he remember all that he had learned?
He remembered. He would always remember.
And no matter what it cost, no matter how it felt, he would do the right thing.
SEVEN
THE PLANE DIPPED and rose over invisible bumps in the air. Its battered metal frame rattled, and the engine sounded louder on the inside than it had on the outside.
The fact that the entire thing smelled of a combination of diesel fuel and gasoline did not encourage Ariel. The fumes were so strong, she was afraid that if she lit a match the entire plane would burst into flames.
She had mentioned the smell when she first climbed into the plane, but Duke had professed himself unworried. He sat beside her now, a toothpick in the side of his mouth like a poor cigarette substitute. He flew the plane as if he were driving a car—one hand on the steering mechanism and the wrist of his other hand resting on some sort of joystick.
Ariel didn’t know a lot about planes, but she would have felt a lot better if Duke were paying more attention. The mountaintops seemed uncomfortably close—at one point it seemed like she could reach out and touch them—and she kept having visions of the small plane crashes she’d seen in movies—the one from the Patsy Cline biopic Sweet Dreams came horribly to mind—where the plane slammed
into the side of the mountain and burst into flame.
Somehow she had feeling that dying like that wouldn’t be as mercifully short as everyone said it was. She thought time would slow down, maybe even freeze, and she would know exactly—
“Um.” The word came out of her mouth even before she knew it.
Duke didn’t glance at her, like she would have preferred. He looked at her. “What?”
Keep your eyes front and center. Keep your hands on the controls. Fly the damn plane!
“Um, how long have you been flying up here?” It was the only thing she could think of to say that didn’t sound totally offensive.
He grinned and finally looked out the windshield like he was supposed to. “Seems like most of my life. I just love these mountains. Flying ‘em can be real dangerous. You gotta know what you’re doing.”
Was he baiting her? Maybe she had turned a particularly awful shade of green, or perhaps the way she was threading her hands in her lap gave her away.
“They must seem very familiar to you,” she said, gritting her teeth. So familiar that you don’t care if you hit one.
His grin grew wider. “I could fly this with my eyes closed.”
“Please don’t,” she said, and this time her voice actually shook.
He looked at her again. “Am I making you nervous, little lady?”
There, he did it again: offended her while asking her a question. Was he deliberately rubbing her the wrong way, or did he treat every woman like this?
Well, she could be macho she-woman of the mountains or she could be honest. Honest probably wouldn’t get his respect, but then, she was never going to see him again.
“A little,” she said.
“A tough cookie like you?” he asked that without a trace of irony. “Vari told me you saved yourself from going down the side of a cliff using a hunting knife.”
Almost saved herself, but who was going to quibble? “I prefer hiking to flying,” she said, deciding to be vulnerable, hoping that would make Duke change his habits, at least for this trip.
“You’d be surprised how many of my passengers say that.”
Oh, no, I wouldn’t. She just smiled and looked out the grimy window to her right and then started. The tops of some pine trees looked suspiciously close to the bottom of the plane.
He must have noticed her expression (why didn’t he keep facing forward, dammit?) and said, “The way that the air currents get around the peaks, sometimes it’s better to skim.”
That was it. She’d had enough of this conversation. She swallowed hard and wished she hadn’t agreed to get on this plane. If anything, the fumes had gotten heavier and the interior of the cabin too warm.
“Um,” she said again, mostly to control her thoughts. If she thought about something else, she might make it through this joy ride. “Have you flown to Dar’s place before?”
“Where?” Duke bit hard on his toothpick, breaking it. He pulled it out of his teeth, gave it a dissatisfied look, and tossed it on the floor.
She looked down. The floor was messier than the floor of her car, which was saying something.
She looked back up immediately, saw a sheer cliffside ahead of her, and turned her head toward the right side of the plane. Not that that helped much—those treetops were still too close.
“Dar’s place, you know. Where you picked me up.”
“Variance?”
“What?” This time she looked at him, thinking maybe he had using some important plane-flying jargon and she had to do something.
“Variance. That’s where I picked you up.”
“The region has a name?”
He shook his head, reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, and removed another toothpick. He rolled it around in his fingers as if he were smoothing the tobacco in a self-made cigarette. “Not the region. The house. It’s called Variance.”
“Oh,” she said. “How come?”
“Because it’s Vari’s.”
She frowned. This conversation was as confusing as the plane ride. “Dar’s last name is Vari?”
“What’s Dar?”
Why hadn’t she learned his last name? How had she overlooked that? And why hadn’t she realized it until now?
“Not what,” she said. “Who. Dar is a who.”
Now it sounded like she was quoting Dr. Seuss. Ariel Hears a Who. Who’s on First. Who is? Who. It was an easy segue into Abbott and Costello.
She shook her head. Maybe she was going crazy.
The plane rose above the cliffside at the very last moment. She pretended not to notice.
“Dar is a who,” Duke repeated. “Oh. You mean a person.”
“Yes,” Ariel said.
“The guy you were looking for?”
“Yes. He’s the one who lives in the house.”
“You mean Andrew Vari.”
She didn’t like how this conversation was going. “He said his name was Darius.”
Duke shrugged and put the toothpick in his mouth. “Guy’s weird enough to say anything.”
“He didn’t strike me as weird,” Ariel said.
Duke turned toward her very slowly, his eyes wide with obvious disbelief. “He didn’t?”
“No. He was very kind. He cooked me dinner—”
“Yeah, he always brings too many provisions.”
“—and he carried me off that cliff—”
“Andrew Vari?”
“Well, he said his name was Darius.”
“The guy in the house.”
“Yes, the guy in the house.” Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that she thought of Abbott and Costello. Apparently she had just landed in one of their routines.
“Short little guy, maybe five feet in high heels, carried you into his house.”
“What short little guy?” she asked.
“Andrew Vari.”
“Look out!”
He turned his attention back to flying in time to pull up and clear the top of a lone pine tree on a mountain peak. His face paled and beads of sweat formed on his forehead.
She wasn’t exactly calm. She was gripping the ripped plastic of the co-pilot’s seat so hard that she had probably ripped it some more. Maybe that was how it got ripped in the first place.
She certainly didn’t blame it. Anyone in their right mind had to be ripped to get into this plane.
When he leveled it and there didn’t appear to be any more peaks ahead, he said, “You’re telling me Andrew Vari carried you to his house.”
“I’m telling you the man who owns the house, who called himself Darius, carried me to the house.”
“This Darius, he looks like one of the seven dwarves come to life, right?”
This time it was her turn to give Duke an amazed look. “He looks like a Greek god.”
“Whatever floats your boat,” Duke said, making an expression of distaste.
“No,” Ariel said very carefully. “I meant he looks like a Greek god. He’s tall, blond, and probably the most handsome man I’ve ever seen.”
Duke frowned. “Tall?”
“Tall.”
“How tall?”
She shrugged. “Taller than you.”
The mountains were leveling out. Ariel thought she could see a valley in the distance.
“That can’t be Andrew Vari,” Duke said.
“I’m getting that impression.”
“But it’s strange.” Duke was finally keeping his eyes on the scene before him. “I mean, I flew Vari up there, and he didn’t say anything about a guest.”
“Dar was very comfortable in the house. He knew where everything was and he knew its history.”
“Hmm.” Duke shifted in his seat. “You think Vari’s in trouble?”
“From Dar?” Ariel’s voice raised slightly. “He saved my life. Why would he do anything harmful to someone else?”
“I dunno.” Duke’s frown grew deeper. “But I would have known if he was going to bring anyone in.”
“Why?” Ariel
asked. “Because they had to fly?”
“Well, yeah.” Duke glanced at her.
She raised her eyebrows at him deliberately, and he gave her a sheepish grin.
“Okay,” Duke said. “So he could have walked in.”
“Hiked in.”
“That too.”
There was a valley. The land was flat; the mountains were in the distance. Tiny buildings dotted the ground and a ribbon of highway flowed through the center. Ariel was never so glad to see anything in her life. She would be getting out of this plane soon.
“I’ll just ask him about it when I see him again,” Duke was saying.
“Who?” Ariel asked. Her heart rose in expectation. Maybe she could see Darius one last time.
“Vari.”
“You’re going to see him?”
Duke nodded. “Next Wednesday. Gotta pick him up, seven a.m. If I’m late, he don’t pay for the flight. It’s been our agreement forever, before me even.”
“Before you? I thought you’ve flown this route for years.”
“Yeah,” Duke said. “Vari’s been around forever. He had that same bet with the guy who flew the route before me. Guess someone was late once, and it really torked Vari off. I guess he’s not a guy you’ve ever seen mad.”
“I take it you’ve never seen him mad.”
Duke shook his head. “Don’t want to either. He’s unpleasant enough when he’s nice.”
“No wonder you didn’t think he rescued me,” Ariel said.
The plane eased toward the highway. The buildings were getting larger, the ground was getting closer, and she still didn’t see anything resembling a runway.
“I didn’t think he rescued you because he’s too short to carry you. It’d be like being rescued by an eight
-year-old.”
“He’s that short?”
“Lady, he’s the shortest adult I’ve ever seen.”
It looked as if the plane was heading toward a flat, square building. Ariel gripped the side of the seat even harder, her fingers finding the stuffing. This plane ride was never going to end.
“When we land,” Duke said, “Evelyn’s gonna drive you to the hospital.”
Completely Smitten Page 8