Controlled chaos surrounded them. Burners roared, fans blew, people ran to and fro locating equipment, or just kibitzing. But every person seemed to know their duty as they tied guidelines, ran cable, and kept the area clear while the huge balloons drifted upward one by one, grounded only by a network of cables. Other crews still held onto the lightweight wicker baskets, weighing them to the ground while their balloons filled.
“This is better than walking through Candyland,” Alys marveled, swiveling to watch a fiercely painted sunset rise over her head.
“It does seem to suit you,” he replied with amusement. “I think I see the colors over there. C’mon. Let’s find Mame.”
Bubbling with excitement, Alys located the balloon with the race-car driver’s colors and number and ran in that direction.
“Mame!” she cried, spotting a familiar crop of red curls on a tall, slender woman in navy slacks, wearing a maroon nylon jacket against the evening breeze.
Whirling, Mame saw them coming. Running toward them, she held out her arms. Alys thought she looked healthier than she had been in the hospital.
“Thank goodness!” Mame hugged Alys and reached for Elliot, who gave her a grave hug while she chattered excitedly. “I’ve been worried sick about you. How’s Lucia? Did you find Dulce?”
“They’re fine, Mame. We just left Lucia in her aunt’s hands.” Elliot looked up as a burly man with his graying fringe of hair tied back in a short ponytail left his balloon to head their way.
“Elliot, Alys, this is Jock Morton, an old friend of mine. Jock, you’ve met my nephew and . . .” She tilted her head with a mischievous smile at Alys. “And this is a special friend of ours. You’re looking happier than I’ve seen you in a while, Alys.”
“You’re looking stronger than I saw you last,” she retorted, gazing from Mame to Jock. The two seemed quite comfortable with each other. And very friendly. Jock had draped one muscled arm over Mame’s thin shoulders.
He offered his hand. “Glad you made it safely. After seeing what they did to your car, we were worried. I’ve been keeping Mame close, just in case.”
“Seeing what who did to what car?” Elliot demanded. “And in case of what?”
Mame grimaced. “Maybe we should explain later. We thought you’d see . . .”
Holding Mame at his side, Jock overrode her hesitancy. “Someone slashed the Rover’s tires out in the lot so she couldn’t go back to the hotel. Maybe it was just vandals, but we can’t be sure.”
Alarmed, Alys glanced at their grim faces, then to the crowds of people around them. She didn’t even know who or what to look for. Everyone here was a stranger.
“When, Mame?” Elliot asked with unnerving calm. “Have you called the police?”
“This morning,” she said defensively. “It could have been vandals. And of course I called the police.”
“Have you seen any purple semi cabs around here?” Elliot demanded.
“I’m not a simpleton, Elliot. Salvador saw the Rover, that’s why we left Lucia with you. I’m pretty sure we led him astray after that. But surely he knows that one way or another we would take Lucia to the reservation. He has no reason to follow any of us now that she’s safe. It has to be vandals.”
Alys felt the tension in Elliot’s arm, knew he was working into a major uproar, and she had no power to stop him. She didn’t even know what he was planning that needed to be stopped.
“I’m not putting up with one more day of this. You’re both going home where it’s safe. I’ll call a taxi.” Wrapping his big hands around Mame’s and Alys’s arms, Elliot tugged them in the direction he wanted to go.
Neither of them budged.
“I’m not spending my life living in fear, Elliot,” Mame admonished. “I can be mugged by vandals, die of a heart attack, or be run over by a bus tomorrow. Today, I’m with Jock and having the time of my life.”
“Salvador’s thugs nearly ran us off the road,” he roared. “They tore up a train station in the mountains. If they know where we are, they could kill you out of sheer meanness!”
“You can’t hide us forever, Elliot,” Alys added, not bothering to disengage his hand. “Besides, you’re overreacting. He has no reason to interfere now.”
The roar of a dozen motorcycles in the parking area interrupted any tirade that might have followed. Jock stopped to fasten a guide line that had loosened as the balloon inflated. Watching him, Mame only turned to the noise after Alys and Elliot did.
“Friends of yours?” she asked as the motorcycles ignored parking limitations and scattered wherever the spirit took them. “That one seems to have found you.”
Milo propped his bike near the roped-off area, waved in their direction, and instead of removing his helmet and gloves, jogged clumsily toward them.
To Alys’s surprise, Elliot started forward to greet him. Not certain this boded well, she hurried to catch up—in time to hear Milo yell, “There’s a convoy of Mendoza semis turning off the interstate, barreling in this direction.”
His voice was nearly drowned out by the thunder of big rigs speeding down the access road. Alys watched in horror as they began blocking off all available exits.
Around them, everyone halted what they were doing to stare.
Elliot didn’t wait to see what they wanted. “Get Mame into the balloon,” he shouted to Jock, grabbing Alys as he raced toward the balloon.
Lacking horses, the cowboy intended to rescue them with the next best means of transportation.
Chapter Twenty-five
The blast of a shotgun in the crowd was the worst noise Elliot had ever heard, but the image of Mame slowly crumpling to the ground before anyone could reach her nearly stopped his heart.
Losing hope of sending Alys and Mame safely into the air, Elliot dropped the guide wire he was untying and ran to his unconscious aunt. He fell to his knees beside her to ascertain that she was still breathing. Once satisfied she was alive, he practiced Alys’s breathing technique to smother his alarm and began a systematic search for bullet wounds.
Bellowing curses, Jock tripped over guide wires and crashed through the screaming crowd to reach Mame. People scattered in all directions, some diving for cover, others fleeing for the parking lot.
The balloon crew crushed together in a protective circle around Mame’s fallen figure. Behind them, Elliot could hear Milo and his gang hurling curses and shouting threats as they closed in on the man with a shotgun attempting to escape through the crowd.
He didn’t even have to look up to know when the shooter’s fellow drivers muscled their way through the throng to rescue him. The roar as a melee of flying fists broke out between the bikers and truckers warned of the ensuing brawl.
Despite his concern for Mame’s unconscious state, Elliot turned to warn Jock about the loose guide wires. As he started to speak, another terrifying cry rose over the roar of the brawl.
“El-l-lio-o-t!”
He swung in time to see the hot-air-filled maroon balloon starting to rise. No one had turned off the heat. It tugged on the loosened guide ropes—while Alys scrambled to climb over the high wall of the basket.
On the ground lay the woman who had taught Elliot all he knew about life and love.
Behind him, Alys fell back into the basket as the balloon tilted dangerously under the force of its abandoned burners. Another guide wire tore from its mooring with the movement and the balloon rose. She’d break her neck if she jumped now.
Elliot’s life ripped right down the middle.
In the distance, he could hear the wail of a siren. The fistfight had escalated into pandemonium. No one seemed to notice the balloon except him.
He couldn’t let Alys go.
With a shout of warning and a prayer for Mame, he leapt toward the basket rising skyward.
At his abrupt leap, the crew finally woke to the danger. While some stayed to guard Jock and Mame, others raced for the loosened ropes—but with a full head of air, the balloon couldn’t be halted.
Too late. The balloon had already gained sufficient momentum. The final wire tore loose of its mooring and the basket was skyborne.
Thrown off balance by the abrupt jerk to freedom, Alys threw her arms around him and hung on. Elliot circled her shoulders and glanced downward. Jock was with Mame. Ambulance attendants were racing through the crowd with a stretcher. It looked as if Milo was sitting on top of the shotgun-toting truck driver while the rest of the drivers and bikers fought it out.
And he was up here, high above them. With Alys. And no power whatsoever over what was happening below.
He could turn off the burners and let the balloon down, but it would be risky in that crowd.
Alys was shaking so hard that he had to help her sit down. Ascertaining the direction of the wind and the clear expanse of airway ahead of them, he dropped down beside her and hauled her into his arms. She buried her face in his shoulder and shuddered with the force of her sobs. He wanted to cry with her, but he’d forgotten how.
It helped to let her do it for him. It was as if she were his other half, expressing the fear and sorrow exploding inside his chest. He was terrified he’d lost Mame this time, but holding Alys, knowing she was alive and well and needed him, kept him grounded.
“It’s okay, we’re safe,” he reminded her, cupping her face with his hand, feeling her tears on his fingers. “The ambulance will take Mame to the hospital. We just need to land this thing so we can go after her.”
“I can’t do it. I can’t do this anymore. How do people live like this, loving and losing the ones they love? It’s tearing me in two.” She wept harder, clinging to his shirt with a fist.
“Mame’s a fighter. She’ll need your positive vibrations when we get back.” He didn’t know what else to tell her. The gentle rising of the balloon rocked them, providing the comfort he could not.
Had he been on the ground, he’d be tearing his hair out, ordering the medics to the duties they already knew, fighting his helplessness in the only way he knew how—with his knowledge. Or maybe chasing in a bloody rage after the villains who had made his life a living hell—when the police could do it far better than he could.
Up here, he could do nothing at all. He could steer the balloon to the nearest flat field, but they had no ground crew racing after them, no one to help them tie the balloon down, no one to pick them up and take them back to town. Eventually, Jock’s crew would fight their way through the melee to come after them, but not yet.
For the first time in his life, he had to let go, to let events happen without him. With Alys in his arms, it didn’t seem such a bad thing.
Except, of course, he couldn’t keep her.
“The sun is setting,” he said, working for that yoga-like calm Alys could inspire with one sunny smile.
She wiped her eyes on his shirt and turned her head enough to look into the sky. “Ow.” She winced and sat back some more, poking at a hole in her sweatshirt. “My arm hurts.”
With a curse, Elliot grabbed her arm, found the charred black holes and the trickle of blood, and jerked the sweatshirt off of her. Under it, she was wearing the knit shirt that was all collar and no shoulders, and he could see the raw, bleeding wounds across the pale skin of her upper arm.
“He must have used pellets. You’ve been shot.” He’d had years of practice at speaking calmly, even after he’d just swallowed his heart and it lodged in his esophagus.
He tore off his jacket and threw it on the floor. Ripping at his buttons until they skittered across the basket, he pulled off his shirt, shredded the cotton, and folded it into a compress.
“It’s just a flesh wound.” He hoped. He hadn’t dressed a wound in years, and this one had started to bleed copiously.
“Shot?”
To his disbelief, Alys dried her tears to stare with interest at her arm. “Like in the cowboy movies when the hero says it’s just a flesh wound and keeps on fighting?”
“Right. Want to fight?” Elliot used the sleeve of his shirt to tie the compress into place. He didn’t think she would bleed to death anytime soon, but now that he had a task to accomplish, he set his mind to it. He understood action far better than the emotions rioting through him.
“No, it hurts like heck. I can’t imagine riding a horse like this.” She winced while he tied it. “This means some of the pellets didn’t hit Mame. Maybe the others missed, too?” she asked with hope in her voice.
“We can hope,” he told her, so she could keep giving off those positive vibrations. “If they were just pellets, she should be fine. The idiot was probably aiming at the balloon.” Which meant Mame could have had a heart attack. Elliot preferred not to think of either alternative.
She poked at the bandage in wonder. “You’re good. I think it’s stopped bleeding already.”
“No major arteries there, but it needs cleaning.”
He glanced doubtfully at his makeshift handiwork, then at her tearstained face watching him with admiration, and he couldn’t resist.
Slowly, so she had time to back off, he lowered his mouth to hers.
She didn’t back off. She didn’t tell him this was entirely inappropriate. She parted her lips for him and responded with the warmth and vibrancy he desperately needed.
Life and love poured into him through the sweet delight of her lips. To prevent her from lifting her injured arm, Elliot cradled Alys in his lap, tasting the salt on her lips and kissing her tears away. She purred when he covered her breast with his palm, and her nipple sprang alive beneath his touch, as alive as he always felt with Alys in his arms.
He wanted this moment to go on forever—sailing freely above the world, holding happiness against his chest.
Alys applied kisses along his jaw, and he leaned back against the basket, soaking up the pleasure, watching the balloon sail into the dusk. Lust might play a part in what he felt right now, but it wasn’t lust healing the pain in his lonely heart. Alys’s hand splayed across his chest, teasing him into arousal even though they couldn’t act on it. He didn’t think he’d ever known a better moment in his life.
Life would go on. No matter what was happening down there on the ground, there was always another day after this. If he let it happen, there could be babies to scare him and break his heart, music to get lost in, laughter to enjoy, his brothers to look after.
And Alys to love.
And because he loved her, he couldn’t break her heart and make her cry. She deserved all the love and laughter life had in store for her.
Trying not to crush her too hard, he kissed her with all the passion he possessed, hoping to gather enough strength to let her go.
* * *
The heat from Elliot’s broad, bare chest warmed her. The heat of his kisses set her on fire. Alys knew instinctively that her response wasn’t just animal passion, but she couldn’t think about it right now. He held her and caressed her and made the world go away. Almost literally, since they were flying high above it, and she didn’t know if they would ever come down.
And didn’t care. She could die happily like this, with Elliot’s lips on hers, his strong arms holding her anchored against the winds of fate. She trusted him to do what was best for both of them.
Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how long she had been standing on her own. She’d been the one Fred had relied on when he got sick. She’d been the one who had arranged her parents’ funerals. No one had offered a helping hand until Mame had dragged her back to her feet after she’d collapsed from the sheer burden of it all. And she’d still been alone.
The sheer bliss of letting go, letting someone else brace her against life’s buffets, showed her that she didn’t have to be alone. That no one should be.
“I think I could fly with you to the moon,” she murmured, stroking the bulge of his upper arms and lifting herself into his hungry kiss, unable to clarify her thoughts any better than that.
“To the mo
on, Alys,” he chuckled against her mouth. “Although there are days I think you’re already there.”
The balloon hit an air bump and jarred them back to the moment, where they needed to be. Alys glanced up and saw the mountains moving closer. In the rosy hues of the setting sun, the red rocks were spectacular. Shadows carved images into the buttes and hills, and her heart soared with the birds.
“I suppose I’d better be looking for a safe landing place. Surely they’ve sent someone after us by now.”
Elliot was looking down at her with regret. Alys didn’t want to move. She wanted him to make love with her right now. Burned with the desire for it. And knew they might never make love again.
“We need to get back to Mame,” she agreed, knowing that’s what he needed more than her.
He didn’t agree or disagree. He ran his hands through her hair, cupped her face, and kissed her nose in the very un-Elliot-like gesture he’d developed over the past few days. She wanted to explore this new Elliot and all the other Elliots hiding inside him.
He set her away from him and stood up tall against the sky, efficiently pulling on cords and resetting burners and checking gauges she couldn’t hope to understand. The sun gleamed off his bronzed, muscular shoulders and dark curls, and she thought if she lived to be a hundred, she’d never forget the sight of Elliot commanding the winds.
She gave him her heart then, to do with as he wished. She wouldn’t need it anymore.
“Tell me what to do.” She stood beside him, watching the balloon drift lower into the shadows beneath the hills. The world needed men like Elliot. She would always be proud of this week, no matter what the future held. She’d helped him. She knew she had.
“I don’t want your wound to open. Just admire the scenery and tell me if you see a car racing in our direction. We could spend a cold night out here if no one comes for us.”
Away from Elliot’s warmth, she shivered in the cool breeze. He instantly reached for her sweatshirt and helped her pull it back on, easing her injured arm through first so she wouldn’t have to lift it. She’d forgotten how comforting it was to have someone caring for her.
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