Come Fly with Me

by Gina Welborn

  A clap-swish, clap-swish sound drew her attention back to the unwanted man—yes, yes, he was unwanted—standing in the center of the room and tending an unnecessary fire.

  He swiped his hands together a few more times, ridding them of lingering dirt and wood. “All set.”

  Luanne looked heavenward and gave her head a little shake. “Thank you,” she muttered.

  He drew his eyebrows closer together. “Have I offended in some way, Miss Palmer?”

  “Of course not.” Luanne waited for him to say more.

  He didn’t.

  They stared at each other for an uncomfortable moment.

  She clenched her hands together. “Why . . . uhh . . . why do you ask?”

  “You looked put out. And now you are scowling at me.”

  “No, no, I was—” No matter what her parents said, honesty wasn’t always the best policy. Although she had to stop ignoring the fact that she had to tell him in no uncertain terms that his fire-building skills were unneeded.

  She met his confused gaze. The poor man was only trying to be helpful. Later. She would talk to him later, when she wasn’t distraught over the conversation with Professor Tate. Yes, that was the wise thing to do. Be calm. Don’t cry. Oh, why was this happening to her? Why did Geddes, of all the racers in Butte, have to be the one closest to Roy Bennett when his balloon landed too hard, tossing him from his basket and breaking his arm? And why couldn’t Geddes have limited his Good Samaritan instincts to seeing Roy Bennett to the hospital? Why invite him to live in Helena—in the Palmer’s house—for two, full months?

  Luanne pressed the back of her hand against her nose. She sniffed again.

  He picked up his brown tweed coat. He tossed it over his shoulder, one hooked finger keeping it from falling to the floor, and started toward her. “Are you feeling under the weather?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” Luanne eased sideways so he could exit through the door. The bustle beneath her navy plaid skirt bent under the pressure of sliding against the chalkboard, but remaining far away from Roy Bennett took precedence over keeping her skirt clean. One sympathetic glance, one expression of concern, and she’d throw herself in his arms with such abandon she’d be fired for sure.

  If he didn’t believe her insistence that she was fine, Roy Bennett was gentleman enough not to accuse her outright. He stopped on the threshold and offered her one of his sigh-evoking smiles. “I look forward to seeing you this evening at dinner.”

  Luanne nodded, giving him the same placid grin she’d perfected for dealing with Professor Tate. As soon as he closed the door behind him, her breath caught. The tears she’d held at bay fell. How would this work out?

  The wall clock chimed the top of the hour. Seven A.M.

  Luanne straightened her shoulders and wiped her face with the back of her hands. A letter would solve this. Two, actually. One to Mr. Tate explaining her refusal. One to Roy Bennett asking him to cease building a fire for her classroom. That was the simplest solution. Starting now, she would avoid him. As much as possible, at any rate. She had her involvement with church, school, and the Ladies Aid Society to keep her occupied. New plan: be polite but disinterested during family dinner, then disappear for evening charitable causes as soon as the dishes were cleared.

  Yes. That’s how it would work out.

  Chapter Two

  An hour later

  Palmer carriage house

  Roy kneeled and pounded another piece of shiplap into place with more force than necessary. Why had he let Luanne’s siblings, Geddes and Yancey, talk him into building fires as a show of regard? Far from appreciating the effort, Luanne apparently had tolerated it for a few days before deciding . . . what? That he was a lunatic? That she’d put up with him long enough? Or that she understood he was hoping to woo her and she was shutting it down before he got his hopes too high?

  Stoking up a fire.

  In September.

  No wonder a smart woman like Luanne scooted away and eyed him like a skunk when he came near her this morning. He was never again listening to courting advice from a twenty-five-year-old bachelor or an eighteen-year-old girl.

  “How’d it go?”

  Speak of the devil.

  Roy continued to pound while watching from the corner of his eye as Yancey picked her way through hammers, nails, and hot air balloon burner parts strewn across the brick floor. Like all the Palmer children, she was blond haired, blue eyed, and remarkably handsome. Roy preferred Luanne’s more mature face and figure, but Yancey would grow into her beauty in a few more years.

  “Well? Answer me. How’d it go?” The girl was tenacious, and too young to understand that sometimes—no matter how much you wanted a thing—you didn’t get it.

  “It went horribly, if you must know.” He reached for another piece of shiplap. Mr. Palmer had agreed to let him and Geddes use the carriage house addition for storing their balloon racing equipment in exchange for finishing the walls and roof. Might as well make sure one Palmer was happy before he left town in a few weeks.

  Yancey edged closer. “Tell me what happened. All of it.”

  He held the shiplap in place with the side of his left hand and placed a nail between his thumb and index finger. “She was silent, then scowled at me and sniffed and—”

  “Sniffed?” Yancey’s voice brightened. “Sniffed how?”

  Roy picked up the hammer and pounded with renewed focus. The plaster cast had just come off his left arm and, if he wasn’t careful, he’d smash a finger and be back to near useless.

  With a huff of breath, Yancey plopped onto an overturned crate. “Sniffed with disdain? Sniffed because she was crying? Sniffed like she has a cold or because chalk dust went up her nose? C’mon, Roy, give me details. I can’t help you without knowing all the facts.”

  “Don’t you have some cooking to do?” His tone was harsh—too harsh—because his chest ached with disappointment. The moment he’d met Luanne Palmer, his heart beat faster. Her strong beauty, her intelligence, and her inquisitive mind added to that first impression until he was convinced no other woman on earth would do as his wife.

  And he should know.

  For his thirtieth birthday, he added Australia to his growing list of continents visited. Six so far. In only eight years. He’d floated down the length of the Rocky Mountains, above Niagara Falls, and across the English Channel. He’d trekked through the jungles of India, the Amazon rainforests, and the Australian desert. He’d photographed lions in Africa, seen the volcanoes in the Polynesian islands, and narrowly escaped death under the hooves of stampeding longhorns on the Texas plains. He’d published over a hundred articles about his adventures in various newspapers and magazines worldwide.

  He was still a milksop in Luanne Palmer’s eyes.

  “That was unworthy of you, Roy.” Yancey’s voice cut through the haze of humiliation.

  Roy stopped hammering and slumped over his bended knee. “I know. I’m sorry, Yancey, but I’d appreciate time to lick my wounds before I have to face Luanne at dinner tonight.”

  A hand squeezed his shoulder. “But don’t you see? You might not need to give up at all. Please. Just tell me what happened. For all that you’re crazed with love for my sister, you don’t know her as well as I do.”

  Persistence was Yancey’s middle name. Or at least it should be.

  Roy set the hammer on the ground and stood. “She walked into her classroom like I was an intruder or a pest or something. She ignored me unless I addressed her, then she was frigidly polite.” Mortification burned the tips of his ears. “When I walked toward the door to leave, she got as far away as possible and sniffed at me. Out of your list of possibilities, I’m guessing it was with disdain.”

  Yancey narrowed her eyes and tapped a finger against her cheek. “Did she have tears in her eyes?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  She scowled at him but, unlike her sister, with a twinkle in her eye. “Think, Roy. This is important.”

 
; He closed his eyes to concentrate. “No actual tears, but her eyes were a little red.”

  Clapping and a yelp. “Excellent.”

  Roy peeled open one eyelid.

  The excitement on Yancey’s face was hard to resist. “Luanne is the most tenderhearted of all us Palmers. Tears means she knew she was causing you pain but saw no way around it.”

  He spread his hands. “And this helps me how?”

  Yancey smiled and wiggled her eyebrows up and down. “Because it means you’re close to breaking through her defenses.”

  Hope lifted his heart, but he was no green girl who thought persistence bordering on obsession was the very essence of romance. He turned away and kneeled to resume working. “We’ll see.”

  The next day

  After listing the last of the day’s homework assignments on the chalkboard, Luanne looked to the clock on the wall. Sixteen minutes left in the day. There wasn’t enough time to start a new assignment. Letting the students out a couple minutes early was one thing, but sixteen?

  She laid the chalk down. “Make sure you copied this list of homework assignments.” She took a seat at her desk. “Does anyone have any questions before you leave school for the day?”

  As she’d hoped, several students had questions about homework. Two more wanted clarification on Mendeleev’s periodic table. One was about the reading assignment.

  Luanne searched through the manila folders on her desk. She found the one she wanted and withdrew a sheet. “This has a list of alternate books you can read for your report. I’ve already checked with the school librarian as well as the Helena Public Library. All the titles are available in both places. If the book is gone in one place, check the other. If it’s gone in both places, choose a different book.”

  Margaret hurried to the front and took the paper. “Thank you, Miss Palmer.”

  Then came, “How does a hot air balloon land?”

  Luanne looked around the room to figure out who’d asked the softly spoken question. “Who wants to know?”

  The boy in the fourth row in the seat in the back of the room sat up in his chair. He was new to the school. Luanne quickly glanced at her seating chart. Denny. Denny Chessman. When she looked up, every student had turned in their desks to face Denny.

  He shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I was watching that balloon last night. How come we only see it in the mornings or evenings? How do they get rid of the air that’s holding it up so that it can land? Did they toss out an anchor like on a boat and then people pull them down?”

  Roy Bennett didn’t need to be in her classroom to make his presence known. Anyone who was outside last night had seen the beige fabric of his hot air balloon rise high into the air and float over Helena.

  Luanne rose from her chair, then walked around her desk to face the class. “The hot air balloon you saw belongs to a friend of my brother. Mr. Roy Bennett is a journalist and professional aeronaut. He is in town for the upcoming race during the Fall Festival. For a safe balloon flight, surface winds must be less than ten miles an hour. This is most common during the hour after dawn or before dusk. Now as far as how a balloon lands . . . well, it can be tricky.”

  Once she finished answering Denny’s question, she was barraged by more. Even Jonas Flintmore and Barney Stubbins peppered her with questions. It was the first time she’d seen those two interested in anything except Sue Ellen Harding or Alice Blair. Though Luanne had been Geddes’s pilot on several ascents when he wanted to practice his marker-man skills, she lacked sufficient technical knowledge of the physics to satisfactorily answer every question, and the most she knew about the upcoming balloon race was when—October fourth.

  Two days before Roy Bennett left Helena.

  “Ma’am, how old do you have to be to enter the race?”

  Luanne looked to Denny and saw that he was watching her with an intent expression. “I don’t know. To enter, you have to have your own balloon, or be hired to fly it for someone else.”

  “I’ve seen your brother flying his balloon,” Florence remarked. She twisted a finger around one of her long blond ringlets. “I wonder if he would be a guest lecturer. Just think of all the chemical and biological things we could learn from him.”

  While it hadn’t been the first time these tenth graders had seen a hot air balloon—her brother, Geddes, had been flying his for a year—this was the first time any student in the school has asked for Geddes to come talk about ballooning. Of course, she suspected Florence was more interested in watching Geddes speak than in listening to him. Regardless of that, Luanne never invited in a guest lecturer during the first month of a new school year. The best way to focus on something was to eliminate distractions. That’s what guest lecturers were. Distractions.

  Luanne glanced at the clock. Three minutes until the bell.

  “Please, Miss Palmer,” someone said.

  She turned back to the class.

  Twenty-four sets of hopeful eyes stared back at her. Several students clasped their hands together in prayerful begging. Their voices grew into one: “Please, Miss Palmer. Please, Miss Palmer.” Good thing September was a low attendance month. Were all fifty-seven students enrolled in tenth grade in class today, every teacher in the hall would be at her room demanding a cessation to the uproar.

  Thank you, Lord, for harvest season.

  And for the Board of Trustees’ teacher rules. All guest lecturers had to fit within the parameters of what the board had given for her to teach on this month. Ballooning wasn’t within those parameters. Not that she couldn’t make it fit if she wanted to.

  Something in her expression must have clued them in to her thoughts, because their pleas stopped. The crestfallen looks on their faces made her heart cringe.

  When she’d been their ages, she’d known she wanted to be a teacher. That was why, the day after she graduated secondary school, she’d begun studying to take her teaching certification exam. She could have followed her mother’s path and married young. She’d chosen differently. Over the years, she noticed the trend of her students following their parents’ paths, save for the handful of young men who had joined the military. Three names, though, she would never forget.

  Angeline Rhoads

  Ida Quimby

  Johnny O’Brian

  If she’d have done more, she could have saved them. This coming school year, she would do whatever necessary to convince every student in her class that there were opportunities for them beyond following their parents’ paths. Girls like Florence didn’t have to become prostitutes. Boys like Barney didn’t have to turn to a life of horse thieving. With a good education and strong work ethic, they could do more.

  Luanne clasped her hands together. “Tell you what. I’ll ask my brother if he can come speak to you next week, as his work schedule permits.”

  The class broke out into a roar, with whistles and applause.

  “You’re the best,” Barney said as the school bell rang.

  Luanne grinned. “Since you think so highly of me,” she called out as they began filing out of the classroom, “be sure to arrive tomorrow morning with smiles on your faces and your essays completed in your best penmanship. Don’t forget your field notebooks! Extra pencils on my desk for those who need one!”

  Palmer house later that night

  Dinner was as abysmal as Roy had expected. Luanne wouldn’t even look at him no less ask questions about how preparations for the balloon race were coming. Fool that he was, he couldn’t get Yancey’s advice out of his head. While he’d worked on the carriage house walls all afternoon, he mentally rehearsed an entire conversation about why he needed to change out the two-cylinder burner he and Geddes used to float over Helena last night for the four-cylinder one they’d be using to take paying passengers on a similar trip in a few days.

  In his daydream, Luanne would lean forward, blue eyes shining with interest, and he’d explain that each race had specific parameters to keep the balloons as equal as possible. The Helena promoters wer
e using what he called the two by two by three rule: two burners and two men in a basket that had to be at least three square feet. Sightseeing, on the other hand, required a bigger basket and more burners.

  Not exactly Shakespeare, but he was building up to that.

  Raised voices drew Roy back to the dinner table conversation.

  “I work during school hours, Lu.” Geddes stabbed a piece of roast beef. “How could you commit me to speak to your class like that?”

  “I didn’t commit you.” She lifted her right shoulder in an apologetic manner. “I merely said I’d ask you to come speak to them one morning next week.”

  Yancey swirled a bite of potato in rich gravy and tried to look innocent. “I could cover for you at the telegraph office.”

  Mrs. Palmer shot a glare at her youngest child. “Not on your life. You can’t get out of learning to cook that easily, my girl.”

  Yancey huffed and popped the potato in her mouth.

  Roy lifted his napkin to hide his grin. While staying as a guest of the family, he’d learned Mrs. Palmer had two loves beyond her husband and children: embroidery and cooking. She was determined to teach Yancey the skills no matter how long it took—which might be when one of them died.

  Luanne placed her hands in her lap and, without even a glance at Roy, who sat beside her brother at the oval table, said, “Geddes, please. I’ve never seen my students as enthused about a subject as they are about ballooning. Sixteen is the perfect age to stretch their minds to understand difficult subjects. And this will be a natural spot for me to add Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days into our classroom reading.”

  Geddes flinched, then frowned at Yancey, who was sitting opposite him. He bent over his plate to shovel potatoes into his mouth with one hand and rubbed his shin with the other.

  Luanne’s gaze shifted to her sister, then back to her brother. “Please. Please, Geddes, this is important to me. For most of my students, this will be their last year in school. Few go on to attend university. This is my last chance to make an impact on their lives. Some of them need to see that there’s a great big world out there with more options than just following the careers their parents have.”