Calm. It was important to remain calm, but Cassie couldn't believe this was happening. The three of them had been cruising comfortably at sixty-five hundred feet, and her husband had suddenly gasped and fallen forward.
"What's wrong with Daddy?" asked her son Rory, peering wide-eyed and frightened through the space between the two front seats.
"I don't know," Cassie said, panic rising with the bile in the back of her throat.
She swiveled in her seat and clenched her fingers around the yoke in front of her. Kevin had shown her how to fly the plane a few times, and once she'd practiced landing on their runway at home with him beside her at the plane's dual controls. He'd always been safety-conscious and knew that sometimes unforeseen events could incapacitate a pilot. But she'd never thought anything like this would happen. Not to Kevin. He was in excellent health and only thirty-three.
"Mommy, Mommy," cried Rory from the back seat. "I'm scared."
Her son was barely five years old, a sweet blond cherub of a boy, and Cassie's instinct was to gather him in her arms and comfort him. She was scared, too. But she couldn't worry about Rory now. She had to fly the plane. And land it.
Cassie summoned every ounce of concentration she possessed. First, the radio. She set the control to the emergency frequency. Then she grabbed the microphone.
And she was thinking, oh, Kevin, what is wrong? His face, what she could see of it with his head sagging against his chest, appeared gray in the glow from the control panel. Was he breathing? She couldn't tell, couldn't spare the time to take care of him any more than she could look after their son, not with their lives in peril as they hurtled through the sky in their pilotless plane.
"Mayday, mayday," she shouted into the mike. Too late she realized that she hadn't pressed the transmission button. She fumbled and repeated the distress call. The speaker crackled, but there was no response. She slid her gaze across the complicated control panel. Which gauge was the altimeter? Which was the directional gyro? She was so petrified that she couldn't think straight.
No one answered on the radio. Cassie saw no other aircraft in the wide black sky. Where were they, anyway? If she managed to reach somebody, she'd have to give their location. They'd been traveling west toward home, but they hadn't reached Palm Springs yet. Cassie would have noticed the lights below as they passed the city on their way to Wildflower, their estate nearby; she always noticed the lights.
She was so damned scared. She swiped at the teardrops rolling down her cheeks, and her arm inadvertently struck the yoke so that the plane dived sharply. By instinct, she yanked the yoke upward. The plane stabilized and she fell back into her seat and sobbed in relief, drawing great gulps of air into her lungs. Hearing her distress, her son flung himself across the width of the back seat and wailed.
It was Rory's fright that lent her strength. She didn't care about herself anymore, only for her husband and son. She had to save them.
Cassie jammed the microphone to her lips. "Somebody please help me," she sobbed. "Please, somebody. I'm all alone and I don't know how to fly this plane."
The mike fell to her lap as she buried her face in her hands. She fought to gain her balance on the thin sharp edge of panic. They'd all die, all three of them, and it would be her fault.
The radio speaker crackled, and then, like a miracle, she heard a garbled transmission.
"Where...you?" rasped a male voice.
She grappled at the mike and depressed the button. "I don't know. My husband is unconscious."
"Don't..." and the rest of the sentence was lost.
After an eternity, the voice transmitted clearly. "I'll talk you down," he said.
Cassie hardened herself to ignore her child's screams of terror and sent up a silent prayer of desperation.
"Tell me what to do," she said.
And they sailed through the sky, the three of them, halfway home.
Through Eyes of Love
The Keeping Secrets Series
Book Two
by
Pamela Browning
~
To purchase
Through Eyes of Love
from your favorite eBook Retailer,
visit Pamela Browning's eBook Discovery Author Page
www.ebookdiscovery.com/PamelaBrowning
~
Discover more with
eBookDiscovery.com
Page forward and complete your journey
with an excerpt from
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS
The Keeping Secrets Series
Book Three
Excerpt from
Sunshine and Shadows
The Keeping Secrets Series
Book Three
by
Pamela Browning
Award-winning Author
When she sensed a lessening of intensity, she made a soft sound somewhere in her throat and realigned her head to make it more comfortable for him, and his lips renewed their quest, his tongue seeking more, more, until she opened her mouth and clung to him in unabashed passion.
He was the one who ended it, pulling away and staring at her in the moonlight, his breathing rough. She closed her eyes, willing her heart to stop leaping about inside her rib cage.
"I didn't know anyone could kiss like that," he said in clear bewilderment, which helped bring her back down to earth.
"I didn't, either," she whispered.
"That was—"
"Was what?" she asked.
"Wonderful," he said, his hands on her shoulders positioning her so that her face rested against his chest. He hadn't expected it to feel so right.
"Are you cold?" he asked when he felt a little tremor run through her.
"Warmer now," she murmured, her voice muffled by his shirt.
He pulled away. "We should have brought jackets. And, maybe, a blanket."
"I'm comfortable," she said.
"I feel like a crazy kid, kissing you on the beach out here in front of strolling senior citizens and tourists and skateboarders," he said. He struggled to control his voice so that it wouldn't tremble.
"I feel like—" she said, but she stopped.
"Feel like what?" he asked.
"Like doing it again," she said, sounding more helpless than he felt, and he laughed and pulled her close.
"In that case, we will," he said, and this time he spent more time at it, reveling in the softness of her lips, the sweetness of her breath, the delight he felt at indulging himself in something that was pure perfection.
Up on the bike path the teenage skateboarders whooped as they rolled past, their wheels noisy on the asphalt path.
"Are you ready to go?" Jay asked.
"Perhaps we should," she said, not sure if she meant it. She wished the skateboarders would leave.
Don't analyze this too much, Lisa warned herself. Even though she knew that he now realized the impact of the attraction between them, he might not feel any real emotion for her. She couldn't dare to hope for love, didn't dare even to think the word, even though she had known in her heart from that first day that she could easily love this man and perhaps already did.
At Jay's place, Lisa followed Jay into the kitchen and sat on a stool to watch as Jay piled turkey on thick slabs of pumpernickel bread.
"Did you roast the turkey yourself?" she asked.
"Yes. It's one of the few things I eat that doesn't come already cooked out of a zip-open bag at the supermarket," he admitted. "Mustard or mayonnaise?"
"Mayonnaise, please," she said.
"Mustard for me," he said, applying it with a heavy hand.
The sandwich was good, but it was Jay who was the real treat. She liked sitting across from him, liked the way he seemed to enjoy watching her. She found herself growing more animated as they sat and talked. Sometimes his eyes flickered with appreciation at something she said, and she fought the impulse to become reckless with wit, to laugh louder, to toss her head, bat her eyelashes—anything to impress him.
But
that would be a mistake. He was impressed. She was flattered. And the attraction between them was magnetic.
After dinner, Jay turned out the overhead light, leaving their faces illuminated only by the hood light over the stove. She held her breath and felt her heart fluttering in her chest. Almost ceremoniously he put his arms around her and kissed her.
"You're a girl who really knows how to kiss," he said after a few minutes. "You must have had lots of practice."
"Not with the right person."
Sunshine and Shadows
The Keeping Secrets Series
Book Three
by
Pamela Browning
~
To purchase
Sunshine and Shadows
from your favorite eBook Retailer,
visit Pamela Browning's eBook Discovery Author Page
www.ebookdiscovery.com/PamelaBrowning
~
Discover more with
eBookDiscovery.com
Pamela Browning lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, for many years.
"The thing that impressed me about Charlotte when I first saw the city was the green leafy trees," she says. "I loved waking up each morning to a place where there was beauty all around."
That's why she found it the perfect setting for Ever Since Eve.
She's worked in public relations, as did Eve. She's also lived in a town where the textile mill went out of business like the one in Wrayville.
"I like to include things that have happened in my life in my books. Which ones those are—well, I'm the one keeping secrets about that. The reader will have to guess."
Has she ever been a surrogate mother?
"Um, only to two one-week-old kittens that were abandoned in my garage and required bottle feeding every two hours around the clock," she says.
She's saving that experience for a different book.
Pamela invites you to visit her website at www.pamelabrowning.com and hopes you'll look for the other books in her Keeping Secrets Series: Through Eyes of Love, Sunshine and Shadows, and Touch the Stars.
And don't forget to drop in at The Keeping Secrets Book Club at www.bookclubit.com where you can discuss all the Keeping Secrets books. (Hint: Search The Keeping Secrets Book Club to join.) See you there!
Table of Contents
Cover
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Book Club Questions for The Keeping Secrets Book Club
Excerpt from THROUGH EYES OF LOVE - The Keeping Secrets Series, Book 2
Excerpt from SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS - The Keeping Secrets Series, Book 3
Meet the Author
Ever Since Eve (The Keeping Secrets Series, Book 1) Page 18