Come Fly with Me

by Sherryl Woods

  Now she only pleaded plaintively, “Trent, I want to come home.”

  “Fine,” he agreed cheerfully. “As soon as he signs, you can hop the next flight.”

  “You don’t understand. I want to come back now!”

  “Then get him to sign the contract now.”

  “Have you ever met Mark Channing?”

  A bewildered silence greeted her question. Then he demanded irritably, “Who the hell’s Mark Channing?”

  “David Mark Channing Morrow.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I met him once. At one of those awards ceremonies or something. We didn’t talk business or anything, but he seemed like a nice enough guy. Why?”

  “A nice enough guy,” she mimicked derisively. “The man is about as stubborn as an old mule that’s made up its mind to stay in the barn. He’s an awful lot like you, come to think of it.”

  “Lindsay!”

  “Well, he is. He won’t look at the contract, much less talk about it. I even stuck it in the middle of a magazine he was reading, but he threw it back on the table like it was just a dumb bookmark and went right back to an article about some actor’s crusade to save the wilderness. Maybe if you offered to buy him his own mountain, he’d listen to reason,” she suggested dryly.

  “If you know of one and it’s not too expensive, try it.”

  “Trent, I was kidding,” she muttered in exasperation.

  “I’m not.”

  Lindsay sighed. “No. I know you’re not. If I happen to pass a mountain with a For Sale sign on the peak, I’ll check it out.”

  “Good. You hang in there, Lindsay. I know you can pull this off.”

  “Exactly how long am I supposed to hang in here?”

  “Until he signs.”

  “Then send some information on my retirement benefits,” she suggested bitterly. “I may be a very old lady by then.”

  “Knowing how you feel about cold weather, I doubt you’ll let him put you off that long. Bye, kiddo. Got to run.”

  “Trent!”

  It was too late. He’d already hung up and she knew perfectly well there was no pressing call or important meeting awaiting him. He didn’t want to give her any more time to try to wheedle him into letting her leave. Not that he was likely to take pity on her anyway. Men like Trent did not make their fortunes by being kind and thoughtful where their employees were concerned. They made them by being single-minded. Trent did that better than anyone she’d ever known.

  Resigned to her fate, she went into the kitchen and fixed herself some toast and tea and took it into the living room. She scanned Mark’s haphazardly arranged bookshelves, marveling at the diversity of his taste in literature. Finally she found a thick novel she’d been wanting to read since its release two years earlier and settled down in front of the fire with Shadow sprawled out on the floor right next to her.

  She should have been thoroughly relaxed, grateful to have some time to spend to herself after months of nonstop traveling and high-pressure assignments, but instead she continued to feel incredibly edgy. The fact of the matter was that she had no experience at relaxation. She usually avoided it like the plague, filling her time with business meetings, research and strategy sessions until she was so exhausted that she fell immediately to sleep the minute her head hit whatever pillow in whatever city she happened to be in.

  As if this unwanted vacation weren’t frustrating enough, the book she’d waited so long to read bored her to tears. It was one of those trashy, mindless concoctions of sex, violence and power struggles that would probably make millions as a television miniseries.

  “I can’t stand it,” she finally muttered, snapping the book shut.

  She sat on the floor and did a series of exercises, though muscles she’d never known existed until she’d taken up skiing screamed in protest with each leg lift and sit-up. Shadow cocked his head, watching her activity and listening to her muttered curses, then settled right back down.

  When she couldn’t do another single stretching exercise, she found a deck of cards and tried playing solitaire. She lost.

  Finally, in desperation, she went back to her room and bundled up in her horrible winter underwear, slacks, jacket and boots, pulled on her cap and mittens and went outside, amazed that she actually felt better with the fresh air whipping around her. It cleared her head of all sorts of confusing thoughts about Mark, murderous thoughts about Trent and her own range of insecurities that had been surfacing more and more frequently over the past few days. They were insecurities that she’d deluded herself had been long overcome. Instead, she was discovering that they’d merely been buried, awaiting a situation like the one she was experiencing with Mark to surface again.

  When she reached the end of Mark’s driveway, her boots crunching on the ice-covered snow, she turned down the road in the direction of the general store. Maybe there she’d find some lively company to offer further distraction from her disturbing thoughts. At the very least she could pick up any newspapers and magazines that had come in for Mark, so she could occupy herself for the rest of the day.

  She came upon the little shop about twenty minutes later, its front porch piled high with stacks of wood, a welcoming puff of smoke curling from the chimney. She stomped her feet to get the snow off her boots, then went inside. An old man with a healthy, graying beard and a pipe was sitting in front of an old wood-burning stove and a woman she knew immediately must be Mrs. Tynan was working behind the counter, piling groceries into a bag for a couple who seemed to be tourists. They were asking for directions to a lodge Lindsay knew was farther up the side of the mountain.

  “You look half-frozen,” the old man said to her, gesturing to a chair close to the stove. “Sit down here and rest a spell, young lady. This old stove ain’t much to look at, but it’ll warm you right up.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So,” he said, dragging the word out as he scrutinized her closely. “You must be Mark Channing’s gal. Heard tell he had a pretty young visitor up at his place.”

  Lindsay winced. It was just as she’d expected. The grapevine was in fine working order. Not that it had had far to travel from Mrs. Tynan to the man sitting beside her stove. It still made her uncomfortable to be thought of as Mark Channing’s gal, when she wasn’t quite sure Mark Channing was thinking of her at all.

  “I’m visiting Mr. Channing on business for a few days,” she said stiffly.

  “Hmmph,” the old man said with a toothy smile. “So that’s what you young folks call it. Ain’t nothing the matter with two people living together as far as I can tell. Nobody around here gives a hang anyway, leastways that’s what I’ve been telling Grace for the last ten years.”

  He cast a sly, but adoring glance at the trim, wiry woman behind the counter, who was pointedly ignoring him. He shrugged. “Guess the old prune likes living by herself.”

  She reeled around at that and gave him a drop-dead glare from frosty blue eyes.

  “It’s better than living with you, Jeb Davis. It’s bad enough that you stink up the store with that pipe of yours. I’ll not have you stinking up my house,” the woman retorted, though there was genuine affection in her voice.

  “Hmmph. It’s your loss,” he grunted. “No point in these young ones making the same mistake.”

  “Jeb, you old coot, mind your own business,” the woman said as she came out from behind the counter and held out her hand to Lindsay. “I’m Grace Tynan. Don’t mind Jeb. His mouth always did operate faster than his brain.”

  “Lindsay Tabor,” she said as she gazed up into a kindly, weathered face, from which those brilliant, cornflower-blue eyes now sparkled back at her. She could see the snap and vinegar that Mark had alluded to in this woman, but she also sensed the wry sense of humor and, more important, the comforting gentleness that would materialize the instant a person was in need of it. For some reason, she wanted this woman to like her, perhaps because she knew instinctively it would be important to Mark.

  “I really am here on busin
ess,” she repeated in what she hoped was a convincing tone.

  “Too bad,” Grace Tynan said in a low, gravelly voice that was filled with disappointment. Lindsay knew that she was about to ignore her own advice to Jeb. “I’ve been hoping Mark would meet someone who’d look after him and you’re the first woman I ever recall him bringing up here. Thought maybe you’d be the one. If any man needs a wife to soften him up, he does.”

  Soften him up? Lindsay looked at Mrs. Tynan peculiarly. Mark wasn’t hard. A bit of a loner maybe, but he was kind and gentle and fiercely protective. Not that she was about to share her impressions with this pair. They seemed to be hoping for a wedding announcement, and since she couldn’t give them that, she figured she’d better just hold her tongue.

  “What business do you have with Mark, little lady?” Jeb asked bluntly. “You from one of those publishers back East?” The way he said it, the East Coast sounded no better than an overcrowded den of iniquity.

  “No. I work for a movie studio. We want him to do the screenplay from one of his books.”

  “Don’t set much store in movies myself,” Jeb said. “I like watching real people. They’re a whole lot more interesting.”

  “Why don’t you just say it, Jeb? You love to sit around and spy on other folks’ lives and then gossip about it.”

  “That’s not so, Grace Tynan. I’m no more a gossip than you are. You were at your best when half the electric and phone lines around here went down in that blizzard last winter and everyone depended on you for the latest news.”

  “Oh, hush up, Jeb,” she retorted as Lindsay grinned at the two of them. It sounded to her like they might as well be married, the way they bickered affectionately. She had a feeling Grace Tynan and Jeb Davis would have one heckuva passionate romance, if they ever gave it half a shot.

  Grace glared at Jeb, then turned to Lindsay. “Which book do you want Mark to do?” she asked. “I’ve read ’em all.”

  “Velvet Nights.”

  Grace Tynan’s face immediately fell and her warm smile vanished. “Velvet Nights?

  Oh, honey, I wouldn’t push him on that, if I were you.”

  “Why not?” Lindsay asked, puzzled by the oddly intense warning.

  “Well, you’d best be asking him that, but I’ve always had the feeling that there was something right disturbing to him about that book.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Oh, it was nothing he came out and said, you understand. It’s just that usually he’d go down to the local library after one of his books came out and hold a discussion group. Folks around here are mighty proud of him and it was always a big deal,” she explained and it was obvious that she shared the community’s pride. Again, Lindsay sensed that a special bond existed between this woman and Mark, a bond that might help her to understand him, if only Grace Tynan would open up to her and share her insights.

  “Did something different happen when Velvet Nights came out?” she asked.

  “Sure did. The minute that book hit the stores, he just holed up in that cabin of his, same as he did when he first bought the place. Wouldn’t see a soul. I’d take his groceries and mail to him and he’d thank me, real polite as always, but he never let me past the front door. Before that we’d always sit and have a cup of tea and a good chat. He’d tell me stories about the places he’d been and the people he’d met. I’d tell him what was going on around here. But not after Velvet Nights. Seemed like that book took something out of him. He was hurtin’ real bad, honey. I’d hate to see all that stirred up for him again.”

  At last Lindsay was beginning to understand that Mark’s avoidance of her, once he knew that Trent Studios wanted him to write that particular screenplay was part of a pattern. She still didn’t understand why. Why had he even written a book that disturbed him so?

  “How long did he shut himself away like that?” she asked, trying to imagine him lost and lonely in that cabin with only Shadow for company. The image tugged at her heart and she wished she’d known him then, that she’d been here for him. That stirring of protectiveness was as much of a surprise to her as the comfort she’d taken in Mark’s tenderness toward her. She was so lost in her own thoughts that she almost missed what Grace Tynan was saying.

  “It took about three months for him to come around,” she recalled. “One day he just turned up here cheerful as could be, picked up his mail, bought a few supplies and chatted like he’d been here all along. He’s seemed right as rain ever since, leastways until a couple of weeks ago, when he got a letter from that agent of his. His face clouded over and he took off out of here like a bat out of hell. I thought for sure the snow’d melt right out of his path, he was so hot under the collar.”

  That must have been the letter from Morrie telling him about the offer from Trent Studios, the letter that started her game of hide and seek with him, Lindsay realized.

  “I think I’d better be getting back,” she said suddenly. It was time she and Mark had this out once and for all. She needed to understand his reluctance to do Velvet Nights. She was convinced now that there was far more to it than simple stubbornness or, as Trent had been convinced, greediness for a better contract. If she knew why he was so adamant, perhaps she could convince Trent to back off as well.

  “Looks like we’re about to get some more snow. You sure you wouldn’t like a cup of tea to warm you a bit before you go?” Mrs. Tynan asked. “I’ve got the pot all ready.”

  “No, thanks. Another time.”

  “Then you’ll be here awhile?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, you come back anytime, honey. You’re always welcome. Maybe you and Mark’d like to come for dinner one night?”

  “I’ll tell him you asked,” Lindsay promised, though she had a few things to settle with Mr. Mark Channing before they went gallivanting around the countryside like some blissfully happy couple.

  On the walk back, as snow began to swirl around her, first in a teasing flurry and then in a steady, thick wall of white, Lindsay turned over in her mind everything Mrs. Tynan had said and tried to make sense of it. Unfortunately, she hadn’t had the chance to read Velvet Nights before Trent had sent her off on her whirlwind chase, so she had none of the insights the book itself might have given her. Oddly enough, now that she thought about it, there hadn’t been a single copy on Mark’s bookshelves, though his other books had been there.

  Well, they’d just have to talk about the book and what it meant to him. If the man could write, he shouldn’t be lacking in verbal skills. He should be able to explain his attitude about this and make her understand once and for all.

  After a few more minutes, she was no longer able to think about what she and Mark needed to discuss. She had to concentrate on finding her way. The road was covered with new snow and the landmarks she’d noted on the way to the store were difficult to spot through the cloud of thick, wet flakes that pelted her. Though she’d never been caught in a snowstorm before, she wasn’t particularly concerned, just cold. She was certain she was heading in the right direction and knew that soon she was bound to spot the old stone post that marked the driveway up to Mark’s house.

  Long before she saw the entrance, though, she heard Mark calling her name. She shouted back and Shadow bounded up to her, putting his paws on her chest and licking her face.

  “Shadow!” she protested, just as Mark seemed to materialize beside her.

  “Hi,” she said brightly, not noticing that he was in an absolute state of panic, his dark eyes shadowed with a barely concealed terror.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he said, grasping her arms so hard, she could feel his fingers biting into her flesh even through the thick layers of clothing. Suddenly she saw the panic in his eyes and realized he was restraining himself from shaking her only with great effort. For a moment, she was almost frightened.

  “Let go,” she demanded. “You’re hurting me. What on earth is wrong with you?”

  Instantly, his hands dro
pped guiltily to his sides and he took a deep breath. This time when she gazed closely at him, the panicky expression she had seen before had been replaced by relief. The intensity of those responses startled her. He really had been terrified.

  “You’re okay then?” he asked insistently.

  “Of course, I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “How long have you been out here?”

  “Not that long. You were so busy writing, I decided to go for a walk.”

  “In a damned blizzard?”

  “It wasn’t snowing when I left.”

  “You could have gotten lost.”

  “I knew where I was. I only went down to the general store. I’ve been talking to Mrs. Tynan and Jeb. They’re quite a pair, by the way. She wants us to come to dinner.”

  “That’s nice,” he muttered distractedly, then gazed into her eyes with a look that reflected his earlier urgency. “Lindsay, please, don’t ever leave the house again without telling me.”

  At first she felt guilty for apparently having scared him by going for a walk on her own without even so much as leaving a note. Then, as she thought about the way he had abandoned her this morning, left her to her own devices, then hit her with this absurdly patronizing lecture, she grew increasingly infuriated.

  “I’m a grown woman. I can take care of myself.”

  “You don’t know anything about a place like this. You don’t realize what could happen, how easily you could get lost. Please. Stay inside unless I’m with you.”

  “I will not! I’ll go anywhere anytime I damn well please,” she retorted. “If I’m stuck out here and you’re going to shut yourself away and work, then I have to have something to do. I can’t just sit around and twiddle my thumbs. I’m used to being busy.”

  All of her fury and pent-up frustration suddenly erupted in a no-holds-barred screaming match—at least on her part. Mark, all of his earlier anger gone now, just listened as she ventilated her fury. Now he was coolly rational, which further irritated her.