by Maggie Ryan
He arrived at the airbase just after she’d jumped in tandem with her instructor. Two pairs had landed prior to Sophie and she was due down next. Scott shielded his eyes against the sun’s glare and watched her, heart in throat as she sailed spread-eagled to the ground. As soon as she landed and was detached from her instructor, an older man, presumably Sophie’s father, hurried over and hugged her. Scott gave them a moment alone together before he approached them.
“Scott, did you see me? I did it, I completed the task! I can’t believe I’ve done it. I skydived… me! Oh my, thank goodness it’s over!” she babbled excitedly. Her hair was messy, all over the place, displaced by the jump. Unthinkingly, she dragged her fingers through her unruly mane, attempting to tame her thick blonde mop.
Scott held out his hand to the man he assumed to be her father and he shook it, confirming that he was indeed Sophie’s Dad. “I’ll get off home to Mae now that your friend has arrived, Soph. Well done again, darling! I’ll see you tonight and we’ll all go out for dinner to celebrate. You’re welcome to come along too, son, if you’d like to? I’ll see you later, Soph.”
After her father had left, Sophie stood and stared at Scott. Suddenly silent, she felt embarrassed. She simply had no idea what to say to him. She still felt euphoric after her jump and perhaps that confidence encouraged her to ask him to take her out for ice cream.
“Sure,” he replied easily and led her over to his truck. “A dog, you have a dog!” She leaned over her front seat to scratch behind the large Alsatian’s ears. “Yeah, meet Diesel, he’s my K-9 partner.”
Sophie beamed at him happily and Scott’s heart clenched. God she was lovely. “I adore dogs,” she told him.
“I know you do, hon’. So, tell me, how does a girl who was so darned terrified of heights that she had trouble skiing in Colorado, end up skydiving?” He knew straight away he’d asked the wrong thing. It was as if he’d pressed her off switch. She just died. Her facial expression blanked and her eyes sheened over with unshed tears.
He looked behind him in the car mirror and indicated to pull off the road. Parking the truck, he pulled on the handbrake.
Chapter 3
“What are you doing?” she asked, with a frown.
“Gettin’ to the bottom of what the hell’s wrong with you.” He knew he sounded harsh but he had to understand what was going on inside that beautiful, infuriating head of hers. There was silence. She bent her head, allowing her loose hair to fall either side of her face, screening herself off from him.
“I got all week, hon’, take as long as you need but you’re gonna talk to me. You owe me that much, Soph.”
He was taken aback by her malevolent glare and sharp retort. “I owe you absolutely zilch! We mean nothing to each another. In fact, if it hadn’t been for you, Rupert would still be here!”
Huh?
“How’d you work that one out?”
“If you’d been with Leah and I’d been with Rupert, they wouldn’t have died!” she cried raggedly.
He stared at her and saw her face contort. She looked as though she would burst into tears at any moment. “Y’know that’s crap, right? We didn’t do anything wrong, sweetheart, we simply chatted sometimes by the chairlifts and some in the bar. It was a pure accident. We couldn’t have known that balcony would collapse. It was a sheer fluke that we weren’t out there too. Ten minutes before that and we would have been killed alongside ‘em.” He hoped that he sounded reasonable, despite feeling livid with her obtuseness.
“If we hadn’t been flirting, they would still be here!”
Scott shook his head. “No, hon’, they wouldn’t.” She burst into noisy sobs and he pulled her against him, his arm tightened about her. He let her cry. She needed this release. After a while she muttered something unintelligible. He smoothed her hair. “What, baby, I didn’t catch that?”
“I said that I thought I’d feel better but I don’t. I hoped that I’d feel somehow whole again once I’d completed the list… but I d-don’t!” she wept softly.
“List? What list is this?” he asked, holding his handkerchief up to her cute snub nose. “Blow,” he ordered, gently but firmly. She gave an obedient blast, offering the laundered square back to him. He waved his hand indicating that she should keep it.
“Now, what list were you talking about?” he questioned.
Silence. She made no reply, twisting his handkerchief into a rag. Her head hung low again.
“Soph?” he prompted. More silence. He waited.
“The bucket list,” she finally croaked.
“You made a bucket list?”
“Yes, well, um… no-o.”
“Which is it, yes or no?” he pressed. She heaved a sigh and wriggled in her seat a bit before answering.
“You won’t tell my dad any of this?”
He tilted his head and studied her. She sounded more like a little girl than a fully-grown woman.
“No, not if you don’t want me to,” he promised, intrigued.
“Rupert wrote this bucket list when we were at university together. Over the years he ticked things off, either as he changed his mind or when completed tasks but he always kept it going—adding stuff, y’know? Well anyway, as I said, he ticked off quite a few things. Thankfully, swimming with sharks was one of them. We went on a world hike after Uni starting in India, we visited the Taj Mahal, travelled into Tibet then we visited Singapore and flew over to the Antipodes working our way around Australia and New Zealand. We even climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania together.”
She began to count the following feats off on her fingers. “I have continued his list and abseiled down the Post Office Tower in London. Run the Brighton marathon. Deep sea dived in San Diego and visited the Grand Canyon; I did those two tasks in one trip with Dad and Mae. I have trekked the path to Machu Picchu in Peru and today I completed the one task I was dreading the most—the parachute jump!”
She shuddered dramatically.
He stared at her incredulously. “You mean you’ve been completing his bucket list for him?” She nodded solemnly.
“Oh, Sophie, darling, that is just so utterly, totally cra-zy!” He hugged her to him and planted a kiss on top of her head. “But why would you do that?” he asked.
“I know it sounds bonkers but I thought that if I completed everything that Rupert wanted to do in life, then I would feel better, maybe less guilty, y’know?” A tear slid down her face, then more followed until she was in floods again. Scott clicked open the glove compartment and pulled out a pack of tissues. He handed them to her thoughtfully.
“And do you, now that the list is nearly finished, do you feel less guilty?” She stared up at him wide-eyed and vulnerable, slowly shaking her head.
“No, that’s the problem. I still feel awful.”
“And despite me or anyone else telling you that it wasn’t your fault?”
She shook her head.
“Okay. Do you want to be punished for Rupert’s death, even though it was most definitely not your fault, is that it?”
“How d’you mean punished? Like go to jail?” she asked, startled. He shook his head.
“No. I mean maybe you need spanking.”
“What?” she squeaked. “You’re not serious?” She was totally discombobulated by his suggestion.
“My mom and dad had this kinda traditional marriage, y’know? Dad took his belt to us lads occasionally, like when we played hooky from school an’ such, but it wasn’t until I’d left home that I found out that he’d spanked my mom on occasion too.”
Sophie looked at him wide-eyed, horror across her face. “Oh my God that’s abuse, how awful!”
Scott shook his head, grinning ruefully. “No, actually it wasn’t. My parents were the only couple I knew growing up who never really argued. He was head of his household and he had the final word. Have you heard of about modern domestic discipline marriages, Soph?”
She nodded. “They are for church going couples, aren’t they?”
“Hmm, yeah but not always religious based. I think I’d like that kind of a marriage but with you.” There he’d come right out and said it.
She was staring at him as though he’d grown another head right there in front of her. There was nothing for it but to kiss her. Before she knew what he was about, he had her in his arms and his mouth found its way onto hers like a compass on north. For a moment it was touch and go and then she melded to him, her mouth softened, her lips parted and he was in heaven. How long had he dreamed of this… of kissing her… holding her… loving her?
After the terrible grinding crash of the balcony giving way at the ski resort, he had clutched Sophie to him and dragged her out of the bar, back into the hotel lobby, out back and as far away from the cloud of debris that was sweeping the building as he could get. He had held onto her, kissing her, reassuring her, comforting her, keeping her safe as mayhem ensued. There were people screaming and sirens wailing all around them. He had protected her from the worst of the horror and yet it seemed as though she blamed him, but for what? He had never understood, not until now. Scott realized she was riddled with survivor’s guilt. He had suffered a little from that too, but Leah was a new relationship, one that he knew was only ever going to last a short while.
His poor love, his sweet Sophie, was stuck in the glue of her guilt over her friend Rupert. Scott knew that he could help her, if only she would trust him to. He’d known that she and Rupert were simply friends and nothing more because he had been in the elevator at the resort, when Rupert had leapt inside, just as a crowd got out. He’d turned to Scott and winked at him before telling him that Sophie was smitten with him. He’d warned Scott that if he hurt her, he would have to answer to him. Scott had assured him that his feelings for Sophie were genuine; Rupert had then grilled him about Leah. They’d finally agreed that Rupert would pursue the leggy red head; Scott assured him she was as disinterested in continuing their relationship as he was. They simply didn’t work together, they didn’t suit. That left the field clear for Scott to convince Sophie to have dinner with him. That memory of his one and only conversation with Rupert flashed through his mind as he pressed his lips to Sophie’s. If only the accident hadn’t occurred, then Sophie and he would have been dating long before now.
Scott hoped that his kiss would go some small way toward building Sophie’s faith in him. He felt her attraction to him and she had shared her deepest most painful thoughts with him, surely that must be evidence of her growing trust in him?
Sophie pulled back in his arms and gazed back at him, saucer eyed. Now she didn’t know what to think. She’d been so certain that completing Rupert’s bucket list would relieve her of this overwhelming guilt at his death, but it hadn’t. She had no right to feel this good in Scott’s arms, not when Rupert was dead. The circumstances were all wrong. She should never have been flirting and talking with Scott while she was on holidaying, skiing with Rupert. The fact that they were not a true couple made no difference to how she felt. Rupert and she’d made a pact. When they got to thirty, if neither of them had met anyone else, they would marry and start a family together. Oh hell, she felt so confused right now that she didn’t know what to think. Then there was this weird offer of Scott’s to spank her as if that would help get rid her of her guilt. But then again perhaps that might work? She needed time to think about it, process everything he’d said. She placed a hand on his arm.
“Please, Scott, can we just go, get something to eat, and not talk about us?” she begged.
Scott narrowed his eyes thoughtfully for a moment before nodding. “All right,” he agreed, “just so long as you think about everything I’ve said and get back to me about it.”
She agreed, “I promise. Let’s go. I’m starving now and ice cream just won’t cut it!” Strangely, she felt better, lighter than she had in weeks and it had nothing to do with the jump she’d just completed, although she was proud of herself for overcoming her fears enough to carry it through to the finish. No, this was a small lifting of her spirit, a sense that everything might become normal again. There was a glimmer of hope that she might be able to move on with her life and finally be able to let go of the past.
They drove into the lot of the Pizza House in town. After getting seated and ordering coffees, they decided to share two different flavored toppings; luckily they both liked a thin, crispy base.
Scott kept the conversation light, chatting about the funnier side of dog handling then chatted about dogs and animals generally. By the end of the meal he just had to ask her what the last task on Rupert’s bucket list was.
“I saved the easiest and best till last,” she smirked, toying with her drink straw.
“Yeah, are you gonna tell me then?”
“Niagara Falls!”
“Hell, I’m in!”
“For real?” she exclaimed in astonishment.
“Yeah… I can take an owed vacation day and we’ll do something to mark the loss of everyone who died on the balcony that day… but afterward you must move on with your life, agreed?”
She stared at him. That tiny glimmer of hope shifted again, fanning into something warm inside her. She nodded and gave him a quick smile. “I’ll try, okay?”
Scott was elated. This was the first real progress he’d made with her. “Leave the organizing to me. I’ll let you know the date in plenty of time, all right?”
Sophie nodded, her smile widening into a grin. “I’m glad you’ll be there, Scott. I want you to know that I’m grateful for today. I know I haven’t been very nice or welcoming since you arrived, but well, y’know.” She shrugged trailing off, dropping her hand onto the table.
He reached across and covered her hand with his. “Hey, no more regrets… friends?”
Sophie nodded. “Friends!”
“Come on, I’ll drop you home. You need to change and I have to walk Diesel.”
Scott paid and they left the diner. He went to the passenger door and held it open for her before going around to the driver’s side. Sophie liked that he was old fashioned like that, a real gentleman. They chatted easily on the drive back to Sophie’s parents’ house and Sophie told Scott all about Kirsty and her dilemma taking the collie over as her pet.
“I have to say I don’t get it. Why not take Kirsty and if you travel, let your step-mom take care of her?”
“Because I know Mae, she’ll start to see Kirsty as her dog and then she will want to keep her when I am ready to move on.”
Scott was silent for a while, getting the words straight in his mind before he spoke out.
“I could take her, just when you’re busy. I’m certain that you and I will end up together, so it would be an ideal solution.”
Sophie twisted in her seat and stared at him. “Scott, if that’s your expectation then I don’t think you should be a part of my Niagara Falls trip.” She jumped as his hand lifted and smacked down on the steering wheel.
“Hell, Soph, it’s one step forward and two steps back with you! I am organizing this trip and that’s the end to it, d’you hear?”
“But…”
“I am this close,” he said, lifting two fingers up, pinching them together, “this close, to stopping the truck and putting you over my knee, little girl!”
Sophie’s eyes widened, her mouth went dry. “I, er…”
“Don’t say another word, just sit there and enjoy the ride,” he growled.
Sophie flushed hotly and turned to stare out of the window. Would he actually do it? This was unheard of; men didn’t spank women nowadays! He’d said that his father had spanked his mother and he wanted a marriage that included spanking. She pressed her knees together nervously. Why did the idea of him threatening her that way excite her? Come on, Sophie, just think of the embarrassment and it would surely hurt. Yes, in reality, the idea was perhaps not so appealing.
When they pulled up outside her father’s house, Sophie quickly yanked open the car door, running away before he could get around the other side of t
he vehicle to help her down, but he dashed after her and caught her arm. Holding her gently, he bent and grazed her cheek with his lips. “I’ll see you later on this evening.”
She turned startled blue eyes to him. “Why?”
He grinned, looking so self- satisfied that she wanted to hit him. “Your dad invited me out for dinner, remember?”
She gave him a cold haughty stare. “What if I don’t want you to come?”
“What if I smack your childish butt?” he countered.
She flushed and yanked her arm free, taking off at a jog toward the house.
“Laters, baby!” he yelled after her, grinning. She stopped on the porch steps, turned back and stuck out her tongue before dashing into the house, slamming the door behind her.
“Little brat!” Scott spluttered, laughing. Shaking his head, he climbed back into the truck and drove away whistling. He was winning her over, just as he knew he would… eventually.
Sophie stood with her back against the front door breathing heavily, a big grin split her cheeks. Then she ran upstairs taking the stairs two at a time. Goodness, what on earth was she going to wear tonight?
Chapter 4
Scott followed Sophie’s father inside the elegant restaurant in East Avenue, Rochester. He escorted Sophie in with his hand barely touching her bare middle back where her lovely blue strapless dress ended. It was as though a current of electricity passed between them, such was the power of his attraction to her. He knew that she felt it too; he saw it in the widening of her eyes every time their skin brushed one another. “Light the blue touch paper and run,” he muttered. Except that was the absolute opposite of what he wanted to do.
“Sorry?” Mae asked from behind him, thinking his mutterings were directed at her.
“Nothing, just thinking aloud. Nice place,” he answered looking around appreciatively.
“Yes, it’s my favorite place for lobster.” Mae pointed at a tank filled with the large blue crustaceans, set against the wall on the opposite side of the restaurant. “Sophie hates that I like to eat them, she refuses to choose one for the pot!”