Blue Skies (5 page)

It was an hour prior to landing before the back-end crew could take a break, eat some leftover salads, exchange a little company gossip and sit down. Bea ventured back to the aft galley and poked her head through the blue curtain that separated them from the passengers. “Dixie? Do you have a second to help me with something?”

“Don't worry,” Karen said, “I'll go.”

“I really need Dixie,” Bea said nervously.

At the distressed sound of her voice, Dixie abandoned the salad she'd been picking at. She was senior on the flight, after all. “Sure,” she said, and followed Bea to first class.

In the first-class galley, Bea whispered, “The lady in 4A, she's on my manifest as Mrs. Darnell.”

Dixie frowned. She poked her head out of the blue curtain and looked at the seat Bea indicated. The woman there was attractive, with soft brown hair that fell gracefully to her shoulders. She was reading, head down, so Dixie couldn't see her face. She withdrew back into the galley. “So?” she asked Bea.

“She said the copilot is her husband.”

“I reckon that could be Branch's wife. They have two
teenagers. They haven't lived together for a long time, like a couple of years, and I think they're just waitin' on another Christmas before they—”

Bea was shaking her head. “She says it's her husband's birthday and she's flying to New York to surprise him. She told me she has reservations at the Four Seasons for nine o'clock and wanted to know if we'd get there in plenty of time.”

Dixie was very well trained at staying cool and in control, no matter what. She had won beauty pageants, after all. And unfortunately, this was not the first time something like this had happened to her. But inside she was dying.
No! This isn't happening! Not again!

But very calmly she said to Bea, “Oh, the poor thing.”

“She says she has a negligee in her suitcase and left his mother in charge of the kids. If it weren't for all the charity boards she sits on, she'd like to stay in New York a couple of—”

“Oh, God, Branch warned me something like this might happen. She doesn't want the divorce even though she was the one who originally asked him to leave a couple of years ago. This is just so sad.” If she didn't hurt so much inside, Dixie might marvel at how quickly she could make up a cover story. Who said she was a dumb blonde?

“What are you going to do?” Bea asked.

“I'd hate if there was a scene. The best thing would be if Branch took her off somewhere quiet and let her down easily.”

“She still loves him, then?”

Dixie shrugged. “Or maybe it just didn't work out with the other man, but whatever, Branch has moved on. I should warn him so he doesn't humiliate her…or him
self…or
me,
for that matter. Can you, um, trade places with me? Tell the girls in the back that I'm lookin' over your paperwork as a favor or something? And when we're taxiing in, I'll give Branch fair warnin'. The less anyone knows about this, the better for everyone.”

“I guess so,” she said. “You going to be all right?”

“Me?” she asked with a laugh. “This doesn't really have anything to do with me. Just another one of those difficult divorces. When have you ever seen an easy one?”

But she didn't warn him. She served the first-class cabin coffee and thought about striking up a conversation with Mrs. Darnell, but in the end stuck to the professional courtesies. It wasn't necessary to gather any more information—the truth was obvious. Mrs. Darnell was very confident about her birthday surprise.

They weren't separated. Branch was just getting a little on the side.

The passengers poured out of the plane, but Mrs. Darnell lingered. When the pilots came out of the cockpit, Branch second, he saw Dixie in the forward galley alone. “Well, angel, you have a good flight?”

“I did, cowboy. And there's a little birthday surprise for you in 4A.”

He grinned stupidly, confused, and looked down the aisle. Dixie couldn't see his face, but she heard him. “Darlin', what in thunder you doin' here?”

Dixie peeked out. Mrs. Darnell was
so
happy, grinning from ear to ear, eyes sparkling, arms outstretched as she embraced her husband and kissed him. And he returned the favor.

Except for a sheepish glance over his shoulder to see if Dixie had drawn a bead on the back of his head, Branch made no attempt to communicate with her. First
Officer and Mrs. Darnell took a cab to the hotel rather than ride with the rest of the crew in the hotel van. F.O. Darnell must have been a tish nervous about the prospect of his wife and girlfriend getting to know each other better.

The captain and five flight attendants stood curbside, waiting for the van, when Dixie came up behind them. She heard Karen say, “Well, what the hell does she expect? God, she's such a ditz.”

“Karen!” Bea warned, looking over her shoulder at Dixie, who stood there frozen.

“Oh. Sorry, Dixie. But, you know…” She shrugged lamely.

Dixie said nothing. She
did
know.

Unwilling to face her coworkers' curiosity and censure, Dixie skipped dinner, which she shouldn't have done. She opened the very good bottle of wine she'd brought with her and sat cross-legged on the bed and drank. She couldn't afford to have a good cry; her eyes would be all puffy and everyone would know the extent of her misery, including Branch, who would be on tomorrow's flight. She'd be damned if he would find out she'd cried over him.

It was about eleven when a knock sounded at her door. Discreet tapping. No surprise there. Empty bottle in hand and wearing only navy blue panty hose and her striped uniform shirt, she opened the door. There he stood, pilot shirt open at the neck, ice bucket in hand—his obvious excuse to leave his wife in their room—and a lame expression on his stupid face. He lifted his arms in helplessness. “Well, darlin',” he drawled. “You coulda knocked me over with a feather. What can I say?”

She stared at him for a minute, stricken by the fact
that even under these circumstances, she was tempted to embrace him, draw him to her and love every long, tall inch of him. How humiliating! Before she could reconsider, she rammed the empty wine bottle bottom first into his gut. “Ugh,” he grunted, bending over in pain and grabbing the bottle as he did so. She backed into her room and slammed the door on him. There was a loud thud, which, she acknowledged with a wince, must have been his head.

Well, she thought, you could've knocked him over with a feather…or whatever.

D
ixie sat in the airport with the rest of her crew. She lazily filed one of her perfect red nails when her cell phone chirped from inside her purse. She pulled it out, identified Nikki's number on the caller ID, and answered, “Yes, Captain.”

“Hey. Where are you?”

“We're sitting in Kennedy. How about you?”

“Chicago. About to push back. I heard the craziest thing. Did you guys have a pilot fall down the stairs and crack his head open?”

“We did hear that,” Dixie said, “but I don't think anyone's talked to him. It was supposedly the first officer—Darnell. Do you know him?”

There was a moment of stunned silence. “Oh, shit, Dixie.”

“I guess he was after a bucket of ice, slipped on the stairs and whacked his head. He couldn't remember exactly what happened so his wife called a cab and took him to the emergency room. We hear he has a slight concussion. Nothing bad, but he spent the night in the hospital for observation and can't fly until his flight surgeon clears him.”

“His
wife?
”

“Yeah, poor thing. She got on in Denver and was gonna surprise him for his birthday with a special night
in New York City. I just can't imagine their disappointment.”

Dixie could feel the eyes of her fellow crew members on her. They might not know what had really happened, but from their looks and whispers, they knew there was more to the story. So, screw 'em. Dixie was beyond caring. Karen had called it the evening before at the curb—Dixie had been a stupid fool. About a hundred times.

“Dixie…”

“Hmm?”

“Are you sure someone didn't…
push
him down the stairs?”

“For heaven's sake, what a thought,” she replied with the blandness of a yawn.

“When do you get back to Phoenix?” Nikki asked.

“Our flight was canceled because of the first officer's injury, which screwed up the rest of the segment. They had to deadhead a cockpit crew out here, so we're going to work the next flight back to Phoenix and then quit. I don't work again until Sunday. How about you?”

“I'll be back tomorrow night. Maybe I should swing by and see you on my way home?”

“You know you're always welcome,” she said. “All I have planned is to clean out the closets. High time I got rid of all those old clothes just clutterin' up the place.”

“Are you all right?” Nikki asked.

“'Course,” she replied coolly.

“And he doesn't remember what happened?”

“Isn't that fortunate?” Dixie cleared her throat. “I'm sure his wife's very grateful.”

She clicked off, slipped the phone back into her purse
and asked, in her very sweetest and most innocent drawl, “Can I get anyone a latte?”

“Great idea,” Bea said. “I'll go with you.”

“Don't get up, darlin',” Dixie said. “My treat. Anyone else?”

There were no other takers. Dixie walked to the coffee kiosk, allowing the rest of the crew the privacy to talk about her behind her back.
Lost his memory, huh? Forgot he was married for a while? How does she let herself get into these situations? All she'd have to do is make one phone call to check him out. What does she use for brains? Ah, she's just thinking below the waist, as usual. Lots of miles on that chick.
They would be quite entertained. They would also be quite accurate.

 

Dixie, whose given name was Helen, came from real brainy stock. Her father was a CPA with an MBA, and her mother had her doctorate and taught anatomy and physiology in a nursing college. Her older brother was a pediatric oncologist and her younger sister was in computers—the vice president of Information Systems for a large corporation. And Dixie had been the Homecoming Queen and the Fiesta Queen and the Oktoberfest Queen and Miss Temple, Texas.

At twenty-one she had dropped out of college to become a flight attendant, and there was no question this disappointed her parents, if not her entire family.

There was a very familiar pattern to what she'd just been through with Branch, Dixie realized. The only wonder was that she never saw it coming. Her denial must have been powerful. Over and over again she kept falling in love and getting lied to, cheated on and dumped.

She wished she'd been as brilliant as the rest of her
family, but what bothered her even more was that she'd apparently missed out on the meaningful-relationship gene, as well. The rest of them, Mom and Dad, her brother and sister, were all very happily married and had wonderful family lives. From high school through her short college career and every year since, all Dixie had wanted was to have a partner she could love, count on and have children with, like the rest of the McPhersons had.

Her brother, Hal, was a wonderful husband and father, as well as a big-shot doctor in Houston; her sister, Sue, was married with two kids who went to the day care in her Dallas office building, but Dixie just limped along looking for love, getting jewelry instead. She had been kicked in the teeth so many times it was a surprise she didn't need dentures. And not just by pilots. She had been used and then jilted in nearly every profession. She couldn't count the number of times she'd had to go get tested for STDs after discovering the man of her dreams had been cheating on her. In fact, she couldn't count how many men she'd had sex with—and she'd tried. Suddenly she was terrified.

Still, despite the brevity of her college education and the lunacy of her romantic life, Dixie knew she was intelligent. Maybe not brilliant like the rest of the McPhersons, but damned smart enough in other ways.

Although it might not seem like much to the Ph.D.s in her family, at thirty-thousand feet, her kind of skill could be priceless. No one could get control of a cabin or calm a ruffled passenger better than Dixie. She was good with people and she was excellent with safety procedures. She had administered CPR along with an onboard physician, had blown a slide to safely evacuate an aircraft after an engine fire, and had even once calmed
the hysteria of a crew member who was suffering some form of posttraumatic stress disorder after the 9/11 attacks.

For fifteen years she had performed at the top of her game, and now she was tired and disappointed. She wasn't going any further in her job, even if she did rack up seniority, which translated into a little more pay and a little less work each year. But the challenge was gone and her personal life was in tatters. She was lonely, her heart hurt, and her coworkers didn't respect her.

How did Nikki do it? Nikki hadn't had a guy since her divorce. She didn't appear to want one or need one. But then Nikki had those two fabulous kids; maybe that was what sustained her. As for Dixie, disappointment that she had no one special had left her feeling bitter. She had just resorted to violence, for God's sake!

She felt like such a loser. Not only had she failed to find The One, but she'd let that be the most important thing in her life for the past fifteen years.

Now she was on her way home from one of the worst trips of her career. Branch was simply the last in a long line of failures, and the fact that he had lied to her didn't let her off the hook—she should have done some investigating. She was, as her sister flight attendant so coldly pointed out, a ditz.

Well, all that was about to change.

 

Dixie lived in a quaint little town house at the edge of the city in the shadow of the mountains. The complex was gated and secure and featured a community room, fitness center, pool, tennis courts and a drop-dead view. There were four town houses to a building, all with garages. When she'd bought the place she thought it would be temporary. Something to keep the rain off her head
until she found Mr. Right, married, got pregnant and bought a nice little house near good schools.

Her friend Carlisle and his partner, Robert, lived right around the corner; she had told them about the unit when she saw the For Sale sign go up three years ago.

Now she found herself driving past her own town house, around the corner to Carlisle's place. It wasn't late. Maybe she could talk Robert and him into dinner, or at least a drink, because she just didn't feel like being alone. As she turned into their cul-de-sac, her headlights strafed the front of his house, and she saw something very strange. Carlisle was sitting on the front step of his town house, wearing his flight attendant uniform, his overnight bag parked upright on the sidewalk in front of him. The garage door was open, and his car sat next to Robert's inside. There was a nice little BMW parked on the street, and the lights were on in the house.

Dixie parked and got out of the car, then walked up the sidewalk to the steps. Hands on hips, she looked down at him. “Hey, you. You goin' to work?”

“I just got home,” he said, standing up. He tossed a look over his shoulder at his house and there was no mistaking his sad expression. “My trip was cancelled. I came home unexpectedly and I found Robert…entertaining.”

“Oh, damn, Carlisle. That's awful.”

He shrugged, his hands shoved into his pockets. “I could've called. But I didn't.”

Smarter than me,
Dixie thought.
I never had a clue.
“What are you gonna do?”

“I've been trying to decide. Yell and break things? No. That's unlike me. Too messy. Get drunk? Exact revenge of some kind? I could dip his toothbrush in the toilet every morning.”

“Very passive-aggressive,” she observed. “You could hit him in the head with somethin'.”

Carlisle stretched his back. “I doubt he'd hold still for that.”

She chuckled in spite of herself. “Carlisle, the idea is to do it real fast, surprise the critter, get off one good shot like that whack-a-mole game, before—” She stopped talking as the front door slowly opened.

A pudgy young man around twenty-five poked his head outside, checking for danger. He paused as though listening for the cocking of a rifle. Dixie and Carlisle both glared. The young man sheepishly came out the door, down the steps past Carlisle, and, head down, made his way cautiously along the sidewalk to his BMW.

“I'll be hanged,” Dixie said as the man got into his car. “He's a baby! Not exactly what I'd call fetchin'. And he's all swishy.”

“And a little squishy, too,” Carlisle said.

By contrast, Carlisle was quite handsome and solid. Thirty-eight, a
real
blond, he had classically handsome features—high cheekbones, strong chin, great smile. They always were the cute ones.

“All right, Carlisle,” Robert said from inside the house. “He's gone. Come inside.”

Robert stood in the doorway, very much at ease and unembarrassed. As if he'd been caught picking his nose, not screwing around on his partner. Even knowing he was gay, a woman could be stirred by the Latino's strong good looks. While Carlisle sometimes exhibited that telltale effeminate affectation, Robert—or Roberto—was what they liked to teasingly call “a man's man.”

Carlisle's going to do what he says,
Dixie thought in near despair.

“I don't think so, Robert. I'm going to help myself to some ‘think time.'”

Yay!

“Let's not drag this out,” Robert said. “That'll only make it worse.”

Carlisle grabbed his overnight bag and began to pull it down the sidewalk toward the street. Dixie happily trotted along behind him.

“If you leave now, you might not be welcomed back!”

Without turning around, Carlisle lifted his hand in the air and gave him the middle-finger salute. Behind him the door slammed shut.

He didn't look back. After stowing his suitcase in Dixie's back seat, he climbed in front.

Dixie got in beside him. “I know that was hard for you, buddy. I'm proud of you.”

He shrugged. “Now what?”

“My house,” she said. “We'll have a couple of drinks, something to eat and maybe a little bonfire in the backyard grill. I have some pilot clothes I'm thinkin' of lightin' up.”

 

It wasn't until the very last leg of Nikki's three-day trip that the work started to get interesting, and not just the flying part. It was Chicago to Phoenix, the sky was a crystal, unmoving blue, and she was ready to put this trip behind her. She had kids to get back to, a dead ex-husband's personal effects to sort through, and she was more than a little worried about Dixie. The hollow sound in her friend's voice had alarmed her, and she knew there was more to the injured-first-officer story than she had heard so far. She sincerely hoped Dixie
wasn't homicidal. And to add to her worries, Nikki's first officer, Bob Riddle, was driving her nuts.

Bob was one of those distinguished-looking men in his early fifties with a deep voice that took on a slightly Southern drawl when he was on the radio and PA. It was a condition often referred to as
sky drawl,
when a pilot without a Southern accent turned into Chuck Yaeger whenever he got on the radio. Bob was tall and tanned, salt and pepper at the temples, full head of thick dark hair and a strong chin. Upon close inspection it appeared he colored his hair and used tanning cream on his face—those telltale orange stains on his cuticles and in the creases of his palms were dead giveaways. But you had to get close.