Calling Kupid (Kupid's Cove Book 1) (14 page)

“Okay, I’ll drive. I know the back way. We can avoid the main roads, but if he catches us off guard we’ll have no backup.”

“It’s a chance we have to take. I know this guy isn’t from around here. He won’t know the town the way you do. We’ll be okay.”

“I sure hope you’re right,” she said, her face showing the fear she felt.

I hugged her again. “I know this is scary. I’m also the last person you want to trust, but I want you to know how much it means to me that you are.”

“I’m trying to figure out why you didn’t just cut and run back to Chicago yesterday.”

“Because I had to stay here to protect you,” I whispered.

Kate

I sat nervously in the passenger seat waiting for Gideon to finish his check of the helicopter. I was praying, trying to figure out what God wanted me to do.

What am I doing here? Why am I going with this man I barely know?

Because you trust him, whether you like it or not, and you don’t want to die. You have too much to live for.

I snorted condescendingly.

Other than my job, I don’t have much going for me.

You have a niece on the way. If that’s not enough to live for, then I don’t know what is.

It’s not fair that Freddie will have kids and I won’t.

Fair isn’t always easy to quantitate, Katie, but we can’t change the past.

I’m not mad about Freddie having a baby. I don’t mean to be like that. Is she really having a girl?

You get to be any way you want to be when we spend time together, Katie. I’m here to listen, and maybe impart wisdom that will help you keep going. Yes, she’s having a girl. You can take my word for it.

I chuckled a little and looked up at the roof of the helicopter, joy in my heart that I was going to have a niece. Then I heard Gideon close the side of the helicopter and I jumped.

I’m kind of in need of some bravery right now. I’m scared.

When you’re afraid, you will trust in me.

When I heard Gideon say those words in my apartment, it kind of felt like you were speaking through him.

I was. You are stubborn, my child. You had to go with him.

It’s easy to say I will trust in you, but not so easy to do when you’re petrified. Maybe I shouldn’t say that. Will I go to hell?

You won’t go to hell. Being human isn’t easy. I understand that.

Is that why I’m freaking out about going up high into the air with a man I barely know.

Do you feel like you barely know him?

Does it matter how I feel? The fact is I barely know him.

I believe it matters how you feel. I’ve worked hard to bring you two back together. So tell me how you feel.

Do you know when I’m talking to you if I’m being honest or not?

Oh my child, you have always made me laugh. You talk to me often, and most of the time you aren’t being honest, but I always know what the truth is.

Then I don’t need to tell you.

I would like to hear it in your own words.

I blew out a breath, rubbing my hands together to warm them.

I guess I feel like I’ve always known parts of him. Like his mannerisms are familiar and his words ring true. I was angry for a long time with him. He treated me unkindly, but now I wonder if the alcohol clouded my judgment for too long. Maybe that’s why I never stopped thinking about him. I felt like we connected on a level that transcended casual sex, which I know you don’t approve of, so I repent my sins.

I swear I could hear laughing while I squeezed my eyes shut and waited.

If it weren’t for casual sex some of the most important people of all time wouldn’t have been born. Everything happens for a reason. I hope you have learned the reason for you and Gideon.

Me and Gideon? There’s a reason for us?

Of course there is. Why else would I put the life of one of my most special children in his hands?

But he’s so much older than I am.

He had to be, Katie. He walked a long journey to get to this place. He learned a lot of things he needed to know in order to be your protector. He is also your, what do you call them down there, soul mate?

I snorted loudly shaking my head.

I am not his soul mate. I’m so far out of his league of soul mates, I’m in left field.

Yet, you sit waiting for him, trusting him to keep you safe. I would say you’re already on first base.

I snickered
. I don’t think that means the same thing there as it does here.

Here it means you’ve already taken the first step to getting home.

The voice in my head was silent as I pondered the importance of trust, faith, soul mates, and home.

“I think we should be good to go,” he said, climbing in the cockpit. “All safety features check out.” He looked at his watch before setting a strange looking briefcase by my feet. “We should be at the hotel in fifty-seven minutes.”

“Exactly?” I asked, the tone of my voice teasing.

“Give or take a few depending, on the wind speed.”

He buckled his seatbelt and checked mine. “Have you ridden in a helicopter before?”

I shook my head, fear sitting at the base of my throat like a lump.

“You’ll love it. Take these headphones and we can talk the whole trip.”

I took the pair he held out and put them on my ears. He put on his, then started flipping gauges. I heard the engine engage and tapped his arm. When he looked over, he pointed at the mic by my lips.

“Sorry, I forgot already. I was going to ask if you let anyone know we’re leaving Snowberry.”

He kept up his flight checks and pointed at the case by feet. “That’s the satellite phone Sebastian was talking about. He knows we’re on our way. We don’t have to file a flight plan since I fly by vision, not by instrument. I’m thanking God for that right now.”

I gave him a less than beaming smile and he gave me a beaming thumbs up. I felt the helicopter start to shake. He worked the joystick as we twisted one way then the other. When I looked down we were already off the ground a few feet, hovering. When I looked back to the windshield we were skimming the ground at what seemed like a very fast rate.

“Doing okay?”

I heard his voice in my headphones and nodded, then remembered to use my voice.

“I can’t see much it’s so dark, but I’m okay. Why are we flying so low?”

“I’m just giving you time to get used to it.” He smiled at me and I grinned myself.

“Take her up, I’m ready.”

He pulled on the joystick and the chopper rose higher over the barren fields. What used to hold life-giving crops was now covered in lifeless snow. I wondered if I would be here to see the new seeds push through the snow come spring. One glance at him and I knew the answer. He would keep me safe until that time.

“I’m going to fly just above the tree line. The hotel is on the route I take down to Chicago. I’m trying to beat the snow. We can fly in snow if we have to, but I would rather not.”

“Me either.” I nodded, my eyes focused on the trees below us. With the light shining from below the chopper, you could see surprisingly well, once you got high enough.

“You’re smiling. What are you thinking about?” he asked in my ear.

“I learned to talk when I was young, like before I was one.”

“Why am I not surprised?” He was grinning and I resisted punching him in the shoulder, since he was piloting this thing.

“I couldn’t say certain words when I was little because my tongue wasn’t coordinated enough. One of those words was helicopter. I called it a hopter scopter for the first five years of my life.”

The grin grew on his face and he chuckled into the microphone. “I bet you were adorable as a little girl.”

“My brother didn’t think so. He was about eighteen months older. I was a real pest. Was it weird being an only child?”

“I guess I wouldn’t know because I had nothing to compare it to. It was lonely. I can tell you that. Now that I’m an adult, I wish I had someone else in my life to go to when things get hard. Like when my parents were dying and I was the only one here to take care of them. Don’t get me wrong, I cherished that time with them, but there was no one else to talk to about how awful it was to watch your parents die.”

I rubbed his shoulder, something that seemed safe in the small confines of the cockpit. “I’m sorry. I know her death was so recent it must be hard still. I do understand, even if you don’t think I do.”

He looked at me for a moment with deep consternation, but finally answered. “Each day is easier than the last. I had a long time to spend with her before she passed. I granted her final wishes by taking her ashes up into the sky so she could fall back down into the ocean with my father. They are happy together now, that’s comforting.”

I nodded, feeling a little saddened by his tale. I decided to change the subject. “Do you fly yourself back and forth to Hawaii? Doesn’t seem like a helicopter could hold enough fuel for that.”

He shook his head. “It can’t. I have a helo there I use for getting around the islands, but fly commercial to get to Honolulu.”

“So you have two helicopters?” I asked a little intimidated.

“This helo was actually my dad’s. It’s a 1985 Enstrom.”

“Wow, it’s in incredible shape for being that old.”

“It doesn’t have a lot of flight hours on it, but I’ve been using it to get around to my resorts on the lower forty-eight. I was originally planning to put some time on it before I sold it, but I haven’t been able to part with it yet.”

“I don’t think you need the money, right?”

He laughed in my ear and shook his head. “No, I’m definitely okay without the money I’ll get for this old bird.”

“Then maybe you should keep it. You obviously enjoy flying it. Maybe you should keep it for when you have a son. Then you can fly in it together just like you used to with your dad.”

He looked over at me for a split second and smiled. “Do you think my wife would let her little boy go up in this with me?”

I shrugged. “Maybe not when he’s tiny, but teaching a child to love something early in life is okay. I know I wouldn’t have a problem with it once he was old enough to sit still and understand what he was supposed to do in a cockpit.”

“You wouldn’t, huh? Do you want kids, Katie?”

“Wanting and having are two different things, Gideon.”

“What is that…”

A strange beeping started in the cockpit. He hit a few buttons, but it didn’t stop. The helicopter banked sharply and I grabbed the handle above the door.

“What’s going on?” I asked nervously.

“I don’t want you to freak out, but the engine just went out.”

“That’s the second time you’ve told me not to freak out in a matter of hours!” I exclaimed.

He nodded, concentrating on the ground below. “Because I don’t want you to freak out.”

“But we’re going to crash!”

He shook his head. “No. Katie, focus on my voice. See, there’s a secret a lot of people don’t know about helicopters. You can land them without an engine, if you know what you’re doing. It’s called autorotation.”

“Do you know what you’re doing?” I squeaked. He nodded, his tongue stuck between his teeth in concentration as he lowered the helicopter closer to a field below us.

“I know exactly what I’m doing. Do you see that field down there?”

I nodded, holding my breath. He kept lowering us down towards the ground in a strange up and down pattern.

“I’m going to put us down there. You can hear the blades still going right?”

“Yes,” I answered, my heart starting to palpitate in my chest.

“I’m going to hug you so hard when I get this hopter scopter down,” he said, keeping me calm. “Give me a few more feet…”

He stopped speaking as he concentrated. In a few more seconds I felt the ground connect with the guards of the helicopter. He flipped a bunch of switches all at once and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Like butter,” he whispered, turning to me.

I bent over and plugged my nose, blowing hard until my ears popped and I felt my heart rate slow again. I could feel his hand on my back.

“Katie, are you going to be sick?” he asked, reaching for something behind him.

I sat up slowly, thankful when my heart stayed in its normal rhythm.

“I’m okay,” I promised, trying to give him a confident smile then grasped his arm. “What happened to the engine? Did that guy sabotage us?”

He took his headphones off and I followed, hanging them on the hook behind our head. You could hear the blades slowing to a stop above us and I tried not to hyperventilate.

“I don’t think so. I checked everything before we left and there was nothing amiss. Stay inside while I go check the engine.”

He was outside tinkering for no more than a few minutes when he knocked on my door. I opened it so he could lean in.

“We aren’t fixing this tonight. The gas line is frozen. We’re done until I can get this indoors and figure out why. It might be sabotage, but clearly the guy didn’t know the kind of pilot he was dealing with.”

I sagged forward and he unbuckled my belt, pulling me over onto his shoulder.

“We’re okay, but we are kind of out in the open here, so I want to grab our go bags and head out to the hotel on foot. We’re only about a mile away.”

“We can’t just leave the helicopter here.”

He pointed to a tree line a few feet away. “We’re going to push it into the trees. I’ll call Graham on the satellite phone and give him the coordinates. He will have it picked up. All we have to worry about is getting to the hotel so they can extract us from that point.”

“Extract us from that point?” I asked. “I feel like I’m playing James Bond.”

He held out his hand. “Come on, Miss Moneypenny, I need a hand pushing this beast over to the trees.”

He flipped two wheels down on the back of the guards and together we pushed the surprisingly light machine towards the trees. There was only so far we could go, but at least from the small dirt road that ran along the right side of the field, you couldn’t see it in the dark. The daylight was another matter. He opened a hatch, pulled out our backpacks, and a very large shotgun that he wedged in the strap of one of the packs he had slipped on. He grabbed the satellite phone from the front of the cabin before he locked the door.

“Do you want to take a romantic stroll through the woods, babe?” He held out his hand and I inched closer to him.

“You said you were going to hug me when we landed.”

He grabbed the strap on my backpack and tugged me the rest of the way towards him. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

He put his arms around me and held me close to him. “I promised to keep you safe and I will.”

Snow started falling almost as if someone had flipped a switch. I sighed in resignation. “Doesn’t that just make the evening?”

He held me out by my shoulders and one hand came up to caress my cheek. “Snow can make a stroll in the woods very romantic.”

“How about I take your word for it, Casanova?” I asked before pointing to the fence along the road. “Why don’t we just walk on the road? If we walk through the woods, we’re going to get wet and possibly run into wild animals.”

He pulled me farther into the woods where the tree canopy was denser muting the snow.

“I would, but if he did sabotage my fuel line he may have a tracking device on the chopper. I didn’t see anything, but that doesn’t mean it isn't there. I’m not taking the chance he finds us by walking out in the open. You can make it a mile in the woods, right?” To answer I turned, marching back towards the helicopter until he grabbed my arm, “Wrong way.”

I wrenched my arm out of his. “No. Right way! We’re going to stay in that helicopter and you’re going to call Graham. He can come ‘extract’ us from here!” I flailed my arms around and he grabbed them, lowering them to my sides.

“If the engine doesn’t run we can’t keep it warm and it turns us into sitting ducks. Being on the move is a better idea. As soon as we get farther away from here, I’ll call Graham. We can do this.”

He grabbed my hand tugging me deeper and deeper still into the woods until I couldn’t see anything. I think he was reading my mind, because he pulled a small, but powerful, flashlight off the clip on his backpack and kept it aimed at our feet. We walked, our breathing heavy, listening for cars on the road or footsteps in the forest. All of it was exhausting and the cold was making me limp on my already sore knee. He slowed his steps and came back to me, putting an arm around my waist. My heart was pounding and I stopped, bending over.

“I don’t know how much farther I can go,” I said, coughing hard twice. I was rewarded with my heart rate slowing in my chest.

“We have to keep going, Katie. We should be reaching the hotel very soon.”