He hadn’t moved while she spoke, and she barely paused to take a breath before going on. “Since you’re on your way there, and you’ve got your own plane, I was wondering if I could hitch a ride with you back home?”
His intent gaze didn’t change for a long moment; he shattered her hopes with a shake of his head. “No, I can’t do that, and I’m in a hurry.”
“Why not?” she asked before he could disappear through the door the guard had just pushed open for him.
“It’s a company plane.” He held up one hand, palm toward her when she started to protest. “The rules are, no one gets on board who isn’t an employee or connected to the company in some manner. Sorry. Now I have to go.”
Merry swallowed hard. She should have simply told him she was Merry Casey back in the day, that her dad had worked on his parents’ ranch, fencing and running cattle. But she hadn’t, and he’d made up his mind. But she refused to give up. “Mr. Carson,” she began, but he cut her off again.
“No,” he said as he slipped off his ball cap, smoothed back his thick dark hair with one hand then tugged it back on with a sharp jerk of the bill. The action served to shadow his eyes even more. “Rules are rules. Now, I really have to go.”
Panic stricken, one last-ditch idea came to Merry—something that, if he agreed to it, wouldn’t break any rules.
“Mr. Cason, please listen for one minute?”
“This is not open for discussion.”
“I know, but I also know you’re the head of your own company, so the plane is technically yours... And since you’re the one who makes the rules, I think you could make an exception to break those rules just this one time for a neighbor.”
He countered that with, “It’s an insurance thing.”
“You said you take clients up in your plane?”
“Of course I do, when it’s called for,” he admitted, “but—”
She cut him off by reaching in her pocket and pulling out her small wallet. She took all of the bills she had left from her trip, just over a hundred dollars, and held it out to him. “Please, I want you to do some work for me. I’m hiring you, right now, right here, so then I’ll be your client.”
“That’s not going to happen,” he said roughly.
“I want you to design and make a bulletin board for me with ‘Kids Are Cool” at the top of the frame.” She plowed on. “Four feet by four feet, a perfect square and painted in primary colors, nothing too cute or sweet. Just bright and beautiful.”
His harsh expression eased a bit, and that seemed to soften the angular features of his tanned face. Even his eyes seemed a bit less intense. But he didn’t take the money. “I don’t do bulletin boards, only the buildings they hang in.”
She stared at her hand, which was still thrusting the money toward him, and hated the unsteadiness that was starting to show. “It’s a specialty job. I know you do them. A doctor at the hospital said you did one for him when the expansion was completed a few years ago. He brags about it, in fact—he said it was an add-on for the Radiology department.”
“What doctor?”
“Dr. Moses Blackstar.”
“He told you about me?”
She smiled at that. “Yes, he has. That work you did at the hospital is his favorite subject when it comes to you.”
“So you’re friends?”
“I’m on a government grant to The Family Center. I address the emotional and mental needs of challenged children, and he does the physical concerns. He’s basically overseeing the grant, and that means the doctor and I work together a lot.”
Gage cocked his head slightly to one side as if affording himself a better view of this crazy woman trying to hitch a ride with him. “I won’t even ask what’s in Wolf Lake that can’t wait a day, because I need to get in the air myself, and if you’re a friend of Moses’s, then I’ll take that as a recommendation.”
He took the money out of her hand, his heat brushing her skin for a second before he pushed the money in the pocket of his denim jacket. “Just let me know when you need the bulletin board by.”
She drew back quickly, slightly light-headed with the massive relief she was experiencing at his sudden agreement. “Remember, all primary colors,” she said a bit breathlessly as she pushed her now empty wallet back into her purse. When she looked up, he was already going through the open door and into the corridor.
“Come on. I can’t waste any more time,” he called back over his shoulder without looking, obviously certain she was following in his wake. And of course she was. She wasn’t about to let him out of her sight now. She got her bags, and took off down the metal tunnel that echoed with each footstep she took.
At the bend, she turned, and almost rammed into Gage’s back when he slowed to flat-hand a swinging door open to expose the cold gray day and a stretch of tarmac. As she stepped out, feeling the frigid air whip against her face, and gasping for breath, Gage stopped and swung back around. “Give me that,” he said without preamble, and grabbed her suitcase, then turned and kept going. Merry was tall and her legs long enough to keep stride with most men, but Gage was not only long legged, he was a very fast walker.
She caught up to him again at the door to a flat roofed hangar set up against a ten-foot chain-link security fence. “There’s a storm off to the east, and we need to be well out of its path before it gathers strength, but that’ll only happen if we load up and get out of here quickly.”
A storm? It did look like one might be coming, with the sun pretty much blocked from sight by a scattering of clouds. She nodded, yet not even thoughts of a distant storm could ruin her euphoria. She had never truly believed in miracles, but as she met Gage Carson’s probing gaze, she actually felt she was in the middle of one right then.
In a few minutes, she’d be in the air and in less than two hours, she’d finally be home.
* * *
GAGE CARSON DIDN’T have a clue why he’d agreed to take this woman with him, except for her connection to Moses, and that arguing with her would have taken up precious time before he could get in the air. Moses and Gage had been childhood friends, spending boundless days on the Rez or on the Carson Ranch with Jack and Adam—Gage’s brothers—and John Longbow, now the town sheriff. Gage would do anything for Moses, and since it had been clear that Merry Brenner wasn’t going to give up easily, it had been most expedient to agree.
He crossed directly to his plane, a new aircraft with very few hours on it. It was a huge relief that the reason he had to put down in Pueblo, a slight hesitation at cruising speed, had been a simple fix.
He opened the door to the onboard storage area between the back passenger windows and the tail of the plane and tossed in the luggage. He turned to get Merry’s other bag, expecting her to be behind him, but she was still over by the open double doors, staring nervously up at the plane. He crossed to take her other bag from her and said, “Let’s get this show on the road.”
It was then that she started babbling, just as she had when she’d been going on about needing the ride and Moses and custom jobs.
“I had no idea a corporate plane would be so small,” she’d started out with, and hurried onto, “It looks too little to fly, and only two really small engines, they don’t look as if they could actually get any plane up in the air. I mean, the weight has to be a lot, even if it is so...so compact.” At least she’d come up with a new word for small, he thought, and let her prattle on as he tossed her second bag in the