Suffocating. That was a good word to describe his life these days. An appropriate adjective for the frequent sensation that an unbearable weight had landed on his chest and was holding him in place, unable to move.
As Aunt Jean said, his breath had been stolen, his momentum stopped. All forward thought frozen in place, glued to that moment in time when a slick road and a blind curve had changed everything he and his family had known about their former lives.
“You need some excitement. An adventure. How long has it been since you’ve had sex?”
Reese coughed into his fist, the mouthful of air he’d just inhaled having lodged in his throat. “Aunt Jean …”
She grunted. “Oh, please, spare me. You need to get laid.”
“Jeez, can’t you bake or knit or something like a normal great-aunt?”
She ignored him. “Have you gotten any since that stupid Tate girl tried to get you to choose her over your family?” Not waiting for an answer, she continued. “You’ve got to do something more than deal with your sad mother, your squabbling sisters and your juvenile-delinquent brother.”
He stiffened, the reaction a reflexive one.
“Oh, don’t get indignant, you know it’s true,” she said. “I love them as much as you do, we’re family. But even apples from the same tree sometimes harbor an occasional worm.”
The woman did love her metaphors.
“So here’s what you do.”
“I knew you would get around to telling me eventually.”
She ignored him. “You simply must have an adventure.”
“Okay, got it. One adventure, coming right up,” he said with a deliberate eye roll. “Should I call 1-800-Wild Times or just go to letsgetcrazy.com?”
“You’re not so old I can’t box your ears.”
A grin tugged at his mouth. “The one time you boxed my ears as a kid, I put frogs in your punch bowl right before a party.”
An amused gleam lit her eyes. “So do it again.”
Reese’s brow furrowed. “Excuse me?”
“Be wild. Do something fun. Chuck this cautious-businessman gig and be the bad-ass rebel you once were.”
Bad-ass rebel? Him? The guy most recently voted Young Businessman of the Year? “Yeah, right.”
He didn’t know which sounded more strange—him being that person, or his elderly great-aunt using the term bad-ass rebel. Then again, she had just asked him when he’d last gotten laid—a question he didn’t even want to contemplate in his own mind.
She fixed a pointed stare at his face. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten who I had to bail out of jail one spring break. Which young fellow it was who ended up taking two girls to the prom. Or who hired a stripper to show up at the principal’s house.”
Oh. That bad-ass rebel. Reese had forgotten all about him.
“The world was your playground once. Go play in it again.”
Play? Be unencumbered, free from responsibilities?
Reese looked at the files on his desk. There was a mountain of order forms, requisitions, payroll checks, ad copy, legal paperwork—all needing his attention. His signature. His time.
Then there was his personal calendar, filled with family obligations, fixing his sister’s car, talking to his brother’s coach … doing father stuff that he hadn’t envisioned undertaking for another decade at least.
All his responsibility. Not in a decade. Now.
It wasn’t the life he’d envisioned for himself. But it was the life he had. And there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
“I’ve forgotten how,” he muttered.
She didn’t say anything for a long moment, then the elderly woman, whose energy level so belied her years, laughed softly. There was a note in that laugh, both secretive and sneaky.
“Whatever it is you’re thinking about doing, forget it.”
She feigned a look of hurt. “Me? What could I possibly do?”
He knew better than to be fooled by the nice-old-lady routine. She’d been playing that card for as long as he could remember and it had been the downfall of many a more gullible family member. “I’m going to leave a note that if I am kidnapped by a troupe of circus clowns, the police should talk to you.”
She tsked. “Oh, my boy, circus clowns? Is that the best you can come up with? I’m wounded—you’ve underestimated me.”
“Aunt Jean …”
Ignoring him, she turned toward the door. Before she exited, however, she glanced back. “I have the utmost confidence in you, dear. I have no doubt that when the right moment presents itself, you will rise to the occasion.”
With a quickly blown kiss and a jangle of expensive bracelets decorating her skinny arm, she slipped out. Reese was free to get back to work. But instead, he spent a few minutes thinking about what Great-Aunt Jean had said.
He didn’t doubt she was right about the fact that he was bored. Stifled. Suffocating. But her solution—to go a little crazy—wasn’t the answer. Not for the life he was living now. Not when so many people counted on him. His family. His employees. His late father.
Besides, it didn’t matter. No opportunity to play, as she put it, had come his way for a long time. Not in more than two years. The word wasn’t even in his vocabulary anymore.
And frankly, Reese didn’t see that changing anytime soon.
1
Halloween
IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN a routine flight.
Pittsburgh to Chicago was about as simple an itinerary as Clear-Blue Airlines ever flew. In the LearJet 60, travel time would be under an hour. The weather was perfect, the sky like something out of a kid’s Crayola artwork display. Blue as a robin’s egg, with a few puffy white clouds to set the scene and not a drop of moisture in the air. Crisp, not cold, it was about the most beautiful autumn day they’d had this year.
The guys in the tower were cheerful, the Lear impeccably maintained and a joy to handle. Amanda Bauer’s mood was good, especially since it was one of her favorite holidays. Halloween.
She should have known something was going to screw it up.
“What do you mean Mrs. Rush canceled?” she asked, frowning as she held the cell phone tightly to her ear. Standing in the shadow of the jet on the tarmac, she edged in beside the fold-down steps. She covered her other ear with her hand to drown out the noises of nearby aircraft. “Are you sure? She’s been talking about this trip for ages.”
“Sorry, kiddo, you’re going to have to do without your senior sisters meeting this month,” said Ginny Tate, the backbone of Clear-Blue. The middle-aged woman did everything from scheduling appointments, to bookkeeping, to ordering parts, to maintaining the company Web site. Ginny was just as good at arguing with airport honchos who wanted to obsess over every flight plan as she was at making sure Uncle Frank, who had founded the airline, took his cholesterol medication every day.
In short, Ginny was the one who kept the business running so all Amanda and Uncle Frank—now 60-40 partners in the airline—had to do was fly.
Which was just fine with them.
“Mrs. Rush said one of her friends has the flu and she doesn’t want to go away in case she comes down with it, too.”
“Oh,