‘Hello, Jack.’
‘Andie...’ He took her hand, kissed her cheek, then looked up as Cleve joined them. ‘Cleve. Good to see you,’ he said, not quite quick enough to hide his shock at Cleve’s pallor. Any other time, any other man, Jack would have made a joke about women pilots, she would have rolled her eyes, and they would have got on with it.
‘Jack.’ Cleve’s brief acknowledgement did not encourage small talk.
‘Right, well, we’re all ready for you.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Andie, you’ll be interested in seeing the updates we’ve incorporated into the latest model of the Mayfly to come off the production line.’
It was a plea not to leave him alone with Cleve but, with the tension coming off him in waves, she wasn’t going anywhere.
‘I can’t wait,’ she said, touching her hand to Cleve’s elbow, a gentle prompt forward, and she felt the shock of that small contact jolt through him. She caught her breath as the responding flood of heat surged back along her arm, momentarily swamping her body.
She held her breath, somehow kept her smile in place as he pulled away from her.
‘The new tail design is largely down to Andie,’ Jack explained to Cleve as they walked towards the hangar. ‘The sooner she gets tired of life at altitude and gets back to the design office, the better.’
‘Miranda was born to fly,’ Cleve said before she could answer.
‘No doubt, but my time will come.’ Jack grinned confidently. ‘Some lucky man will catch her eye and she won’t want to be up and down all over the place once she starts a family.’
Desperate to cover the awkward silence that followed Jack’s epic foot-in-the-mouth moment, she crossed to the aircraft, sleek and gleaming white but for the new tail that bore the stylised red, gold and black goldfinch identifying the ever-growing Goldfinch Air Services fleet.
‘She’s a beauty, Jack.’
She turned to Cleve for his reaction but he looked hollow and she thought, not for the first time, that this very public support of Marlowe Aviation and the aircraft her father built had been a mistake.
‘Why don’t we go and deal with the paperwork first?’ she suggested. ‘If Immi’s in a good mood she might make us—’
‘Let’s get this over with,’ Cleve said, cutting her off before she could suggest a bracing cup of tea. But she was the one making all the right noises, asking all the questions as Jack ran through the new design details.
The chief engineer’s relief when a loudspeaker message summoned him to take a phone call was palpable.
‘I’m sorry but I have to take this,’ he said, handing her the clipboard. ‘We’ve just about finished the externals. Why don’t you take her out, try a few circuits? Get a feel for her.’
‘Thanks, Jack,’ she said, when Cleve did not reply. ‘We’ll see you later.’
‘I’ll be in the office...’
She gave him a reassuring nod when he hesitated, then turned back to Cleve.
He was staring at the aircraft, his face set as hard and grey as concrete. Her hand hovered near his elbow but she was afraid that if she touched him again he would shatter.
As if he sensed her uncertainty, he said, ‘Go and find your sister, sort out your dress. I’ve got this.’
‘I don’t think so.’ He turned on her but before he could speak she said, ‘You’re not fit to fly a kite right now.’
They seemed to stand there for hours, staring one another down and then, as if a veil had been lifted to reveal all the pain, all the grief he was suffering, his face seemed to dissolve.
Before she could think, reach for him, he’d turned and stumbled from the hangar.
The airfield was bounded on one side by a steeply wooded hill and in the few moments it had taken her to gather herself he had reached the boundary.
‘Stop!’
She grabbed his arm and he swung around. For a moment she thought he was going to fling her aside but instead he caught hold of her, pulling her to him and, his voice no more than a scrape against his vocal cords, he said, ‘Help me, Andie...’
He hadn’t called her that since the days when he’d teased her, encouraged her, kissed her in the shadowy corners of her father’s aircraft hangar and her stupid teenage heart had dreamed that one day they would fly to the stars.
He was shaking, falling apart and she reached out, slid her arms around his chest, holding him close, holding him together until he was still.
‘I’m sorry—’
She lifted a hand to his cheek and realised that it was wet with tears.
‘I can’t—’
‘Hush...’ She touched her lips to his to stop the words, closing her eyes as he responded not with the sweet, hot kisses that even now filled her dreams, but with something darker, more desperate, demanding. With a raw need that drilled down through the protective shell that she’d built around her heart, that she answered with all the deep-buried longing that she’d subsumed into flying.
She felt a shiver go through him.
‘Andie...’
There was such desperation in that one word and she slid her hands down to take his, hold them.
‘You’re cold,’ she said and, taking his hand, she led the way along the edge of the runway to the gate that led to her parents’ house. She unlocked the door and led him up the stairs and there, in the room filled with her old books, toys, dreams, she undressed him, undressed herself and then with her mouth, her hands, her body—giving him all the love hoarded inside her—she warmed him.
EXHAUSTED, A LITTLE SHAKY from a rough ferry crossing, Andie handed her passport to the border control officer.
‘Buongiorno, signora.’ He glanced at the back page of her passport and then gave her the kind of searching look a Roman traveller landing in the ancient port of Sant’Angelo two thousand years ago would have recognised. The kind of look that would bring even the most innocent traveller out in a guilty sweat. ‘What is the purpose of your visit to L’Isola dei Fiori?’
‘I’m running away,’ she muttered.
From her job, her life, from the man she’d been in love with since the life-changing moment when he’d applauded her touchdown in a treacherous crosswind.
Hiding the secret she was carrying.
‘Scusi?’
She swallowed down the lump in her throat. ‘I’m on holiday.’
He did not look convinced. She didn’t blame him but the clammy sweat sticking her shirt to her back had nothing to do with guilt.
‘You are travelling alone?’ he asked.
That rather depended on your definition of alone...
She nodded. ‘Yes, I’m on my own.’
‘And where are you staying?’
‘At Baia di Rose. The Villa Rosa.’ His brow rose almost imperceptibly. ‘My sister inherited it from her godmother. Sofia Romana,’ she added, in the face of his scepticism.
The man’s eyebrows momentarily lost touch with gravity. Clearly the mistress of the late King Ludano would not be everyone’s choice as godmother but Sofia had started school on the same