Come Fly With Me (35 page)

“Okay,” Sloan agreed, equally loudly.

“Bet?” Grier screeched, then winced at her own voice. “You bet on me?”

“Damn straight we bet on you.” Sloan moved them determinedly toward the door. “And I’m quite confident in the outcome.”

Mick knew it was small of him, but he was perfectly content to hide out in the meeting center’s kitchenette with a cup of coffee as all of Indigo filed in for their monthly town hall meeting.

As mayor, Walker’s grandmother, Sophie, ran the meetings on a tight schedule, and the pre-meeting rumbling had hit a fever pitch. He threw his cup away and
walked back into the hall. Of its own accord, his gaze scanned the room for Grier and his stomach tightened when a full sweep produced no sign of her.

Maybe it was for the best.

He had no interest in laying his feelings bare for the entire town. What he had to say to her needed to be said in private. He snagged his usual seat in the middle of the room, next to Walker, and hoped the agenda was a short one.

Sloan sat to Walker’s left and Avery was next to her. They both smiled at him, their bright grins far more supportive than he’d have expected after the fight he’d had with Grier.

Not that it mattered all that much. It was Grier’s support he had to win.

As Sophie rapped the gavel to order, his thoughts drifted to what he was going to say and how.

A man had to work his way up to “I love you,” after all. The words didn’t just come pouring out of their own accord.

Sophie opened the meeting with an update on some proposed town improvements and then shifted gears into the upcoming Valentine’s dinner dance. In a town drunk on love, the grandmothers supported that event with almost as much gusto as their annual bachelor competition.

“Does anyone have anything to add to the motion?”

Mick tuned back into the meeting when Kate Winston, who sat across the aisle from him, raised her hand and stood. Kate was notoriously quiet, so the fact she had even raised her hand was a surprise. He turned to
stare at her, more than curious as to what she was going to say, when something hit him in the shoulder.

As he turned to see what it was, something hit him from behind as well. A white paper floated toward the ground from where it ricocheted off his shoulder and he reached for it.

A paper airplane?

As he pulled it closer, he could see writing on the wing.

OPEN ME.

Kate was forgotten as he opened the piece of paper. And his heart stopped as he read the words.

I’M SORRY.

On a heavy thud, his heart started up again, triple its usual speed. Walker handed over the second airplane and Mick saw writing on its wing as well. Opening the paper, he read more printed words.

CAN YOU FORGIVE ME?

A light noise started to rumble through the hall as more paper headed his way, the folded airplanes coming at him from all directions. Mick stood and turned in a circle, taking in the town assembled around him.

And then he couldn’t see anything else as Grier stood at the back of the hall and walked down the center aisle toward him. Her face held a solemn expression he couldn’t read as the urge to touch her nearly overwhelmed him.

She stopped a few rows away and produced a pink airplane from behind her back. With swift, efficient movements, she sent it sailing straight toward him where it landed in the middle of his chest.

Mick caught it before it could hit the ground, and Grier smiled for the first time.

“Open it.”

As he unraveled the neatly folded paper, he saw more words printed inside.

I LOVE YOU.

The words swelled in his chest and came out before he could even think to hold them back. There was nothing to work up to because the words were simply there.

“I love you, too.”

Grier moved forward then and he opened his arms to pull her close.

“I love you, Mick.”

“Kiss her!” Hooch’s unmistakable shout came from his perch in the front row.

“We have a lot to work out,” he whispered softly.

“Do you want to work it out?”

“God yes.”

“Then kiss me before Sophie has to rap her gavel for order.”

Mick smiled, the pain and anxiety that had filled him for days evaporating. She’d beaten him to the punch, declaring her love first, but he didn’t mind.

Grier was here. She was in his arms. And she loved him.

If she asked him to, he could fly.

M
ary let out a small sigh at the satisfying sound of a popped cork. “How’d you swipe that out of the hotel?”

“I swiped nothing,” Julia said in mock horror as she puttered around her kitchen, grabbing glasses and small appetizer plates as she went. “Avery’s a good girl who’s willing to share her stash of Rothschild.”

Julia carried the bottle and glasses over to the table and lined up her wedding crystal. She diligently pulled it out each and every week for their girls’ night in. Mary could never stop the small twinge that had her wishing Julia would toast someone other than her girlfriends with the glasses.

“So, I want to go first.” Sophie picked up her glass as soon as Julia had finished pouring.

Mary and Julia lifted their glasses.

“Two down and one to go.”

“Sophie!” Julia hushed her. “Don’t jinx it.”

“It’s not a jinx if it’s true.” Sophie’s retort was quick and absolute.

“Oh, don’t put on your mayor voice,” Mary
admonished her. “Julia’s right. Avery and Roman need all the good mojo they can get.”

“If it’s even supposed to be the two of them.” Julia stared into her wine. “She is going to Ireland.”

“She’s meant for Roman.” Sophie’s voice remained resolutely stubborn. “She can’t end up with anyone else.”

Julia shrugged, but Mary understood the concern. She’d had more than a few tense moments worrying about Mick and Grier. These things weren’t guaranteed, no matter how right you thought something was.

“When it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be,” Sophie persisted. “Like Mick and Grier. I kept one of the paper airplanes, by the way.”

“I did, too,” Julia said.

“Me, too.” Mary giggled. “And aren’t we a bunch of hopeless romantics?”

“Hopeful, Mary,” Julia said quickly. “Hopeful.”

“To hopeful.” Mary raised her glass.

“Speaking of hopeful…” Sophie clinked her glass before turning thoughtful. “Has Grier heard from Kate? I’m glad to see something good happen for that girl.”

Mary related all she knew. “A few days ago. She’s enjoying New York and having fun getting to know Jason.”

“Do we see another wedding on the horizon?”

“Grier said they’re taking it slow. Kate’s staying in her apartment as she and Jason get to know each other.” Before Julia could say anything, Mary added, “The milk’s still free, but the girl’s got enough sense to learn how to be by herself, too.”

“Oh, Mary, get off your high horse.” Julia poked her in the ribs. “You didn’t exactly close down the dairy when you and Charlie were dating.”

Mary poked her back. “Of course I didn’t. This is Alaska. You have to find some way to stay warm.”

“So, how are Grier and Mick?”

“He’s helping her get Jonas’s house fixed up now that she’s moved in with him. Mick and Jack have been interviewing pilots and they’ve found someone. And Grier’s tax business seems to be thriving. Everyone’s delighted they don’t have to leave Indigo to get the help of an accountant.”

“So the new pilot’s going to rent the house when he gets here?” Julia took a sip of her wine. “That’s great.”

“
She’s
going to rent the house.”

“Mick and Jack are hiring a woman pilot?”

“Yep.”

“Maggie must be beside herself.”

“She doesn’t know yet.”

Sophie practically rubbed her hands together with glee. “So we know first.”

“Yep.” Mary nodded proudly. “I say we keep it a secret until she arrives. Have a little fun with it.”

The three of them clinked glasses again. “Hear, hear.” Sophie nodded firmly. “It’ll give us a head start.”

“Head start?” Julia said. “Head start on what?”

“We need to find her a bachelor.”

A
very watched Sloan walk down the aisle of the small A-frame nondenominational church that dominated one end of Main Street and thought she’d never seen a more radiant bride. But it was Walker’s incandescent smile as the bride’s and groom’s gazes met that would have caused any woman to sigh in ecstasy.

Grier reached over and squeezed her hand, a bright smile shining through her tears. Avery squeezed back, the sappy feelings that had filled her back in her room winging through her chest again in a heady rush.

So why the hell—in the middle of a moment of sweet, glorious perfection—did she clamp her eyes on her ex-boyfriend?

Roman stared back at her, his green gaze as compelling as it was when she was sixteen. Add in the fact that all six feet, four inches of him was decked out in a custom-fit tuxedo, and her traitorous body gave a leap of appreciation that wasn’t quite appropriate for church.

One dark eyebrow lifted over those emerald green eyes in silent challenge, and Avery fought the urge to stick out her tongue.

Damn the man—he’d make a stripper blush, with those bedroom eyes and the thick, luscious hair that just begged to be mussed.

And wasn’t that the problem?

Everything was way too easy for Roman and it always had been.

It had just taken her too long to understand that fact.

Dragging her gaze away, Avery focused on the bride. Grier took her flowers as Sloan stood beside Walker, and Avery quickly refluffed the train so it lay evenly on the aisle.

Jobs completed, she and Grier met the groomsmen, Mick and Roman, and they escorted them the few brief steps to their front-pew seats. Roman grasped her arm and it took everything inside her to keep her gaze straight and her smile firmly fixed as the entire town of Indigo looked on with interest.

“You look beautiful.”

Avery swallowed hard at the warm breath in her ear, those inconvenient feelings rising once more in her clenched belly.

“Thank you.”

She took her seat, the words playing over and over in her mind.

So many images stood out in her memories of the two of them, but the one at the top of the list was the year they began to notice each other as more than friends. Roman had whispered in her ear in the middle of a soccer match on the town square. He’d told her where to line up a shot and she’d nearly melted into a
puddle as his words skittered down her spine, light as feathers and as powerful as an avalanche.

The sensation had taken her so off guard—because of a mixture of inexperience and the sudden change in a relationship she’d had since grade school—that she’d pushed him away with a smart-ass retort. But she’d thought about his words long into the night as she lay wrapped up in her tiny bed in the back room of her mother’s house.

Clearly not much had changed in eighteen years.

“You ready?”

Avery felt Grier’s quick poke to her thigh and realized she’d nearly missed her cue. She and Grier returned to the altar to help Sloan with her dress, then moved to the side as Mick and Roman stepped forward to flank Walker.

Mick produced two shining platinum bands from his vest pocket and laid them on the reverend’s open Bible.

Avery watched with rapt fascination as Walker slid the band effortlessly onto Sloan’s finger, and moments later when her friend returned the gesture. And when the couple kissed for the first time as husband and wife, the entire church let out a communal cheer.

Walker and Sloan began their walk back down the aisle and Mick and Grier followed. It was only when Roman took her arm once more to begin their procession through church that a thin layer of panic seized her throat.

Broad smiles greeted them as they moved down
the aisle, their progress slow as many guests stopped Walker and Sloan with hugs. Hooch even threw Avery an oversized wink that his wife, Chooch, responded to with an equally oversized elbow to his stomach.

Roman seemed oblivious as they walked, his arm locked steadily with hers. She snuck a glance at his chiseled profile and—miracle of miracles—it looked as though he’d missed Chooch and Hooch’s antics. As if sensing her attention, he turned with a smile.

“I haven’t felt this on display since I did a calendar shoot for charity.”

Avery involuntary sucked in a breath. She’d seen that calendar when someone had bought a copy for Susan, her boss at the hotel. She’d even given herself permission to go look at it late one night when she was manning the front desk by herself.

Long ropes of muscles accentuated his arms from shoulder to wrist, and thick ridges sculpted his abdomen. He’d always been well built, but the man that stared back at her from the photograph, wearing nothing but a strategically placed towel, took her breath away.

He was magnificent.

A warrior.

And he had been as foreign to her as if a stranger had stared back from the page.

Pulling herself from the heated memory, Avery just shrugged as those inconvenient flutters once again filled her stomach. “Small towns.”

A slight smile grooved his cheeks as he leaned in. “So why don’t we really give them something to talk about?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her hiss was low enough not to be heard by anyone else, but no one in the remaining pews between them and the door would miss the fury in her eyes.

“If you’re so worried about what everyone thinks, let’s make it worth their while. Have a little fun.”

“I’m not worried about what people think.”

Fresh air greeted them as they finally made their way through the doors of the church, and Avery dragged her arm from his.

“Could have fooled me.”

Avery flung a hand in the direction of the church, even as she stomped across the small front lawn to give them some privacy. “Did you not miss how on display we were in there? The exuberant winks and broad grins, everyone so delighted we were walking down that aisle together? Like
we
were the ones getting married.”