Page 184 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

Strange. Because it was freezing.

“Come on,” she shouted over the roar of the wind. She got into the cockpit, and then walked over the seats and into the main part of the plane. She opened the door there, and yelled down below. “Climb on in. You’re getting added to my cargo.”

He got into the plane, and looked around. It was sparse. There was a chair that faced sideways next to all the cargo. And then there was her seat up in the cockpit. There was a copilot seat, but she would not be inviting a stranger to sit up there with her.

“Have a seat.”

She did her preflight checks, including looking at her report from the mechanic and making sure everything checked out as being in good order. She signed off on the report, and passed it out of the cockpit to the bundled-up man standing on the tarmac.

“What are you transporting?” her passenger asked.

“A few things.” She did a physical check of the instruments and waited for her all clear from the tower.

“Your box says wedding.”

“Yeah. Some royal shindig out at Martha’s Vineyard? I don’t know. I’ve got flowers I think. On ice. Not that we’re short on ice.”

“True,” he said. “You don’t recognize me?”

“Do you recognizeme?”

He lifted a brow. “Should I?”

“Not any more than I should recognize you, I reckon. Unless we met and I don’t remember. I do meet a lot of people in my line of work.”

“We haven’t met.”

“All right, then.”

“What’s your name?”

“Stevie,” she said. “Buckle up. I gotta get going. We’ve only got a small break in the weather here, and I gotta get up above these mountains.”

“All right.”

He sat down.

Right then, she got the go-ahead from the tower.

“Buckle,” she ordered.

“As you wish.”

He did.

She engaged the engines, and the propellers began to turn.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” she said. “Going to be rough.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

The casual vernacular sounded strange with his accent.

“I don’t want a lawsuit on my hands or anything.” The plane began to trundle down the runway, and Stevie felt a kick of adrenaline. She flew almost every day, but the rush of knowing that she was going to make it out of here, the triumph of having defeated the storm, gave her a slightly spicy feeling at the moment.

“Here we go.” They picked up speed, the wind pushing them along, turning them into an icy bullet as they shot down the runway, and began to achieve liftoff.

And then, they were airborne.

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