Page 65 of Air Force One
“You two!”
Holly resisted jumping in surprise—barely. The plane was so big that she hadn’t felt it shift when the bodyguard boarded. Rather than bothering to come down the aisle, he shouted from the front. His pleasant tone to Inessa had gone walkabout. “Hurry the fuck up. And now she says not the blue sample case, bring the black one and the brown one. And she wants the red and gold suit bags. Woman has some goddamn dresses she wants to show to the shitty local clothing shops that even my girlfriend thinks are crap. Shit but it’s a good thing this job pays well.” Then he turned and stomped back off the plane.
While Mike extracted the suit bags, Holly snapped open the blue case as they’d initially been instructed. Inside was a fine selection of top-quality cold-and-foul gear, including a small knapsack. She showed it to Mike who smiled with relief, then she followed him off the plane toting the brown and black ones. Maybe she should lift weights more often, these things were seriously heavy. Inessa sure knew how to put on a show.
They did their best to look as uncaring as the bodyguard when they loaded everything into the van’s rear compartment. Then, just as they were about to pull away, Holly rapped on the bodyguard window’s glass.
He rolled it down and scowled at them.
She looked past him into the rear. “Hey, idiot pilot. I need the damned key to set up ground power and turn on the heater. Unless you want the nice lady to have to sit in a giant freezer when she comes back? Eh?”
He patted his pockets, then, “It’s in the cup holder by the right-hand seat. Do not damage my plane.”
“Da. Da.” She waved them away as bored as could be.
61
It took a bit of figuring out, but they found the connector for land power and managed to scrounge up an electrical cable to plug in the plane. After they fetched their gear bag, they climbed aboard and closed the door.
Mike went into the cockpit, seriously unhappy, while she took their gear aft and began sorting it. After a while, the heat came on and soon, thankfully, she could no longer see her breath.
“Well done,” she shouted forward.
“Go jump in a billabong with a gang of your salties, Harper.”
Mike actually cursing her with Australian salt water crocodiles as the threat? She wanted to go and hug him. Hell with that; she wanted to jump him. Mike never let her down.
Holly stopped what she was doing and stared at his back fifty feet away.
Seriously? She tried to remember and couldn’t think of once.
Had she ever let him down? The knot in her stomach answered that far too well.
“Hey, Mike.”
He didn’t respond, but he probably didn’t hear her. It came out as little more than a whisper.
She laughed at herself. He was busy trying to inhale enough knowledge to not kill them when he had to fly the plane. She’d tell him later.
Unless there wasn’t a later. The odds on this working were still longer than a roo’s tail.
Her walk forward turned into a trot, then a run though they weren’t all that far apart.
When she reached him, leaning forward to study one of the screens he’d managed to power on, she grabbed his head and turned him to face her. Then she kissed him hard. Kissed him with all her apologies and fears and hopes. Slowly at first but, getting with the program plenty fast, his hands came up to frame her face.
After five years of living together, there shouldn’t be new levels to something as simple as a kiss, but there were. It escalated and swirled about them. Not like sex, though there was plenty of that electricity between them. More as if, for the first time, she really meant it.
When it shifted from kiss to awkward embrace—he was deep in the pilot’s chair and she was leaning over the central control panel that filled the space between the two cockpit seats—she nuzzled his ear and whispered.
“I love you, Mike. I just wanted you to know that.”
“Love you, too, Harper.” The first person to say it, who she believed, since the death of her brother.
“For as long as we both shall live.”
He chuckled, actually chuckled. “Let’s just make sure that’s longer than today, okay?”
“Deal!” She slid back enough that they could shake on it. Then she pictured the couch at the very rear of the plane. Shifting away, she didn’t release his hand. He clambered out of the pilot’s seat and followed her aft.
