Page 10 of Colton in the Wild
He also knew enough to help Jake push them off from the dock and then quickly make the jump aboard before she turned on the engine. A floatplane under power was moving, whether you wanted it to or not.
Spence chose the front seat, as she’d expected. At least he turned off auto-flirt when it was just them. And she knew he knew the basics of the instruments and controls, just in case.
She lowered the water rudders and upped the power to the engine until they were taxiing away from the RTA dock at a pace she was comfortable with. For some reason, a memory came back to her from a picnic-style gathering of RTA people the owners had hosted. She been the newest hire at the time, and as always, was grateful they’d taken a chance on her, a relatively inexperienced pilot. She’d been afraid she’d have to leave Alaska to get that first job. When she’d said as much, Ryan Colton, Spence’s dad, had smiled at her and said, “We like when we can hire people we already know and trust.”
“Too bad you can’t handle a boat, too,” one of their crew had joked. “I could use a break now and then.”
“The heck she can’t.” Spence had jumped in. “That plane’s a boat until it’s airborne.”
She’d wanted to hug him, and might have if there hadn’t been so many people there, including all of his family. That was the Spence she remembered, the boy with more discernment than anyone gave him credit for. Looking back now, she thought it was probably the moment when her high school crush on Spence Colton had reactivated. And refused to die, even when she watched him flirt with clients, because she knew, she just knew, there was more to him.
She even had proof, like the time they’d been prepping to take the Alexander family out to the main fishing camp. The parents had been worried the kids would get bored with no internet, so he’d talked to them a bit and found out they liked this one board game even if it was hopelessly old school. So, Spence had gone out and tracked down an edition of the game in a secondhand store and packed it up with the rest of the gear. When she’d realized what he’d done, she’d practically melted inside. That was the Spence she knew lived beneath the casual, carefree exterior. The Spence she remembered from the hours they’d spent together fighting through his quirky way of learning.
The Spence she’d never forgotten, for so many reasons. Even if the man sitting beside her now seemed like a surface imitation.
The takeoff was uneventful, as she’d hoped. Their destination, when they got there, would be a different matter. Partially because the lake was so much smaller and she’d have to taxi them out from the campsite to where she could utilize more of its length for takeoff. But it was also usually a bit windier there, which would help with faster liftoff.
She chuckled inwardly at herself.Get there first, before you worry about leaving.
“Something funny?” Spence asked, sounding wary.
“Just me getting ahead of myself,” she said.
“You always think ahead. It’s a requirement, isn’t it, to be as good as you are?”
Yes, that was one thing about Spence she could always count on. He never failed to compliment her on her flying. He might joke about everything else, might be a goofball sometimes about some things, but not about this.
“I do try to think ahead,” she agreed. “And thanks.”
He shrugged. “Truth is truth.”
Yes, it was. And the truth was the same as it had always been since the first time she’d laid eyes on Spence Colton and had felt a totally unexpected jolt of attraction. And that she knew she could never, ever have him, didn’t ease that feeling one bit.
Chapter 6
Spence wondered if the jolt of adrenaline he always felt when they took off was even a tenth of what she felt. One sideways glance at Hetty, at the sheer glow of exuberance, made him doubt it. Then again, when he looked out over the landscape below them as they banked and turned from the sound toward the mountains, he felt that burst of energy that always followed the knowledge that he was once more headed into the wild. So maybe it was just as powerful as what she felt, only different.
He looked down over the foothills—which would be considered mountains themselves in many places in the world—and saw that even the patches of snow that usually lingered in the shady, sheltered spots were gone. He wondered if he was strange, for being almost sad to see the last of the snow melt away. Maybe it was because they had fewer clients in the dead of winter, and he was more free to go trekking on his own. He knew his family worried when he, or Mitchell, took off alone as they were wont to do, but he was extra careful, always prepared, and then more careful.
This area was fairly close to Shelby and wasn’t as wild as some of the places he visited. Especially including those he kept to himself, never taking clients there even though to him they were the most beautiful places he’d ever been. There was nothing like standing looking at a gorgeous, crystalline lake, and only having to turn your head to see an unstoppable glacier creeping down from the peaks. Or having the eagles soaring overhead and sparing barely a glance for the insignificant human below.
He never felt more alive than when he was out in the vastness of it. The wildness was the reason he went to those places, and he didn’t want that to change. Didn’t want them on the list of places RTA took people. Selfish, perhaps, but there were some things he just wanted to keep to himself.
As he scanned the horizon ahead and on both sides, he felt the urge to go higher, so he could see more. Almost in the same instant, he felt the shift, the climb, and knew that she was already doing it. He turned his head to grin at them being in sync, just as she said, loudly enough to be heard over the noise since he hadn’t put on the plane’s headphones yet, “I just want to check the status of the main spots.”
He nodded and belatedly reached for the headphones, activated them and slipped them on.
“Just what I was going to suggest,” he said. “Last year the north camp didn’t become accessible until the beginning of August. Need to know that before we start booking anything there.”
She bobbed her head. They banked smoothly into a turn, and since she was intent on the maneuver, he felt free to watch her. It was so clear in her face, in her eyes, that she loved what she was doing, it might as well have been written in neon above her head. She loved flying as much as he loved exploring this place where he’d been lucky enough to be born.
He tried to remember, back in the days when it had just been the two of them in a classroom as she’d tried to help him figure out what seemed to come so easily to other kids, if she’d talked about learning to fly. He couldn’t remember that she had, but he’d been so focused on his own frustrations that he might not have noticed. He’d had a few appointments with people who could supposedly help him with his reading issues. None had. He knew his parents had been worried, so his mask of it not mattering to him got thicker, even with them. He’d hidden his problem from his friends for so long, feeling ashamed, they thought the times when he made some mistake were intentional, all part of that joking façade.
But because Hetty was practically family, and had volunteered to tutor him through a school mentoring program—and because he knew her well enough to know she would never use it against him—he had finally let it out.
And to his amazement, once he had explained, she’d made it her mission to find a way to help him. And she had never lost her temper with him, had never chastised him or gotten irritated or thrown in the towel. Never thought he was stupid, just different. And she ever and always ended a session with, “We’ll try again.”
And it had been Hetty who had come up with the idea that had finally worked, so that he was able to function almost normally in a written-word-driven world. And he would never forget that. He trusted her more than any person who wasn’t blood family, and all her teasing and jabbing couldn’t change that.
