Come Fly with Me (16 page)

When they reached the store and threw
open the door, Grace and Jeb greeted them with welcoming smiles. The pair quickly took in the fact that Lindsay's hand was firmly grasped in Mark's and their eyes lit with the approval of a couple of dedicated matchmakers.

“Howdy, you two,” Jeb bellowed enthusiastically. “Get in here and get that door shut. It's colder outside than a witch's...”

“Jeb!” Grace thundered warningly, then beamed at them. “Sit down. I'll get some tea. Or would you rather have hot chocolate?”

“Oh, hot chocolate sounds wonderful,” Lindsay sighed. “If it's not too much trouble.”

“Not a bit. It's Mark's favorite too.”

Lindsay caught the triumphant gleam in his eye. He actually considered their mutual desire for hot chocolate a point in his favor on the unevenly tipped scale of their romance. He apparently figured Lindsay and Grace would grasp the significance of it, too.

“So, what brings you two out from in front of a warm fire?” Jeb asked. “Just come down to get the mail, did you?”

“Not exactly,” Mark said. “I want Grace to do something for me.”

“What's that?” she called from the back room.

“I want you to propose to Lindsay for me,” he said perfectly calmly, as Jeb suddenly hooted wildly and slapped his knee.

“Hey, Grace! Did you hear that? This ought to be a good one,” he snickered. He settled back in his rocker and watched them expectantly.

“Mark!” Lindsay protested weakly as embarrassment flooded through her.

“Well,” Mark retorted defensively, “that's what we came down here for.”

“We did not. We came to visit.”

“Maybe you came to visit. I came to get Grace to propose to you.”

Grace poked her head around the doorway. “Any reason you can't do your own proposing, young man?” she inquired sternly.

“She won't listen to me.”

“Then what on earth makes you think she'd listen to me?”

“I thought you could tell her about my finer points, sort of act as my agent.”

“Don't mention agents,” Lindsay said with a shudder. “If you get Morrie in on this, I'll walk out on you for sure.”

“No Morrie,” he agreed. “I think this needs a woman's touch. Come on, Grace. You can do it.”

“I'm thinking the girl must have a pretty good reason for saying no to a man like you. She's been locked away in the cabin all alone with you for days now. She's probably seen a side of you the rest of us don't know about. Maybe she doesn't love you.”

“Of course, she loves me,” Mark retorted indignantly. “She's just being stubborn.”

“Stubborn!” Lindsay said indignantly. “I am not being stubborn. I am just trying to preserve life as I know it.”

“What's that mean?” Jeb wanted to know.

“It means she doesn't like cold weather,” Mark answered.

“Don't blame her much. My bones are beginning to take a mighty strong dislike to all these howling winds too.”

“Your bones are a lot older than hers, you old coot,” Grace barked, as she brought in a tray with steaming mugs of hot chocolate. “Besides, ain't nobody stopping you from moving to Arizona or Florida, if that's what you want.”

“You won't go.”

“Of course, I won't go. I like it here. What's that got to do with anything?”

“You blasted well know I'm not going anywhere without you, Grace Tynan, not after all these years.”

“Then settle back and hold your arthritic old hands over the stove and keep your mouth shut. Let Mark and Lindsay try to work this out.”

“Seems to me they're not doing too well on their own, if they had to come down here to get you to run interference,” Jeb shot back.

“You, of all people,” he added in disgust.

“What's that supposed to mean, Jeb Davis?” Grace demanded, her blue eyes flashing dangerously.

“Just that you ought to be paying a little more attention to your own life and not worrying about everyone else's.”

“He might have a point there,” Mark said helpfully, as Grace glared at him.

“Mark Channing, unless you want me to tell this woman to run for her life, you'd best not be siding with Jeb.”

“Oh, are there two different sides here?” he asked innocently. “I was kind of hoping you two were on the same one.”

“In a pig's eye,” Grace sniffed. “We're getting off the subject anyway. If you want Lindsay to marry you, then you're just going to have to convince her you love her.”

“She knows I love her.”

“And you're sure she loves you?”

Lindsay was beginning to get the feeling that neither of them remembered that she was around. Jeb shrugged and gave her a sympathetic, I-know-what-you're-up-against look.

“Of course, she loves me. I've already told you that.”

“Then what's the problem?”

“The problem,” Lindsay interrupted emphatically, “is that your pigheaded friend here expects me to do all of the compromising.”

“Ahh. I see. Like what?”

“Like giving up my career and moving here to flounder around in snow up to my knees.”

“There's no snow in the summer,” Mark pointed out cheerfully.

“Then let's just live here in the summer,” she countered.

“Good,” Grace said approvingly. “Now that's a compromise.”

“But I love it here in the winter,” Mark said plaintively.

Lindsay threw up her hands. “See what I mean?”

“Yes. I think I do.” Grace scowled at Mark. “Which do you love more: winters in Boulder or Lindsay?”

Lindsay chuckled as she watched the play of expressions on Mark's face. “Shoe's on the other foot now, isn't it?” she said gleefully.

“Yes,” he conceded grudgingly.

“How's it feel?”

“It's damned uncomfortable.”

Lindsay gave Grace a grateful look. “Thank you.”

“Anytime.”

She gazed into Mark's troubled eyes. “Want to go back now?”

“Why not?” he said, his tone suddenly defeated. “I suppose you'll want to leave now.”

“Yes,” she said softly, her eyes catching his, her lips curving into a slow, easy smile. “I think it's time I started packing.”

“Okay. Let's go.”

“Of course,” she said, gazing at him impishly, “I didn't bring all that much.”

Mark's eyes lit up. “So?”

“I suppose it could wait until morning.”

I
t was a long, long time until morning and Mark filled every minute with incredible tenderness and spellbinding passion. Lindsay had nothing to compare it with, but she knew intuitively that what was happening between them was unique, that she would capture this sort of wildly sensuous responsiveness and wanton abandonment with no other man.

As dawn approached, Lindsay could read the sadness in Mark's eyes, knew that it was reflected in her own, but they had talked for
hours and eventually she had been able to make him see that it was too soon for unwilling compromises. They had come together for an explosive moment in time and now they needed time apart to sort things out. They each had to find their own way back into each other's arms.

“You know that once you leave, it will be that much harder for you to come back,” Mark said as he sat propped up in bed and watched her pack the few things she had brought with her for what had been meant to be nothing more than a brief business trip, but had turned into an unbelievably romantic, once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“Not if it's right,” she countered. “If we were meant to be, we'll find a way to make it work. And if we weren't, then...”

She found she couldn't complete the thought because the idea of not spending the rest of her life with Mark suddenly terrified her. Already the thing she had feared most had happened. She was captivated by an intriguing man and no amount of distance and perspective was likely to change that. She wanted to run straight back into his arms, to snuggle next to him under the covers and feel
the crisp hairs on his chest as they taunted her bare skin, to feel his warmth and strength and love surround her with an astounding beauty. She wanted to stay there and never let him go.

But she knew it would be wrong. If they didn't work out their differences about the future in a way that was right for both of them they would make each other miserable in the end. And there had to be a way to do that, she reassured herself. There had to be! Two people as in love as they were could not be kept apart.

The drive to the airport seemed to take forever over roads made hazardous by a fresh coating of ice. Mark's hands gripped the wheel with white-knuckled intensity and Lindsay knew it was not entirely due to the condition of the highway. He hated letting her go even more than she hated leaving. The tension in his body had told her that—from the instant they had left Jeb and Grace the previous night. Even at the height of passion, there was no emotional release for him. Instead, there had been only a growing sorrow and desperation that had made each taking of her willing body more urgent. There had been
exciting peaks of violent, soul-shaking shudders, but no aftermath of calm.

At the airport Mark left her alone at the check-in counter for several minutes. She was still in line when a familiar, beloved hand reached over her shoulder and held out a chocolate bar and a bag of chocolate-covered almonds. Lindsay turned and gave him a wobbly grin and felt sudden tears well up in her eyes. She tried to blink them away before he could see them, but she was too late. He brushed away the single tear that had escaped and rolled down her cheek.

“Don't go,” he urged softly.

“I have to.”

Her hand reached out to caress his cheek, lingering at the spot where a smile would create one of his beloved dimples. Except there was no smile now and he trembled visibly beneath her touch.

“You don't have to. You want to.”

“Mark, we've been all through this. We need time. Things happened too fast. You're asking me to make changes in my life I'm not ready to make. Commitment. A move. Giving up my career. A few days ago those ideas were the farthest things from my mind. I
couldn't have imagined, then, ever loving anyone the way I love you.”

“And now that you do?”

“I need time to figure out what to do about it and so do you. I can't be the only one to make concessions. It's going to take compromises from both of us to make this work.”

“Just don't forget about me,” he said and there was such vulnerability in his voice that Lindsay was touched beyond measure.

“How could I ever forget about you?” she teased gently. “You taught me to ski.”

He grinned and the fleeting hint of a dimple taunted her. “At the time, you didn't consider that a point in my favor.”

“Maybe in time I will,” she said, sliding her arms around his waist, molding her body into the fit of his, trying to absorb the scent and feel of him, so that the memories would last for however long they were separated. “I do love you, Mark.”

He kissed her then, his lips hard and urgent against hers, his tongue seeking, demanding a promise that she could not give him verbally. Her body gave it to him, though. Her senses yielded to his questing lips, wanting
him yet again after a night that had been filled with so much loving.

Then reluctantly, when she wanted most to stay, she turned and walked away, trying to still the sobs that threatened to overcome her and reveal the depth of her own vulnerability.

Once she was on the plane, Lindsay tried to convince herself that time and perspective would lessen the intensity of what she had found with Mark, that while she might go on loving him, just as she had assured him she would, there would no longer be this horrible, aching need inside her. She was sure that once she was caught up in her old life, the memories would fade, lose their allure and give her peace again.

Except it didn't work out quite that way.

After only a few days back on the job, she discovered that she missed Mark as she had never missed the traveling and hotel rooms and late-night meetings that she'd left behind during her stay in Boulder. While she didn't miss the snow exactly, she found herself thinking longingly of those cozy hours in front of the fire with Mark's arms securely around her, the love in his eyes caressing her until she, too, felt a blazing warmth.

Mark's frequent calls, the long, midnight conversations that ended with sleepy good nights and murmured words of love only taunted her. It took nearly a month before she finally admitted the truth: that it was too late to avoid commitment and, even if it weren't, independence and freedom from the fear of loss were not a fair exchange for the man she had come to love so deeply. Even sunshine and warm breezes didn't matter without the right person to share them. Every bed she slept in on her increasingly frequent business trips seemed lonelier than ever before.

And yet she knew that she couldn't do as he expected and simply walk away from everything she had worked so hard to achieve. She had found that she did love her work, that what she'd been missing was balance, and with Mark she had found that balance. Her work was challenging and satisfying, even when it was thoroughly frustrating and Trent was his most maddening, as he had been ever since her return.

Just as she'd predicted, he had sulked upon learning that she'd failed to sign Mark to do
Velvet Nights
, but apparently he'd sensed that something had happened during that trip because
he quickly tempered his disappointment and began giving her more and more work to do. Each new assignment carried more responsibility accompanied by demanding deadlines that allowed no time for long hours of soul-searching, much less for those longed-for stopovers in Boulder.

Worse, Mark hadn't even invited her to come back, and the fact that he hadn't even suggested a visit created an aching emptiness inside Lindsay that wouldn't go away. At first she'd been sure that pride stood in his way, but as time went on, she wasn't so certain. Maybe for Mark the past few weeks had proven the truth of her statement that during a separation they might discover that theirs was a love that was fleeting, a love that was never meant to be. Unfortunately, for her it had proven just the opposite.