Pilot Error (41 page)

Despite the dig, Micki threw him a grin. "Okay, I admit I've learned my lesson in that respect."

Luke shrugged sheepishly. "Yeah, well... maybe I learned a lesson or two myself."

"Oh? And what exactly was that?"

"That I shouldn't have patronized you," he said, sounding sincere, "and I shouldn't have assumed
Jacinto Scenic Flights
was run by a man."

"Okay," she agreed, slightly mollified.

"And," he went on with a slight grin, "I shouldn't have called you 'beautiful' when you didn't like it."

"Okay, enough already."

"And I shouldn't have—"

"Give it a rest, will you?"

"—stood behind you and watched you wax the entire nose of that plane."

Micki scowled fiercely to hide the smile that wanted to escape. "You didn't!"

His grin was wicked. "No, but I would have liked to."

Despite herself, Micki laughed. "You're incorrigible, Yank, you know that?"

"It's one of the reasons you love me."

"Yeah, maybe it is." They met each other's eyes. They didn't need to say it aloud for it to be mutually understood, but Micki wanted to voice what she had neglected to tell him when she'd left him stuck in that hole. "And I do, you know," she said softly. "Love you."

Elated, Luke grinned cockily and slipped his arm around her waist. "Good."

"'Good?' That's it?"

"Yeah. I think that covers it. Now, when are you coming to my place to let me cook you dinner? Tomorrow's good for me, how about you?"

She gave him a wry glance. "Awfully sure of yourself, aren't you, Commander?"

"Well, you did promise." He rubbed his cheek on her hair affectionately, and she leaned into his embrace. "And I'm a great cook. So good, in fact, that you just may want to hang around a while. Say, another fifty or sixty years?"

Fifty or sixty years? Micki pulled back to regard him in wonder. Was that a—? Did he just—?

Luke took advantage of her stunned silence to continue his proposal face to face. "I'm sure there's some place we can live where I can be near work, and you can start up a new tour business.
Hardigan Scenic Flights...
I like it." Smiling at her thunderstruck expression, he moved to kiss her, but stopped short at the last moment. "Hey, maybe you could teach me to fly! Ray always wanted to, and it wasn't that I didn't want to learn, more a question of not being able to find time, what with the Navy, and catching and prosecuting Bad Guys, and—"

"Luke?"

"Yeah?"

She studied him intently. Like herself, he still bore signs of their ordeal. They had survived that together, as now they would tackle the future. Together. Now she had a lifetime's worth of plans.

"I lied about the Dress Whites," she confessed. With a tender smile, Micki raised her hand to touch his cheek. "So just shut up and kiss me."

As his lips met hers, Micki knew she'd learned the most valuable lesson of all.

Surviving required wings... and a reason to always return to the ground.

###

T.C. Ravenscraft is a pseudonym for a team of two women with more years of writing and editing experience than they will admit. They share a mutual love of dogs, word-smithing, and family. Individually, their interests encompass far flung subjects ranging from aviation to vampires and appaloosas to werewolves.

Together, they always have two books in progress; one in production and one under revision. So often do these works flow between two hard drives, the authors themselves are unable to remember who wrote what passage. Plot, characters, setting and dialogue are created, revised and interwoven until they are a seamless whole. Sometimes it feels like magic. Sometimes it feels like hard work. Always, it feels like doing what they love: living the dream of writing novels for someone else to enjoy.

For the latest on upcoming titles, free short stories, Facebook, Twitter and other contact information, please visit us at
http://tcravenscraft.com
.

"When we are writing, we aren't 'us,' we are T.C.!"

Author's Note

Thank you for reading "Pilot Error." If you enjoyed this story, we'd love it if you left a review on Amazon.com. Although this book has been read multiple times by multiple people, mistakes and typos do happen. If you find something that you feel needs correcting, please send an email detailing the error to
[email protected]
. Thanks!

Coming In 2013
From

Castle Key Publishing, LLC

"Beneath the Killing Moon"

By T.C. Ravenscraft

Romantic horror novelist Victoria Pennington leases her ancestral castle in present-day Wales, seeking inspiration for her latest vampire book. Her stifled muse awakens while sequestered within the drafty stone halls with vividly realistic dreams; dreams about the people who once lived and loved there.

Barely a notch above a ruin on a windswept moor, Castle Pendleton has no modern conveniences to serve as interruptions. None, at least, until the night Jack Hultgren, a man walking away from his past, arrives on her doorstep. With his intrusion into her self-imposed exile, past and present blur in dizzying flights of danger and desire. Will allowing him sanctuary in her refuge lead to enduring love or eternal darkness?

Rumors of a family legacy resurface, the townsfolk turn hostile, and a dark hunger awakens inside Victoria as she spirals toward destiny. Together, she and Jack struggle to escape their roles in a centuries-old, revenge-driven curse that, unlike her novel, has already been written.

 (Category: paranormal mystery, romantic horror. Approx 90,000 words)