AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Mr. Delaney’s change of tone was even more sudden than his laugh. I tried not to roll my eyes. It wasn’t like I was asking to be his sweetheart, after all. Being up there just felt like flying through a movie set, and I figured he would want to share that with someone.
“Do you ever get asked if you do trips for couples?”
“My plane doesn’t fit more than two, and as I’m the pilot, that only leaves room for one more,” Mr. Delaney answered gruffly. “Look, Miss Overstreet, I’m not a tour guide, just a pilot.”
“Oh, that’s no problem –” I began.
“And I barely know you,” he cut in.
I really did roll my eyes then. It wasn’t as if I was asking him to spill some juicy stories about his childhood. I was just trying to make conversation. This is what people did when they were stuck together for periods of uninterrupted time. Or, at least, I guess this is what people not named “Gabriel Delaney” did.
Nonetheless, I continued to try and ask him questions because I was intrigued by his work. His answers were gruff, but so long as I kept my queries focused on our jobs, he didn’t seem too opposed to answering. It was as if he was used to people trying to sleep or enjoy the view instead of asking him about everything... or even anything.
If I’d realized he would be like this, I would have made sure to have my book in the seat with me instead of in my bag.
We continued in this pattern for a couple of hours. My voice started to get hoarse from having to speak a little louder than normal. Not yelling, per se, but certainly louder than on a commercial flight.
However, we both went quiet as we realized the clouds around us were no longer entirely white. About a half hour earlier, the blue sky we’d been flying through changed to white whisps of high-up clouds. Now, those whisps were thick and dense and had taken on a blue-grey hue. I shivered and tried to wrap my sweater around my shoulders a little tighter. Had it gotten colder in the airplane or was that just my imagination?
“Mr. Delaney?”
“It’s a storm… a large one… as much as I appreciate our discussion over the last couple of hours, this is going to require all of my concentration,” Mr. Delaney said. “Just buckle up and let me focus.”
I didn’t answer.
Mr. Delaney changed the dial connected to the headset and started talking to a tower below us. I caught part of the conversation because the wind whipping around us brought his words behind him like the scent of freshly baked cinnamon rolls downwind of a bakery.
The thought was rudely interrupted as the plane lurched and dropped what felt like fifty feet. I gasped and clutched the chair. My heart pounded in my throat, and I lifted one side of the headset to try and catch any of what Mr. Delaney was saying on the other channel.
The storm was bad on the ground. I couldn’t hear how bad it was, but most of the discussion appeared to center around whether or not the nearest airport could take us on their runway. Eventually, Mr. Delaney found an airport we could land in, or something, because he switched to talk to me.
“Hold on, Miss Overstreet. This might be a bumpy ride. The airport is doing its best to keep the landing strip clear, but the snow is piling up fast. Even so, we need to land. There’s a massive stormfront in our path, and we don’t have enough fuel to go around it.”
“All right.”
I braced myself against the sides of the plane. As we descended, it felt more like being in a ship on the open ocean than an airplane. Mr. Delaney seemed to also have permanently changed his headset’s channel to ground control, and I was grateful he wasn’t listening to me gasp in terror. I didn’t say a word at risk of breaking his concentration as the turbulence batted us around.
Mr. Delaney managed to land us at the small airport without much problem. The landing was certainly not the smoothest I had ever felt, but we were safe. That was all that mattered to me.
“Welcome to Dawn, Colorado, Miss Overstreet,” Mr. Delaney said into the headset once we were on the ground. “I’m afraid your trip to Corinth is going to be delayed until this storm is over.” We taxied slowly and he squinted through the front windshield. “Look at how thick it’s coming down. This is highly unusual for this time of year…”
It didn’t take a genius to see that an unusually heavy winter storm had blown in, despite it being the start of spring now. This worried me. I only had a few days to get these pictures. What would happen if I didn’t get them?
Chapter seven
Gabe
It didn’t take long to get my plane into a hangar and get into the airport. For the sake of getting to more permanent shelter, I figured it was best to see if the Dawn airport had any rental car options.
“Here. Let me take that duffel,” I said, suddenly realizing Miss Overstreet was struggling with the bags and shivering a little even though we’d just entered the main terminal. “I definitely didn’t expect a storm like this.” I wanted to get to the rental car desk as soon as possible, and I hoped carrying her luggage would help us get there faster. In a town this small, they probably only had one or two cars to rent, if any.
“I have a coat in the duffel,” Miss Overstreet said, interrupting my thoughts. “Why don’t we pause here, since there’s not a lot of people around, and rearrange our luggage a little?”
I stopped abruptly. She was still shivering, and I could’ve smacked myself for not noticing. I nodded. I could just imagine what my dad would be saying to me right now if he’d seen me rushing through a mostly empty rural airport with a shivering woman trailing behind me. Pull it together, I chided myself. She’s still your client, and you’re responsible for making sure she gets safely to her destination.
As she was digging in her duffel bag, I pulled out the small jacket I had packed. It didn’t look like it was going to be very heavy, but it had been made to be worn while skiing. I’d intentionally picked a well-designed, warm jacket meant for aerodynamics so that it would pack without being a thick lump in my suitcases. Though I hadn’t thought I would need it, I was now glad I had packed it.
Once that was out and over my arm, I started to call my clients for the next week. I got mostly busy signals. It was unlikely they were all calling people, and I figured the signal must be spotty with the storm. I glanced at where Miss Overstreet was still zipping up her suitcase I decided to text, even though it was less professional. This was one of the few times I was willing to do so. Getting stuck in less-than-ideal weather conditions was reason enough to start shuffling my other clients around because the way this snow was piling up, I didn’t think we’d be getting to Corinth on time. Or leaving on time.
