Secrets of Forever Read online

  Ellie smiled to herself. Business was expanding.

  “Well, then I guess I’m honored,” Neil told her. “Speaking of firsts,” he said as he started to pick up the carry-on luggage he had temporarily set down, “this is my first ‘errand of mercy’ flight.”

  Only half listening, Ellie had put her hand over the suitcase handle, intending to pick it up. When he looked at her in surprise, she told him, “Oh, I can take that for you.” She deliberately moved his hands away and caught herself thinking that his hands felt as if they were very large and capable. How was he able to do delicate surgery with those hands? she wondered.

  “I can carry my own suitcase,” Neil told her, making a move to secure the handle.

  But Ellie stubbornly kept her hand where it was, not allowing him take the case from her.

  “Dr. Dan said you’re a surgeon,” she told him. “You don’t want to risk hurting your hands.”

  “It’s a suitcase,” Neil pointed out. “Not a machete or an anvil. I can certainly carry a suitcase to your car.”

  “Actually,” she corrected him, “We’re taking it to my plane.”

  A plane? That surprised him. Dan had told him that he was making arrangements to transport him from the airport to Forever. But his friend had said nothing about the arrangements involving a passenger plane. Or, for that matter, a sexy pilot.

  “You have a plane?” Neil asked.

  Leading the way out of the airport, Ellie happily nodded.

  “It’s a 2006 single-engine-turbine Piper Meridian.” Seeing that meant nothing to him, she quickly added, “It doesn’t look like much. But it’s very safe.”

  “A Piper Meridian,” Neil repeated. He had never heard of the plane before—at least, he thought she was talking about a plane. Maybe it wasn’t safe to make any assumptions. “Is that the name of your airline?”

  “No, that’s the name of the type of plane I’m flying.” Since, in a manner of speaking, he was entrusting her with his life, Ellie felt she owed him a little more of an explanation. “I’m hoping to someday have my own airline. Right now, there’s just the one plane.”

  “Everyone has to start somewhere,” he said philosophically. “And this aircraft...it’s yours?” he asked, trying to get a handle on the woman he was apparently entrusting with his life.

  Her smile was broad as she flashed it at him over her shoulder. “Technically.”

  That didn’t sound all that good. “Technically?” he asked as they went through the airport’s electronic doors to the outer area.

  “Well, I’m still paying it off,” she confided. “I bought the plane from Arnie. He was the one who owned the airline, but he decided to retire early last year. He sold all his planes but the one to another airline. I managed to talk him into selling that one plane to me.” She glanced to the doctor. “I guess you probably think that’s kind of unusual.”

  “I’ve never met anyone with their own aircraft before,” he told her, trying to word his response as diplomatically as possible.

  Her full lips pulled back into a quick smile. “Well, I’ve never met a heart surgeon before, so I guess that makes us even,” Ellie said.

  They crossed to what was a designated airfield reserved for private planes. Ellie gestured over to the side where she had left her aircraft before entering the terminal. The plane looked a little forlorn amid the other handful of planes that had been left there, awaiting their owners.

  All the other planes appeared to be a lot newer than hers was. It didn’t matter to her. She loved that old aircraft. Ellie waved her passenger over to the Piper Meridian.

  “Lucille’s right over there,” she told him, picking up her pace.

  “Lucille?” Neil questioned.

  “The plane,” Ellie clarified, gestured at the aircraft again.

  But Neil was still having trouble assimilating the information. “You named your plane Lucille?” he asked, thinking Dan had obviously failed to mention how unusually colorful these people who lived in Forever were.

  “No, I didn’t,” she told the doctor, which only seemed to further confuse the man. She spoke quickly to rectify that—or to attempt to at any rate. “Arnie was the one who called the aircraft Lucille. I just decided to leave it that way rather than confuse things further by changing her name.”

  “Afraid you’d confuse the plane if you called it by another name?” Neil asked, doing his best to try to follow the thread of the conversation. She didn’t exactly make it easy. Nonetheless, he was amused.

  “No, me,” she said. When he looked at her curiously, she explained, “I just got used to calling the plane Lucille.” They had reached the aircraft and she’d stopped walking.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound as if I was making fun of you,” he apologized in case that was what she thought he was doing. “Actually, one of the surgeons I work with has a Ferrari he calls ‘Big Red.’”

  Ellie opened the plane’s door and released its stairway. She made no comment about the Ferrari. To her that vehicle was a sinful waste of money, but everyone was entitled to do whatever they wanted with their money—even waste it.

  “Go on up,” she told the doctor, gesturing toward the opened hatch. Neil looked a little skeptical about the venture. “Lucille doesn’t bite,” she assured him with a smile.

  “I’ll hold you to that,” he told her before he gamely climbed up the steps that led into the plane. The stairs felt somewhat rickety to him, but he told himself that Dan wouldn’t have made these arrangements for him if this method of travel wasn’t at least safe.

  Dan had sounded rather eager to have him come out to examine this friend of his, so Neil felt it was a pretty safe bet that he wouldn’t be risking his life on this venture.

  Still, he had to admit that he held his breath with every step he took to reach the inside of the aircraft.

  Once he was seated, he heard his “pilot” call up to him, “Don’t forget to put your seat belt on.”

  Taking a breath and thinking he had done smarter things in his life, Neil did as she had instructed. The moment he did, his diminutive pilot, moving agilely, climbed into the plane.

  The door slamming shut sounded almost ominous to Neil, like the echo of a death knell. Turning toward Ellie, he asked, “And you do know how to fly this thing?”

  A whimsical smile played on her lips. “Well, I’d better, don’t you think?” she asked him. He looked at her with widened eyes. “I’m just kidding,” Ellie assured him with a laugh. “Don’t worry, I’ve logged in a lot of hours flying Lucille. I even have a license and everything,” she teased, catching her tongue between her teeth. “And if it makes you feel any better, Dr. Dan cleared me for another year.”

  “Cleared you?” Neil repeated, obviously confused by the term.

  “He said I was fit to fly a plane for another year.” Going through her check list mentally, Ellie paused to look at her passenger. “Flying so high above the rest of the world is a wonderful experience, Doctor. There’s really nothing that even comes close. You feel like you’re one with the universe,” she told him.

  That revelation didn’t exactly fill him with a great deal of confidence. “As long as you don’t become one with the universe,” he told her, thinking that a plane crash could easily accomplish that.

  Ellie read between the lines. She needed to make him comfortable about this experience. “Well, I thought you’d want to get to Forever quickly and this is a lot faster than driving,” Ellie told the surgeon. “Quite honestly, more people die in car crashes than in plane crashes.”

  “All it takes is once,” he murmured.

  “Don’t worry,” she assured him as the plane revved up. “I’ll get you there safe and sound.”

  But Neil hardly seemed to hear her. At the moment, the surgeon was too busy clutched to his armrests and white-knuckling it.

  Chapte
r Five

  If she didn’t know any better, Ellie would have said that the muscular, good-looking man in the seat beside her was afraid of flying. In her estimation, he looked almost frozen in place. Maybe he was just uncomfortable. There could be any one of a number of reasons for that. In that case, she decided, it was her job to make him feel more comfortable.

  “I take it you don’t like to fly very much,” Ellie said to him. She raised her voice to be heard above the noise generated within the passenger plane that, unfortunately, was rattling like a blender filled to the brim with cupfuls of loose screws.

  It took Neil a second to realize that she was talking to him and then several more to actually make out the words she was saying. He found the noise level in the plane pretty bad.

  “Not in a plane that sounds as if it is going to come apart at the seams any second now,” he answered. “Are you sure this plane is going to make it?” Neil asked, because it certainly didn’t sound that way to him.

  “Oh, I’m sure,” Ellie assured him. “I’ve flown this little gem when it sounded a lot worse than this,” Ellie added.

  “Why?” he asked.

  For the life of him, he couldn’t see taking a chance on flying something that, in his estimation, would have been upgraded in status if it was referred to as a “bucket of bolts.”

  Ellie shrugged. She assumed that he was asking her why she loved to fly. When it came right down to it, she really couldn’t explain why, she just did.

  “I guess I just love the freedom of soaring through the sky,” she told the doctor. “It’s in my blood.” Her face brightened as she looked straight ahead through the windshield. “We’re almost there,” she told Neil, pointing. “If you concentrate really hard, you can almost see Forever right there in front of you.”

  “Forever,” Neil murmured, focusing on the word as if it was a prediction. “Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about.”

  “The town,” she clarified with a laugh. “Not eternity.” He might as well prepare himself, she thought. “Now, I should warn you—”

  Neil was instantly on the alert. “Warn me?” he echoed, feeling nerves sprouting in his system. “About what?”

  “The weather’s a little turbulent right now...” she pointed out, although that was probably unnecessary, given how the surgeon was watching everything intently. “So the landing might be a bit bumpy—”

  “But we are going to land, right?” Neil asked, interrupting her.

  Ellie spared him a wide grin. “Yes, we are going to land,” she assured the doctor, then added, “You might find it reassuring to know that I haven’t crashed even once yet.”

  “All it takes is once,” she heard him mutter under his breath.

  Her smile grew wider, hoping that would reassure him. To look at the surgeon, Neil Eastwood didn’t really appear nervous. But then, looks could easily be deceiving.

  “Today is not a good day to die,” Ellie told him, putting a spin on an old Native American saying. “So we’re just not going to.”

  He slanted a glance in her direction. It did not reflect the soul of confidence.

  “You can’t guarantee that,” Neil pointed out. He grabbed onto the armrests, clutching them even harder as the rickety plane encountered even more turbulence.

  Ellie was attempting to compensate for the rough weather, and the winds that had kicked up, by remembering everything she had been taught to keep the aircraft steady.

  “Tell you what,” she said gamely. “If we crash, I’ll return your airfare.”

  Neil glared in the woman’s direction before turning to face front again. He was hardly breathing as he did his best to will the plane to keep aloft.

  “I didn’t pay any airfare,” he reminded her through gritted teeth.

  “Well, then I guess I have nothing to worry about,” Ellie quipped. “Relax, Dr. Eastwood. I’ve never lost a passenger yet.”

  “That doesn’t really fill me with that much confidence,” he told her. His hands were growing even whiter as he held on to the armrests.

  Maybe he should have taken a sedative, she thought. Right now his behavior was making them both tense. And then she breathed a sigh of relief for both of them. The flight was almost over.

  “There’s Forever,” Ellie pointed to the town that lay straight ahead of them. She smiled encouragingly at her passenger, secretly thinking that transporting animals was a great deal easier than bringing in Dr. Dan’s friend. “We’re coming in for a landing,” she announced and then smiled at him. “I can hold your hand if that would make you feel any better.”

  “You landing this plane in one piece will make me feel a whole lot better,” Neil told her, staring at the swiftly approaching ground as they were about to land.

  Ellie nodded. “Your wish is my command, Doc.”

  Mentally, she went through the checklist for a proper, uneventful landing, the way she always did. She did it each and every time she landed even though she knew all the steps by heart.

  “Okay, Doc, here we go,” Ellie announced, telling him to, “Brace yourself.”

  “If I were any more braced,” Neil answered, “I’d snap in half.”

  “No, no snapping in half on my watch,” Ellie deadpanned. She knew he was kidding. At least, she hoped he was. “There’s an extra charge for that.”

  Neil glanced at her. How could the woman make jokes at a time like this? In the few moments that the plane had begun its descent, his stomach had lurched upward and now felt as if it was firmly lodged in his mouth, threatening to gag him.

  Neil’s entire body was tensed and braced, waiting to feel what promised to be a really jarring impact as the plane prepared to touch down on what looked like the world’s shortest runway.

  When it finally did land, Neil wasn’t sure whether to utter a cry of joy or just shed a few tears of immense gratitude and relief.

  The surgeon settled for offering up a few heartfelt, albeit silent, words of thanksgiving. The ordeal was finally over!

  With the plane back on Mother Earth, Ellie slowly brought it to a halt then turned off all the plane’s switches one by one. When she had flipped the last one, she turned toward her passenger. It was all too obvious that the doctor had definitely not enjoyed the ride.

  Ellie did her best not to smile. “You can let go of the armrests, Doc. We’ve landed.”

  She heard Neil release a shaky breath. Ellie realized that she hadn’t heard him breathing during the last part of the landing. Had he really been that afraid?

  And then she heard him say, “I guess prayers do get answered,” and she had her answer.

  “Well, you’re proof of that,” she responded glibly. Neil looked at her as if he didn’t understand, so she did her best to explain. “You’re the mountain who came to Mohammed. In this case, Miss Joan was playing the part of Mohammed. Everyone in town knew we didn’t have a prayer of getting her to see a doctor anywhere outside of Forever. Just when it all seemed so hopeless, you agreed to fly in and see her.”

  Neil found he was still trying to release his death grip on the armrests and relax his hands. “I wouldn’t have agreed if I had known everything that was involved.”

  For the moment, Ellie remained sitting in the plane—not because she needed to but because she wanted Neil to be able to navigate off the airplane—she didn’t want him to suffer the embarrassment of his knees buckling. She’d witnessed it before and she wanted to spare him that.

  “Then I guess it’s lucky for us you didn’t know what was involved—although it wouldn’t have been nearly so complicated for you if you had only known how to drive,” she diplomatically pointed out.

  Neil opened his mouth to argue that point but knew that, in all fairness, he really couldn’t. At bottom, he supposed he had to admit that it was his own fault he’d had to face the harrowing flight through the heavens.

  �
��Learning how to drive just went to the top of my to-do list,” he assured the pilot.

  “I could teach you,” Ellie offered cheerfully. “I’ve been driving ever since I was eleven years old.”

  Somehow, he didn’t doubt it. “Do you drive like you fly?” he asked, even though he wasn’t really considering her offer.

  Ellie grinned at him. “There’s less turbulence on the ground than there is in the air—at least today—so I’d probably have to say ‘better.’ Think about it.”

  “Right now,” he told her very honestly, “all I want to do is just feel the earth under my feet.”

  “Hold on,” Ellie instructed.

  The next thing Neil knew, she had opened the door on her side and, rather than take the stairs, had jumped to the ground as agilely as his Great-Aunt Grace’s cat used to when the calico would spring off the kitchen windowsill in the dead of winter.

  Craning his neck to catch sight of his pilot as she disappeared from view, Neil called out to her. “Hello? Ellie?”

  Had she suddenly decided to abandon him?

  Just as the question flashed through his mind, Neil thought he heard a noise coming from outside the passenger window. Turning his head, he caught a glimpse of jet-black hair flying by. The next thing he knew, the door on his side had opened.

  Ellie was on the ground, releasing the door and the steps on that side. She beckoned to him. “C’mon down,” she invited.

  Neil took a deep breath, focusing on his feet finally being able to touch the ground. Just before he attempted to climb out, he frowned. Why did climbing down look so much more intimidating than climbing up had?

  While he supposed that he was as agile as the next person, he really wasn’t exactly the last word in gracefulness. He had always been the kind of man who usually looked before he leaped. Right now, looking had a way of interfering with the perfect execution of what he was attempting to do.

  Like getting out of a plane without twisting his ankle.

  Still, not wanting to fall on his face in front of a ravishing brunette was a definite motivator. Neil braced himself and quickly climbed down, listening to the rickety steps issue their own protest.