From Out Of The Blue. Nadia Nichols

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СКАЧАТЬ the land he’d chosen to make his home in. Maybe he’d never be rich, maybe he’d never drive a late-model truck or fly a plane that didn’t always need fixing, but she had the feeling that somehow he’d get by. He was the kind of guy that would walk away from a hard landing with that same macho swagger and arrogant grin. Nothing would ever beat him down.

      He wrenched open the truck door, tossed an object wrapped in a clean rag onto the bench seat between them and hauled himself in behind the wheel. “So, what’s your preference? There’s a deli a little ways from here or a roadhouse that serves great burgers. Your choice.”

      “I’m not really that hungry.”

      He fired up the engine and eased the truck into gear. “Then let’s grab a sandwich at the deli. It’s not as fancy and it’s quicker.”

      He was as nervous as she was, she realized as he drove to the deli; only, when she got nervous, she got quiet, whereas Mitch couldn’t seem to shut up. The deli was rustic and charming with big baskets of bright flowers that hung from the porch eaves. He talked about fishing while they waited for their order to be delivered to the little picnic table on the porch, and in between bites of his sandwich he told her about salmon runs and grizzly bears that prowled the riverbank by his cabin and one instance when he’d barricaded himself inside while a bear chewed his favorite fly rod to splinters. And then came a long pause in the conversation and she glanced up and realized those disarming eyes were studying her intently.

      “What?” she said, shifting under his scrutiny.

      “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Something wrong with your sandwich?”

      “I told you I wasn’t hungry.”

      “You said you wanted to talk, but this is a mighty one-sided conversation.”

      She averted her eyes, heart thumping painfully. “I’m enjoying listening to you describe your life here.” She gave him a faint smile. “Your place sounds nice, except for the bears. Maybe you’d give me a tour while I’m here. I love log cabins.”

      His eyes narrowed and he sat back in his chair. “Sure. Just say when.”

      Kate had spent her childhood dreaming about what she was going to be when she grew up. Once she’d grown up, she’d spent every moment striving to make that dream come true, and every step of the way there had been men standing in her path, blocking her, trying to trip her up and hoping she’d fail and make a fool of herself.

      Getting pregnant had been the worst setback of her career. Getting pregnant had validated all those chauvinistic remarks and those sexist attitudes. For four months she’d had to give up flying. Four whole months she’d been grounded because she’d done just what they’d expected her to do. She’d gone out and gotten herself pregnant, just like a woman.

      This man had been a major player in tripping her up and almost causing her to fail, yet now she was sitting in this deli listening to him talk and his words were making her feel all warm and fuzzy inside and she caught herself thinking, Wow, for the past four years, I could have had a man in my life that I actually liked to talk to, listen to and, yes, make love with. There was no denying the magnetism that had made him so impossible to resist the first time they met. It was still there. She could still feel it. Just one touch and she’d succumb again, one touch and he’d destroy all her defenses and start another fire, one neither of them could put out. Would that be such a bad thing at this stage of her life?

      What was the matter with her? She must be sicker than she thought to be having such crazy ideas. She didn’t need a man. She’d never needed one. She was happy being single. In fact, she preferred it. Nobody had to worry about Captain K. C. Jones. She could take care of herself. Always had and always would.

      Always?

      Ha! Funny how facing you own mortality cast a harsh light on everything and illuminated truths that had been so easily hidden beneath alternating layers of bravado and pride. Funny how it humbled…

      “I have a confession to make,” she said. “I never read the letter you sent. I threw it off the edge of the flight deck, unopened, and I’m sorry.”

      MITCH DIDN’T KNOW quite how to take this. All he knew was that it stung. He’d spent countless hours agonizing over each and every word, just to have her fling it off the edge of the flight deck, unopened? The letter he’d written to K. C. Jones four and a half years ago, give or take a few months, was the only one he’d ever penned to a woman. It encompassed weeks of laborious beginnings that went nowhere and awkward revisions that only made the content more stilted. He’d finally mailed it off in a kind of fatalistic coup de grâce.

      “That explains why you never answered it,” he said. “But why are you sorry about it now?”

      “Because I think maybe I should have read it. I was so angry then. So mad at you and at myself. I know it doesn’t make much sense and I’m sorry about that, too.”

      Mitch didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Why would she have been angry at him? Were all women born irrational?

      Probably.

      Even if she didn’t give a damn about him, she should have read his letter and had the decency to put him out of his misery with a proper “Dear John” response, instead of leaving him wondering why she’d snuck away as she had. And now here she was, sitting across from him at his favorite deli, having told him she wanted to talk. But about what? Obviously not the fact that she’d missed him.

      After watching her shred her paper napkin into smaller and smaller pieces, he finally reached out his hand to pull the remnants away. “Okay,” he said, balling them up and dropping them into the center of the table. “If you’re not so mad anymore, then I guess the two of us have some catching up to do.”

      She nodded, and a faint flush colored her cheeks. “Maybe you could take me back to your place and give me the tour. We could talk there.”

      “You bet.” He paused in the act of rising out of his chair. “Did I mention my cabin had no indoor plumbing or electricity?”

      “That seems appropriate for a cabin.”

      “And you’re sure you want to talk there?”

      She nodded again.

      “Good enough.” He took her uneaten sandwich, wrapped it in several napkins and stuffed it in his jacket pocket in the hopes she’d eat it later. If she didn’t, Thor would. In the center of the table he left a pile of bills, enough to cover the tab and a good-sized tip, and then he escorted Kate back out to his truck and wondered if maybe, just maybe, his day hadn’t just taken a big-time turn for the better.

      CHEMOTHERAPY, as defined by her doctors, was the use of drugs or chemicals, often in combinations, to kill or damage cancer cells in the body. These drugs targeted not just cancer cells, but all cells that divided quickly, including those responsible for hair growth. They had been administered intravenously via a small plastic needle inserted in her forearm, delivering a mixed bag of anticancer agents into her bloodstream, a potent cocktail of life and death, of nausea and pain, of hair loss and fatigue and above all else, hope.

      For Kate, those weeks spent in the hospital undergoing intensive chemotherapy had been hell. She’d СКАЧАТЬ