Some Kind of Wonderful (Puffin Island 2)
“As long as you promise not to touch anything.”
Brittany’s tears had dried and she couldn’t resist teasing him. “I can’t touch anything? Nothing?”
His gaze settled on her mouth. “Not unless you want me to crash.”
She sat next to him and took the headset he handed her. “Can I talk to air traffic control? Blue Bird, this is Johnny Boy, come in please.”
Zach reached for the controls, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “For the record, this plane is not Johnny Boy. It’s female.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s how I think of her.”
“If you’re about to say it’s because she’s temperamental and needs careful handling, think twice. I can do a lot of damage with this cast.” She watched as he flicked a switch on the instrument panel. This was his territory. His area of expertise. “So this is an amphibious plane? You can land anywhere?”
“Anywhere from a grass runway in the Vineyard to a frozen lake in Alaska.”
She blinked at the array of lights, dials and switches on the instrument panel. “It’s pretty. And complicated.”
“Not really. Everything has a purpose and it’s an easy plane to fly. It helps having the engine instruments on the MFD.”
“The MFD?”
“Multifunction display. Shows real-time flight-critical data, including traffic, digital attitude, heading, engine, airframe indication and CrewAlert. You’ve got three 10.4-inch LCDs, backup instruments, switches and the flight guidance panel.” He showed her. “The layout is clean and logical.”
It didn’t look logical to her. It looked complex and perplexing, but although she didn’t understand the mechanics of flight, she understood how it felt to have a passion for something.
“As long as one of us knows what it’s all for. Seems like a lot of dials and switches for a small plane.”
“Small plane—advanced avionics.”
Flying wasn’t something she’d ever thought about much. To her, it was a mode of transport and usually not a particularly comfortable one. She was used to being crammed into a small space with her knees bumping the seat in front.
This was different.
She watched as Zach’s hands moved over the instruments with quiet confidence. Stealing a glance, she realized how much he’d changed. He had a quiet self-belief that had been absent when she’d first known him.
He must have felt her gaze because he turned his head and raised his eyebrows. “Is this the part where you tell me you really are scared of flying?”
“Spiders, Flynn. It’s just spiders.” She licked her lips. “Is it going to put you off if I tell you you’re hot when you fly a plane?”
For a brief moment his gaze held hers and then he turned his head and focused his attention on the flight deck. “I’m not hot the rest of the time?”
“Maybe it’s to do with all the thrust and power that’s going on around here.”
“If you’re having filthy thoughts, you might want to save them until we land. That’s unless you want to ditch in the ocean.”
There was an increase in engine noise and then they were speeding along the runway and into the air.
As she watched Puffin Island recede beneath them, she realized she was holding her breath.
To the right she saw the Captain Hook leaving the harbor on its way to the mainland, the yachts moored in the Ocean Club and the rocky shoreline and inlets that formed the west coast of the island.
Then they turned and flew over the forest. Far beneath her she caught a glimpse of Heron Pond where they’d camped with the children, and then saw Shell Bay and Castaway Cottage. There were people on the beach, tiny figures with no face or form, enjoying the last days of summer. They’d be wearing sweaters, she thought. Reaching for another layer, commenting on how the weather was turning.
And then the figures vanished and there was only the rippling expanse of the ocean, yachts cutting through the white chop of the water.
They flew over Puffin Rock and then headed north over islands, some inhabited, some not, and she looked down on beaches, lighthouses and mountains. Seated in the cockpit, she had an uninterrupted view of her little corner of the world and that world was breathtaking.