Flying Too Close to the Sun, George Jehn [freda ebook reader txt] 📗

vanished and he stopped dead in his tracks. Another gut instinct screamed out an intimate night with this lady might herald the end of a more important, budding relationship. He was drawn to Carol not Christina, for reasons he wouldn’t be able to explain even to a shrink, something even he didn’t understand. There was a real dilemma because he couldn’t write Christina off since he needed her potential salvation. Time was required to sort out this tangled mess of complex emotions, when suddenly a potential temporary way out appeared. Breaking off a single wild climbing rose with huge, recently-bloomed dark red petals growing alongside a neighbor’s fence, he inserted it in her front door screen, rang the bell and quickly left.

A brooding Christina couldn’t grasp why Erik had run off like a frightened gazelle that had seen a lion stalking it. Maybe she intimidated him? Perhaps he already had a girlfriend? Or was gay? She heard the doorbell ring and dressed. Did he decide to return? When she cautiously opened it only a solitary rose greeted her.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Christina spotted Erik before the next day’s flight, looking like a person might appear before visiting the dentist. She folded her thin arms across her chest and glared at him with eyes ablaze like gas jets. Her glower made the stainless steel and pale wood of the operations office with the white walls, linoleum floor and fluorescent lighting seem warm. No batted lashes. No hand on his arm. “Don’t think leaving the rose would make up for what you did,” she finally hissed at him through clenched teeth, a chill in the blue eyes and threat in her voice.

Erik attempted to walk the uneven terrain without tripping over his feet. “I’m really sorry,” he offered.

Her eyes went dark. “Don’t give me this I’m sorry crap. You couldn’t have hurt me more if you—”

“All right,” he finally said holding up his hand. “Truth is I met this other girl who kept popping into my mind. Even I don’t understand what happened.”

Her plan outweighed anything so she had to put the anger and humiliation aside, but Erik wouldn’t know that, not just yet. Right now the front and center question was whether or not to also include Woody. Besides a drinking problem, was he also broke? Owe money? Gamble? Have someone on the side? The termination of the 7 PM Boston Shuttle was chowtime and hopefully would provide the opportunity to get some answers.

After landing she asked Woody, “You gonna grab a bite?”

He hesitated only a moment. “Sure.”

After stopping in the ladies’ room she went to the employee greasy spoon, a self-service joint located in the basement of the terminal with a continual misty veil of smoke hanging in suspended animation in the grimy air, along with the smell of cooked bacon. Her order of burger and fries more resembled a plate of lard that might cause a heart attack simply by looking at it. She took one of the creaky wooden seats right next to Woody and began the conversation on a light note by asking while pointing to his stew, “You working on clogging your arteries too?” His reply was only a weak grin.

Christina held many former military flyers like Woody in pretty low esteem as most were skeptical of a woman’s piloting abilities. The irony of this wasn’t lost on her after his hangover performance. All she knew of his personal life was he lived in New Jersey, was married and had also transferred from East Coast Airlines when the operation was sold to Shuttle Air. Trying to lighten things up a bit, she asked, “You promised to tell me how you got your nickname. It wasn’t like a guy thing—was it?”

“Lots of friends thought that was the case and razzed me all the time.” He chewed slowly, as if deep in thought. “But the moniker came from my old man, a long story about getting hit on a head as tough as wood.”

A relieved Christina felt the time had arrived for the sole reason she was here. “You flew in the service. Correct?”

“Yeah, I flew P-3’s in the Navy, the military Lockheed Electra; the four-engine turboprop.”

“You got all your flight time on the P-3?”

Woody’s eyes blinked too many times. “Well, no.” He hesitated. “Before my time was up, the Navy sent me to the Boeing plant in Seattle for a lengthy stint at aircraft repair school. I got my FAA mechanic’s licenses there.”

This sounded strange to her. Like Shuttle Air, the military had invested lots of money in their pilots’ flight training. She knew other military pilots and none had done this. Why send a flyer to maintenance school? Maybe Woody also had problems there? If that was the case he would never admit to it, but his eye movement seemed to provide confirmation.

As if reading her mind, he continued. “The Navy loaned me to the Air Force where I oversaw repair work on KC-135’s, the jet transports used to refuel fighters, the military equivalent of the Boeing 707. I learned the nuts and bolts of virtually every Boeing-built jet. The maintenance officer position was my assignment for the remainder of my tour.”

Christina remained suspicious because there had to me more to this story. “How come you left the military?”

Another too-long pause until he continued “I wanted to make more money, plus my wife, Ingrid got tired of the military lifestyle. The only time we even came close to settling down was when I was in the maintenance program.”

“What about the money, our compensation?”

“Shuttle Air pays more than the military, but my wife still harps about money, always asking how long until I get a raise? Make captain? Stuff like that.” He paused to eat some more stew. “When word got out about my background, Shuttle Air’s mechanics sought my advice on some complex maintenance problems and I sometimes hang around and work and chat with them. That’s how I got the inside scoop on our engine