Harley's Diva

By Isabella Lamont

Christmas day, 1963.
The world holds its breath. A beautiful and much beloved actress is missing. Two days earlier her private jet disappeared without a trace, while flying from Vancouver to Toronto, Canada.
Only two people in the world know that she has crashed high in the mountains of central British Columbia. She is the sole survivor and with serious injuries, awakens inside the mangled fuselage, buffeted by hurricane force winds, snow, and subzero temperatures.
Her friends, associates, and millions of fans fear the worst—they will never see her again.
Only she and rancher Harley Jacob know the truth.
The academy award winning Hollywood A-list personality is alive and falling for Harley Jacob.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Isabella Lamont
• Release date: Mar 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310865510

Isabella Lamont

Isabella Lamont is a professional who has been published in several scientific and environmental journals. This writing was terribly dull technical mumbo-jumbo, guaranteed to cure insomnia. A few years ago she and her SO exchanged some highly erotic letters, which they both enjoyed immensely. Isabella decided to experiment with romantic erotica. Here in Smashwords, she publishes her inner self -- highly erotic stories based on her life to date. Let her know what you think.

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Harley’s Diva

By

Isabella Lamont

Copyright 2015 Isabella Lamont

Smashwords Edition

License Notes

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All of the characters and most locations that occur

in this story are figments of my imagination.

This story contains many graphic descriptions of sexual acts. All of the

characters involved are eighteen years of age or older.

If you enjoyed this book, please leave a review at Smashwords

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1963

December 24

12:30 AM

From a deep dreamless sleep, Clarice Moreau was jolted instantly and brutally awake by the deafening roar of the twin jet engines on either side of the fuselage. There was a whooping alarm, so loud she could hear it through the bulkhead separating the cabin from the cockpit. Even louder was a mechanical voice at full amplification wailing; PULL UP! PULL UP! PULL UP...!

It took her a few seconds to remember where she was—a spasm of pure terror twisted her gut as severe turbulence shook the airframe. She was alone in the cabin of a Lear jet, the two pilots the only other people aboard. She stared out the porthole beside her—the landing lights were on—bright cones thrusting out through the blackness of the night. All she could see in the lights was fog and horizontal snow; she could feel the aircraft climbing steeply. Another sudden lurch of turbulence threw her off the settee on which she'd been sleeping, onto her back on the carpeted deck. The powerful jet engines were thunderous at full power, much louder than during take-off. The entire aircraft was vibrating—equipment stowed throughout the cabin was rattling violently.

Clarice Moreau was a remarkable woman. A couple of hours earlier she'd been on stage at Vancouver's Queen Elizabeth Theatre, performing to a sold out audience; her second show of the evening. She was nearing the end of her annual North American Christmas tour—two performances per evening, in fifteen major cities. It had been an exhausting schedule.

For two hours, she'd sung a selection of her songs and shared many gossipy, behind the scenes stories of her Hollywood career. She'd brought along her Oscars; her attendants carried them into the audience so people could actually touch and hold them. She'd invited questions from the audience and soon had them rolling in the isles with her humorous answers. Minutes later she had them in tears, with a sad song from one of her movies.

She was a gifted actress with one of the finest singing voices of the twentieth century. She had single-handedly revived the musical movie genre with Oscar nominations three years in a row; winning all three. Her record sales were second only to Elvis Presley. A new British rock group called The Beatles was shooting up the charts but still hadn't caught her.

After two curtain calls and a five minute standing ovation, her handlers hustled her out a back entrance; a helicopter with its rotors slowly revolving, awaited in a roped off section of the parking lot. Ten minutes later it landed at Vancouver International Airport, next to hanger in which a private Lear jet and its crew awaited her arrival. It was a blustery evening; the helicopter ride had been rough. Inside the hanger they could hear heavy west coast rain and hail, hammering the metal roof above.

A small woman, just over five feet tall and a hundred, ten pounds soaking wet, Moreau had a perky, funny, intelligent beauty; different than the sultry movie sirens and divas of previous decades. After seeing her in a movie or interviewed on television, her fans actually felt they knew her. She was like a best friend or the girl next door. For the past two years, her movies had earned more money than any other Hollywood actor's—male or female. She was presently the highest paid actress in the industry.

Now in her mid-thirties, she was one those fortunate women who seemed to grow more attractive as she aged. She still looked as good in a bikini as she had fifteen years ago. She was athletic and liked to stay in hotels with well equipped gyms. A travelling businessman might find himself running on a treadmill alongside a heavily perspiring Clarice Moreau. What a great story he would have to tell his family when he arrived back home.

Just a few traces of gray had appeared at her temples, mostly hidden within thick folds of shoulder length, honey blond hair. She wouldn't allow her hairdressers to use coloring, instead insisting on styles that would compliment it.

She'd felt her first pangs of apprehension that evening, as the pilots taxied near the eastern end of the airport's main runway. The Lear rocked and shook like a wet dog as near hurricane force winds buffeted the jet's dainty swept-back wings. Captain Wolfe gently explained to her over the intercom, that air traffic control was telling him to wait a few minutes for a break. Twenty minutes later the winds seemed calmer and the tower radioed clearance for takeoff.

Be quick about it, 7445, advised the air traffic controller.

Roger that, replied Wolfe. A few minutes later they were wheels up, climbing northward over the Strait of Georgia, trying to skirt the center of the storm. Fifteen minutes later, their climb to thirty-five thousand feet complete, they were flying straight, level and calm.

Clarice was still in the flight attendant's seat, facing aft. She liked this seat because it had double shoulder straps like the pilots'.

Make yourself comfortable, Ms. Moreau, said Captain Wolfe over the intercom. We'll be approximately four hours to Toronto. If you want to snooze, I'll let you know twenty minutes before arrival so you can freshen up and get yourself buckled in. Buzz me if you need anything.

Claire unbuckled. In the tiny galley fridge she found a bottle of wine, the cork partially pulled and a cold tray of snacks. A minute later she'd settled back into a deep plush settee, Billie Holiday crooning over the stereo system; a glass of very decent Gewurztraminer on the tray beside her. She picked from a selection of raw veggies, cheeses and segmented fruit. Normally she would have an assistant or two with her, but this was the Christmas season. She'd sent them home to their families; another studio representative based in the east, would meet her at the airport in Toronto.

Soon she was so relaxed, she lay back to sleep—tomorrow was going to be a long day. They would arrive in Toronto at 7:30 AM local time and she was scheduled to be on stage at Roy Thompson Hall at seven that evening for the first of two shows. This was the last city of her tour—she'd be home in the wee hours tomorrow, just in time for Christmas morning in L.A. She pulled a blanket up to her chin; minutes later she was sound asleep.

Clarice's pilot this evening was fifty-five year old Captain Franklin Wolfe; as experienced and skilled a pilot as Clarice could ever wish for. In the mid 1940's, Wolfe and his crew flew thirty-five harrowing night missions over Europe in a monstrous Halifax long-range bomber. On the last, their aircraft had been so severely damaged by anti-aircraft flak, he couldn't understand what was keeping it aloft. With two engines feathered, he'd ordered his crew to jettison everything except the clothes on their backs and their parachutes. The crew had taken this to heart and twenty minutes later they'd tossed all their guns, ammo; even the disassembled bomb-racks, sights and almost a ton of radio gear. They sat huddled on the freezing metal deck inside the empty fuselage praying that this mangled aircraft would keep flying just a little while longer. After coaxing the limping, smoking bomber across the English Channel, his landing was more like a controlled crash. The Halifax was an utter loss but the entire crew walked away.

After the war Captain Wolfe became a commercial pilot with BOAC; then Trans World Airlines. In his late forties, he starting flying Lears for a small private airline catering to VIP's. It was mostly fun; except on nights like this, of course.

Wolfe's co-pilot this evening was Captain Chris Webber—a gifted twenty-nine year old aviator, just a bit too young to have served during the Second World War. But he had flown Avro CF-100 fighters towards the end of the Korean War and had been shot down in the spring of 1953 by a North Korean missile. He'd parachuted to safety and evaded the North Koreans for two days before making his way back to the Allied front. After the war he'd served as an RCAF instructor pilot.

Both Captain Wolfe and Webber had personal secrets.

Captain Wolfe had experienced severe chest pains a week earlier. He was sure it was nothing to worry about—the pain went away after an hour and he intended to discuss it with his doctor if it happened again.

Captain Webber needed an occasional sip of gin when flying under stressful conditions. After returning home from Korea, seldom did he sleep through an entire night without nightmares about his CF-100 exploding and disintegrating in the sky. It had been a miracle that he'd ejected clear of the wreckage and that his parachute opened undamaged.

He drank gin because it was odorless and least likely to be noticed by his fellow workers. Earlier this evening, Captain Webber had been badly frightened by the weather reports and had taken several large belts of Beefeater from a flask in his chart-case, prior to boarding the aircraft.

Previous day

December 23, 1963

8:45 AM

Harley Jacob might have been a happier man if he'd been born fifty years earlier. Living alone on his five hundred acre cattle ranch, considered miniscule by most other ranchers in the area, he existed nicely without television, a daily newspaper, or even a telephone. He listened to an occasional CBC newscast and the farm reports on the small transistor radio he kept the window ledge, next to his kitchen table. He'd enjoyed over a decade of perfect happiness, but that had all ended when Tess died, back in '61.

Now three years shy of his fortieth birthday, Harley was not overly happy or sad; he was simply existing—the love of life pretty much gone. His best friend was a big wiry Morgan horse named Billy. One of the few remaining pleasures in his life was his mountain cabin and the solitude he found there. It wasn't as though he had no privacy at his small ranch house—he lived like a hermit there, too. But it was filled with memories from which he occasionally needed to escape; especially at Christmas. He would make up a pack and ride Billy up into the high country.

There was a string of line cabins located ten or fifteen miles apart, just below the ridge of the Fletcher range, west of his ranch. But Harley had a favorite. It took an entire day to reach it, climbing almost six thousand feet; stopping often to rest and water Billy. The cabin was about a mile from a long, sloping alpine valley, just above the timber line. Between the towering peaks of the Fletcher Range, this valley was home to every kind of game imaginable. There was a small turquoise lake at one end; its water like sparkling crystal in the summer. In the spring, these meadows would bloom with brilliant greens and multi-colored blossoms; as picturesque as any wilderness in the world.

These mountain cabins were for cowboys during the fall roundup. It took a couple of weeks of combing through hundreds of acres of rolling alpine to find all the half-wild livestock; the calves now six months old and more bull-headed than the steers. There were brands from a half dozen ranches in the area; it was time consuming to sort them all out.

The cattle were never keen to start moving down into the valley; it was hard work to keep them bunched up and moving. The trick was to find an old matriarch cow who knew there were fresh oats and alfalfa down in the bottomland—she would lead the way and the rest followed.

There was an understanding among the Fletcher Valley ranchers that Harley's cabin was out of bounds. The cowboys made sure that hunters and hikers stayed clear of it, too.

Through the summer he'd make three or four trips up to the cabin; Billy leading two pack mules, each carrying bales of hay and preserved food for the cache. He'd chop and stack several cords of black spruce and lodgepole pine for the wood stove. He'd built a small shed alongside the cabin to protect the firewood and hay from the weather and wild animals. There was even a comfortable stall at one end in which Billy slept, nicely out of the weather. Harley and Billy could ride up to the cabin in the dead of winter and stay there comfortably for a couple of weeks.

This was the most difficult time of the year for Harley—the Christmas season. Tess had loved the holidays and her mood had been contagious. While they'd never had kids, Tess still seemed to fill the house with company and Harley had to admit, it had all been great fun. He was not a man easily depressed but if he was going to get feeling sorry for himself, Christmas would get it started. His best defense was to get out of the ranch house and up to the cabin.

Harley didn't tell anyone when he was going, but his neighbors knew his schedule. When his driveway remained unplowed and no smoke rose from his chimney, folks driving by in their rickety old pickup trucks didn't worry. They knew Harley and Billy were up at the cabin.

The climb started just back of Harley's ranch house. His property was mostly mountainous; the only flat part being the fifty acres of stock pens and feed lots bordering the gravel road that wound up through the Fletcher valley. The fields on the other side of the road were Harley's, too. They were used in the fall after the roundup to sort cattle and fatten them up, before the big transport trucks arrived. Soon the bawling cattle would be on their way to the rail yards in Prince George; from there to the livestock auctions in Vancouver and Edmonton.

Billy was not quite an old horse—at twenty-seven he still had some good years left in him. When he finally retired he would lead a life of ease, grazing the low fields of the ranch. He was one of the smartest horses Harley had ever known.

Billy had instantly recognized Harley's mountain gear—the big canvass sacks and the 30-30 lever action carbine that slipped into a leather scabbard across Billy's heavily muscled flank. Billy was so familiar with the climb that Harley usually just let him choose the way. The big Morgan liked a bit of variety but would get them there in about eight hours, no matter which route he decided to take.

The first part of the hike was a maze of overgrown skidder trails through second growth Douglas fir, jack pine, scrub alder, and poplar. There was thick ground cover under the canopy—blueberry, juniper and buck brush. They eventually climbed out of this, surprising the occasional deer wandering down to the lowlands to raid the last of the fall grass. Next they climbed into rolling hills, patchy with grassy meadows and thickets of mountain birch. Billy liked to snack on the last green mosses and lichens of the season—Harley didn't object; they had lots of time. The wild grasses were now mostly brown; killed by the fall frosts.

It started to snow.

Billy knew every trail snaking through every thicket and wandered along them at his own good pace. Harley spoke to him from time to time, complimenting him on his excellent choice of route and telling him how much he was enjoying the ride. Billy seemed to understand and answered with a long exhaled mutter; his way of agreeing. They'd been best friends since the big horse was born in 1936. Harley, just ten years old at the time, had been at the vet's side during the birth.

Harley had been watching the sky to the northwest and didn't like the look of it—wouldn't be surprised if they were in for one hell of a storm. As they climbed higher, the snow became deeper—now over a foot. There were a couple of inches on Harley's hat and shoulders.

A half hour before dark they arrived in a meadow just below the cabin. For the past hour, they'd waded through knee-deep powder. Billy was looking forward to his little stable in the woodshed and getting into some of the clover and oats they'd hauled up that summer. His joints were sore; he knew that Harley would rub him down and throw a heavy wool blanket over his back. Billy would have a good feed, a long drink of water that Harley would bring him in a galvanized bucket; then he'd lean against the side of his stable and snooze. Harley would let him out tomorrow morning to wander a bit.

By dinner time, Billy was dozing. Inside the cabin Harley had a kerosene lantern glowing, a fire crackling in the stove, had stowed his supplies, made his bed with fresh sheets and swept the floor. A pot of thick beef-barley soup and dumplings gently bubbled on the stove; the odor so rich he was salivating in anticipation. He was tired. He would probably work on his carvings for a couple of hours; then hit the sack. It felt good to be back.

But it would be so much nicer if Tess were here.

*****

Over the next two hours a massive, freezing low pressure system rolled down the west coast of North America from the Arctic and Siberia. Five hundred miles west of Harley's cabin, it ran into a monstrous 'pineapple express', flowing rapidly northward from the south Pacific. The resulting stew of horrible weather pounded across the Queen Charlotte Islands and into the interior of British Columbia. By late evening, powerful erratic winds were rattling the cabin shutters and the big door to Billy's stable. When Harley blew out the lantern at 10:00, the cabin vibrated slightly as ninety mile per hour gusts hammered the hillside. Along with the wind came more heavy snow; by midnight another foot had fallen and it was still coming down hard.

Harley was asleep in minutes.

December 24

12:15 AM

Clarice Moreau's flight had only been in the air forty-five minutes when the crisis began.

Captain Wolfe glanced up from his instruments—Captain Webber was sound asleep, his head lolled over against the bulkhead. Wolfe suspected he'd been drinking and experienced a bright flash of anger followed by a lightning bolt of mind-numbing pain, deep in his chest. He immediately lost consciousness and flopped forward against his control column. With a large chunk of aortal plaque fetched up against a fluttering heart valve, Captain Wolfe's pulse sputtered in arrhythmia. Thirty seconds later, it stopped altogether.

Wolfe had switched on the autopilot several minutes earlier, but the weight of his corpse pushing steadily against the control column, partially overpowered the servos, causing the Lear to slowly lose altitude. A bright red light blinked continuously on the instrument panel. Through all of this, Webber slept like a baby, his alcohol thinned blood coursing happily through his body.

The Lear's charter firm had installed a new ground proximity alarm a few months earlier. It was this alarm that saved Clarice's life. Captain Webber awoke to the whooping claxon twenty-six minutes after Wolfe's heart attack. It took him a few seconds to remember where he was. He could tell instantly from Wolfe's ashen skin that he was dead—he'd seen plenty of bodies in Korea. The flashing light and audible alarms told him exactly what was happening. A massive dose of adrenaline overpowered the alcohol in his veins as he stared in disbelief at his instruments. He fought the urge to vomit—they were flying at just under ten thousand feet. There were many mountains in the Fletcher range higher than that. He flipped on the landing lights and peered out through the windows. Nothing. Solid cloud and snow.

Webber flipped off the autopilot—immediately the jet dove as the weight of Captain Wolfe's corpse pushed his collective all the way forward. Webber managed to haul the Captain's body upright with his left arm and jamb it sideways against the bulkhead. Now he rammed his throttles to full power and hauled back on his controls with all his strength; he could feel and hear the roar of the engines aft causing the entire aircraft to vibrate and shudder violently.

Thank God; the Lear was now climbing. He was flying blind with no idea where they were nor what kind of terrain was beneath. He stared in horror at the ground proximity gauge—seven hundred feet and falling; six hundred, five hundred, four hundred. Now three hundred. How could this be—why wasn't he gaining altitude? He must be approaching a mountain—the ground must be rising faster under their belly, than he could climb.

It took all his willpower not to scream. He felt a hot wet sensation as his bladder voided. Now two hundred, one hundred... At this altitude they might strike the ground any second; the plus/minus accuracy of this gauge was fifty feet. Finally the gauge seemed to level at one hundred; then drift up slightly, now almost two hundred. The muscles in his arms ached as he fought the controls.

Since awakening, everything had gone wrong for Webber—now he had his one lucky break. They'd finally reached the top of this weather system; he could see openings through the roiling clouds.

Again Webber choked back vomit. They were flying into a vertical rock canyon surrounded by thick fog. In the light of a full moon he could just make out the forested flanks of the mountain, leading to a small flat area surrounded by huge granite spires. These peaks were at least two thousand feet higher than his present altitude—probably more. Webber knew he didn't have enough room to climb out of danger or to turn and fly back out in the opposite direction. He had to ditch on that flat area ahead, and he had to do it quickly. In about twenty seconds it would be too late.

Behind him in the tiny passenger cabin, Clarice Moreau was fully awake. Badly frightened, she had crawled back to the flight attendant's seat and belted up the three harness straps, cinching them as tightly as she could bear. She found herself simultaneously crying and praying.

To his credit, Captain Webber did a fair job of putting the Lear down in the alpine valley. He knew his greatest enemy was velocity—he'd have to bleed off speed before impact. He cut his engines to essentially an idle, lowered his landing gear, deployed his flaps, and pulled back on his controls, forcing the Lear to climb gently like a glider with its remaining momentum. One side of the alpine valley sloped upwards at fifteen or twenty degrees—Weber banked and flew for that slope, gliding upwards in a loosely controlled stall. Finally, he had to set down or they would fly into the steep shale slides at the base of the rocky crags.

They hit the ground at just over 125 miles per hour; the shock a hundred times greater that the hardest landing of Webber's career. What he couldn't see under the snow was the heavy brush, the scattered boulder field and scrub trees common at these altitudes. As the fuselage made contact, cushioned somewhat by the deep snow, the port landing gear caught a rock outcropping and was instantly ripped away. This caused the entire fuselage to roll and twist. Both Webber and Moreau in the back were thrown violently against the insides of their respective cabins—both mercifully knocked unconscious, sparing them the terror of the ride ahead.

Then as the starboard landing gear and both wings were shorn off, the fuel tanks inside them ruptured and exploded in the engine exhaust, well behind them. The fires didn't last long due to the snow. What was left of the fuselage continued sliding uphill through the snow like a torpedo for another fifty yards; then tipped and rolled. The tail portion of