Heads In The Clouds

By Amber Polo

Love is in the air…

Can a meat-eating Texas advertising woman find love with a vegetarian Buddhist and get her pilot’s license despite interference from her wacky Arizona airpark neighbors and a high flying Alaskan Malamute?

Lia Bedford thinks she’s going to get her pilot’s license, sell her father’s Arizona airpark house, go back to helping beef producers sell meat, and probably find a guy just like the cheating husband who bankrupted her.

Seth Hartman thinks he’s come to Arizona to build a spiritual center, escape the community and wife that betrayed him, and create a new beginning much like the contemplative, vegetarian life he left.

While Lia tries to hide and Seth tries to fit in, their attraction pulls them together. Lia and Seth begin to change with help from their wacky senior citizen neighbors and a high-flying Alaskan Malamute. All they have to do is conquer the fear of flying and their fear of love.

A Contemporary Western Aviation Romance

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Publishing
• Release date: Apr 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094416441

Amber Polo

Amber Polo is best known for her Shapeshifters’ Library series, a light urban fantasy filled with dog-shifting librarians and book burning werewolves. Released, Retrieved, Recovered, and Reprinted.Amber's love of books drew her into a career as a librarian- and later a writer. One day a plane flew past her office window and she turned her pen to her own Arizona airpark backyard and Heads in the Clouds was the result. Hearts in the Vortex, a Sedona paranormal romance, was also is set in amazing Arizona.Following her trail back to libraries, The Pharaoh & the Librarian imagines what would have happened if Cleopatra had faked her death and escaped on a pirate ship? While her sister sailed for Wales with the most valuable ancient books from her Library of Alexandria? And they both landed in an imagined new world filled with crypto-creatures and historical humans?In addition to her novels, she is proud of Relaxing the Writer: Guidebook to the Writer’s High which offers hundreds of tips to help writers and readers relax and her self-produced Relaxation One Breath at a Time, an audio that uses her voice to teach relaxation to calm your body and mind and/or help you fall asleep.

Book preview

Heads

in the

Clouds

A M B E R   P O L O

Bryant Street Publishing

Copyright © 2013 by Amber Polo

Edited and revised edition of Flying Free © 2009

All rights reserved

Cover Design by Mary Ruth

ISBN: 9781094416441

First Scribd e-book edition: 2021

Scribd, Inc.

San Francisco, California

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"Keep your Feet on the Ground,

Your Mind Wide Open,

Your Spirit Flying Free,

and Your Head in the Clouds."

one

91.111 Operating near other aircraft. (a) No person may operate an aircraft so close to another aircraft as to create a collision hazard. FAR/AIM Federal Aviation Regulations/Aeronautical Information Manual, 2006.

Lia was certain, if she opened her mouth, her heart would burst out and explode across the plane’s instrument panel. Her hands loosened on the yoke. She whispered in disbelief, I did it.

One more hour of flight training finished. No time to think. Stay calm. Land the plane. Compared to landing, flying was a breeze. She laughed out loud. After years of writing advertising copy under pressure, clever words popped into her mind at the strangest times.

Scanning the sky, she noted a plane far to her left. Below, the grid of the town of Sunrise looked like a model train village in the tan, mesquite-scattered desert. Close to the base of the airport’s mesa, the dirt-brown Cottonwood River snaked through the valley, easy to spot between bands of green trees and farmland.

Without warning, a gust of wind threw the plane sideways. The yoke twisted in her hands. As she fought to regain control, another plane appeared close on her tail. Its red underside cut in front of Lia’s plane and dropped into the landing pattern. Her landing pattern.

I’m going to die. Lia’s fingers squeezed the yoke. Damn you, Ben. I don’t belong here. How fitting. Talking to her dead father, who with thirty years flying experience, died in a plane like this one. But not before he wrote a will requiring her to learn to fly. She wished she could have afforded to say no, thank you.

The plane passed close. Too close. A flash of red out Lia’s window. Her head brushed the ceiling and she bounced against the harness. Her plane shuddered from the near-miss. Engine roar filtered through her headset.

Lia’s heart stopped beating. She tried to move, to think, but her body and mind froze. The cockpit closed in. She fought the urge to close her eyes.

She pulled up on the yoke. The plane rose carrying her back into the sky. It seemed like forever before she felt safe enough to exhale and whisper, Danger’s over. Do what Flo trained you to do. Why didn’t small airplanes have flight attendants serving drinks or at least a mini-bar?

Her hands moved automatically. She held her altitude, eased the flaps up, and kept the Cessna’s nose level. Plane straight, she headed away from the runway and increased the throttle.

Sounding more confident than she felt, Lia spoke into the mic using formal aviation radio language, Sunrise, this is Cessna Five Five Victor extending my downwind, Sunrise.

Immediately she heard her instructor Florence Keene’s reply, You did great, Lia. Take her around and bring her in.

Lia wanted to scream. Just open the door and leave. Her shirt, sweaty and cool against hot skin, clung to her chest. She moved her head and stretched frozen neck muscles from side to side, shrugged her shoulders up towards her ears, and let them drop. Starting out, her body had been tense. The near miss turned stress to panic. Her heart began to shrink back to normal size.

The red plane that cut her off could have killed her. She was too old for this. Learning to fly was for immortal eighteen-year-old boys not for perishable forty-year-old women. Her father wanted her to learn when she turned sixteen. To spite him, she refused. Now his last will and testament required her to fly in order to claim her inheritance. Sneaky bastard.

She watched her altimeter. At 1,000 feet above the airport she reduced throttle and started her descent. Looking up and out over the instrument panel, she glanced down at the desert airstrip. Right now her only objective was to get this plane and her feet back on solid earth. Staying in the air was not an option.

Looking down, she glimpsed trouble. The orange windsock on the south end of the runway flew straight out, while the one on the north hung flaccid as yesterday’s pantyhose. So far she’d been lucky. The weather every morning of her training flights had been perfectly calm. Each flight had been exactly like her textbook and CD-ROM program exercises. Flo had told her landing in a crosswind was difficult and monsoon season winds unpredictable. So what. She’d never planned to stay here longer than it took to get her license. Or fly once she’d had that piece of paper in her purse.

White knuckled, she inched the yoke to the left and pushed her left foot against the pedal. Coordinate. That’s what Flo called it. Coordinate the turn. The plane responded. She was back in control.

A mile-long runway stretched down the middle of the mesa. Hangars and houses spread along both sides of the strip. Although she’d always told people her dad’s airpark community was like a golf course development, except with a runway instead of a fairway, she hadn’t actually come here until after Ben died. For now, this was home.

Lia turned into the final leg of her pattern. She glanced to her left and saw a golden eagle gliding off her wing. The eagle turned its head toward her. She whispered, I want to be free. Then louder, Now I’m talking to birds.

Lia brought the Cessna in line with the runway. Thankfully both windsocks now flopped limply. The large white number seventeen loomed up in her windscreen. She held the plane’s nose in line with the centerline of Runway One Seven. Five hundred. Four. Three. Two. One hundred. The ground came closer and closer.

She heard and felt the right wheel hit with a chirp. Then the left. With a thump the nosewheel settled onto the tarmac. She slowed and taxied the plane close to a stucco building and metal hangar and shut off the engine. It sputtered to a stop and she exhaled a long whoosh and forced her sweaty palms to release the yoke. She wiped one hand and then the other on her jeans, folded her arms across the yoke, and laid her head upon trembling crossed arms. Every cell in her body tingled from fear and surged with adrenalin. Lia unbuckled her harness, opened the cockpit door, found a foothold, and jumped to the ground. She commanded her legs to support her.

Though her legs wobbled, her feet were, at last, on solid ground. Since Flo Keene hadn’t rushed out, she’d have time to settle herself. She hated flying lessons, but respected her seventy-something flight instructor.

Still in shock, Lia’s queasy stomach knotted. If she’d had time for breakfast, the cockpit would be a disaster. She stretched up her arms. Her breathing felt close to normal, but the muscle tightness and backache she always experienced after flying remained. Rubbing her right hand and wrist, she tried to soothe the chronic ache from long hours of computer work interrupted by texting. She straightened, took one unsure step, then started toward the pilot shop. Her body shivered at the memory of her fear, feeling no pride in her response to a real emergency.

Lia removed the long-billed flight hat. Her headset had plastered her dark hair flat to her head and she shook to let it dry in the Arizona sun. Eight in the morning and the temperature was close to ninety-five. August in Arizona. She’d thought dry heat would be, somehow, drier.

Even without the usual stress of flying or a near midair collision, an hour in a cockpit was brutal. Flying lessons. Arizona. One huge mistake. And a dead man was to blame.

Commercial airliners had been a big part of her life in advertising. She’d loved the excitement of terminals and the peaceful quiet of cross-country flights to catch up on work and sleep. Refreshed, she’d bound off the plane ready for meetings and presentations. That kind of stress energized her. Obviously, her body was not made for any plane smaller than a 747.

Lia attached the tow bar to the Cessna 152’s nosewheel and maneuvered the plane into the hangar. She’d quit, then figure out how to get on with her life without a job, a home, or anyone who cared about her.

A tall, sandy-haired man walked up and helped her position the wings. Hi. I’m Seth. So sorry about what happened. I heard Ms. Keene say you’re a student pilot. I hope you keep flying.

Keep flying? her voice sounded as strident as Flo’s, while her knees still felt like wet leather. Was he apologizing? Could he read her mind? This guy stood too close and looked directly into her eyes. Short for a Texas girl, she’s grown up around tall men and set her stance firm. Her message was clear. Do not underestimate me because of my size. He’d casually ignored her message and invaded her space. Most people wouldn’t have noticed, but her personal space extended out further than most. Her ex-husband always told her she kept the whole world at arm’s length.

I mean, if someone had done something like that to me when I was learning... His eyebrows merged into a straight line. Are you okay? Seth reached out and touched her cheek. You look flushed.

Lia stepped back. I am fine. It’s hot. The idiot still stood too close. I’m fine. She turned, collided with the wing, and lost her balance. The hangar smell of used motor oil must have made her woozy.

Seth’s hands reached out and held her shoulders to prevent her from toppling backwards.

Thank you, she began. He turned her to face him. Lia looked up into his eyes. And lost her voice. His hands still held her shoulders firmly and his sky blue eyes showed concern. Heat radiated from his body and she smelled an exotic smoky scent. Strangely, instead of discomfort, a wave of calm washed over her.

He slowly withdrew his hands from her shoulders.

Still wobbly, she leaned away. She couldn’t pull her gaze from his. Was he concerned? Or he was flirting? She had no time for either.

His mouth softened. "Shanti," Seth said softly.

What?

"Shanti means peace in Sanskrit."

You talk in Sanskrit?

I’m Buddhist.

Embarrassed, she added quickly, I have to go, and stuffed her headset into her black vinyl flight bag and walked toward the pilot shop. Why did she have to buy a special bag when one of her too-expensive designer totes would have worked just as well?

As she avoided a vicious prickly pear cacti and a determined mesquite bush grown into a tree, her shoulders still felt warm where that strange guy’s hands had rested. She followed the red-brown dirt path to the square building. The sign read Sunrise Airport, Pilot Supplies, Flight Instruction, Fuel. Local pilots called the place Flo’s or Flo’s FBO for Fixed Base Operation or just The Pilot Shop.

With little effort she could write an ad campaign to make this place famous. She’d create a logo and catchy slogan. A photo of Flo’s distinctive weathered face would become an icon of aviation history. But she wasn’t here to design advertising campaigns. And Flo seemed to like her business just the way it was.

She tried to smile at the bald man sitting on a bench outside the door, grasping a handheld radio. He looked concerned for her, too. Probably heard the whole thing. She had no interest in a conversation with this thin, dry as the desert, old codger.

She opened the door to the pilot shop and her face softened into a smile. Behind the counter, her tiny white-haired flight instructor yelled and waved her arms at a man in dark aviator glasses. Despite Flo’s rant, the young man looked like an unrepentant kid accepting punishment.

Flo stomped around the counter. Trim in a tan jumpsuit, snugly belted around her narrow waist, she looked up at the young pilot. The top of her head reached only to his shoulder and her heavy white braid swung from the nape of her neck as she yelled. Chance Branock, you dumb ass fool. You cut off my student. In fifty years I’ve never seen a stupider dang move. Damn idiot!

The old man from the bench outside walked in, ignored the scene, and poured himself a cup of coffee.

Sorry, the dark-haired pilot Flo had called Chance began. I didn’t—

Fool. No excuse for a stunt like that. Lia could have been killed. What in blazes were you thinking?

Hey Flo, he pleaded, holding out his hands in an entreating gesture.

No buts.

You and Lia okay? the old man asked Flo.

Flo glared at him. We’re fine, Barney. Don’t need no babysitter.

With a nod to Lia, he carried his coffee outside.

Chance shrugged and turned to Lia. His handsome features reminded her of a model she’d used for her last Texas beef photo shoot, sans cowboy garb. Chance wore tan pressed slacks and matching shirt with wings and braid. She’d bet if it weren’t hot as hell, he’d be sporting an authentically-battered leather bomber jacket.

I’m sorry. Chance grinned, removed his dark glasses, and shone smiling emerald eyes at Lia. Yet his gaze looked past her, as if staring into the distance. Fashion models looked at cameras with that same blank stare.

Lia didn’t think he sounded concerned, but before she could tell this guy he was a jerk, the man she’d met outside walked in. Chance punched the other man’s shoulder in an exaggerated cool dude gesture. Seth, man, meet Lia. Lia, meet Seth, my passenger.

Seth’s gaze didn’t waver. We met. His soft voice a contrast to Chance’s bluster.

Chance snapped his fingers. Hey Seth, help me put my plane away.

Seth stepped around Lia and turned. A sandy blond ponytail hung down the back of his shirt and her eyes checked out his backside. He looked good in those jeans, but he sure was no cowboy. He wore sandals. Every Texas girl knew no cowboy would be caught dead without his boots.

The door thudded closed. Through the window, Lia watched the men walk to the red two-seater Piper Cub, like the one her dad flew when she was a kid.

Seth looked about her age and classically handsome, but not model beautiful like young Chance. His strong features contrasted with his calm manner and reminded her of confident men who were well aware their looks affected women. She tried to dismiss him from her mind, yet she could not forget his eyes.

Next to Chance’s exaggerated pilot-swagger, Seth’s fluid walk seemed effortless. She’d never seen anyone move like that. Lean muscle and subtle strength, his confident manner caught her attention, and for a second, the long sandy hair reminded her of her father.

Flo fanned her face with a sectional chart. Damn fools. Testosterone around here’s making me dizzy.

Who’s the blond guy with the nice butt? Lia asked.

Moved into the apartment in Chance’s dad’s hangar. Chance flew in from Sedona this morning and took him for a ride.

Flo walked to Lia, reached up, and gave her a hug. Her tiny stature made Lia’s own slim five-foot-two-body feel gigantic. The older woman couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds and Lia felt ribs through the thin jumpsuit. Without tough talk and an in-charge attitude, everyone would treat her like a china doll. Lia stood rigid. Hugging wasn’t her thing.

Only a quitter would stop flying, yet she ached to tell Flo she had business back to Texas. Or honestly admit she didn’t have the stomach for flying.

Flo held on until the older woman’s strength melted Lia’s resolve. She’d finish what she’d started and prove to her dead father, wherever he was, she could become a pilot.

You were doggone great. Flo stepped back and looked at Lia. Your dad would be as proud as I am. It’s in your blood.

Thanks. Lia felt guilty not telling Flo that even if she passed the test she’d never fly again. If she even got that far. Flo said Ben would be proud of Lia for taking flying lessons. But flying killed him and his last will and testament forced her into the deadly skies.

Have a cup of coffee and fill out your logbook. Flo’s voice slipped back into her crusty instructor tone.

When Flo gave an order, she expected it to be followed. Florence Keene had been flying for forty-eight of her seventy-three years and knew more about airplanes and flying than most men and wasn’t too shy to let them know it. Most called her Ma’am, but Lia heard pilots say, Sir, behind Flo’s straight back.

Lia, awkward after the hug, wondered if Flo sensed how close to quitting she’d come. She glanced toward the door. Tell me about the blond guy?

Another Sedona snob. More money than sense. Flo’s face crinkled into a lined roadmap. Yep. Just one of Chance Branock’s fancy Sedona friends.

If he’s rich, why is he renting an apartment here? Lia’s real estate research showed airpark property values escalating all over the country. Flo told her most current owners bought years ago, built their own planes, and lived on modest pensions. Rich guys invested in land and bought big houses they didn’t have time to live in.

Some of the guys think he’s undercover FAA. See how he walks. No normal guy walks like that. Flo fluttered her arms and imitated Seth’s smooth walk. And did you see his sissy shoes?

Lia laughed. Chance, not Seth, looked like money. His sunglasses cost more than her computer.

I can’t figure how Chance cut in front of you? Trained him myself. He’s landed here a zillion times. I sure didn’t expect the darn fool to cut you off like he did. I got more scared than you.

I doubt it, Lia said. I should have been more alert. One gust of wind terrified her. She’d lost concentration and fear caused her to miss seeing the other plane. Though she was certain her instructor’s voice had been the only one on the radio when she called her approach, she’d not been in control. She planned to get her license, but she also planned to live. Wind caught my right wing and I slowed. You taught me better. But so far all our flying days have been calm. Just as she’d been taught, Lia had brought the plane into the pattern, easy as could be. Then the wind hit. The yoke slipped from her grasp and the left wing dipped. She’d fought to level the wings. And then that damn red plane came out of nowhere, bearing down on her with no radio warning. No, she couldn’t tell Flo she’d panicked. Right now I need a—

Drink, said Flo with a grin.

Absolutely. Lia nodded. Though it’s a little early.

I used to love to smoke a Camel after a rough flight.

I quit.

Good girl. But are you really okay? She inspected Lia again. You’re darn good at hiding feelings. Not like your dad. Ben showed how he felt and did things his way and damn anyone else.

Right, Lia replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. She’d always hated her father’s know-it-all attitude. I am fine, really.

Too bad both those guys are jerks. Flo shook her head. No young men for you up here with all us old fogies.

I’m forty and not looking for a man. Lia ignored Flo’s stare and unconsciously rubbed her sore wrist. I’m here to learn to fly and settle Ben’s stuff.

Ben fixed that old house up real nice. You’ll be real comfy there. You know he bought this mesa and the adobe from a sheep rancher and put up the steel hangar big enough for his cock-eyed projects and leveled the dirt strip himself. When he decided he’d live here full time and wanted company, he sold lots and turned this into a fancy-schamcy airpark. Flo’s turquoise eyes flashed, I had lots of good times with Ben and his cronies. Maybe I should have invested in one of those pieces of dirt. But I’m like Ben. Independent.

Flo seemed happy living alone in the cramped rooms behind her shop. Lia vowed her own next home would be a high-rise condo or rehabbed urban townhouse with offices on the first floor for her advertising business.

Flo cocked her head. "What do you want?"

Lia set her jaw. Did Flo suspect Lia was thinking of leaving? She gave Flo the expected answer, My target is my pilots’ license.

That’s my girl.

two

The birds can fly an’ why can’t I? John Townsend Trowbridge, Darius Greene and his Flying-Machine, 1869

Before Lia reached the jeep, her cell phone rang. She answered and recognized her father’s lawyer’s supercilious voice. Ms. Bedford? Will Yannecky from Sanford, Carnegie, Undergaard, and Margolis.

Yes. Her response sounded as curt and impatient as she felt. Ben’s law firm had been less than efficient. She’d still not seen a copy of the will.

I’ve been trying to reach you for some time. Messages left at your business were not returned. Now the phone is disconnected.

I’m here. She did not add that it was not his concern that PROMOTE BEEF! went bankrupt. So what’s your point?

"I need to FedEx a copy of your father’s will to you. We spoke