Anywhere with You: Starlight Hill, #4

By Heatherly Bell

She crashed and burned once before in a small town, but she needs a second chance...

Celebrity stylist Kailey Robbins wants a second chance with the love of her life, ex-military pilot Joe Hannigan, but can she convince him that this time she'll settle down into small town life?


Sweet and tender, Heatherly Bell writes romance that will capture your heart. ~ Marina Adair, New York Times bestselling author

Heatherly Bell's sweet, warm romances are the perfect escape. ~ Jamie Farrell/Pippa Grant, USA Today bestselling author

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heatherly Bell
• Release date: Nov 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201596507

Heatherly Bell

Heatherly Bell was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama but lost her accent by the time she was two. Her grandmother, Mima, kept the both the accent and spirit of the southern woman alive for decades. After leaving Alabama, Heatherly lived with her family in both Puerto Rico and Maryland before being transplanted kicking and screaming to the California Bay Area. She now loves it here, she swears. Except the traffic.

Book preview

1

Joe Hannigan loved flying planes. Crash landing them, not so much. Even though he regularly piloted a plane of skydivers over Napa Valley, he rarely jumped. No self-respecting pilot would ever jump out of a perfectly operational plane.

Operational being key.

On his return flight from the Sacramento Valley two thousand feet over Napa Valley, his Cessna began running roughly. Not good, especially at this low altitude. Joe quickly adjusted the fuel mixture controls back and forth. Nothing.

C’mon, baby, don’t do this to me.

As Joe fought with the vibrating controls, he couldn’t fight facts: his plane was rapidly sinking, quickly losing altitude. One thousand five hundred feet, one thousand feet, nine hundred, eight hundred, seven hundred feet. Great. He’d lost engine power at a dangerously low altitude. Shit. Time to configure for a forced landing.

Joe couldn’t believe the one word that came to mind as he immediately assessed and interpreted facts as quickly as his well-trained aeronautical brain would process them: Kailey. Not the word he would have chosen had he not been calmly interpreting anything other than his own impending death. To be fair, a close second was fuck.

The same word had been heavy on his mind, in a far different capacity, the first time he’d ever laid eyes on Kailey Robbins. They’d been bed buddies since shortly after they’d met on the job. Joe, the private pilot for a celebrity juvenile-delinquent pop singer with an unpronounceable name, and Kailey the kid’s stylist. Their relationship was supposed to be temporary, like the job, but both of them were surprised when neither one wanted to end it. He’d talked Kailey into coming home with him to Starlight Hill, where she’d stayed for about two minutes.

Then she’d been off to some other job in another big city. She had to follow the work, she explained. There were no celebrities needing a stylist in Starlight Hill unless you counted Billy Turlock, and the guy was too pretty to need a stylist.

She didn’t fool him. Kailey had run as fast as she could out of his little town. She’d had a difficult life, growing up as a foster kid with no real roots. She didn’t understand home and family, and Joe scared her. What they had together scared her.

It might have scared him too, except he didn’t scare easily.

Like now.

Screw this. No one is dying here today. Not him, anyway, and not without a fight. He’d been trained for this eventuality, and even if nothing on this plane seemed to want to cooperate at the moment it didn’t mean it was time to give up. Thankful he was alone and not responsible for another human life, he used what little engine power he had left to turn and head towards open land.

He pulled back, white-knuckling the column and coming in for a landing. The noise as he hit the ground was a roar and crash of metal and glass reminiscent of a roadside bomb. But he’d landed the plane right side up. Yes! Now to slow the beast down. It kept moving despite his best efforts, following all laws of physics. Joe didn’t know how long because he lost track of time as he pictured his family. Mom. Gen. Thought about internal injuries. Those would be the most serious of injuries. A broken leg or arm he could handle but if he couldn’t slow down this plane soon it might ground loop and flip over on its back.

Then everything went black.

Joe woke up to the sound of sirens. Man, those guys are fast. He had to give it to the first responders of the Starlight Hill Fire Department. He should have gone to work for them instead of flying planes. Always knew these damn things would be the death of him. Rather than wait for help, he crawled out of the wreckage on his belly. Everything hurt and it was hard to tell where he was injured. He looked around at his surroundings, recognizing the ugly red barn immediately. Yep, he’d landed right on Ike Henderson’s land, the lone farmer in Starlight Hill to grow mushrooms.

Joe had landed in a pile of shit. No big surprise there. He’d been doing that for most of his life.

Ike was yelling and waving his arms. Something about ‘watch where you’re going.’ Okay, thanks, buddy.

The first responders drove right out to the field and headed in his direction. Don’t move! Ty Gillham yelled.

Not a problem. Joe gritted his teeth and stopped trying to move. He could take this pain. It was fine. Good. Pain did something most people didn’t realize. It made a person feel alive. Right now he was about as alive as he’d ever been in his entire sorry life.

Ty, Scott Turlock and the others reached him, and one by one they went to work.

What a landing! Scott said.

Joe rubbed at his eye and his hand came away bloody. Now several feet away from his plane, he took one long and hard look at the wreckage. Parts were scattered about in different directions. The right wing was destroyed, nearly flattened into the ground. Fuck!

What is it? Ty asked.

I think I need a new plane.

A few minutes later, Joe was deposited in the ambulance for a ride to the emergency room of St. Vincent’s Hospital. Even though he’d told the guys over and over he was fine and only needed a ride back to his truck, no one would listen to him.

Go get checked out. You’ll need stitches for the cut above your eye, if nothing else, Scott ordered.

You’re a pain in my ass, you know? Joe said to Scott.

Yeah, yeah, Scott said and shut the ambulance doors.

Are you refusing medical care? The fresh-faced EMT applied pressure above Joe’s eyebrow.

No, dammit. Joe spit out. Let’s get this over with.

Joe found himself on an ambulance ride. Seemed unnecessary but then again plane crashes had a way of shaking people up. The whole thing was unnatural, metal falling out of the sky. He definitely agreed. But he’d executed a difficult landing and managed to walk away in one