Barefoot in the Sun (Barefoot Bay)(2)

Do what? It didn’t matter. If this was her test, he’d pass. “Honey, I’d walk across fire for you and you know it.”

“Then this ought to be a piece of cake. Oliver Bradbury, you are about to conquer your fears.” She pulled off the blindfold. “And I’m about to face mine.”

Yellow. The only thing he could see was a giant, rubbery, blinding mass of yellow spilled over the ground like a sea of sunflowers; it took a full five seconds for it all to compute. “No f*cking way.”

“Well, now, that’s the attitude.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him closer.

“A hot air balloon, Zoe? Are you nuts? I’m not getting on that thing.” Not in a million years.

Rounding the basket, she stood on her tiptoes and peered in. “Oh, the crew did everything just like I asked. We only need to blow her up and take her high.” She waved to a few people gathered near another balloon, this one partially inflated by a giant fan in front of it. “Climb in and meet the ground crew.”

“The ground crew? How about the pilot?” At her smug smile he closed his eyes. No. Oh, Christ, no.

“I’m taking you up,” she said, confirming his fear.

“You are.” He gave a dubious look to the deflated balloon and tiny basket barely big enough to hold two people, let alone enough extra tanks to make sure they didn’t run out of whatever it was that kept these things afloat.

“Want to see my license? I got it last week.”

Last week?

Her laughter floated off into the breeze, like they were about to. Except they weren’t.

“You want a lesson in how it works?” she asked. “Would that make you feel better? Those sandbags are—”

“I want a rain check.” He stepped back, glancing up to a morning sky that promised no rain as a handy excuse. A brightly striped balloon ascended, already nearly a thousand feet in the air. Aw, f*ck it all. “It’s not happening, Zoe.”

She angled her head and looked up at him. “And thirty seconds ago you were going to walk across fire for me.”

“I still would. On the ground.”

For a long, quiet, seemingly endless moment, they looked at each other.

“How is it you can cut open a human chest and pluck out a heart and replace a stinking artery like a freaking car mechanic and you can’t go up in the air in a machine brilliantly designed to fly safely?”

He took a slow breath. “First of all, I only did that during my cardiology rotation, but in surgery, I’m in control.” He held up his two hands. “I operate these.”

“Well, I operate this.”

“No, Zoe, it’s powered by wind and—chance.”

She stepped closer, wrapping her arms around his waist, and gave him an irresistible smile. “Kind of like me, huh?”

He slid his hand into her hair and held her steady. “You’re uplifting, not flighty. There’s a difference.”

She inched back, her eyes uncharacteristically serious, and maybe a little scared. Why would she be scared? “I want to tell you something, Oliver, and I want to be up there”—she pointed to the sky—“when I do.”

“You can tell me right here, right now. Not two thousand feet in the air.”

“Three.”

Shit.

“I need to be sure you aren’t going to leave.”

He almost choked. “Leave? I’d never leave you. I’m attached to you. I changed my life for you, or did you forget?”

She shrugged. “Yes, you broke up with your girlfriend the day after we met. But”—she pointed a finger in his face—“you said yourself you didn’t really love her.”

Was this a test of whether or not he loved Zoe? Because if it was, Oliver wouldn’t fail. But, damn it, he didn’t want to take that ride. “This is crazy.”

“I’m crazy,” she assured him with a ridiculous amount of pride. “I’m a lunatic who loves to get up in the air and be completely untethered. And that’s where I want to be with you when I tell you…something.”

That something he needed to hear.

He searched her face, hating that he could already feel himself giving in. How did she do this to him? He couldn’t say no to her. One kiss, one touch, one laugh, one time, and he was gone. “God, I love you.”

“Is that a yes?” She tightened her grip. “Please say yes.”

“I know what you’re doing.”

She tilted her head, that serious look darkening her eyes again. “Actually, I don’t think you do.”

“You’re testing me. And you know damn well I have never met a test I didn’t ace.”

“I’m not testing you, Oliver. I’m testing me.” She put her finger on his lips, holding his gaze. “And I want to do it on my turf.”

“Which happens to be three thousand feet off the ground.”

“Think of it as three thousand feet closer to the sun. Please?”

It was just enough to push him over an edge he knew he’d tumble over anyway.

He gave up the fight as a few guys—who looked as young and inexperienced as Zoe—came over to greet them. During the next half hour Zoe was in her element, and Oliver was in denial.

The fan blew the massive nylon balloon up to four stories high, until they were all dwarfed by its magnitude. When it was big enough, they attached what looked like really rickety burners, which blasted enough heat that the whole thing started to bounce a little—like Zoe in her strappy sandals and ruffled skirt that danced around her ankles.

“Let’s go!” She grabbed his hand and they got into the basket, high-fived a few of their crew, and then there was more choreography of burners and sandbags and a great deal of waving and cries of “Good luck,” which he hoped to hell they didn’t need.

And then they were off, the ground drifting farther away, the gondola, as she called the basket, swinging like a heart-stopping pendulum, and the air thinner with each passing second.

Or maybe that was just Oliver having a tough time breathing.

He gripped the wicker rim, refusing to look down. Instead he watched Zoe fine-tune the burners and dance with the wind, as he tried to pretend he was paying attention and not mentally writing his last will and testament.

“Listen,” she whispered as she twisted a valve. “Listen to that.”

Silence. Complete and total silence.

“Nice,” he admitted, relaxing a little as a slight breeze lifted them over a golf course and toward a lake, the residential developments of suburban Chicago fading into a quilt work of farms in rural Illinois about fifteen hundred feet below.

Wordlessly, Zoe and Oliver came together, folding into each other’s arms like it was as natural as breathing.

“You okay?” she asked.

He nodded, lowering his face for a kiss. “Is this the part when we get to drink that champagne?” he asked, nodding toward the bottle that one of the ground crew had tossed in at the very last minute.

“Oh, that’s not for us,” she told him. “That’s in case we land on someone’s property. It’s tradition for the balloon pilot to offer champagne to the people to thank them for letting them land there.”

“In other words you don’t have any idea where you’re going to land.”

“That, my darling, is the story of my life.” She took a deep, deep breath and closed her eyes. “You ready?”

“For anything. Except jumping.”

“Well, you might want to when I tell you this.”

He searched her face, taking time to appreciate the fine bones and soft skin, the deep bow in her upper lip, the bottle-green eyes that tipped up at the sides and sparkled when she smiled. But it wasn’t Zoe’s external beauty that had wrapped around his heart and squeezed the life out of him. It was her spirit, her laugh, her willingness to give everything to every situation.

“Nothing you could tell me would make me want to jump,” he said.

“All right.” Her chest rose and fell with each strained breath. She eased out of his arms and steadied herself by holding on to the wicker edge, the rising sun silhouetting her. “My name’s not really Zoe Tamarin.”

He gave it a nanosecond of consideration. “Okay, what is it?”

“Bridget.”

Bridget? “I like that name, but Zoe suits you so much better. So much more alive and wild than Bridget.”

“Zoe means new life,” she said softly, the words spoken almost as if she’d memorized them or she was quoting someone.

“Is that why you changed it?”

Her knuckles whitened on the basket rim. “I didn’t change it. Pasha did.”

Her aunt was even crazier than Zoe, that was for sure. “Don’t tell me: a butterfly landed on her teacup and flapped out a new name in Morse code?”