Only Mine (Fool's Gold #4)(92)

They’d swooped and bucked, and then a single flash of light had hit their engine. The plane had shuddered as the engine was fired into a useless molten part, and the plane had dropped like a rock.

There’d been no controlling the descent. It had been too dark to know where to land, assuming there had been somewhere safer than the forest where they’d crashed. Finn didn’t remember much about the impact. He’d awakened to find himself lying on the ground, in the rain.

His parents had both been unconscious. He’d cared for them as best he could, then he’d hiked out to get help. By the time he returned, they were gone. They’d probably died within an hour of his leaving, but he didn’t like to think about that.

Lightning flashed next to the plane, jerking Finn back to the present. The mother screamed. The boy was probably terrified but too sick to make a sound. Next to Finn, the father clutched his seat.

No one asked if they were going to die, although he was sure they were thinking the question. Probably praying. Finn waited for a sense of regret, a voice that said nothing was worth this, that he should have waited.

And then he felt it. A sense of something other than himself. Even though he knew it was impossible, he would swear his parents were there with him, helping him. It was as if someone else took control of the plane, guiding his hands.

Not knowing what else to do, he listened to the silence, turning left, then right, dodging lightning and the wind shears, finding the calmest part of the storm. He flew lower when the invisible forces indicated he should, veered left, then up.

For the next hour he flew as he’d never flown before, and gradually the power of the storm faded. Fifty miles outside of Anchorage, he saw the first hint of sunlight. A voice from the control tower crackled in his headset.

They landed less than thirty minutes later. An ambulance was waiting to race the boy and his family to the hospital. At the last second, the father turned back to him.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” the man said, shaking his hand. “I thought we were going to die. You saved us. You saved him.”

Then he was running after his wife and climbing into the back of the ambulance.

Finn stood by his plane and watched the sun break through the clouds. Automatically, he checked the plane. Everything was fine. There wasn’t a single mark to indicate what they’d been through. He climbed back inside, knowing whatever he was looking for wasn’t there.

Maybe it had been his parents, maybe it had been something else. Flying was like boating. If a man did it long enough, he experienced things that couldn’t be explained. For whatever reason, he’d been spared the night of the crash. He’d always thought it was to raise his brothers, but maybe there was another purpose. Maybe he’d been saved so that he could find his way to Dakota.

He loved her. Having to go through a near-death experience to figure that out made him an idiot, but he could live with that. As long as at the end of the day he got the chance to tell her.

He loved her. He wanted to marry her and have lots of babies with her. Hell, he needed to call Hamilton and tell the old coot he wanted to buy the business. Then he should let Bill know he was selling. Most important, he had to get back to Fool’s Gold and tell Dakota how much he loved her and wanted to be with her.

He pulled out his cell phone and called Bill.

“I’ve been worried,” his partner said. “I had to hear it from the tower that you arrived? You couldn’t call?”

“I’m calling.”

“You’ve been on the ground ten minutes. What have you been doing? Shopping?”

Finn chuckled. “Getting my passengers into the ambulance. Look, Bill, I’m out. You can buy me out of the business. I have to go back to Fool’s Gold right away.”

“This is about that woman, isn’t it?”

Finn thought of Dakota and grinned. “Yeah. I’m going to figure out how to convince her to marry me.”

There was a pause, then Bill said, “She’s going to be really happy to hear that.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she’s standing right next to me. If her smile is anything to go by, I’m going to guess she’ll say yes.”

DAKOTA USED binoculars to scan the sky. Bill had told her in which direction to look, and when she saw the tiny speck of a plane appear, she began to jump up and down.

Finn landed and guided the plane off the runway. She was already running toward him.

They met on the grass by the tarmac. While there were a thousand things she had to say, right now she only wanted to be in his arms. Then she was, and he was holding her and kissing her and nothing had ever felt so right.

“I love you,” he told her, then kissed her. “I love you, Dakota. You and Hannah and our unborn baby. I should have told you that before.”

She was so happy, she wasn’t sure she even needed to breathe. “You needed time.”

“I got scared and then I took off.” He cupped her face in his hands. “I want to marry you. I want us to be a family.”

She searched his face. “Even though that means a lot of responsibility?”

He nodded, then kissed her again. “Who am I kidding? I was born to be responsible.”

“You were a wild guy.”

“For about fifteen minutes. I want to be with you.”

Beautiful, amazing words, she thought happily. Perfect words, from the man who was exactly right for her.