Page 28 of Fire Dancer
She pursed her lips, then shrugged. “What can I say? I hope so.”
Chapter Seven
INGO
I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel of the government-issued Jeep, then checked my watch. It wasn’t like Nash to be late. What was keeping him?
I’d checked and rechecked my messages, but nothing. Of course, reception was spotty out where Nash lived, and work took him to equally out-of-the-way places, so his messages had a way of pinging through hours after he sent them.
I was in the supermarket parking lot, not far from the Y intersection that had become the center of my compass rose for Sedona. People skittered in and out of sight in my rearview mirror, pushing empty shopping carts into the store and full ones out. The coffee shop Stacy frequented was over to my right, just a few doors down from Red Rock Vistas Real Estate.
I scowled at both places, then glanced back at the office of Desert Skies Balloon Adventures.
Five minutes passed, and still no Nash.
I called in to the agency, following up on the license plate trace. I’d never had one take this long or been put on hold so many times.
“Sorry for the wait,” the woman at the agency finally came back on the line. “I’ve been told to direct your inquiry to Captain Edwards.”
I frowned. Edwards was way up the chain of command. Why him?
“Um, did I do something wrong?” I asked, only half joking.
The woman’s laugh straddled the same line. “Ask Edwards. Do you want me to put you through?”
A dusty orange Subaru pulled up beside me. I glanced over, did a double take, and hastily ended my call.
“I’ll call back, thanks.” I put down the phone and stared at the new arrival.
Not Nash.
Pippa.
Joy and hope swept through me, as they did every time we met. My mind went blissfully blank, and my inner wolf bayed as I slid out of the Jeep.
“Hi.” Pippa’s greeting was flat, but that didn’t stop my inner wolf from wagging its tail.
“Pippa,” I murmured, then glanced at the office. “Here to book another flight?”
A few weeks ago, I’d taken a balloon flight to get an overview of the area for my initial risk assessment report. I hadn’t accomplished as much as I’d hoped, because Pippa had joined the same flight, and my mind had been too busy filling in a totally different risk assessment — the one estimating the chances of us ever reconciling.
She glanced at the balloon office with a dry chuckle. “Another flight? If I could afford it, I would.”
Had it not been for recent events, I would have laughed. Instead, I positioned myself between Pippa and the real estate office before she got it in her head to go stomping back in there and set the place on fire. Pippa was a kind, loving soul, but once you got on her bad side…
The wind pushed her lavender scent toward me, and my throat went so dry with longing, it ached. My heart ached too.
“Are you here to meet Erin?” I asked.
“Nope. I’m here for you.”
Words that had featured a thousand times in my dreams over the last too-many years.
“Erin said you needed someone to show you the back roads,” Pippa said in a carefully neutral tone.
I cleared my throat, but the words still came out all husky.
“I did.”