Page 21 of One Last Shot
He laughed. “I like you, Boo. Maybe it was the Marine unit, but you aren’t hard to be around.”
She smiled back. Okay, so maybe midnight chicken wasn’t torture.
He put the straw into the shake, then picked up the glass and wiped the ice cream from the table with a napkin. “You might have seen me talking with Reynolds, the executive producer of theMike Grizz shows.”
She stilled.
“So, actually, it was the last of a number of conversations with Huxley Shaw, his associate producer. Huxley approached me a while back after she contracted Air One for this gig. She and Reynolds had approached their network with the idea of an unscripted reality show about search and rescue.”
Her stomach started to knot up.
“They were impressed with Oaken, and frankly, I was too.”
“He kept his cool.”
“He saved Mike’s life. At least, enough to get him to help. And sacrificed doing it, too.”
The memory of his distress on the highway stirred in her mind.
“Chicken’s up,” said Tillie as she set two plates of crispy chicken in front of them. And then in the middle, a pile of glistening fries. “Anything else?”
“Thanks, Tillie. We’re good for now.”
“I’ll cut you a piece of cherry pie.”
She walked away and Moose picked up a fry.
“No, seriously, where do you put all that food?”
He grinned at her. “I take the pie home. Eat it for breakfast. Try the fries—they’re amazing.”
Maybe, before she lost her appetite. She reached for a handful of fries and added them to her plate. She’d be eating chicken for breakfast, probably.
“Reynolds and Huxley would like to do a limited-run series with Oaken and Air One.”
She stared at him, fry in hand. “What?”
“He’d join our crew for three weeks—a month, tops. We’d train him, and he’d go out on a few callouts—nothing too dicey. And... they’d pay us enough to cover our summer expenses and then some.”
She washed the fry down with water. Then, “Are you serious?”
“As a bear in springtime. I need to get creativehere, Boo. I have a fundraising event in the fall, but right now we need cash flow. This would help. A lot. I don’t want to shut down Air One at the height of tourist season.”
She picked at the chicken.
“The fact is, the emergency services are relying on volunteers and outfits like Air One more and more. Last summer, a group of campers was mauled by a bear, and they waited nine hours for rescue because the SAR troopers out of Anchorage were busy looking for lost hikers. Which they never found. Two of those campers—teenagers—died, waiting.”
She leaned back, wiping her fingers on a napkin. “I get it. I do. And I agree Oaken Fox seemed... well, not your usual celebrity country singer. He’s the real deal.”
“I think so.”
“Fine. Sign him up. Whatever. I’ll help with whatever I can. I just don’t want to be on camera.”
He put down his shake. Met her eyes. He had dark, gray-green eyes, and they held a hypnotic sort of power, really. Made her still so that even her insides stopped moving.
“What?”
“That’ll be hard since I want you to train him.”