12 "There's the lady's plane"

Lee closed her eyes,. What a mess. What a wonderful, scary, couldn't-come-at-a worse-time mess.

She was having Oliver's baby. Oliver, a man she'd known and trusted since forever. A man who had made soldiering his life---until it killed him.

Gazing at the woman,whose fuchsia-colored stethoscope draped her neck like a trendy piece of bling, Lee's mind whirled with future scenarios. The baby's health, due to Lee's age. The birth process, another health worry. Her fledging company. No question, she'd have to sell Sky Dash. A single mother operating a plane and raising a baby? Impossible feat.

"God, I can't believe this happened, Lily. You know my periods are always unpredictable, and since the divorce I didn't bother with the pill. What was the point of regulating them, right? And, in case you're wondering, he wasn't blasé and I wasn't stupid. We used condoms."

" Condoms can tear," Lily said gently.

Lee stared at the floor. "it wasn't supposed to happen," she whispered. "you know how close we were as kids, right? You, me, him.(BFF). But on this furlough...."

"Things changed," Lily filled in.

"Yeah." Lee remembered Oliver's face that last day.

She'd flown him to the naval air base on Whidbey Island, where they'd held each other for an eternity. She realised then that walking away from her marriage to Stuart had been a relief; but walking away from her lifelong friend had put a dent in her heart.

A tear slid down her cheek. "I want this baby to live, Lil."

"First and foremost--no stress. And no negative thoughts." The doctor's hand gripped Lee's. "Do what you have to do because this may be your last chance. You're thirty-three, Lee. And that means---"

"I know, I know. My eggs are petrifying."

Lily chuckled. "Well, not quite."

"But close. Funny, isn't it? Stuart and I tried for years and when it finally happened I miscarried after the first month. Oliver and I do it once, and...." Abashment warmed her skin. Lord. She didn't know whether to hope, pray or wish. "Do you think it'll make a difference because it's his?"

Lily dabbed Lee's tears with a tissue. "I cant answer that. However, I can outline a strict and careful routine for you. I'll also prescribe an anti nausea medication. Don't worry," she said with a smile. "it's been on the market for years, for just these conditions."

"That's good, because I still have a plane to fly."

"Today it moves into second place," Lily said firmly. "From this point on, baby comes first."

If he lived. Yes, Lee thought, hoping. It's a boy. With Oliver's smile, Oliver's eyes. Eyes that offered the same gentleness she recognised the night Rogan Matt had chased the cold away with his warm vest.

Oh, Lee. How much worse can it get? Here you are, pregnant with the baby of one man while lusting after another.

Who would've guessed that she, still a virgin on her twenty-third birthday, would shuffle through men quick as a card player ten years later?

At nine o'clock Friday morning, Rogan stood on the boardwalk facing a narrow door that led up to the apartment above coffee sense, a shop that brewed some of the best java he'd tasted in a long while. Last weekend, when he noticed the for Rent sign in the upstairs window, he had immediately called the number listed. Apparently, the owners of the coffee shop and its top floor recently lost their tenant to Bremerton and they'd needed another lessee. After a quick tour, Rogan signed the agreement.

Jingling the keys in his hand, he looked toward the cove. The boardwalk arced in a horseshoe at the conclusion of main street. The right annex of the shoe consisted of ferry docks, a few craft shops and a seafood pub; the left extension hosted several local clothing stores, the Tuscany Grill, Art Smarts, Coffee Sense---and Lee's pier.

He admired the quaint maritime of bold colours, weathered cabled roofs, storefronts circa 1930 with scripted or printed signs.

Most of all, he liked that Coffee sense was the last shop on the boardwalk's left curve--and a few dozen yards from where Lee moored her seaplane. Tha detail had him smiling as he surveyed the spot where, within the hour, her red-and-white Cessna would once again rock lazily on the sun-dappled water.

After signing the lease yesterday, he'd stood with Danny at the upstairs window and watched Lee lift easily into the air on her afternoon mail run.

"There's the lady's plane," his son pointed out. "Are you gonna see her all the time?"

An innocent question with conflicting connotations. Yes, in a sense, he would see her "all the time" but not for the reasons he craved, like the heart he believed hidden behind her quick tongue and clever mind. And then there were those flashing green eyes. Reasons that were all about Lee Tait, the woman---jeez, Rogan.(forget it already).

Inserting the key, he unlocked the door and took the steep, narrow stairs to the four-by-four landing where a pair of doors faced each other. With a squeak, the one on the right swung open and he stepped into his new office. The hard wood floors creaked beneath his boat shoes and the musty scent of wood and age filled his nostrils. Yesterday there had been a sense of rightness about the place, which he felt again today as he reassessed the main room, the side kitchen, the five-foot hallway branching into a washroom, bedroom---or second office space--and the rear entry to an outside stairway.

Guilt poked Rogan at leaving the firm he and Johnny had founded. But he couldn't do that life anymore, couldn't live in the house he'd bought with Darby. All he wanted was to live in the new farm house, and work Monday to Friday under his own shingle here on the island. Although he'd agreed to work as a quasi-satellite office to the main branch in Renton for special cases, the idea of small town layering and taking on garden variety cases appealed to Rogan as nothing had since he'd graduated from Princeton.