Finding Mr. Write (Business of Love #5) - Ali Parker Page 0,9
as clueless and occupied as a dog watching its master holding a piece of cheese.
The airport wasn’t all that busy this morning. Mondays weren’t a big day for arrivals or departures apparently. I checked in and went through security in less than twenty-five minutes before I settled down on a leather chair in the only cafe in the airport. I sipped a decaf Americano because the last thing I wanted was to feel jittery on my flight, and I pulled out my notebook. I rested it on the armrest and wrote a few pages while I drank my coffee and waited for my boarding time.
An hour and fifteen minutes later, I was in my front-row first-class seat on the plane. I still had my notebook out, not because I wanted to write right then but because I wanted to look busy and focused so that whoever sat beside me didn’t try to strike up a conversation. The last thing I wanted on a flight was an obligatory conversation with a stranger.
Sure, I could use it as material for a book, but sometimes, a guy just wanted to fly in peace. My game plan, should things go how I wanted, was to recline my seat, close my eyes, and sleep for most of the flight. Maybe I’d have lunch when the meal cart went around. Maybe I’d continue to sleep.
Time would tell.
As the rest of the plane filled up, I found myself crossing my fingers that nobody sat beside me. Those were the best kind of flights.
My hopes were dashed when a seventy-five-year-old man in a tropical-printed shirt sat down beside me. He had a backpack with him, and stitched onto the front was a large Canadian flag. His wife, or the woman I assumed was his wife, had the aisle seat on the other side. She too had a Canadian flag on her bag.
I twisted to my notebook, held the pen over the page, and willed him not to speak to me.
“Morning, lad,” the Canadian man said. “Always a shame to leave such a beautiful place behind, isn’t it?”
I grimaced internally but smiled at him. “Definitely. First time?”
He shook his head. “Genie and I come every year on our anniversary. But every year, it gets harder and harder to leave. She says it’s because we’re old and frail and don’t like heading back to British Columbia in the rainy fall season.”
“I hear it’s cold there this time of year.”
“It’s not nearly as bad as the other coast,” he said. “Our winters are fairly mild compared to the rest of the country. Where you from, lad?”
“New York.”
“Ah, then you have far colder weather than us.”
“I like the cold.”
“I don’t mind it either. It’s just the rain I don’t like. Seeps into your bones. Can’t warm up. But that’s not what makes it hard to leave a place like this.”
“What is then?”
The man gave me a knowing smile and tipped his head to his wife. “When you’re old like us, you don’t know how long time is going to favor you. One of these trips will inevitably be our last one together. When you start to close in on the end of the line, every minute and every day counts. So leaving the beaches and the memories we have here behind gets a little harder each year.”
I stared at him.
He chuckled and put his seatbelt on. “Look at me, going all soft on a stranger. I can see you have work to do there. Carry on. I’ll mind my own business and harass my missus instead.”
As soon as he turned around, I flipped to the back of my notebook and scribbled down what he’d just said to me. It seemed like the perfect piece of wisdom for a book.
And for me.
The air had a cold snap to it when I pushed out the doors at JFK airport and stepped out onto the busy sidewalk where travelers were flagging down taxi cabs and Uber drivers. I carried on down the sidewalk to the pickup location, where I spied what I was looking for, a glossy black Bugatti Chiron. The car headlights flashed and I grinned as I dragged my bag down the curb.
My friend, Walker, extracted himself from the car. He was a tall man and nearly every vehicle was too small for him except for big trucks. He wore a black winter overcoat and a burgundy scarf. Walker had always had a flair for fashion. It was the artist in him. He