The Value of Vulnerability (45 page)

***

Someone slapped her cheek, very lightly, and she opened her eyes.

“What happened?” she asked, confused.

“You fainted.”

Crouching beside her, Nick held her in a semi-upright position, her back against his bent knee, her shoulder against his broad chest. A large puddle of coffee was still growing next to them.

“Sorry for the smack. You scared the crap out of me. Are you all right?”

“I guess. What’re you doing here?”

“Heading to Fort McMurray. I assume you are too.”

She nodded. “He’s dead.”

Nick’s mouth tightened and he straightened, hauling her with him. “We don’t know that,” he muttered in a voice that spoke more of desperate hope than belief.

“They just said—”

“
They
are frequently wrong.” His strange eyes, a white-blue that stood out in his tanned face, raked over her. “I thought you and Ford—”

“I love him. He doesn’t love me.” Her face crumpled. “Didn’t love me,” she corrected the tense. She collected herself with an effort as Nick’s callused hand squeezed hers. “I’m on a flight late-tomorrow morning.”

“Where’s your luggage?”

“Don’t have any. I was out with my boss when I heard, and went straight to Pearson.”

“Come with me. I have a charter leaving in an hour.”

A janitor was already mopping up the spilled coffee as Nick led her away.

***

She let him take care of her without a whisper of resistance. She was numb, and he needed something to do other than wait to hear final and absolute news of the death of one of his closest friends.

Exhaustion caught both of them by the time they arrived in Fort McMurray, collapsing in hotel rooms Nick arranged. She half dozed for a couple of hours until he rapped on her door, bearing shopping bags.

“I guessed the size,” he said.

Erin’s clothing was, aside from rumpled, insufficient for the colder temperatures of northern Alberta, for the previous day had been excessively warm in Toronto, and colder than normal in Fort McMurray. In addition to a change of clothes, Nick had bought her a parka, mittens, a toothbrush, and assorted sundries.

“Thank you.” She thought about her gloves from Ford, tucked away in a drawer at home.

“The parka’s actually too warm, but better that than cold. You should have boots, too, but guessing badly on size in footwear would be disastrous. We’ll get you more things later. Outfit you right.”

She smiled wanly and he left her, saying he would be back shortly to collect her to go to the search headquarters, where family and friends were gathering. As she showered, she wondered if Ford’s family—his mother and the vast claimants to the Howard fortune and BHG stocks—would be there. Not likely—they’d be assembling teams of lawyers in Toronto for what was sure to be a huge battle. It would just be her and Nick to hold vigil.

“Where’s Conor?” she asked Nick later. “And Alex. I never met Alex.”

“He’s been in the States since right after Christmas. I talked to him—he’s getting a flight to Edmonton. Conor’s in Europe, but on his way back to Toronto. This will all be wrapped up today, I imagine.”

And then it would be home. Empty handed. A funeral. Or a memorial service, if his body wasn’t found, or had been . . . Her fingernails curled into her palms.

People were crying, tearing at her ragged emotions. These were family members of the flight crew and the corporate team, brought there by BHG. A reporter or two hovered, not too obtrusively
. Most interviews were done, and other reporters were in the field. It was a long waiting game, waiting for word of recovered corpses and information about the cause of the crash.

The parka was too warm for indoors and she struggled out of it.

“What happened with you and Ford?” Nick asked, assisting her. “He didn’t really say.”

They both wanted to talk about him, and now was a good a time as any. “I was an idiot. Fell in love with him. I couldn’t stay under the circumstances. It’s hard to love when it isn’t returned.”

“He had a lot of baggage, you know. Lots of hurt. Made it hard for him to open up. I guess I’m surprised that you of all people wouldn’t have been more patient.”

However natural it was that he defend his friend, the hint of censure in his voice was her undoing. “More patient. Me, of all people.
Screw you, Nick.”

“Hey!”

“I get that all the time. I know people think I’m a soft touch. That I’m too nice. Too easygoing. Just because I cope with disaster well doesn’t mean it’s easy for me. It’s hard. Hard swallowing hurt. Hard taking casual slights people toss at you because ‘Erin won’t mind,’ or ‘She’ll get over it.’ As soon as I do something that’s hard for me to do, to make a moral choice that also serves my best interests, suddenly I’m a bitch? Being nice and easygoing doesn’t equate to being a doormat, you know. Do I regret my decision? Sure, in a way. But it was the right decision. Period. So I deal with the downside.”

Nick chuckled
, nonplussed. “Sorry. You ever talk to Ford like that?”

“Sometimes. Anyway, you think I sh
ould have stuck it out. Tried to get through.”

“Never having been in that situation myself, I can’t speak empirically.” He shrugged. “For what it’s worth, while he was with you
, I’d never seen Ford happier. You were good for him.”

She gripped his hand in silent thanks. It struck both of them that they were referring to him in the past tense, and the ache of that hit hard. “Tell me something about him.”

So, Nick told her stories, and she shared some of her own. Time dragged.

Nick had loaned his charger to her and found a place for her to plug in her phone. She reached for it and powered it up, instantly seeing a raft of messages. “I should call home. My boss. Someone.”

There was a commotion, a surge of people, voices raised. Cameras flashed and microphones brandished and arced over the wave of new arrivals at the centre.

“Oh my god,” Nick breathed, getting to his feet.

Surrounded by reporters, deftly handling the barrage of questions thrown at him, his features drawn, was Ford.

He’s alive.

She stared, struck immobile.

Nick, unmindful of the reporters—for he was well used to them—crossed the room to his friend. Scruffily handsome in a growth of beard, Ford’s face broke into a rare, pleased grin as he shook hands with Nick. They gave each other one of those rough, affectionate, backslapping hugs that men do, and exchanged a few words.

His eyes jerked in her direction as Nick pointed to her. Cameras continued flashing and recording, capturing for all eternity the expression on Ford’s face—boyish joy and wonder spilled across his features as his eyes met hers.

Somehow, her legs moved. She ran to him. She pushed past people, heedless of anything but getting to Ford. She threw herself into his arms, her face burrowing in the curve of his neck, long legs clasping his waist through the thick coat.

“Hey . . .” His arms tightened around her.

She did not hear Nick ordering the reporters back, did not notice Ford moving, carrying her away from the crowd, did not see a volunteer pointing the way to a room where they could have a moment of privacy. All she knew was that Ford was breathing. That he was alive.

“Hey,” he murmured again, and she noticed then that they were alone.

He set her on her feet as she scattered kisses over his face and opened his heavy coat to bury her nose against his shirt to smell him, her hands petting him, squeezing him, touching him as if checking for damage.

He started to laugh, a laugh she had never heard before, completely free and sincere.

She stepped back, jerked and embarrassed into clarity. “Rumours of your death were highly exaggerated,” she said finally. Slapping impatiently at his arm, she snapped: “I didn’t know you wanted to be a rock star.”

He cupped her face in his hands, still smiling gently. “I only found out about twenty minutes ago that I was dead.” He took a lingering sip of her lips.

“Where the hell have you been?” she raged, tears spilling. “And I missed your birthday!”

“What? What birthday?” His hands fell.

“On the news. They said you were dead at thirty-four!”

“Well, they got it wrong. They look at years, and ignore months. My birthday is in May. The fourteenth.”

“Oh. Well, okay, then. Mine, too, actually. The thirtieth, though.”

“Good to know.” He grinned. “But I knew that already. Background check and all.”

“Huh. But I’ll bet if we hadn’t broken up and the fourteenth of May had come by, you wouldn’t have
told
me it was your birthday!”

“Probably not,” he declared unrepentantly and cheerfully, rocking back on his heels.

Fresh tears fell, and she smacked his arm again. “Where have you
been
?”

“It’s a long story that can wait.” Holding her face again, he kissed her softly and lapped at her tears. “Why are you here, sweetheart?”

“I c-couldn’t stay away. You know I l-love you. Even though you don’t love me, I had to be here. Just to say g-goodbye.”

He put her hand over his heart and pressed his over it. “My beautiful, playful, crazy, weird girl. No matter what happens, no matter the cost, I’m yours.”

“You love me?”

“Erin, I don’t know what that means. If—in addition to a variety of parameters I’m
sure you will provide—it means I’d almost rather be dead than live another day without you, then yes, I must love you. You wanted into my heart. But the truth is that you
are
my heart, the sole reason it wants to continue beating.” His gaze was uneasy. “Is that enough?”

Speechless, she nodded. And began to shake in reaction.

He swept her roughly into his arms. “I’m sorry about everything,” he muttered hoarsely. “We’ll talk, but I have to get out there. The families of the crew. Dala’s husband. Mike’s wife.”

She nodded again. In her great joy, she had forgotten that there were others whose loved ones would not magically reappear again as hers had.

“I still can’t believe you’re here,” he said as if echoing her thoughts. Then he chuckled. “Good to know I just had to wait for you to come running back to me.”

“Of all the—! You’re still an arrogant ass. I’d not be here if I’d known you were alive.”

That made him laugh again. “Doesn’t love mean blind acceptance of your lover’s faults?”

“You wish.”

He held her at arm’s length. “Look at you! You’re dressed for a warm Toronto spring, not Fort McMurray. No wonder they call us pampered elitists. Do you have a coat?”

“Nick bought me a parka. Took good care of me. We have a hotel room and everything.”

“A room, eh? Can’t a man be dead for a day without his best friend moving in on his girl?”

“Rooms,” she corrected, sniffing inelegantly. “I’ll let you stay in mine.”

***

The story came out as Erin heard bits of it from Ford talking to reporters, and Nick filled in some detail he had garnered.

From Juneau, Ford took advantage of being in the far north to meet with some mining interests in Yellowknife, chartering a flight while maintenance was performed on the jet. He arranged with the flight crew to meet in Edmonton, where Michael Rens needed to be for a meeting. A field trip for Ford and the Yellowknife interests—flying to Hay River and taking snowmobiles for the last of the trek—had produced some inconveniences, with one snowmobile breaking down. Stranded, his guide had radioed a bush pilot to take Ford to Fort McMurray. He’d lost his cell somewhere along the way, and it wasn’t until he landed that he found out that all hell had broken loose.

Erin turned down Nick’s offer to take her back to the hotel, hugging him closely, thanking him tearfully for everything he had done—and got her hair ruffled for her efforts.

She hovered while Ford spoke to the families of the flight crew, offering his condolences and assuring proper respect and care of their loved ones. She watched as Michael Rens’ wife clung to him, and saw Ford’s gentle treatment of the woman. He spoke at length, quietly and sombrely, with Dalaja’s traumatized husband.

Not that she hadn’t seen Ford fake his way through situations that demanded empathy—but tonight, there was no hint of dissembling. Mr. Slick was not in the room.

And with that realisation, the concerns she hadn’t realised were still there—their differences, his need to mete out revenge—dissolved. They had a chance of making a real go of their love.

After that, there were more reporters to deal with and volunteers to thank. It was hours before they were finally alone in her hotel room.

Ford, laughing, threw her on the bed, following her down. To her utter dismay, she started crying again. He patiently held her and stroked her hair.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled against his throat. “I can’t tell you how terrible it’s been and how fantastic it all is now. I’m the biggest idiot, crying instead of ripping your clothes off.”