Chapter Thirty-One
thirty-one
Ridley
■ 23-DEC ■ Trans-Continental Airways ■ Flight: 964 ■
LHR-London, Heathro w ? JFK-John F. Kennedy Int’l Airport
Seat Assignment: 14J 31A/31C
Ridley stuffed his carry-on into the overhead bin and sat in the open seat beside Lanie.
Her mouth dropped open, watching. “Wait, what are you doing here? I thought—”
“That I wasn’t going to come?” He gave her a playful smile, shrugging. “Yeah, well, a very smart woman with a big vocabulary said it ‘behooved’ me to join my daughter. And I knew what flight you’d be on, so, I bought a last-minute ticket. And here I am.”
“Is that why you’re in coach like a pleb too?”
“Pretty much,” he lied, and doing that had honestly sucked.
“And just happened to get the seat right next to mine? What’s the likelihood?”
“What’s a little moving heaven and earth to be here? For someone I love, I’d do anything.”
Lanie’s face reddened. He liked that he’d flustered her and suddenly wondered what she’d look like red-faced with exertion too. Then just as quickly he blinked, dismissing the unbidden, totally inappropriate thought. “Bea will love this surprise,” he quickly added. Ridley flagged down a passing attendant. “Can I have another water for her and a Bloody Mary for me? Cheers.”
The attendant looked puzzled for a moment before nodding as Ridley turned back to Lanie.
“Uh. Isn’t it a little early in the flight?”
He checked his watch. As the saying goes, it was five o’clock somewhere. “Nope.”
Plus, he needed something to settle these sudden nerves.
“God, you have some real ‘entitled white man’ energy sometimes. Has anyone ever told you that?” She spoke in censure, but chuckled lightly.
“No, I think that’s definitely a first.”
■ 23-DEC ■ Trans-Continental Airways ■ Flight: 964 ■
LHR-London, Heathro w ? JFK-John F. Kennedy Int’l Airport KEF-Keflavík International Airport
Seat Assignment: 31A/31C
“Attention, passengers, the captain has turned on the seat belt sign. We ask everyone to return to their seats and fasten their seat belts. The captain has identified a mechanical issue requiring us to make an unscheduled landing.”
“Nothing to worry about, folks.” The captain’s composed voice took over smoothly from the head flight attendant over the PA as passengers looked around, gauging each other’s level of panic. Alarmed murmurs quieted. “It’s a problem with the oxygen system that feeds into the drop-down masks. Nothing that impedes our ability to fly. So, it’s only out of an abundance of caution that we’ve decided to land at Keflavík International shortly.”
“Keflavík?” Lanie turned to Ridley.
“Iceland.” Luckily, he could answer in a decidedly calmer fashion than he might have if the pilot had said it was a problem with the engine. But he still gave a short chuckle to mask his growing unease. “I’ve been before. You’ll love it.”
The captain continued, “We’ll have the ground crew take a quick look-see and hopefully, we’ll be back in the air and arriving in New York City ahead of that snowstorm. Happy holidays. Cabin crew, please take your seats and prepare for landing.”
“You have, huh?” Lanie searched Ridley’s face as if deciphering something written there. “Well, I’m sure I’d love it more if this was a scheduled stop.”
A rotation of Christmas classics played in his ear as Ridley watched Lanie slouch against the front desk at the first hotel that had possible room. Her elbow was thrown up on the high counter. He smiled inwardly. She tapped at the surface with the edge of a credit card to a rhythm only she heard. He stood a foot away waiting on a customer service representative from a different hotel to return to the phone. The staff member at the counter looked about as helpful as the person who had him on hold. Which was to say, barely.
Lanie occasionally swatted the tiny ornaments hanging from the miniature tree on the counter, like a cat. She hadn’t noticed but every few moments, the hotel rep glanced up from his computer monitor at her.
She has another admirer. Ridley had come to recognize that Lanie was not aware of the attention she and her wild curls, full lips and galaxy of freckles garnered.
As his daughter might say, Lanie was “deeply weird.” But in a way that people were drawn to, and was pretty cute. Like her tendency to scrunch her nose, or tap it when she was thinking, as she was doing right then. Or how when she was concerned or nervous, she’d tug on her earlobe. Or how she barely stilled even asleep on a flight, fidgeting constantly.
Ridley smiled to himself thinking about it all.
Any luck? Lanie mouthed when she noticed him watching her.
He snapped out of his distraction, the fleeting grin disappearing from his face. He shook his head as hers fell sideways onto her arm draped across the counter dramatically.
He wasn’t surprised that they weren’t getting anywhere. Therese, at home, had zero luck procuring them a single hotel room anywhere within twenty minutes of the airport online. Their unscheduled pit stop had become an overnighter, and by the time they’d cleared Immigration, nearly all the flights inbound or outbound from the United States had been canceled. The Big Board of Flights was by then awash in red, thanks to the snowstorm there that had landed early.
They journeyed from airport hotel to airport hotel looking for available rooms. Ridley could have kicked himself. It wasn’t like he hadn’t known they’d been trying to beat a turn in the weather—it was winter after all. Now, there had been a run on rooms here in Keflavík and between that and the regular holiday season bookings, they were, in effect, nomads.
Five minutes later, after an entirely abortive conversation with the customer service representative, Ridley resigned himself to having struck out. “No luck,” he admitted with a sigh as he rejoined Lanie at the front desk.
By then, the early sunset in Iceland had sent the light down behind the horizon hours ago and true night had fallen.
“Anything here?”
Lanie shook her head but it was the hotel clerk that spoke.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Aronsen.” He gave a genuinely defeated shrug.
“So, that’s it? We’re supposed to sleep outside?” Lanie asked, and though she may have been directing the question to Ridley, her eyes remained on the clerk. She didn’t exactly bat those long, brown lashes of hers but her tone and expression definitely read as coquettish.
A flush ran up the young blond clerk’s neck into his face. He looked back down at the computer screen and punched keys determinedly. She glanced in Ridley’s direction then, giving him a flash of a conspiratorial wink.
He stifled a laugh. Well, maybe she does know she’s cute...sometimes.
“There may be one room available that I can offer you.”
“One room?” Ridley’s voice pitched upward, sounding more alarmed than he should. Lanie straightened from her prolonged lean against the counter to regard him. “Sorry, if that’s all you have, sure.”
Lanie’s face was unreadable as she turned her attention back to the clerk.
“Unfortunately, it is.” The clerk tapped a button. “So, I may have something in about thirty minutes. That is, if they don’t extend their stay due to that.” He tipped his chin upward.
Ridley looked in the direction the clerk had nodded. A television in the restaurant bar across the lobby displayed a Doppler weather radar image of two large, multicolored, swirling masses obscuring the entire Northeastern US.
Ridley groaned and excused himself to make a call to Bea’s grandparents. They’d be sitting, waiting on news from him.
“You sure you’re comfortable...with, well, you know...” Ridley trailed off awkwardly twenty minutes later as he followed Lanie down the hall on the second floor. “Sharing one room?”
“It’s a suite with two bedrooms. And we were always gonna be in one room unless we wanted to stay in Reykjavík.”
He nodded. That was the one thing his unsuccessful calls to various hotels repeated. They could always take the hour-long trek into the capital. There could be hundreds of available rooms there. Unfortunately, if they were rebooked onto a flight first thing in the morning, they’d run the risk of missing it, being an hour away. Lanie couldn’t tolerate that and Ridley agreed.
They could have— would have —done much worse. So why didn’t he feel better?
When Lanie opened the door at the end of the hall, she clapped her hands together in delight as he stepped inside behind her. Lanie walked from one bedroom to the other, feet away, inspecting them before claiming the left one for herself.
“You have the bigger king bed but I’ll take the two doubles to have the bigger of the two bathrooms. I need space to spread out my products.”
“Sounds fair,” he said absently, taking in the space as she disappeared into her room.
Ridley’s eyes transited the large space. It was a rather nondescript, utilitarian beige-encased main room with a wide but uncomfortable-looking gray sectional at the center. And an oval, particle board–style, walnut coffee table facing a sizable wall-mounted television.
“You okay?” Lanie wandered back into the main room after she’d dropped her bags.
Ridley nodded, uncertain he was telling the truth.
“You don’t like it?”
“It’s not that,” he fibbed. “I’m worried I might miss Christmas if we can’t get on a flight tomorrow.”
Lanie’s eyes softened. “You’ll be there. I know you’ll make it.” Lanie glanced at her watch, clearly unsure of what to say next. “What I don’t know is, the time the kitchen in that restaurant downstairs closes. So, I’m gonna run down and see what I can grab.” Lanie turned and ran into the bedroom she’d chosen, climbing onto one of the beds and reaching for something in its center.
“Good idea,” he said while trying to banish the single thought that was running rampant in his head at the view she presented. Ridley’s mouth dried watching her ample bottom crawl across the bed in the shaft of light that shone in from the main room. He had no right thinking the things he’d begun to.
“Can I get you something?” she called over her shoulder.
If Lanie knew what he was thinking, there was no way she’d willingly share a room with him. What he needed was to call Bea, then check in with Therese and Dash. He should probably even check his email.
“Uh, no, thanks,” he replied, looking away guiltily.
Then he needed a shower. In fact, if they were going to last under the same roof all night, whether or not it was in entirely separate bedrooms, he was going to need a cold one.