“About Jack,” he said.
“Yes, about Jack,” she said, flicking the white orange pulp from her fingertips. Mentioning Jack reminded her that she’d been looking forward to spending time with him on this trip. She’d been so busy at work she’d not noticed his pattern of postponing dinner, or drinks, or a Saturday afternoon playing video games. Only when he backed out of the trip did she connect the dots.
“He’s not going to be happy about this,” Keenan said.
“About what?” Rose asked.
Keenan just looked at her, and the molten heat in his eyes stopped her with an orange section halfway to her mouth. “You can’t look at me like that in public,” she whispered.
He blinked, and Keenan was just Keenan, unassuming, quiet, unremarkable Keenan.
“I hadn’t planned to tell Jack about this,” she said, pleased to hear her voice was well-modulated, matter-of-fact. “I mean, I don’t normally tell my brother I’m having sex with someone, SEAL or otherwise, because it’s (a) gross and (b) none of his business. Why? Did he warn you off me or something?”
“Or something,” Keenan said.
She thought about inquiring into the “or something,” then thought better of it. “I’m sorry for what I said when I was leaving.”
His brows pulled down. “What did you say?”
“About being better than second best?”
He laughed, bright, vivid, head back. “My ego can withstand coming in second to a working cell phone.”
“Oh, God,” she said, and put her head in her hands. “It’s not the same. They’re totally different good things.”
“Good things?” he said, grinning.
“Why isn’t the floor swallowing me up right now?”
He leaned forward, lowered his voice. “Don’t worry about it, Jetlag. I like a challenge.”
“Powell, party of five,” called a man with a clipboard before Rose could make things any worse. She tucked the orange into her pocket, snatched up her bag, and followed Grannie, Florence, and Marian out the door, Keenan on her heels.
They resolutely avoided eye contact on the way to the launch site. They were fine, as long as they didn’t make eye contact. As soon as they did, based on the way they looked at each other, everyone would know. The heat between them would burn an office building to a blackened shell.
The balloonist sized them all up with a practiced eye, then pointed the older ladies into one balloon basket and Rose and Keenan into another. “Wait,” she said. “I want to go with Grannie.”
“So do we,” Florence said.
Rose narrowed her eyes. Florence gave her a little finger wave / shooing motion, and Rose turned to find Keenan politely holding the basket door open for her.
“I don’t like heights,” she said as she stepped into the compartment.
“Neither do I,” he said.
“You jump out of airplanes,” she said, remembering Jack’s descriptions of HALO training.
“With a parachute I’ve packed myself,” he explained.
The basket was sectioned into compartments. She and Keenan were in one, while a heavyset older man with a graying beard occupied the other. The grounds crew unhooked the basket from the stakes, and with a deep whoosh, the balloon rose into the air. The soil and dry grass surrounding the launch site blurred into an indistinct pale brown as they gained altitude, drifting on the currents after the other balloons. She turned in the enclosure, looking for Grannie’s balloon, but quickly lost her in the flock of balloons now soaring over the valley.
“How many balloons go up each day?” she asked the balloonist.
“Hundreds,” he said cheerfully. “But don’t worry! There has been only one crash in the last dozen years. Very safe.”
She looked at Keenan. “Given the right equipment, I can defy the laws of physics,” he said.
Her gaze flicked to his backpack.
“Sometimes a backpack is just a backpack, not a parachute.”
Smart aleck. Rose went on tiptoe, peering into the cloudless sky, a crisp, cool blue that seemed to go on forever. The balloon ride was different from being in an airplane; aside from the occasional whoosh as the balloonist turned up the flame above their heads, the ride was so silent Rose heard ringing in her ears. “I can’t see her,” she said, her voice disappearing into the vast, pale sky.
“She’s fine,” Keenan said quietly. “You’re the one who’s about to snap off a nail,” he said, still in that low undertone. “Not that I’d mind.”
She shot him a look.
“The scratches stung this morning,” he said.
The balloonist was chatting to the other passenger, pointing out the scenery below. The rising sun picked out undulating folds of hillsides, in sepia tones of brown, gray, and cream, and the villages carved into the rock, the arched doorways irregular, mysterious, ancient. “I’m sorry,” she said.