Free The Color of a Promise (The Color of Heaven Series Book 11) by Julianne MacLean Page A

He glanced at me from behind the wheel as he drove onto the main road. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure that when you’re sitting in the captain’s seat, and you see how it all works, you’ll be hooked.”
    “I don’t know,” I said hesitantly, gazing off at the mountains in the distance.
    Wayne reached across the seat and squeezed my shoulder. “Come on, it’ll be fun. Just give it a try. We could go tomorrow.”
    I breathed deeply as I held my arm out the open window and felt the lift of the wind beneath my palm. I couldn’t deny that something in me had always been fascinated by the science of aerodynamics and the fact that a giant 400-ton machine could even get off the ground.
    At the same time, any news about a major air disaster left me morbidly captivated and glued to the television set. I would read everything I could get my hands on about it. I wanted to know exactly what had happened, and more importantly, why it happened.
    Maybe Wayne was right. Maybe I just needed to face my fear head on. Maybe even embrace it.
    “Okay,” I said with purpose, turning to look at him. “Let’s do it. Can we make it happen tomorrow?”
    Just saying the words sent a burst of adrenaline into my veins.
    Wayne grinned at me, looking very pleased. “I’ll see what I can do, Captain Andrews.”

PART III

    Nine Years Later

Chapter Sixteen

    Jack Peterson

    I always knew when rain was in the forecast. I didn’t need a meteorologist to tell me about it, because I felt it in my right knee and thigh, and sometimes in my arm.
    As I sat at my mother’s kitchen table at her summer house in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, after my parents had gone to bed, I massaged my right quadriceps. Though the femur was completely healed and I had no trouble walking, it was a bone-deep ache on days like this, when bad weather was coming.
    For a moment, I considered taking something for it, but decided against that because this was nothing, really. Nothing compared to those early weeks in the German hospital after the bombing, which included a second surgery to replace my knee and a full schedule of excruciating physio that lasted for many months back home in the United States. Not to mention the burns on my chest and stomach which took forever to heal.
    At any rate, I had been on pain killers for a full year, and it hadn’t been easy to get off them, which was why I rarely took anything for pain these days. This level of discomfort, I could handle.
    Rising from my chair, I carried my phone out to the front deck overlooking the water, and sat down on one of the Adirondack chairs. I tipped my head back to look up at the stars, but there were no stars that night because of low cloud cover. I couldn’t see the moon either. Nevertheless, it was a warm and windless night. Wonderfully tranquil. Just the sound of the waves lapping onto the beach and the salty scent of the sea made it worth the trip from Manhattan that afternoon.
    I wondered what Katelyn and Aaron were up to in Portland. I hadn’t even told Katelyn I was flying home for the weekend, because that had been a rather spontaneous decision. It had been a slow news week with not much happening in the world, so it seemed like a good time to get out of the city.
    By now, it was almost 10:00 p.m., and I wondered if it was too late to call.
    I decided to text Katelyn to find out what they were up to tomorrow.
    Hey there. Surprise—I’m in Cape Elizabeth. You still up?
    I set the phone down on the arm of the chair and wondered if things would ever change. Would there ever come a day when my brother’s wife wouldn’t be the main reason I wanted to get on a plane and fly home for a visit—even when I knew she would always love Aaron, and that she and I would never be anything but friends?
    At least, since I’d returned home from Afghanistan, I’d finally come to terms with it. I’d learned to accept things the way they were. Life was rough. There it was in a nutshell. And never in a thousand