“The airport we’re landing at is the highest commercial airport in North America,” Brady replied immediately. “The approach is one of the hardest to manage, but you did it last year without any problem, so I think we’ll be fine.”
Hold the phone, Travis flew them last year and Gavin knew about it? He’d have had to because he was on the plane.
Travis grinned at Brady. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Seriously, about that…
Brady scrunched his face. “I probably shouldn’t have said that in front of Mom. She gets weird about aviation.”
“I don’t get weird about it,” Rachel said before thinking. Brady raised his eyebrows at her in a move that reminded her remarkably of his uncle. She shook away the thought. “I just don’t care for flying. Like you don’t like cauliflower.”
“You don’t need cauliflower to get from one place to the next,” Kellan chimed in. “You don’t need cauliflower for anything.”
“Preach it, kid.” Dane headed toward the cockpit, and was he about to do what she thought he was about to do?
Rachel’s stomach plummeted and hit her toes like a super hard landing. “Is Dane the copilot?”
“He is,” Travis replied.
Rachel grabbed Travis’s arm. “Is he qualified?” she asked, ready to grab her kids and dogs and get off the plane altogether.
Travis extracted her fingers from his forearm. “He is.” Rachel bit at her bottom lip. Hard. “Are you sure?”
“I signed off on his license, so I’m pretty confident in his abilities.”
“You can do that?” She gripped her purse to her chest instead of grabbing Travis again. “Sign off on other pilots? Is that a thing? One pilot just says another is good enough and on they go?”
That seemed like a remarkably bad idea. This, right here, was why she didn’t like flying.
“I’m a flight instructor.” Travis kneeled so they were eye to eye. He spoke calmly, like she would if she was explaining to her children that cauliflower wouldn’t murder them in their sleep.
“I thought you worked at Puffle Yum,” she said. “I do that, too.”
Oh.
“The flying is more of a hobby, but it comes in handy.” He patted her knee. Patted it. Like he touched it in front of his mother.
She was pretty sure she heard Evelyn growl.
“And you’re good?” she asked. “A good pilot and instructor and all of that?”
“So I’m told,” he replied, confident and cocky.
She swallowed the uncertainty that had wiggled its way into her throat.
“Rach?” Travis asked, tilting his head toward the front of the plane. “Can I talk to you alone for a second? About Brady?”
She nodded, standing on wobbly knees. She set her purse in her seat.
Her eyes caught Evelyn’s and Bob’s as she passed. Bob winked. The man had charm—gobs of it that each of his children had inherited.
Evelyn pursed her lips and mimed tearing a thread from her sleeve.
Rachel followed Travis to the cockpit where Dane sat in the seat to the right.
Travis set the metal clipboard on the console next to the seat on the left before turning to Rachel. They were so close. Really close. Practically touching close. Too close.
She tried to step backward, but the closed door stopped her.
