Cloud Waltzer Read online

  “Pretty much,” Meredith answered. “Just promise me, though, that you’re not going to be giving any pop quizzes.”

  “It’s a deal,” Marie answered from the back seat, “if you’ll reveal what you do.”

  “You mean what I’m trying to do,” Meredith corrected her. “I’m attempting to establish myself as a business writer. So far all I’ve come up with is a weekly column in the Journal.”

  “Hey, so you’re the Meredith Tolliver that writes the ‘Common Cents’ column?” Tomas asked. “I read your column. Thanks to you, I’m going to be saving a bundle on my taxes this year. After I read your piece on Individual Retirement Accounts, I opened one up. I’d heard about them before, but never understood exactly what they were. Before I read your column, I thought they were just for tycoons.”

  “Thank you,” Meredith said simply, though she glowed with pleasure at the compliment. It always delighted her to hear that she was accomplishing exactly what she’d set out to do with her writing.

  “Hey, thank you,” Tomas countered.

  “Did the big boss take anyone up with him?” Phil asked as he turned onto the paved road leading away from the launch area.

  “His new receptionist,” Tomas answered. “Even though it was my turn, she pouted so much that I told her to go ahead. She was really—”

  “Hey, he’s veering off.” Carl’s warning cut through Tomas’s assessment. Ahead of them Meredith watched as the unicorn balloon switched back to the south, changing its direction almost as if it were trying to elude its pursuers. “Take your next left,” Carl advised Phil.

  “The Box seems to be working,” Marie observed, leaning forward to track Cloud Waltzer’s reverse in direction.

  “The Box?” Meredith echoed. “What is the Box?”

  “The Box,” Marie answered with an energetic preciseness that Meredith was beginning to suspect was typical of engineers, “is one of the main reasons why ballooning is so popular around here. Albuquerque has an almost perfect combination of just the right winds at just the right altitudes. Generally, upper-level winds are from the northwest and lower-level winds are from the south. So by changing the balloon’s altitude, the pilot can travel back and forth within a vertical box. If everything’s really going right, he can land where he took off.”

  “But that doesn’t happen too often,” Tomas chimed in. “And that’s where we come in, tearing across the untracked terrain after a wayward balloon.” Laughter brightened the interior of the Jeep.

  “Speaking of untracked terrain,” Phil interjected as he swung off the highway onto a dirt road, “everyone hang on because we’re headed for more of it.”

  The radio in Carl’s outsized hand sputtered to life again, spewing out static and a few unintelligible syllables. Carl brought the instrument to his mouth. “Come again, Cloud Waltzer. I don’t copy.”

  The static cleared briefly and the last few words of the transmission came through. “. . . putting her down over the next rise. Over and out.” The radio went dead, but Meredith’s mind was only beginning to buzz with a disturbing suspicion. No, it couldn’t be, she told herself, dismissing the flight of fancy. How annoying to have thought for even a moment that the voice on the radio could have belonged to Archer Hanson. Meredith was annoyed with herself at this latest evidence of the impact the insufferable man had made on her.

  “He’s losing altitude,” Marie observed, craning forward.

  The Jeep lunged over the dusty mesa, rocking and swaying with the unevenness of the dirt road that had dwindled to little more than a footpath. Ahead of them, the balloon slanted in closer and closer to the ground until it was barely skimming the tops of the undulating brown hills.

  “We’d better park it and chase him down,” Carl advised. “The wind’s picked up. It might be a tricky landing.”

  “Tricky for most pilots,” Tomas added. “Not that guy. He could put a balloon down in a hurricane without even scratching the varnish on the wicker basket.”

  “True,” Carl agreed. “But whether he needs it or not, let’s give him a hand here, okay?”

  Phil accelerated until he was ahead of the low-flying balloon, then maneuvered the Jeep around to the other side of the rise that the pilot had said he was aiming for, and stopped. The doors flew open and everyone unloaded.

  “Around this way,” Phil called to Meredith, who felt lost in the scramble. “We want to stay in front of the balloon if we can, then grab on to it if they need help landing. Get ready, here she comes.”

  The top of the balloon peeked over the rise the Jeep had circumnavigated. To Meredith it looked like the bald head of a shy giant building up the slow courage to show himself. Then the horn of the unicorn appeared and, bit by bit, the rest of the magnificent beast was unveiled. For a moment the unicorn seemed perched on the rim of the bluff, pawing at the tawny earth and reaching for the azure sky above. The underbelly of the balloon rose up beneath the beast, lifting him skyward again.

  “Come on.” Phil tugged at Meredith’s parka, breaking the second spell that the unicorn balloon had cast over her that day. “Get over to the side. He’s traveling low enough now to knock your head off.” Meredith hurried off in the direction Phil indicated. Her back was to the balloon as it passed them by. Then they were scampering after it. Meredith was surprised at how fast the unicorn balloon galloped away from them after tracking what appeared to have been its slow, stately progress in the air. She was thankful for her thick-soled hiking boots as they trampled over thorn bushes and gullies.

  At last they caught up with the balloon. The pilot was facing away from them, searching for the best place to put his craft down. The wicker basket the pilot and his passenger stood in now scraped a half foot above the ground. It touched down, then bounced up again and was dragged away as if the wind were reluctant to let this pretty new toy return to the earth.

  “Grab ahold of the basket,” Carl ordered the crew members who closed in around the balloon. Meredith hung on to the suede-covered rim of the basket and felt the mighty tug of the wind. She and the others were forced to hang on and run along behind it for several seconds before they got a firm grip. The pilot busily tugged at a line attached to the top of the balloon, hauling down on it to hold open the seam that allowed the hot air trapped inside to rush out. As the warmed air that had given it life blew away, the unicorn began to shrivel.

  Since the pilot was still occupied with shutting off the propane burners and securing lines, Meredith saw him before he saw her. As he stretched up, struggling to release the balloon from the wind’s dominance, his profile was gilded from behind by the early morning sun. His hair was a sparkling halo ruffled about his head. His expression was fierce as he battled to subdue the still-bucking unicorn. The muscles at his shoulders bunched into knotted cords that pitted their power against the wind, and won. He looked like the triumphant Viking warrior of her unsettling dream. At last the unicorn was tamed and it rested gently on the mesa.

  Then there was time for Archer Hanson to notice the crew around him. The sunlight that played across his shoulders and hair seemed to funnel out through the gaze he settled on Meredith. He grinned as if he had expected to see her. The wicker basket was a shallow obstacle that he vaulted easily before coming toward her. Behind him the pickup, with a sign reading Hanson Development Corporation, pulled to a stop, and the driver joined the crew members that had ridden in the Jeep to begin dismantling the balloon.

  “You’re more determined than I would have given you credit for, Meredith.” The sound of her name on his tongue somehow insinuated itself into a private place within Meredith where she would never have consciously allowed Archer Hanson. “How did you find out that the Cloud Waltzer was mine? Pretty clever of you to hook up with the chase crew.”

  Meredith stared for a second into those eyes that seemed to see far more of herself than she cared to reveal. A sassy retort sprang to her lips, but she bit it back. Fate had given her a second chance. She could either turn it aside with a w
ell-deserved prick to Archer Hanson’s massive ego or she could capitalize on the opportunity. She listened to the steady pulse of logic that beat deep within her and chose the latter.

  “I told you the other day, Mr. Hanson, that the interview with you meant a great deal to me.” She said the words like an actress playing the role of a lifetime, mouthing lines that were alien to her natural instincts. “Besides . . .” Here she stumbled on a line that bridged the gulf between role-playing and out-and-out lying. She crossed the divide. “Besides, I adore ballooning. I go up whenever I get the chance. It’s one of the main reasons I moved to Albuquerque.” She glanced around, glad that Phil and the others couldn’t overhear her deception.

  He studied her without replying for the beat of three slow blinks, then spoke as if expressing an indisputable axiom. “Anyone who likes balloons can’t be all bad.”

  Meredith congratulated herself for forcing even this admission from the redoubtable Archer Hanson. It was the tiniest of cracks in his facade, but one that just might be wedged further open. “I love balloons,” she went on, hoping to cement whatever positive impression she might be making.

  “What happened to the Wall Street whiz kid, the corporate superwoman I met yesterday?” he asked, eyeing her bright green parka, raspberry sweater, jeans, and boots.

  “She stopped existing when I left Chicago,” Meredith said, relieved to cross back into truthful territory. “I only drag her out when I think she’s needed to help me get a story. Obviously she was out of place yesterday.”

  His laughter was rich and warm, the kind Meredith had always associated with a largeness of spirit. “Meredith, I like you. You wouldn’t have dinner with me by any chance? Maybe I can talk you into coming for a ride in Cloud Waltzer with me?”

  “And maybe you’ll agree to be interviewed during the flight.”

  A momentary look of surprise was quickly chased from the ruddy face by the flash of his Viking grin. “Maybe I will,” he boomed out. “Just maybe I will.”

  “Archer,” a honeyed voice called out. It was the receptionist who had given Meredith such a chilly welcome yesterday. She’d been sitting in the pickup truck. “They need you to show them what to do. Oh, hello,” she said, catching sight of Meredith. “Didn’t expect to see you here today.”

  Meredith smiled as graciously as she could, not wanting to spin any more fabrications for the moment. She had, or almost had, an interview with Archer Hanson!

  It was only as Phil was driving her back to their apartment building after they both had declined Hanson’s invitation to join the crew for breakfast that Meredith suddenly remembered—she was deathly afraid of heights.

  Chapter 3

  Meredith was awake even earlier than she needed to be, having spent a restless night bouncing back and forth between formulating possible interview questions and fighting down blind terror. She wondered how on earth—or in heaven, to be more accurate—she was going to keep up her charade as a ballooning enthusiast. Her fear of heights was so intense that she required heavy sedation to even set foot on an airplane. In her thirtieth-floor office in Chicago, she’d had to put her back to the window to avoid so much as glimpsing the expensive view.

  And now, she asked herself gloomily, I’m supposed to go up a couple thousand feet supported only by a few scraps of nylon and a little hot air and pretend to like it?

  With Thor weaving in and out between her legs, Meredith brewed herself a cup of herbal tea. She didn’t need any caffeine this morning. She was fully awake and already nervous enough without coffee. Just as the warm, cinammon-scented beverage began unloosening the knot of apprehension in her stomach, Phil’s knock sounded and the knot tightened back into a hard ball. Swallowing hard, Meredith grabbed her miniature digital recorder and leather gloves.

  Carl, Betty, Marie, and Tomas called out greetings far too hearty for six-thirty in the morning as Phil and Meredith arrived at the launch site.

  “So you’re going aloft today, eh?” Carl asked through the steam of a cup of coffee he’d poured from a Thermos.

  The question made Meredith realize that today would be the second day in a row that none of the regular crew members would be riding in the balloon. Her one-track focus on the Archer Hanson interview had blinded her to all other concerns, like common courtesy. The inquiry also represented a possible escape.

  “It doesn’t have to be today,” she quickly volunteered, hoping she could both rectify her blunder and get out of the balloon ride. “I can go up any time this week. It doesn’t even have to be this week. I’m in no hurry. You’ve been on one balloon ride, you’ve been on them all.” She gave a brittle laugh. “I’m sure that you all are much more eager to go up than I am and you’ve certainly done more to earn a flight.”

  A smile cracked Carl’s weathered face, then spread to the rest of the crew members. “I doubt that any of us is quite as eager as you might suspect,” he said. “Balloon flights aren’t much of a novelty for us anymore. You see, one of the major projects Archer has us working on now is the development of a solar-heated balloon. So we’ve all logged more than our fair share of time aloft in test flights. No, we mostly come out to help with the launches during Fiesta for the fun of it. To be with other balloon nuts from around the country and the world. Why, just the other day someone was telling me that there are pilots and balloons here from England, France, Australia, Japan, Germany . . .”

  As Carl’s international roll call droned on, Meredith’s attention was captured by the plume of dust rising in the thin predawn light that announced Archer Hanson’s arrival. He pulled up in the Hanson Development pickup. The wicker gondola stood upright in the bed of the truck.

  “Morning,” he called out as he swung out of the cab.

  Meredith stood away from the others as they rushed forward to help unload the gondola and envelope bag. In the murky light Hanson wasn’t quite the Nordic god he’d appeared to be yesterday. There was a softness about him that the harsh sunlight had obliterated before. Though with her conscious mind she denied that such a quality of sensitivity could exist in a man like Archer Hanson, in the regions deep within her, far beyond the control of her mind, something stirred.

  That something was like a creature, kept too long imprisoned, that sees the door to its cage open just a crack. The creature of her unconscious moved hesitantly, poking an exploratory paw outside the barely open door to test the feel of the earth after so many years of a concrete cage floor. The instant Meredith felt the creature escaping within her, she slammed the cage door shut once more. Flustered more than she cared to admit, she reached into her parka pocket and felt for her recorder, reassuring herself that it was still there and functioning properly. She was there to get a story. Period.

  “Why don’t you help at the mouth of the balloon?” Carl suggested as she approached the crew. They had already laid the envelope out on the ground. Meredith joined Phil at the point where it connected with the basket. Hanson was standing in front of the basket, which was tilted over on its side. He was busy directing a current of air generated by a gasoline-powered fan into the mouth of the balloon being held open by Phil.

  “Glad you could make it,” he said as Meredith grabbed on to the other side of the opening, helping Phil to keep it upright.

  She smiled briefly in response to Hanson’s greeting. The noise from the fan would have made any other reply difficult. They worked in silence, angling the loop as Hanson directed. Once a pocket of air had been trapped inside, he turned on the propane burner. It roared like a hoarse lion. Hanson aimed the flame toward the interior of the balloon. The hot air captured within, being lighter than the cold desert air without, was the spirit that gave the balloon life. Slowly, it rose. Cloud Waltzer’s unicorn grew ever more eager to shed the bounds of gravity with each cubic yard of hot air it swallowed. Finally it tugged the basket into an upright position and the crew members held on to it to keep it from escaping.

  “Are you coming, Miss Tolliver?” Hanson asked with a mock obseq
uiousness.

  “Most assuredly, Mr. Hanson.” Meredith could barely believe that the words of consent had tripped so lightly from her mouth. Fear made her arms and legs rigid as she attempted to haul herself into the gondola over the waist-high wicker sides. Then, before the fear had a chance to totally paralyze her, she was in and the hands of the crew members that had kept them anchored to the security of solid land were unclasping.

  Meredith felt a scream rising up from the pit of her stomach as she watched the ground recede. Quickly she turned her back to the horrifying sight, knowing that she had made a terrible mistake. She closed her mouth on the scream, but her fear escaped through eyes widening into saucers of liquid terror. It also leaked through her face, washing it of all color except a faint fluorescent green.

  Hanson was absorbed in the details of the takeoff. He made certain that enough flame was fed into the voracious maw above him to ensure an ascent swift enough so that they could safely clear the obstacles on the ground. Once he’d accomplished that, he had time to notice Meredith’s frozen expression and sickly pallor.

  Meredith easily interpreted the gaze he turned on her. Even if she’d felt physically able to continue her impersonation of an experienced and enthusiastic ballooning veteran, Hanson would never believe it now. Her ruse was over. She remembered the way he’d chewed out his mine foreman and knew that he would be just as ferocious when, after all the inconvenience of a launch, he had to land again. She braced herself to receive the scorn she deserved for her lie. Certainly she had extinguished any hope of an interview now. She waited for the scorching heat of his anger, but instead of the harsh abuse she was expecting when his full lips parted, he spoke to her gently.

  “Is this your first flight?” he asked, the way a camp counselor might ask a tearful child if this was her first time away from home.