Sandra and the Scoundrel by Jacqueline Diamond

Author:Jacqueline Diamond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romantic comedy, chick lit, funny romance, marriage of convenience, family romance, laugh out loud romantic comedy, bachelor father, married to a stranger, funny revenge chick lit, scoundrel hero romance
Publisher: Jacqueline Diamond

CHAPTER EIGHT

Caught by a gust of wind, the chopper dipped abruptly, and Sandra’s stomach lurched. They were only a few feet above the driveway, and she calculated she could bail out without suffering more than a broken ankle.

A glance at the pilot showed him relaxed but alert as he lifted them further from Mother Earth. He worked those controls with cheerful intensity, as if flying a video game.

She’d ridden in a helicopter once before, island-hopping with Malcolm, but she hadn’t paid attention to the dashboard or control panel or whatever the proper term was. How could anyone keep track of that many dials?

A swooped upwards eliminated any question of jumping. Not that Sandra had seriously considered it in the first place.

Below them, the town dwindled. She felt isolated and tiny, buoyed by a bubble of air, rocked by every breath of wind. A primitive instinct demanded to know what in heaven’s name was holding them up.

“Nervous?” Jean-Luc asked.

“A smidge.” When she tried to loosen her grip on the armrests, her hands refused to cooperate. “We are kind of defying gravity.”

“It’s all a matter of lift.” He shifted a lever and they zoomed forward. “The shape of the wings makes the air flow over it in a way that creates less pressure above the wing than below. Therefore, we rise.”

“Obviously,” Sandra said.

He chuckled. “It’s the same principle that makes the wind blow.”

“It was on the tip of my tongue to say that.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Perhaps not, but the way you explain it, anyone can understand the principles of flight,” she teased. “People should have thought of it long before the Wright Brothers.”

“They did,” he said. “The Chinese wrote about it as early as 300 A.D., and Leonardo Da Vinci sketched a design for a helicopter. Models were built as early as two hundred years ago.”

“I don’t recall anybody whirlybirding around in the Victorian era,” Sandra said skeptically.

“That’s because the engines were too heavy,” Jean-Luc said. “Helicopters weren’t practical until the gasoline engine came along.”

As they angled south across the town, Sandra’s fear ebbed. It might have been his confident tone as much as his words, but she found she actually enjoyed the freedom of movement.

There was no one else around, not at their level. Above and in the distance, she spotted a jet heading for Ontario International Airport, a dozen or so miles to the north. Below, she made out buses, cars and trucks chugging along on their earthbound way.

Here in midair, she and Jean-Luc reigned supreme. No roads restrained them; there were no speed limits or Highway Patrol cruisers. They were creatures of the light, eagles soaring into the limitless vastness.

Below them, canyons unrolled. A canopy of trees spread across the land, reminding Sandra of how this entire region must have looked fifty years earlier. To the west, she glimpsed the suburban sprawl of Orange County, but here they were still in the land of the mountain lion and the coyote.

Okay, she couldn’t actually see any mountain lions or coyotes. But she could see a lone wolf, the one-of-a-kind airborne variety.

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