Excerpt from Take A Chance by Alexa Silver
Copyright © Alexa Silver, 2015
Leilani Kolbiaw watched, fascinated as First Officer Zane and Barb greeted each other. It was so good to have the first officer here, especially since Captain Joe wasn’t. Lani sniffled a couple of times, but didn’t allow tears to fall. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t even spoken to Cap before Flight 817; they’d become fast friends afterward and she missed him so much. It wasn’t fair that a hero like him had died so young.
Okay, young was a relative term but he’d had a lot of living left to do, and a drunk driver had ruined that for him, for his family, and for all of those he’d touched in his fifty-six years of life.
Sometimes life was colossally unfair.
At least Hunter Zane was here. Lani hadn’t seen much of him on the Facebook page, or the private email list some of the survivors chatted on. He was still subscribed, but he didn’t seem to say much.
Maybe he was a man of few words, or maybe it was just too hard on him. There were people for whom the crash had been a wake-up call, reminding them to live every moment, and there had been some for whom the crash had been only a painful memory to be eradicated.
Lani felt so sad for those people.
Lani kept to the shadows, openly admiring First Officer Zane, though that title was way in the past. It hadn’t been more than a couple of years after Flight 817 that he’d retired from flying commercially. He’d only been to a few of these reunions cum group therapy session cum drinking weekend, though Joe had tried to drag him every year. She wished Joe had been more successful. There had been fire between her and Hunter. Lani had kissed Hunter just after the crash, when her emotions had been at their highest, and she’d needed proof—irrefutable proof—that she and her grandmother were safe and alive.
It had started out that way, anyway, but the kiss had deepened, until First Officer Zane had pulled away, scrubbing his hand over his face, and had told her he was married. He couldn’t do that.
But now, he had no wedding ring on, and there was something about his bearing that made her think he was totally and completely aware of her, even though she had sunk back into the darkness in a corner of the room.
Her nipples tightened and pussy clenched. God, how she wanted that man! Lani had been sure that they would get together some day; their attraction had been wild and untamed. Yet Hunt had never made the move, and Lani wasn’t sure she should.