Page 15 of Her Brother's Billionaire Best Friend
“Laura, this is Ronnie,” said Lucien. “He’s my driver.”
“And pilot?” I said.
“Sure. Ronnie’s an old buddy from the military.”
As Lucien hopped into the craft, I stopped right in my tracks. Then, I followed him, climbing into the helicopter. He reached out and took my arm, pulling me into the helicopter as though I weighed even less than my bag to him. I was stunned by the strength in his body, as he set me down in a leather seat, and Ronnie hopped into the cockpit.
“Sorry,” I said, as Lucien clipped me, then himself, into his seat. “Did you say the military?”
“Yeah,” Lucien said gruffly. “I was in the Navy SEALs.”
The blades began to whir, and roar, and all of a sudden Lucien was tossing me a pair of enormous headphones. We were taking off. There was no time to think. Lucien slammed the doors shut, and then, in a matter of moments, we were rising from the ground.
And then, I began to scream.
Chapter 6
Conor (Lucien)
Normally, I would have fired someone on the spot who screamed the way Laura did as we lifted off over the Caluga Valley. But a curious thing started to happen as we lifted into the air, and began to chart a course over Washington State and towards the Canadian border.
I started to enjoy myself.
It was almost fun, seeing the helicopter ride through Laura’s eyes. I watched her, and she began to yell excitedly. Her eyes widened as we began to move, and in a matter of moments, Caluga was out of sight.
I’d made this trip more than a few times, over Mount Rainer, past Seattle and the coast. The rides were silent, just me and Ronnie, and sometimes I even worked if I could make space in the small cabin. But it was different with Laura somehow, and I couldn’t concentrate. I tried to imagine what it was.
It was true that it was on an unusually clear day. The mountains heightened and began to show peaks capped in snow despite the hot summer. And when the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean began to spread over the horizon, even I couldn’t resist sneaking a peak.
“WA-HOO!” yelled Laura, and I broke into a smile.
“THIS IS AMAZING!” she yelled at me, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than another opportunity to stonewall her, or cut her down. But her sheer enthusiasm lifted my spirits as the world faded away to tiny green bumps, and gradually, the pine forests beneath us grew dark as we crossed the border into Canada.
I thought for a long time about why it made me happy to see her happy. Someone who, by any rights, I ought to have hated. Whose smile should have provoked nothing from me but a scowl. But then I remembered a day when we’d gone to Freetown together on a weekend, maybe fifteen years ago. There had been a rollercoaster there, and Laura and I had ridden it. I pictured her among the crowds, the cotton candy and the teacup rides. And I realized that I was feeling happy because, just for a moment, it had seemed like I was back there in those glory days.
When Vancouver finally appeared, it was nothing but a shining dot on the horizon. But as we closed in and lowered our cruising altitude, she began to point at the skyscrapers, the San Juan Islands and the Cascades to the east.
“We’re flying!” she said, over and over again. “Actually flying?”
“How else would we get there?” I said. But mostly I felt free. It was somehow easier to relax in the noisy, cramped compartment than it had been over the past few weeks. While the ghost from my past quietly paced the long wooden floors and the bookcases of Lakeview.
We were touching down on top of a skyscraper in Vancouver when I finally realized that I could hear Laura breathing hard, her lungs rapidly expelling air as she got a little nervous. I fixed her with a look.
“It’s fine,” I said. “You nervous?”
“The flying’s great,” she said, with a guilty smile. “The landing’s kinda scary.”
“Well, we’re in safe hands,” I pointed at Ronnie. “Ronnie used to fly these things in hailstorms back in the day.”
“Don’t forget hails of bullets,” Ronnie rasped over his mic.
When we finally landed, I resisted the urge to jump out, and waited for the blades to stop spinning. I was pretty confident with the ‘copter these days, but I knew Laura would be nervous to exit while the rotary blades above still span at speeds the human eye couldn’t register.
“Come on,” I signaled and helped her out of the craft. We shouldered our bags and made our way down from the roof, where thirteen of my investors were waiting to speak to me amid the skies.
*
I’d already seen what Laura could do, but I was quietly impressed with the way she handled herself. Most people would have found organizing a trip like this an administrative nightmare, with all the famous and super busy entrepreneurs and bookings and documents to process. Not for the first time, she’d surprised me. Laura was patient and proactive when she needed to be. During the meeting, I glanced over a few times, expecting to see her struggling to keep up with our conversation and take notes. But she handled herself impeccably, taking notes and handing me documents from the enormous bag of things I’d brought whenever I needed something. More than once, I deferred to her for a piece of information or something I needed to know. And all of this while Laura typed up detailed minutes of the whole affair.