Nicola Marsh - Valentine's Day

‘Ten minutes before sun-up,’ the pilot announced. ‘Let’s get you guys in the air.’

Zander curled Georgia into his body and stood behind her against the basket edge in the centre of the basket. She felt both sheltered and protected.

The balloon didn’t rise straight up as she imagined it would when the ground crew dropped their tethers—then again her entire experience of hot-air balloons was from The Wizard of Oz. Instead, it skirted along, centimetres above the ground, and slowly those centimetres became meters and then Georgia got a sense of what the pilot had promised. As soon as they had some height, it suddenly felt as if the earth had started to treadmill below them and they were stationary, just hanging there in space.

The pilot gave the gas its voice and the entire balloon inhaled the burst of flame, long and steady. It rose again. Then she killed the flame and silence resumed; the only sounds were the clinking of guy ropes and the distant squeals of the passengers in the balloon ascending behind them.

Theirs breathed enormous gulps between long silent stretches and climbed and climbed in pace with the sunrise.

‘Do you want to describe what you see?’ Zander murmured against her neck, crossing his strong arms around her and holding the running digital recorder below her chin.

Golden light fingered out from the horizon and the deep blonde colour of the earth began to glow with a vibrancy and a gentle kind of fire. Georgia described the stunning scene, punctuated by the occasional breath of the balloon, and full of words like God and heaven and other-worldly. And whole and healing and soul-breath.

Zander and the pilot remained silent, letting her speak.

They flew over Göreme and then left it far behind as they floated over the lunar-like deserts. A distant mesa grew bigger and bigger as they approached but the pilot kept the balloon level though the others in their convoy all lifted. Georgia’s adrenaline spiked and Zander’s arms tightened around her, but at the last moment the pilot fired the lungs hard and their balloon soared up and over the lip of the mesa and the vast plains of Anatolia were revealed before them.

Tears filled Georgia’s eyes.

Zander recorded the balloon’s respiration as they drifted over great clefts in the earth and the rolling, twisting, ancient tortures of the granite and sandstone crust. He interviewed the pilot and got some close-up sounds of the clanking guy ropes and a passing flotilla of geese, generally capturing the atmosphere of this amazing experience for his listeners.

Though of course that was completely impossible to do.

This was as close to angel flight as she was going to get.

‘What are you thinking about?’ he murmured, back by her side and pocketing the recorder.

She spoke before she thought. ‘Dying.’

He twisted around to look at her face. She laughed. ‘I mean what it might be like after you die. Ascension. I’m thinking it would be like this. So...gentle and supported. No fear.’

‘I didn’t know you were so religious,’ he murmured.

‘I’m not, generally. But it’s tough to be up here and not wonder...’

They fell to silence, but Zander eventually broke it.

‘I remember wondering... I thought when I was young with so many people queuing up for communion there must be something in it.’

She tipped her head half back and contacted the strength of his chest. ‘You’re Catholic?’

‘Sufficiently Catholic to have had mass at my wedding, but not to get up early every Sunday for one.’

He was close enough and smart enough to interpret the total stillness of her body—as still as the balloon felt in space—correctly.

‘You’re married?’ she whispered.

The pilot shifted away to the far corner of the basket. If she could have climbed out to check the rigging at the crest of the balloon Georgia thought she would have.

Zander was as stiff as she was now. ‘No.’

Part of her sagged with relief, but she didn’t let it show. ‘But you were married?’

That was a hell of a thing to be finding out now.

‘Actually no.’

She turned her back on the spectacular view and looked up at him. ‘But you had a wedding mass?’

His face tightened. ‘We had one scheduled.’

‘It didn’t go ahead?’ This was too important a moment to be playing word games.

‘No. It was... The wedding was cancelled.’

Oh. ‘You broke it off?’

His brows dropped. ‘Why would you assume it was me?’

Because no woman in their right mind would jilt a demigod? ‘I don’t know. Only that you’re not very pro wedding.’

Though suddenly that particular prejudice made perfect sense if he’d had a broken engagement in his past.

The gas flame belched and they rose slightly.

She tried again. ‘Was it mutual?’

Zander looked out to the now blazing dawn horizon. ‘No.’

Empathy washed through her. If anyone could understand the awfulness of being rejected, she could. Though she knew now that she’d never loved Dan. And Zander had clearly loved his fiancée. So how much more would that have hurt. ‘I’m sorry.’

What else could she say? Better to know now than find out later? Just because she considered Dan’s rejection of her proposal a dodged bullet didn’t mean that was how Zander felt. And judging by the tightness of his expression and his general close-mouthedness on the subject of marriage...

Would it ever have come up if not for his slip up?

‘Did she tell you why?’

‘No. She and her bridesmaids fled England while the ushers were doing the friend-of-the-bride/friend-of-the-groom thing.’

Georgia’s jaw dropped. ‘She left you at the altar?’ Didn’t that only happen in movies?

He nodded. ‘Even her parents weren’t aware.’

Oh, my God. ‘Zander, I don’t know what to say.’ Not about how awful that must have been for him. Not about the raging anger towards a woman she’d never met for hurting him so badly. Or the raging jealousy that was suddenly surging through her for some stranger he’d loved enough to marry.

‘There’s nothing to say.’ He shrugged, but it was the least casual thing she could imagine. ‘It’s ancient history.’

‘When was this?’

‘Right out of uni.’

Fifteen years wasn’t ancient. ‘You were young.’

‘And stupid as it turns out.’

She slid over to stand beside him so they could both look out at the beautiful, healing landscape below. ‘It’s not stupid to want to spend your life with someone. It’s brave.’

And that was an odd word to have chosen.

He digested that for a moment. ‘I wasn’t brave. I think I did it because it was the right thing to do.’

‘How long were you together?’

‘Four years. Since final year at school. We both enrolled at Lincoln.’

Excellent. High-school sweetheart, too. ‘You must have loved her a lot.’ Maybe he still did? It would explain a lot.

He thought about that. ‘I think it was one of those break-up-or-get-married moments. So I proposed.’

‘And she broke up.’

‘Pretty much.’

‘In the worst imaginable way.’

He slid his eyes down to her. ‘Strength of character wasn’t one of her strong suits. She had very dominant parents.’

That wasn’t a woman she could imagine him admiring. ‘Hurting you was easier than facing them?’

Dark brows folded. ‘Seems so.’

Cappadocia whizzed by beneath them.

‘Well, I guess now I understand your cynicism about marriage. And your reaction after the promo went so wrong.’

He looked at her for the first time in minutes. ‘I had to face two hundred of our family, friends, and neighbours, and tell them Lara wasn’t coming. The idea that I’d set someone else up for the same public humiliation...’ He shook his head.