Cami couldn’t help but grin as she answered the door early the next morning. Vince stood on the other side, and the sky was starting to turn navy with the coming dawn. “Good morning.”
“Hey. Are you ladies ready to go?” He brushed the hair back from his face and took a quick scan over her blue jean shorts and form-fitting spring-green blouse. “You might want a jacket; it can get pretty cool if we get as much altitude as I expect.”
“I’m prepared.” She gestured behind her to the jacket lying across a nearby chair.
“Sage should be here any second.” She’d been down for breakfast earlier.
As if in answer, the sound of steps on the balcony echoed down to them, and Sage descended the stairs wearing a red, white, and blue T-shirt and slim khaki shorts. Her dark curls were caught back in a white baseball cap. “Let me grab my bag,” she said and moved to the kitchen.
“I wasn’t sure if you ladies would actually be ready. My sisters have a habit of keeping me waiting for fifteen or twenty minutes whenever I’m supposed to meet them somewhere or pick them up.”
Cami smiled, liking the way fondness entered his voice when he talked about his family. “Dad didn’t tolerate tardiness well.” George hadn’t been a bear about it, but it irked him, and she’d never wanted to displease him.
“No, he didn’t.” Vince tugged at an errant curl by her face and tucked it behind her ear. “You miss him.”
She wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t. “Yeah. I’m not too thrilled with him right now, but I miss him.”
Sage reappeared, wearing a sweater and with a backpack hooked over one shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“Going hiking?” Vince asked while Cami grabbed her jacket. He checked out the hemp sandals on Sage’s feet, which were definitely not hiking appropriate.
“No, just my camera, some extra bottled water, and something to collect flowers in case I find a few blooms I want to press. You said we might launch from a meadow, right?”
“Yeah. It’s not peak time for flowers, but I’m sure you’ll find a few that interests you.” He held the door open so the ladies could precede him, waiting while Sage set the alarm, and double-checked the door lock after he’d pulled it closed.
They rounded the edge of the garage and Cami could see the basket and a huge canvas bag sticking up above the sides of Vince’s truck bed. Excitement shot through her. “How far away is it?”
“Not too far, maybe ten minutes.” Vince pulled the passenger door open for them and assisted Cami and Sage inside before circling around to the driver’s door.
Cami tried not to squeeze too close to Vince in the cab, but it wasn’t built for three adults. She found herself straddling the stick shift, hip to hip with Vince as he pulled onto the road. His cologne wafted her direction, an intoxicating mix of spice, musk and man. “Do you usually launch from the same place?”
“It depends on the wind currents. I actually got permission from a few property owners for launching, and before I came to get you, I checked the wind patterns to see which location would work best for the area where I want to set down. Now we’ll have to see if I actually get to land where I want. You can’t guide a balloon to land where you want it to; it follows the air flow around it, so you have to know wind patterns before you launch.”
“Really? I didn’t feel much of a breeze when we got into the truck, so is it possible we’ll go up, and right back down in the same place again?”
“No.” Vince chuckled as he changed gears, resting his wrist on her knee, but keeping his hand on the gear shift. “It may seem like there’s no real breeze here, but if you get up a little higher, the currents change and there will be wind. And though I checked the wind patterns, the guys on the ground will still have to follow us because I never know for sure where I’ll end up.”
“That’s why it’s called a chase car,” Sage piped up.
“Right.” Vince took them around another corner and shifted down. Once they were going at a normal speed, he moved his hand back to Cami’s knee, setting it there lightly, heating her bare skin.
“Gage and Jeremy talked like they usually crew for you,” Sage said.
“Yeah, we’re all commercial certified hot air balloon pilots and take turns going up. We have a few local kids who like to crew with us. Two of them are working on getting certified as well.”
“Do you have to take formal lessons?” Cami asked, trying to focus on his words, and not on the hand on her knee.
Vince turned onto a dirt road. “Not like when you want to pilot a plane. There’s a written test, then you have to work with a licensed instructor, and log a certain number of hours and stuff. It depends on what level of certificate you want. Kids can get a commercial certificate when they’re only eighteen.”
“How incredible. So how old do you have to be to become an instructor?” Eighteen seemed insanely young to Cami, but if they could drive a car at sixteen, why not, she decided. People were far less likely to crash in mid-air than on the twisty mountain roads.
~*~
It was getting light already and Cami spotted Joel standing between a red SUV and his Jeep in a meadow.
There wasn’t much time for questions as Vince greeted everyone and made introductions. The guys pulled the equipment out of the truck bed, and Sage said she was going to scout out some flowers.
“Don’t you want to watch the balloon get set up?” Cami asked.
“I’ve done it before, and it’ll be a few minutes before it starts to rise. I’ll be back soon.” She turned and headed toward a patch of color a hundred yards off.
“Hey, where are you going?” Joel called out to Sage.
“Don’t worry, I’ll stay in sight. Just checking out some flowers,” she called back over her shoulder.
Cami noticed Joel didn’t seem to like Sage wandering away, and kept glancing back at her, scanning the surroundings every few minutes. What was with him? Once a SEAL, always a SEAL, she decided.
Turning back to the setup, Cami watched as they unfurled the balloon fabric from the huge canvas bag and pulled it out along the ground. She helped unfold it, so it lay more or less flat while Vince removed a huge fan from the truck bed and set it up.
“I guess it takes a lot of air to fill one of those things,” Cami said when she came back over to him, wishing she’d worn long pants. She burrowed deeper into her jacket for warmth.
“Those things are called envelopes,” Vince said with a grin. “And yeah, they take a while to fill. You want to take a corner of the envelope and hold it open for me?” When she lifted it so the air would blow into the fabric, a freckled teen named Cory grabbed the other side of the hole and helped hold it open. Vince yanked on a string and started the gas-fed fan.
The air rushed at Cami, and her hair whipped around her face and tangled behind her. The fabric jerked in her hands, rippling as the envelope slowly filled with air.
Vince set the fan to the correct angle, then turned back to the basket behind him. He and Joel lifted the burner into place on top of the basket and fastened it, before leaning it onto its side, so the burner would face the balloon. They shifted it closer, then Vince returned to the fan to check the angle.
It did take a while to get sufficient air into the envelope, but it wasn’t as bad as Cami had expected. Even so, she was freezing by the time Vince directed the first burst of flames into the envelope.
Once he started heating the air, it didn’t take long for the balloon to become upright. The crew surrounded the basket, holding on to keep it on the ground as Vince helped Cami inside.
Sage wandered back, her bag slung over one shoulder again. “It’s a beautiful balloon, and a great day for a ride.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Vince said as he vaulted into the basket. He checked the business radio in the instrument panel to make sure he could speak to the ground crew. “We’re good to go. Catch you all when we land again.”