Saving Molly - Chapter 3

Continuing on with the Racing to Love short story, this is the prelude to the entire series...enjoy.  Remember this isn't professionally edited so...eeeks, I'm sure you'll find something wrong, so please forgive me! LOL...  And please come back next week for a crucial chapter 4!  Hugs, A

Saving Molly...Chapter 3
Absent-mindedly running his thumb back and forth across the butter-soft leather of the plane’s comfortable captain-styled chair, James was suddenly grateful he had gone in with the two other companies to purchase the pristine Citation V.  She made flying so much more comfortable and in an emergency like they had found themselves in at the moment, the beauty had come to the rescue.  The three businesses had all been located in the same office building downtown for the last fifteen years.  Nick owned a construction company, Carl was an attorney and James rounded the trio out as a very prestigious and highly in-demand architect.  They all had uses for a plane, but not enough that it made sufficient business sense to purchase one for just a single business alone.  Splitting the cost of the plane and a pilot had been a brilliant move and had worked out nicely over the last three years with very little scheduling conflicts.  Flying just above the white puffs in the clear blue sky should be considered peaceful, and on any other day it would’ve been.  They both loved to travel, but looking at Karen reminded him of the reason they’d raced to the small commercial airport in the first place.  “Hey…sweetheart.  Do you remember English 101?”He had to chuckle at her, Karen was looking at him as if he had two heads.  James laced her ice cold fingers in his and squeezed.  The tear tracks on her cheeks grabbed his heart like a vice.  Running his free hand across her soft skin was a fruitless attempt to dry her tears, as they were just immediately replaced by one rolling drop after another.  Grasping at straws, the only thing he could think to do was remember their past.  Take her back to a simpler time, back when they were young, dumb and carefree.  Well, not completely.  They were both struggling to put themselves through college, working low-paying jobs and living in loud, crowded dorm rooms.  Back then, their worries made it seem like the weight of the world was on their shoulders, little did they know that those days were not even on the same scale as the hell that was surrounding them all at that very moment.  “Come on, you remember old Professor Crotchety?  I swear, they gave the incoming freshman that grumpy, old Mr. Monotone just to separate the boys from the men.  If you could survive that class without being bored to death, then you could practically waltz through the rest of the four years.”
The corner of Karen’s mouth turned up just briefly, but the smile never even reached her eyes.  She nodded, though she continued to look at their joined hands as if she was trying to remember, but James knew her mind wouldn’t free her from the painful thoughts of Molly.  Her mouth twisted, her brow released only to be quickly knitted tight again.  “Anyway, I remember this girl, oh my God, she was the most stunning young woman I’d ever seen.  Long, wavy chestnut hair, fair skin and these dark green eyes that made you feel like she was seeing everything about you, without asking a word.  The first two weeks she sat in the same spot, third chair from the left, on the fifth row.”  James’s heart lightened a bit, Karen was still staring at their hands, but the half grin that slowly appeared told him she could picture it all as clearly as he still could.  Without waiting for her to jump in and add details, he continued on with their trip down memory lane.
“Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, she would settle into the same chair, exactly ten minutes early.  I’d watch her take out her spiral notebook and two pens, always exactly two pens, and lay everything out in a nice, neat and orderly fashion.  Then she’d sit quietly with her nose in a book reading, while waiting for the most boring class in the entire free world to begin.  And no current-bestseller for her, she stuck to the thick, heavy, hard-back classics.  That girl stole my heart from the moment I laid eyes on her.  She was so quiet, but I could tell by the sweet smiles I caught once in a while, that she had the kindest heart a person could possibly have.
“After the third week of classes, and pining from afar, I worked up the courage to sit beside her—in the second chair from the left on the fifth row.  Even though I was almost paralyzed by her presence, I was brazen enough to sit in that second chair for a reason.”
She glanced up, her eyes questioning him, her head tilted.  “Why’s that?  I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned any of this before?”  Karen asked, her voice still small before returning her focus to her left hand and her wedding ring that he was mindlessly twisting back-and-forth on her finger.
It was starting to work.  James had successfully pulled her into the past with him.  The worry was still present in her furrowed brow and her puffy eyes that had seen more tears today than probably all of the years they’d been together combined.  “Well, being the amazing womanizer that I was—"
Karen snorted and bit her lip.
They both knew that was the furthest thing from the truth.  “Hey…this is my story, you shush.”  Grinning, James winked when Karen looked up at him.
Motioning with her free hand, she barely held back a light chuckle.  “Okay, carry on you womanizer you.”
“Thank you.”  James said in his most proper tone and smiled when Karen rolled her eyes at him.  “Now where was I before I was so rudely interrupted?  Oh, yes…I would sit in the second seat, and on top of that I’d get to class fifteen minutes early—“
“Are you serious?  After all this time, I thought you were just saving my seat so that obnoxious jock wouldn’t bother me?  Now, I find out you just wanted me to brush past you on the way to my seat?  Is that what I’m to take from this little revelation?”
James wiggled his eyebrows, “Hey, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.  Anyway, after a couple of more weeks, the temperatures were really starting to dip that early in the morning.  I took the biggest risk of my life, held my breath and as you were neatly packing your belongings back into that beat up old leather messenger bag,”—he shook his head—“and I do mean neatly, no throwing shit back in the bag so you could hurry and get the hell out of there.  I took a deep breath and stood in your way before you could exit the row.  I remember when you tilted your head a little and furrowed your brow, exactly like you’re doing now.  But there was a questioning smile on your face, so I put my heart on my sleeve and asked if you’d like to go grab a cup of coffee with me in the little shop across the street from the campus.”
The first genuine smile he’d seen since early that morning graced Karen’s face. “Yeah, you had me at coffee.” 
She might be trying to feign indifference, oh but he knew better.  He ran his other palm over the top of her hand which he was still holding.  “Little did I know, I’d fallen in love with a girl who loved coffee more than she’d ever love me?  And still does might I add.”
The stain flooded her cheeks immediately.  “That is not true, James Noland and you know it.”
“I do, but you blush every time I tease you about it.”
“It must not have bothered you too awful much, you did buy me the cutest little coffee maker that Christmas for my dorm room.  And that was after we had decided that since we’d only been dating a couple of months at that point, we weren’t going to exchange presents because neither of us could really afford it.”
It was the same little four-cup coffee maker that she kept stored on the top shelf in the walk-in pantry of their kitchen, refusing to part with.  James grinned, he’d been buying her coffee makers ever since.  The latest masterpiece could damn near make the coffee itself, including getting whipped cream from the refrigerator and sprinkling on a dash of cinnamon just the way she liked it.
“And you my dear, if you remember right, when I showed up to pick you up for our date that night with the present in hand, you pulled out a gift bag from behind your back as well.”
“And if you remember my dear, it was a gift bag full of candy.  Nothing special.”
He liked that she was teasing him back, the light was still missing from her eyes, but she was in a better place for the time being.  “A gift bag full of chocolate.  Every sort of candy bar ever made was in there.  It was perfect for me, and don’t be modest, you knew it.”
“Us and our vices, what will we do?”
“Mr. Noland, we will be landing in twenty minutes, sir.”
Derek’s voice from the cockpit brought them screaming back to the present.  Even though James had told Derek time after time to call him by his first name, the young pilot stuck to formalities.  He could respect that about him. 
“Thanks Derek.  You’ve been a godsend today.  Karen and I greatly appreciate it.”
“It has been my pleasure, sir.  I hope your emergency turns out all right.”
James let out a sigh, “Me too, son.  Me too.”
Glancing at his wife, he saw the pain and stress were back, ten-fold.  She was pale again, her forehead was in the palm of her hand and although her eyes were closed, the tears streaming down her cheeks once again.