A Sword in the Sky Read online

  A Sword in the Sky

  Tarot: The Knight of Swords

  By

  C. D. Conejo

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Sword in the Sky – Tarot: Knight of Swords

  Copyright © 2007 C. D. Conejo

  Cover art and design by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Book

  www.extasybooks.com

  To everyone in the fantasy mile-high club…

  The Knight of Swords

  When the Knight of Swords turns up, words will fly! This young man is too smart for his own good. He can be callow, obnoxious, and a troublemaker, but under it all, he can be a charmer, too. He loves his words and knows how to use them. He can cut you to shreds with a sentence, send you into heavenly bliss with a poem. But don’t lie to him. If words are his sword, the truth is his shield, and he will fight to the death for the truth.

  Aurora never thought that a flight home to see her family for the holidays, chased by a blizzard, would lead to true love. But she draws the Knight of Swords as her seatmate, and as the plane tosses in the turbulent skies, they learn the power of words, and the joy of love.

  A Sword in the Sky

  Aurora knotted her thick black hair into a bun at her neck, and took off her glasses. She rubbed her dark eyes and put the spectacles back on. She looked at her watch. It was five, and the plane was supposed to leave at two. Three hours late, and counting. She wandered around the Denver airport, afraid to leave the terminal area, in case they called to board. It would clearly be the last flight out of Denver to San Francisco. The weather was just getting worse, and the next step would be a shutdown.

  She stretched, reaching high overhead. Her thick, grey and blue striped sweater rose up, showing a trim waist, and a little jeweled ring in her navel. Her breasts rose with the sweater, firm and tender.

  Aurora snapped open her laptop, and clicked herself on line. She loved the fact that with a simple payment she could go online in any airport in the country, and on a day like today, it was a godsend. After all, there was nothing else to do, waiting around forever for a flight that might get cancelled.

  She thought of her home in California, where it never snowed. She couldn’t wait. She checked the weather map, again. The blizzard was out of the North, and was coming down through Wyoming, into Colorado. From the looks of the Doppler, if they didn’t get out within the hour, they would be stuck. But their connecting plane was coming from Minnesota, and the weather up there was at least as bad, and the delay could just about sink them.

  Sighing, she clicked into the Tarot site. She drew a basic Celtic cross, and asked her usual question. “Will I find true love?” She watched as the cards popped into place, resigned to her usual answer. Maybe, someday.

  Her eyebrows went up, black and curving against her olive skin, when a new card appeared. She searched for its meaning, its strange positioning. She looked at the spread, shaking her head. The Knight of Swords. What on earth?

  She read the whole picture, careful not to obsess on one card. She would find true love, but the road would be full of conflict. She would travel by air —duh, she thought! True love would find her, but she would need to let go of false pride, and she would have to allow herself to be exposed and open to her lover.

  She felt herself grow warm at this. She certainly had her secrets to keep, and she intended to keep them. And based on her last few experiences with men, she certainly never intended to be fully exposed again. Her heat made her uncomfortable, and she pulled at the neck of the sweater. She knew her cheeks were glowing, and her lips plumping. That was what always happened when she was embarrassed. Or aroused. And with this simple card spread, she was both.

  She shut the computer down sharply, and looked up. Her coffee-brown eyes met sea green ones, narrow and sparkling, under a thatch of straw colored hair and fair skin, and a smiling mouth below. He winked. She felt her blood surge through her, and she looked away. Mercifully, the loudspeaker finally blared. “Flight four-sixty-five to San Francisco, now boarding through gate B fourteen.” She stood, packed up her laptop, and pulling her now frazzled boarding pass out of her pack, she joined the line to board.

  * * * *

  Aurora moved into the window seat after throwing her pack and her heavy coat into the overhead bin. The computer, and her little bag of immediate necessities, like chocolate and tissues, went under the seat in front of her. She shoved the little pillow behind her back, unrolled the blanket and tucked the ends under her chin, and lifted the shade of the window all the way up.

  Flurries continued to swirl outside, but the sky over the mountains was practically black with storm clouds. The peaks were invisible, and the plane shuddered, even on solid ground, with the gusts of wind. It would be a rocky ride over the Rockies, as they always joked. Luckily they no longer served food on these flights, or it would come right up.

  Passengers filed and shuffled in the aisle, eager to get to their seats, to get this bird off the ground. Many were students, or, like Aurora, young academic professionals, off for the winter break. Christmas was in a week, and the semester was over. Relief and exhaustion streaked their faces, and Aurora imagined that the same could be seen on her brow. It had been a particularly tough semester, her first as an assistant professor, teaching hard courses, living with a flaky roommate, and Josh.

  Josh had, in the middle of a concert, turned to her, eyes glowing, and announced that he had met the girl of his dreams, and was moving in with her the following semester. Aurora and Josh had never been an official item, but the dream had kept her going through tough and tougher times. Now, the dream had crashed, and she, his good friend, had put the best face she could on it. She had wished him joy, all while she felt her smile freezing like sleet on the Denver streets.

  Aurora shook her head to free herself of thoughts of Josh. Unproductive didn’t even begin to describe thoughts like that, she chided herself. She was going home for a long three weeks, where she would be cosseted by her loving family, and would think of nothing but them.

  She shut her eyes, willing that no one take the seats next to her, or at worst, only the aisle seat, so she wouldn’t be forced into conversation. She was finally on the plane, and if she could sleep through the two and a half hour flight, she would be home.

  A rustle next to her disturbed her, as an occupant took the aisle seat. She pulled the cover up to her neck and turned her back on the newcomer. “Please take your seats quickly,” the flight attendant announced over the loud speaker. “The sooner you’re seated, the sooner we can get off the ground. And we want to get out before the storm hits.”

  The seats bumped, but Aurora kept her eyes resolutely shut. This flight was bound to be packed, she knew, and she was too tired for conversation. Finally, she heard the welcome voice, “Flight attendants, arm doors for departure.” She could sense that no one had taken the seat in the middle. She turned around, to lift the armrest, and be able to curl more com
fortably into her seat.

  She opened her eyes, and found herself staring into the green eyes of the young guy she had seen before.

  Aurora groaned inside. Just her luck. She would have vastly preferred an overtired road warrior like her dad, a businessman, whose job took him from hub to site to location, and for whom a flight was not an occasion for conversation but a haven from the cell phone and the clamor of clients. They generally smiled politely at their neighbors, opened a magazine or their laptops, and rode silently the entire flight. Instead she had drawn a cute guy, who obviously knew his own looks, who liked to wink at girls. And probably wanted to talk, endlessly, Aurora imagined, about himself.

  She lifted the armrest, and before she could rudely turn away, “Hi,” he said, winking, right on cue.

  “Hi,” she said flatly.

  “Long wait, huh?”

  “Yeah.” She pulled the blanket up, and curled away.

  “Hoping no one sits between us?” he persisted.

  “They already shut the doors, so I think we’re safe,” she answered, without turning around. If she was rude enough he would leave her alone.

  It seemed to work. She heard the rustle of a magazine, a seat belt clicking closed, and she relaxed. The plane began to back up. Next would be the drone of the televised safety message, take-off, and the bumpy ride up above the mountains. Preferably in silence.

  “Want some gum?”

  Aurora didn’t answer. Maybe he would think she was sleeping.

  The plane rolled along silently, into the queue of airplanes waiting to take off. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are number ten in line, so it will be a bit of a wait,” said the Captain, in that southern Yeager drawl they all affected. “Looks like we’re all trying to get out of Denver before the blizzard hits, so we’ll just have to wait our turn. Sit back, relax, and we’ll let you know when it’s time to go.”

  “Damn,” Aurora muttered. Looked like they’d be here a while.

  “What?” said the guy.

  Damn again, Aurora thought. Why’d I say it out loud? She looked up from her pillow. He really was pretty cute, actually. “I just said damn,” she replied.

  He smiled, and his green eyes twinkled. “I’m Clay,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Aurora,” she answered. She had no choice. She took his hand. It was big, and dry, and warm. He held it longer than was strictly necessary. She tried to decide if that was creepy or not, and came up neutral on the subject.

  “Going home?” he asked.

  She nodded. “You?”

  “No. On my way to a job interview. Hoping to get lucky.”

  “Good luck, then,” she said. She kept herself from asking what kind of job. It turned out she didn’t have to.

  “I’m a journalist. I have an interview with a magazine in San Francisco. I’m nervous, and excited, and pretty sure I’ll get the job. But it’s got me all worked up, and these delays aren’t very helpful.” He smiled, a disarming grin designed to melt a woman’s heart. Aurora wasn’t having any of it.

  “Well, good luck then,” she repeated, then turned away. She heard the magazine open again, and shut her eyes tight to keep from glancing over at him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Captain once again. We’re about fifteen minutes from take-off. With our delay, we can’t seem to keep a place in line, so we’ll just have to wait for a break. I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”

  Aurora sighed, and gave up. If the captain said fifteen minutes, it would be an hour. She knew it. She might as well read, or work on her laptop. She pushed the blanket down, and reached for her computer from under the seat. To her relief, her seatmate, Clay, didn’t react or say anything. She pulled up the computer and switched it on.

  She couldn’t go on line on the plane, of course, but she could read. She had bought a couple of e-books to entertain herself with, and if anything, she needed some entertainment now. She clicked on one, and watched as the lurid cover came on the screen. Carefully she angled it away from Clay, and started to scroll the pages. It was a hot little story, and she sure didn’t want any inquiry from this young journalist.

  Aurora wasn’t into time travel, or vampires, or other such nonsense, but she liked a good contemporary sexy story, and she had found one of her favorite author’s newest selections just before she left. It was a tale of a woman and her two lovers, and her efforts to keep them both, while never letting either know about the other. Duplicitous, sure, but fun and hot.

  As the romance got steamy, she smiled and licked her lips. “Good, huh?” She startled, realizing that Clay had spoken.

  “What?”

  “What you’re reading. It must be good.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked.

  “Because your cheeks have gotten rosy, and your breathing isn’t as slow and even as it was before, so you must be getting, shall we say, interested?”

  “That’s a little personal, don’t you think? Why don’t you concentrate on your own breathing?” It was rude, but she was furious. To think she was going to be stuck for at least two and a half hours with a rude, invasive guy made her boil.

  But Clay wasn’t offended. “I’m a journalist, remember? I’m interested in what gets a person to read, to care about what I wrote. So I notice when people read, instead of just watching TV or listening to music. And whatever you’re reading, you sure were reacting to it. I’d love to know what it was.”

  “Well, I don’t want to spend the next few hours worrying about what you’re thinking about while I read, okay? So let’s agree to mind our own business.”

  “Fine,” he said, and to her surprise, he smiled and winked again. “We’ll mind our own business. My business is journalism. What’s yours?”

  “Mine is keeping my own counsel.”

  He raised his eyebrows, and she noticed that they were gold, like his hair, and his green eyes had gold in them too. He was rawboned in a mid-western way, with big shoulders, high cheekbones, and bony hands. When her eyes returned to his face, he was smiling at her. “Like what you see?”

  Aurora felt the blush rise, and turned away. “I like what I see,” he went on. She whirled back at him. If he kept this up, she was going to ask the flight attendant to change her seat. He was grinning. He kept his eyes on hers, but she could feel them drawn to the rest of her. She felt her nipples stiffen, and hoped he didn’t notice that too. “Don’t be mad, Aurora. I’m just interested in what makes a beautiful woman read spicy books, and ignore a nice real live man sitting next to her.”

  “Look, Clay. I’m not interested in a real live man right now, okay? So let’s let this flight proceed, and have whatever minimal interaction two strangers have to have on a flight, and not discuss any personal matters, got it? I don’t know you, and I don’t want to know you.”

  “This is quite an interesting conversation to be having on a flight, don’t you think? Usually, it’s just banal, I’m from Denver, where are you from, can you pass the peanuts, please? We must be drawn to one another at a deeper level.”

  Aurora rolled her eyes, but inside, she felt flustered. She was usually a pleasant, mild woman, and never had encounters like this with strangers. “I don’t go for this woo-woo stuff, even if I am from San Francisco.”

  “I do,” Clay said earnestly. “I believe in the hand of fate. If you let the road lead you, and you make intelligent choices along the way, you can be happy. If you fight the road, or make foolish choices, you pay.”

  “That’s pretty obvious,” Aurora answered. “But what about the twists that the road takes, or the terrible things that happen to people? Those aren’t their fault.”

  “No, of course not. But that’s what’s on their road, and they have to make intelligent choices within their reality. It’s when you fight reality that you really have problems.”

  “So, I guess your way of dealing with the hand of fate is to talk to anyone who sits next to you on a plane,” Aurora said, deflecting the conversation. The road she had
taken had not been pleasant, and she was ready to get back to the unreality of her book.

  “Sometimes. When the woman is beautiful, and unhappy, and lonely, I want to reach her.”

  “I’m none of the above, and don’t bother.”

  “You’re all of those things, Aurora. What ever my faults, and they are many, I’m sure, I always tell the truth.”

  “Look, Clay. Maybe you do, or you think you do, when you know the truth, but you know absolutely nothing about me, so lay off the truth business.”

  Clay winked again. “Aurora, we’re stuck here on this plane for at least the next three hours, assuming we even get off the ground before the blizzard hits.” Aurora shuddered at the idea of spending the night here. “So let’s make the best of it. Fate has brought us to this moment, so let’s try to enjoy it. After the flight, we’ll never see each other again, so we have nothing to lose.”

  Except a peaceful three hours of silence, Aurora thought. But the earnestness of his face, his sparkling eyes, and his unvarnished willingness to speak his mind were, if nothing else, different. And he was right; they were stuck, and had nothing to lose.

  As if reading her thoughts, Clay smiled again, the smile lighting his face. “You say I know nothing about you. You’re right, of course. But how about this? Let me tell you what I see, looking at you. Then you can tell me what you see, looking at me. It will be a fun game. Willing?”

  “Fine,” Aurora said. If he weren’t handsome, she knew she would never be agreeing to this. But here he was. Let’s see what this journalist could guess.

  “I’ll start.” Clay squinted his eyes and looked at Aurora’s forehead. Then his eyes traveled slowly, stopping at her eyes, and looking deeply into them. He held her gaze, not smiling now, until she dropped her eyes. Then he let his eyes drop and she watched him from her slightly lowered lids. He looked at her neck, then the v of her sweater. She felt his eyes on her breasts, and her nipples again rose for attention. She didn’t move, so as not to call attention to them.