Beneath the Sun

by Claire Lorrimer

Genres: Romance; Romantic Suspense

Synopsis

It was a routine flight to Africa but the passengers were destined never to arrive. Hijacked at gunpoint, the pilot is forced to land in the desert where, in the blistering heat and with remote chance of rescue, the passengers face imminent death. For Chris and Liz, on their honeymoon, the intense passion they share proves to be an even deeper and stronger commitment than they had realised ? until now. And for the stewardess Eve, and handsome American Bruce Mallory, will the lighthearted mid-air flirtation end ? as it always does ? on landing?

Release date: February 13, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 128

Sample

Mary-Lou put the last lunch tray in the rack and smoothed the dark hair from her forehead with a sigh.

‘That’s done that. Do you want a cup of coffee, Eve?’

The pretty blonde stewardess, Mary-Lou’s senior by two years’ service, smiled and nodded.

Because of the extreme smallness of the tiny galley it was necessary for both girls to confine their physical movement to the minimum. In the eighteen months of working together they had managed to achieve a perfect partnership, each knowing what was to be done and how to carry out their tasks with the minimum inconvenience to the other as they moved around the plane.

The big V.C.10 was very far from full today. Two coaches carrying passengers to the airport had failed to arrive on time and although they had delayed take-off to the last possible limit, the plane had had to leave finally with a complement of only thirty-four passengers. Consequently their job of serving lunch had been comparatively easy and they could relax for a while—or at least until one of the passengers rang for attention.

Both girls had become very efficient at summing up the passengers and their potential for being ‘a nuisance’. As they had taken their seats on boarding the plane at Heathrow, Mary-Lou reckoned this could well be an easy flight. Apart from the limited numbers, there were no babies or young children who usually inevitably meant more work for her and Eve, and the adults looked a reasonable group.

The couple in seats One and Two were obviously newly-weds, possibly on their honeymoon. They were too engrossed in each other to be much trouble to anyone! Across the aisle from them were a middle-aged couple, Mr and Mrs James, with their daughter. The girl, ash blonde and very thin, looked as if she might have been ill—probably going to a hot climate to recuperate, Mary-Lou decided. It amused her, when she had time, to try to guess the background of her passengers, though it could be a tantalizing pastime since she seldom knew by the end of the trip whether she had guessed right or wrong.

She had been right about the elderly couple in Eleven and Twelve, though. Harold and Elsie Curry, old-age pensioners, were on their first and probably their last trip abroad, for which they had been saving for years and years. The old girl had been a bit nervous when the plane took off and her husband, devoted and caring, had confided the details to Mary-Lou when she stopped for a few minutes to reassure his wife. They had a married daughter in South Africa and were paying her a visit. They hadn’t seen her for twenty years, and their three grandchildren never. Mrs Curry had calmed down once they were at cruising height and had been no more trouble, poor dear.

Eve Cunningham was thoughtfully stirring the hot coffee in her plastic cup.

‘I rather fancy the American in Twenty-eight!’ she said with a twinkle in her large grey-green eyes. ‘I think he’d try to date me if he dared!’

‘Which American?’ Mary-Lou asked, amused. There were two halfway up the cabin, one in his mid-forties, the other ten years or so younger.

‘The young one, of course!’ Eve said. ‘His name is Bruce Mallory—I looked him up on the passenger list.’

‘The red-haired one?’

Eve nodded.

‘I think he’s some kind of p.a. to the other, Kennedy Maxwell. He’s in the Diplomatic. They’re getting off at Cairo.’

Mary-Lou laughed.

‘You seem to know a lot about them. Remember the rules, Eve—no chatting up the passengers!’

Eve sighed.

‘That’s one of the snags in this job—you see someone you could really go for and they alight next stop and you never see them again! Ah, well, such is life!’

Mary-Lou had no such problems. She was engaged—unofficially—to the second pilot, John Wilson. Married stewardesses were frowned on by the company so she and John couldn’t take the plunge yet, but both were quite sure they wanted marriage eventually. For the time being Mary-Lou, who was only twenty-two and loved her job, was in no hurry to settle down, though John, six years her senior, was apt to be a bit jealous and possessive. He wanted marriage because it would tie Mary-Lou securely to him. But he’d agreed to wait until she was ready to make the final commitment.

The light flashed above Eve’s head.

‘I’ll go,’ she said as Mary-Lou stood up. It was one of the nice things about Eve—although she was senior, she always took her full share of the jobs.

She came back a moment later, her eyes full of laughter.

‘It was that deb in number Six. Wants a brandy. And guess what, Mary-Lou—the blond-haired Liverpudlian sitting next to her is her boy-friend.’

‘Are you sure?’ Mary-Lou asked. ‘They came on board acting as if they were strangers. Let’s have a look at the passenger list. I’m sure I know his face. It’s my guess he’s a pop singer—well known, too.’

The young girl was travelling under the name of Susan Smith—‘An alias if ever there was one!’ Eve said. The boy’s name was listed as Henry Bard.

Suddenly, Mary-Lou gasped and clutched Eve’s arm.

‘I know who he really is!’ she cried. ‘He’s Larry Bell and he is a pop singer—belongs to that band, First Impressions.’

‘Never heard of them!’ Eve grimaced. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a fan, Mary-Lou!’

The younger girl grinned.

‘No, but you haven’t heard the rest of it!’ she said excitedly. ‘That girl he’s with—she’s no more Susan Smith than I am. She’s the Honourable Sarah Finnon-Waters and in today’s Express it said her parents had made her a ward of court because they believed she was eloping to Gretna Green with Larry Bell. Don’t you see, Eve, they’ve slipped the net somehow and next thing they’ll be safely out of the court’s jurisdiction and getting married in South Africa!’

Eve drew a deep breath.

‘If you’re right, we’d better tell Bob,’ she said, referring to the first pilot. ‘He’ll know what to do.’

‘Radio the news back home, I suppose,’ Mary-Lou said doubtfully. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t say anything, Eve. After all, I could be wrong.’

Eve raised her eyebrows.

‘But you don’t think so. Anyway, we ought to consider the girl. She doesn’t look a day over sixteen to me. And if she is the Hon. someone or other, it’s understandable her parents want to stop her marrying a chap like that.’

‘She’s sixteen!’ Mary-Lou agreed, quelling her romantic instincts. ‘Not really old enough to know her own mind.’

Eve did not hesitate further. Bob Sinclair was a mature married man of forty-five. He had a daughter in her teens. Let him decide what to do. She got up and went through the cabin towards the cockpit. Passing between the rows of passengers, she glanced at them automatically, wearing the pleasant relaxed smile she could assume at will. Most of the passengers smiled back. The group of dark-skinned athletes grinned cheerfully. They were members of a football team from somewhere in Africa who’d been in England playing a series of friendly matches.

But three African gentlemen up front did not smile. Eve grimaced to herself. She held no racial prejudices but she didn’t like the look of the scowling dark faces. There was something almost furtive about all three of them.

Their scowls were compensated by the friendly smile of the young red-haired American she’d remarked upon to Mary-Lou. His companion was engrossed in an official-looking document and Eve paused briefly.

‘Anything you’d like, sir?’ she asked professionally.

Bruce Mallory’s smile widened. His eyes twinkled mischievously. Despite herself, Eve felt the colour come into her cheeks.

‘I’m just fine, thank you, ma’am!’ he said.

She moved on hurriedly, chiding herself for letting anyone embarrass her. At twenty-six, she was long past the age of blushing when attractive young men propositioned or flirted with her. In her job it was practically an everyday occurrence and she had become adept over the years at coldly rebuffing the advances made. The difference now, she knew very well, was that she didn’t particularly wish to rebuff Mr Bruce Mallory. She liked his bronzed lean face and wide smiling mouth. She liked the deep-set hazel eyes, full of laughter yet with an underlying intelligence beneath. She wished very much that he wasn’t a passenger and that she’d met him in other circumstances where she could have got to know him better.

It was two years now since she’d ended an unhappy affair with one of the other pilots. It had been a crazy, unsatisfactory, stupid affair since she’d known from the beginning that he was married and merely amusing himself. But she’d fallen in love for the first time in her life and had been in too deep too quickly to avoid the inevitable pitfalls that attended such a relationship. Finally, she’d found the courage to make the break and was beginning at last to recover the pieces of her broken heart; even occasionally to wonder if it had been quite so severely broken as she had imagined at the time. Now, with a deep inner awareness of release, she realised that she was actually capable of being attracted by another man; a completely different man from her first lover. Tall, thin, angular, red-headed, Bruce Mallory bore not the slightest resemblance to the square, fair-haired one-time rugby player who’d seduced her with such ease!

Conscious of the young American’s eyes on her back, she went through to the cockpit and closed the door between them. But she knew it would be only a matter of minutes before she had to face him again and was certain that he would be watching for her. She felt excited and self-conscious—young again, and even more regretful that in a few hours’ time, he would be disembarking at Cairo Airport and that she’d probably never see him again.

John Wilson, second pilot, yawned, stretched and stood up as Eve came into the cockpit. He was a pleasant-looking, rather ordinary young man but his smile had great charm and Eve could understand why Mary-Lou found him both attractive and, as a character, likeable. He was good-tempered, amusing, friendly, and he worshipped Mary-Lou.

He said now:

‘Since you’re here, Eve, I’ll nip along and have a word with Mary-Lou. Okay, Skipper?’

Bob Sinclair nodded. He knew all the ins and outs of his co-pilot’s romance with the young stewardess and in his kind, good-natured way, helped John whenever and however he could. He knew how passionately anxious John was to tie Mary-Lou down and understood why. There was always a danger of a girl as pretty as that meeting someone else.

When John had left, Eve told Bob and Jimmy Tate, the radio operator, about the young couple, adding that she and Mary-Lou thought they could be elopers.

‘I don’t know if it’s any of our business or if we should keep our suspicions to ourselves,’ she ended. ‘Mary-Lou is pretty sure the boy is Larry Bell though, and the girl is certainly young and well spoken. What do you think? They’re going as far as South Africa.’

Bob Sinclair sighed. He was thinking of his own pop-crazy daughter when he said:

‘If the kid’s only sixteen, then we ought to radio back.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We land at Cairo in a couple of hours—doesn’t leave them much time to organise someone to be there to meet them.’ He hoped they wouldn’t be held up on landing as a result. At forty-five he was beginning to feel tired at the end of these long trips and realised that when the time came in the near future for him to retire, he wouldn’t be sorry. He was still very much in love with his wife, Lilian, and he looked forward to a more settled routine life in their pleasant country cottage at Chertsey. His son and daughter were growing up fast and it wouldn’t be long before they left home. He’d have Lilian to himself and …

‘Do not make any false move, Captain. I have a gun at your back!’

Just for a split second of time, Bob Sinclair thought the man’s voice behind him was that of John, playing some silly schoolboy prank. But as he slowly turned his head, he glimpsed the white startled faces of Eve and Jimmy and then the dark African features of the speaker.

To his intense surprise the man did have a gun pointing at him. Bob blinked stupidly, trying to take in the improbability of the situation. The question flashed through his mind whether the man was drunk or mad or both. He was aware of danger and felt his muscles tense.

The man’s mouth tightened.

‘If you disobey me, I shall not hesitate to shoot!’ he said, in a heavily accented voice.

‘Don’t be stupid!’ Bob said sharply, and bluffing, added: ‘We’re at thirty thousand feet. If a bullet went through the fuselage, the air pressure would blow us all to hell.’

There was a flicker of surprise on the man’s face.

‘Do not take me for a fool. I know a bullet would have no such effect. I have two colleagues back there. Each has a machine-gun. We could kill many people if you force us. Please make up your mind now to obey me.’

For the first time, Eve spoke. Frightened though she was, she could not yet bring herself to believe in the reality of this scenario. Any moment now, John Wilson would return. With luck he’d take the man by surprise.

‘What is it you want?’ she asked as coolly as if she were enquiring of one of her passengers what they would like to drink.

‘You will alter course!’ the man replied, equally imperturbably. ‘You will fly to Northern Nigeria. There you will be signalled where to land.. . .