Fly with Me: A Novel
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Synopsis
A sparkling and steamy Sapphic romance, Fly with Me by Andie Burke is filled with sharp banter and that sweet, swooping feeling of finding “the one” when and where you least expect it.
A one-way ticket to love or a bumpy ride ahead?
Flying-phobic ER nurse Olive Murphy is still gripping the armrest from her first-ever take-off when the pilot announces an in-flight medical emergency. Olive leaps into action and saves a life, but ends up getting stuck in the airport hours away from the marathon she's running in honor of her brother. Luckily for her, Stella Soriano, the stunning type A copilot, offers to give her a ride.
After the two spend a magical day together, Stella makes a surprising request: Will Olive be her fake girlfriend?
A video of Olive saving a life has gone viral and started generating big sales for Stella's airline. Stella sees their union as the perfect opportunity to get to the boys' club executives at her company who keep overlooking her for a long-deserved promotion. Realizing this arrangement could help her too, Olive dives into memorizing Stella’s comically comprehensive three-ring-binder guide to fake dating. As the two grow closer, what’s supposed to be a ruse feels more and more real. Could this be the romantic ride of their lives, or an epic crash and burn?
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.
Release date: September 5, 2023
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Print pages: 376
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Fly with Me: A Novel
Andie Burke
“We’re not going to crash.”
The entire row of fellow airplane passengers turned, and Olive Murphy realized she’d said the words out loud. And with noise-reducing headphones over her ears, she’d said it so loudly every passenger on board might have heard her.
She swallowed against the thickness in her throat.
Uncharacteristically, her stupid mouth kept moving. “There’s actually only a one in three point three seven billion chance of dying in a commercial airplane crash. And ninety-eight point six percent of plane crashes don’t even have fatalities.” Olive tugged at the collar of her sweatshirt. “Though I guess even the people on the planes that crashed had that same statistical probability, and they still died in a heap of burning wreckage.” She let loose a couple of nervous chuckles and risked a glance around her, hoping a sinkhole or vortex had appeared to swallow her whole. No such luck. She was still here.
On a fucking airplane.
She tightened her grip on the tiny white pill in her fist. Joni, the doc from work who prescribed it, hadn’t told her when to take it. What if they got stuck on the tarmac for hours? Olive had only two Valium pills with her. One for the flight out and one for the flight back. Her normal meds wouldn’t cut it for today.
Her mouth was dry.
There was a smell here. A plane smell. Like recycled air and metal. And death.
Okay, not actually death.
God, she was about to be ten thousand feet up in the air with the airplane smell, defying the laws of physics, the laws of nature, and the laws of Olive Murphy’s guide for surviving life. All she could think about was Newton. What goes up must come down. An apple falling from a tree. A Boeing 737 full of screaming people. All splattered in a crater. Or dive-bombed into the water. The remains picked away by sharks or piranhas or whatever feasts on human flesh in the deep.
She needed to stop watching so much Discovery Channel.
Olive lifted the Valium. “Now or never.”
The pill was inches from her mouth when the plane lurched. The white tablet tumbled into the aisle. A high-pitched curse fell from her mouth, giving the kid behind her an NSFW vocabulary lesson. She clung to the armrest and the seat in front of her as if the metal box had done a barrel roll. A flight attendant stepped on the pill as she passed. Her patent pump pushed the pill into the carpet.
“Oh god.”
A nurse didn’t need to be told the number of bacteria on a shoe that had walked through an airport. Gross. The other pill was in her larger carry-on in the compartment. Her eyes darted like a mouse in a cat’s mouth right before the dramatic gulp. The walls closed in. Tunnel vision. Ringing in her ears.
Breathe.
She would calmly stand up, get what she needed, and then sit back down. This was okay. This was fine. She unclipped her seat belt.
A flight attendant with an enormous blond bouffant and a Southern accent pounced on her. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you need to stay in your seat.”
“I—I need something from my bag.”
The woman’s powdery pink lipstick spread in a placating smile. “You can get it once we’re at cruising altitude.”
“It’s … a pill.” Half standing, Olive clutched the armrests harder.
“Is it a life-sustaining medication?”
Olive gulped. “No.”
The woman pointed a talon-sharp fingernail at Olive’s seat. “Then you’ll need to stay there.”
Olive flopped back down, rebuckling her seat belt. She could do this. She’d faced worse over the last year. She closed her eyes and imagined what this trip would have been like if Jake were here. He’d make her laugh. He’d tell her that her mind was playing tricks on her and say if she could run a forty-six-bed ER during a full moon, she could survive this. Actually, he wouldn’t say any of that. He would quote Parks and Rec or get her to forget she was on a plane altogether by yanking her hair and pretending they were back on a family car trip in the nineties belting out Disney songs in harmony and driving their younger sister bonkers.
But he wasn’t here. And that was the whole damn point. She could do this. For him. He was why she was on this stupid plane in the first place.
They bumped down the runway while the flight attendants checked all the compartments. That blond-bouffant attendant gave her an extra assessment, as though she were an unruly student in an elementary school class who’d already been caught carving dirty words into her desk.
Olive shut her eyes tight and squeezed her phone. She blasted the music in her headphones. Brandi Carlile belted out a few particularly emotional notes.
Happy place. Happy place. Happy place.
Music. Nature. Potted plants. Mid-century modern art deco designs. Velvet tufted everything.
The plane shuddered.
She gasped, drawing more exasperated looks from the totally calm and normal people in the seats around her. Yeah, they’d probably be telling all their friends about the psycho in their row. Sandpaper lined her throat. She fumbled for her water. Water would be good.
Unless the plane landed in it.
Piranhas. Sharks.
A revving noise hit her ears even through the headphones. The plane accelerated, flattening Olive to her seat. She held her breath as if she were jumping off a diving board. A bounce. A lifting sensation. Her eyes opened. Her head whipped around. There was no more shaking. No shudder of the wheels beneath her. Smooth. They were in the air. A small thunk made her latch on to the armrest again.
A gnarled hand lifted her right headphone off her ear, and a gravelly voice from the aisle seat beside her spoke. “That’s the landing gear going away, dearie.” A woman in her nineties if she was a day smirked—actually smirked—at her and patted her arm placatingly.
“Oh, okay.”
“Everything’s going to be fine.” She pointed. “Watch the flight attendants. As long as they’re calm, you should be calm. You’re not going to get sick, are you?”
“Why would I get sick?”
“I can deal with reciting horrific accident statistics better than the stench of panic vomit.” With that she pulled down her eye mask and was snoring in seconds.
Olive cradled her face. This wasn’t the most humiliating experience of her life. Not by a long shot. Jake used to call her proof that Murphy’s Law existed. With her, whatever could go wrong usually did, especially if it involved making a complete ass out of herself. But generally, she could laugh about it.
Not today.
Nevertheless, she dutifully watched the flight attendants. They were calmly chatting. Several more minutes of smooth flying passed before one of the flight attendants shot out of their seat.
“Oh my god.” Olive pulled her headphones down around her neck. Shouts from the front echoed in her ears. Wasn’t there that thing a few years back when a woman got pulled out of a plane after debris hit her window? Olive tightened her
seat belt. “I’m not going to die today.”
The goateed man on the other side of her sighed loudly. Very loudly. It was almost a groan.
Several flight attendants spoke into a walkie-talkie while others fumbled through cabinets. Olive wanted to wake the nonagenarian beside her to beg for reassurance. But even Olive wasn’t quite that pathetic yet, despite the sound coming from her mouth, which might have been a whimper.
A musical and calming female voice came over the PA system speakers. “This is your cocaptain speaking. I need to know if we have any doctors on board. We have a passenger experiencing a medical emergency.”
No one moved. No one raised their hands.
Olive wasn’t a doctor, so she let her shoulders slump, hoping someone with less panic coursing through their veins could help. The flight attendants repeated the request for doctors.
Another minute passed. The same voice overhead. “Do we have any medical professionals on board this flight?”
Motherfucking Murphy’s Law.
Olive raised her hand, and her voice squeaked when she found it. “I’m a nurse.”
With the permission of the bouffant blonde, Olive leaped out of her seat into the aisle. Her headphones almost strangled her, as they’d somehow gotten hooked in an armrest. She pulled them off. She could do this. She was an ER nurse with ten years of experience. She could absolutely do this. The plane lurched, and Olive grabbed hold of the seats, her muscles locking up until she saw the man on the ground.
Oh shit.
They’d gotten him out of his seat and onto the floor in a small vestibule at the front of the plane. He was in his forties or fifties. Gray peppered the hair on either side of his utterly pale face. Unconscious.
Some essential gear in Olive’s brain clicked into place. She rushed to the man’s side. “What happened?”
The head flight attendant, a tall man not much older than she was, handed her a stethoscope. “The people in the seat next to him saw him clutch his chest and then slump over. We don’t know anything else. Is he having a heart attack? The captain’s working on getting us diverted.”
“What supplies do we have?” Olive asked. Another flight attendant opened a black vinyl bag. She searched through it. “Can you find out what he was doing right before he slumped over?”
Olive kneeled, pressing the stethoscope to his chest. He was barely breathing. He had a pulse. Perfusion poor. Color bad. Extremities cool.
The flight attendant appeared beside her again.
“They said he was eating a protein bar and coughed a couple times.”
Olive’s mind processed the information as she wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm. Not choking, though. That wouldn’t have been so fast.
The blood pressure was dangerously low.
Shit.
Protein bar.
Coughing.
She grabbed a penlight from the bag and looked at his throat. Not choking. Swelling. Allergic reaction. She breathed out slowly and grabbed the EpiPen from the emergency supplies bag. She pulled the cap and thrust it into the man’s thigh.
The man gasped and gagged. She rolled him onto his side, where he vomited. His skin was still super pale, and he wasn’t awake. Hypotension from anaphylaxis? Okay. Next steps. She tore his sleeve, wrapped a tourniquet around his arm, and started an IV. She let the fluid flow into him and checked his pressure again.
Still too damn low.
He was breathing better, but symptoms weren’t getting better quickly enough, and there was only one EpiPen in the bag.
Fuck.
Olive grabbed the mask and bag to start giving him rescue breaths. “I need someone to check with the passengers and see if anyone else has another EpiPen. Sometimes you need a second dose.”
A rash had bloomed all over his exposed skin. Olive pulled a flight attendant down to the ground and demonstrated how to give breaths with the mask.
The woman nodded nervously and picked up the motion. “I-I-I’ve had CPR training.”
“Good, thank you. You’re doing great.” Olive offered an assuring nod.
There was an AED beside her. She went ahead and ripped open the man’s shirt, sticking the pads on his chest.
If she couldn’t fix him soon, he was going to code. Could she manage a cardiac arrest here?
The other flight attendant came back with an EpiPen in his hand. Olive flipped it open and thrust it into the man’s other leg, holding it while rifling through the rest of the medications. She threw the used pen on the ground and drew up a dose of Benadryl and gave it through his IV, really hoping that Good Samaritan laws meant she wouldn’t get sued for this.
The man’s chest rose more steadily. His color improved. The hives weren’t better, but they weren’t worse either. He was breathing—really breathing. Olive stopped the attendant pushing in breaths with the bag-valve mask, and set up a continuous flow oxygen mask instead.
She took another blood pressure reading, holding her own breath as she watched the tiny needle
on the gauge.
112/70.
Stable.
Olive sat back on her heels, almost gasping with relief. Thank god.
Two flight attendants helped her prop the man with a pillow. Olive sat cross-legged beside him, checking his pulse and monitoring the fluids dripping into him.
His eyes opened, and Olive leaned forward.
A hacking cough came first and then what almost sounded like a raspy laugh. “The packaging said no nuts. Those assholes.”
Olive grinned. Tears pricked her eyes. “Well, I think you should file a lawsuit. But you’re going to be okay.” She patted his shoulder.
The head flight attendant pointed to her. “This woman saved your life, sir.”
The man smiled. “Thank you.” He held out a shaking hand.
“Anytime.” Olive shook his hand but then winced. “But hopefully never again.”
“We’re preparing for our final descent. A medical crew is going to meet us at the gate,” the flight attendant said.
“We’re already in Orlando?” Olive’s eyes widened. It couldn’t have taken that long.
He shook his head. “Diverted to Atlanta.”
“Oh, yeah. That makes sense.” She tried to hide the disappointment in her voice. It was absolutely the correct decision. She could get another flight out. She could make it in time.
Her legs had begun to cramp underneath her. She was shaky when she made it to her feet, cracking her back and stretching her neck. A roar of noise assaulted her ears, almost giving her a heart attack.
Were they crashing? No. Not after all of that.
It … it was applause.
For her.
Olive pressed her cold hands to her cheeks, hoping to ease the burning. The flight attendant whose name tag she was finally calm enough to read—LEO—pulled her onto a small flip-down seat and buckled her in. Her hands, which had been so steady when she’d held the EpiPen, now trembled wildly. Two other flight attendants managed to half carry the man she’d helped into one of the first-row seats. They checked and rechecked him to make sure he was conscious.
Olive’s eyes shut as a sudden wave of exhaustion crashed into her—well, not crashed. Just to be clear, nothing is goddamn crashing. She massaged her eyelids, seeing colored spots when she forced them open again.
In fifteen minutes and several more near panic attacks, the plane landed with a surprisingly gentle thump, and Olive Murphy was on the ground again. She closed her eyes and sighed.
They slowed to a crawl and then taxied to the gate.
Leo touched her arm, rousing her from a stare. “The pilots would like to talk to you.”
“Uh—sure. Can I check on him now?” She pointed to the man who’d had the allergic reaction.
Leo nodded.
Olive pressed her fingers to the man’s wrist to feel his pulse. He smiled at her. He had a kind, animated face, and she was relieved to see color back in his cheeks. Before she could ask his name, the gate door opened and paramedics appeared. Another round of applause greeted her as she approached her seat.
The old lady in the seat beside hers took off her mask and earplugs and peered up at her. “Did you puke?”
Olive looked at her clothes, which were still mercifully free of vomit.
“I knew it—”
“But I—” Olive shrugged. “Never mind.” With Leo’s help, she hauled her bag out of the overhead compartment and dug in the seat for her phone. He ushered her back up to the front and off to the side.
The cockpit door opened—was it called a cockpit or was that just what they called it in Top Gun? Olive froze.
Standing in front of her was the most beautiful woman she’d ever met in real life. Long, shiny dark hair pinned back into a neat bun beneath a hat. Sparkling dark brown eyes and full, kissable lips. A mouth that quirked up at the sides as if smiling was its most natural position. And right now, this captivating woman was smiling at no one except Olive.
“I’m Allied Airlines pilot Stella Soriano.”
Allied Airlines pilot Stella Soriano’s eyes brightened. “I was so surprised to find out that the person saving the other passenger was just a nurse.”
Okay …
So the most beautiful woman on the planet might be an ignorant asshole.
Fabulous.
Murphy’s Law.
Olive shook Stella’s hand, which, to Olive’s dismay, was perfectly soft and prettily manicured. “Well, on most of those shows, whenever they show a doc touching a patient, it’s usually actually a nurse doing the stuff in real life.” She hadn’t meant to say that, but between the nerves on the plane and helping the man, her mouth’s social filter had decided to malfunction.
“Oh, I don’t watch TV.”
A snobby ignorant asshole.
With a too-perfect smile and goddamn dimples. Of course she had dimples.
But seriously, who doesn’t watch TV?
Olive forced on a facsimile of a grin, slung her backpack over her shoulders, and grabbed the handle of her suitcase. “Well, I better go look and find a flight to Orlando.”
Stella’s lips pursed. “There are no more flights tonight.”
Olive’s hand tightened on her suitcase handle, her nails digging into her palm. “Well, I better, uh—I better go, then.”
A smooth voice came from behind Stella. The white man grabbed Olive’s hand and shook it slowly. “I’m the captain of this here aircraft. Call me Kevin. Or Captain Kevin.” He guffawed at his own joke. “Well, y’all didn’t mention how pretty she is. She’ll look great in the photographs. Won’t she?” Captain Kevin was in his forties. Blandly good-looking with the air of someone you wouldn’t be surprised turned out to be a suburban swinger or have a secret life as a niche porn actor with three families across three states.
Stella had the good taste to grimace at the captain’s smarmy tone. “We hadn’t asked her about the photographs yet.”
“W-what photographs?”
Stella smiled. “The airline would like to pay for your flight and give you a voucher for ten free flights.”
Olive decided not to mention that this was essentially like awarding an arachnophobe a collection of free tarantulas. Instead, she said, “Great.”
“And we’d like to take your picture with the crew for our newsletter and website.”
The airplane seemed to shrink, her vision tunneling like it had before takeoff.
Olive ran a nervous hand through her messy curls. She hadn’t even had time to put any product in after her shower. She probably resembled a poodle by now. Grime from the airplane floor coated her leggings. “I’m not really dres— I look terrible. I don’t think a picture would be good right now.”
“You look great. Trust me, most men would disagree with your assessment of how you look.” The smile from “Captain Kevin” wasn’t genial. His eyes fixed on the area of her tank top that had pulled down enough to expose her cleavage.
She pulled the zipper up higher on her hoodie. Olive was too tired to hide the frostiness in her voice. “Random men’s opinions on my appearance have never been very high on my priority list, but cool.” Why bother fighting this?
Stella shook her head. “If she doesn’t want to take a photo, we shouldn’t—”
“I’m sure she’s just being modest.” And he pulled Olive close. “Smile, sweetheart.”
Unnoticed before by Olive, a gate attendant stood with a smartphone held aloft.
As the entire crew gathered
around her, Olive smiled.
She was sure she’d be very glad she did in about twenty-four hours if this photo actually ended up posted somewhere. But for now, she needed to get the hell away from these people so she could cry about the fact that everything was ruined, and she would be stuck in Atlanta until morning. There was no way she’d make the race for Jake.
“Thank you again for everything you did to help the passenger.” Stella shook Olive’s hand one more time, her face more apologetic than it had been before and a little less snooty. “Goodbye, then.”
Olive walked down the tunnel to the terminal and went to find a seat where she could fall apart. ...
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