Love’s Landing Zone – Chapter 4
Ruby stared at the PowerPoint slide flickering on the conference room screen and wondered if spontaneous combustion was covered under their health insurance.
“Remote telemedicine integration,” she read aloud, her voice catching on the word “integration” like it was a foreign language she’d learned five minutes ago. “Will revolutionize… rural… healthcare delivery.”
Silence.
The kind of silence that had weight and teeth and made her armpits sweat through her blazer.
Marisol Vega sat at the far end of the ADHEMS conference table, flanked by three other evaluators whose expressions ranged from bored to concerned.
“Can you elaborate on the cost-benefit analysis?” asked Dr. Peterson, a silver-haired man whose glasses reflected the screen and made him look like a disappointed owl.
Ruby blinked. “The… cost-benefit?”
“For the drone deployment protocol you mentioned on slide seven.”
Slide seven. Ruby’s brain scrambled through her presentation like a panicked squirrel. Slide seven was supposed to be about response times. Or was that slide eight? Had she even mentioned drones?
“Right. The drones.” She clicked to the next slide, which displayed a chart about medication inventory instead of drones. “They’re very… beneficial. Cost-wise.”
A woman in the middle of the table—Deputy Director Walsh—cleared her throat. “Ms. Olsen, are you suggesting we deploy medical supplies via unmanned aircraft to remote locations?”
Ruby’s mouth opened. Then closed. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like angry insects.
“I… yes?”
“Without FDA approval? Or FAA clearance?”
Ruby’s face burned. “I meant… eventually. With proper… clearance. Obviously.”
Deputy Director Walsh exchanged a look with Dr. Peterson. It was not a good look.
“Perhaps,” Marisol interjected with the tone of someone throwing a life preserver to a drowning victim, “we could move to the budget projections?”
Ruby clicked through slides, landing on one titled “Community Outreach Goals” that featured a stock photo of a family hiking. She had no memory of creating this slide.
“Budget,” she said, her voice catching. “Yes. The budget is… very carefully… budgeted.”
Someone coughed. It sounded like suppressed laughter.
Ruby’s vision tunneled. The slides blurred together into a kaleidoscope of medical jargon and clip art.
“I think,” she said, her voice sounding far away and tinny, “I should… excuse me.”
She stumbled toward the door, leaving her laptop still connected to the projector, her notes scattered across the table, and what remained of her professional dignity somewhere near slide nine.
In the hallway, she pressed her back against the cool wall and closed her eyes. Her phone buzzed. A text from Tommy: How’s the presentation going? Knock ‘em dead.
Something cracked in her chest.
Knocked myself dead instead, she typed back. Send flowers.
*
The emergency department was having what the charge nurse called “a lively evening.” Which translated to: three motor vehicle accidents, two cardiac events, one unfortunate encounter with a wood chipper, and a steady stream of tourists who’d underestimated Alaska’s ability to inflict creative injuries.
Ruby had picked up the shift partly because they were short-staffed and partly because she didn’t want to face Tommy yet. Their grant was riding on her now.
“Trauma two needs sutures,” called Dr. Martinez from across the department. “Fishing hook to the eyebrow. Patient insists he ‘had it under control.’”
In the ER she could forget her problems for a shift.
Ruby grabbed a suture kit and pushed through the curtain to find a bearded man in his fifties glaring at his wife with the righteousness of someone who’d been proven wrong but wasn’t ready to admit it.
“I told him not to cast into the wind,” the wife said without preamble. “Did he listen? Harold, show the young lady your eyebrow disaster.”
Harold gestured at his forehead, where a treble hook dangled like an unfortunate piercing. “It’s not that bad.”
Ruby pulled on gloves. “I’m going to go ahead and disagree with you there, sir.”
Twenty minutes later, Harold was sutured, bandaged, and receiving a detailed lecture from his wife about fishing safety. Ruby disposed of her gloves and realized her hands were shaking.
Not from the procedure—she’d removed fishing hooks in her sleep. But from everything else. The presentation. The audience of unimpressed bureaucrats.
“You okay?” Dr. Martinez appeared at her elbow, kind eyes sharp with concern. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Just tired,” Ruby lied. “Long day.”
“The fishing hook guy wasn’t that bad. I once had someone come in with a lure embedded in their scalp because they tried to cast with a ceiling fan on.”
Ruby managed a smile. “That’s impressively stupid.”
“We specialize in impressive stupidity here.” He paused. “You sure you’re okay? Because if you need to talk—”
“I’m fine. Really. Just need some coffee and maybe eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.”
But as she walked back toward the nurses’ station, she caught her reflection in the dark window and saw what Dr. Martinez had seen. Someone who looked like she’d been hollowed out and hastily reassembled.
Trying to drown her sorrows in the ER was another failure to add to the list.
By the time Ruby made it to Driftwood Cabin, the LaRoche dinner circus was winding down—dishes clinked in the kitchen, the twins argued about drone battery life from somewhere upstairs, and Beau’s voice drifted from the back porch as he provided running commentary for what sounded like a fishing tutorial.
Ruby slipped inside, hoping to avoid the family debriefing session that would include questions about her day, complete with concerned looks. She almost made it to the stairs.
“Ruby, honey, is that you?” Sylvie’s voice carried from the kitchen. “You missed dinner. There’s salmon and enough leftover potato salad to feed a small army.”
“I’m okay,” Ruby called back, her voice sounding strained even to her own ears. “Just tired. Long shift.”
A pause. Then footsteps, and Sylvie appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “That’s the same ‘I’m okay’ Tommy used when he broke his arm falling out of the smokehouse and tried to hide it for three days. Want to try again?”
Ruby sighed. “It’s nothing dramatic. Just a rough day at work.”
“Both jobs?”
“Both jobs,” Ruby confirmed.
Sylvie studied her for a moment. “Tommy’s down by the water. Been there since he got back from his shift. Probably wondering how your presentation went.”
Ruby’s stomach clenched. The presentation she’d texted him about. The one he’d wished her luck on.
“I should go to bed,” Ruby said. “Early day tomorrow.”
“Go talk to Tommy,” Sylvie countered with the gentle firmness of someone who brooked no arguments. “He’s been pacing the riverbank like a worried bird. It’s either very romantic or mildly concerning.”
Ruby looked toward the back door, then at Sylvie, who was still following her with those sharp, kind eyes.
“What if I messed everything up?”
“Then you figure out how to fix it,” Sylvie said. “But you don’t figure it out alone. That’s what families are for. Even the ones you collect instead of inherit.”
The tightness in Ruby’s chest loosened. “Is that LaRoche family wisdom?”
“Survival wisdom,” Sylvie said with a small smile. “The LaRoche family wisdom is ‘when in doubt, add more butter and see what happens.’”
Despite everything, Ruby smiled back. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good. Now go. And take him some coffee—I left a thermos on the counter. That boy’s been nursing the same cold cup for an hour.”
Ruby found Tommy where Sylvie had predicted: standing at the edge of the riverbank, hands in his pockets, staring out at the water like it held answers to questions he hadn’t figured out how to ask yet.
The evening painted him in soft gold, and for a moment Ruby just watched him. The way he stood, patient and solid, like he had all the time in the world. The way his shoulders carried some invisible weight she couldn’t quite name.
“Either you’re plotting to steal a salmon or you’re having deep thoughts about life,” she said, stepping up beside him with the thermos.
Tommy turned, and his face lit up. “Ruby. Hey. How did—” Then he saw her expression, and his smile faltered. “What happened?”
She handed him the thermos instead of answering. “Sylvie thought you needed actual hot coffee.”
“Thanks.” He accepted the thermos but didn’t take his eyes off her face. “Ruby. The presentation?”
Ruby closed her eyes, opened them, and stared out at the river. A fish jumped somewhere near the opposite bank, sending ripples across the golden water.
“I think I might have accidentally suggested we send medical supplies via illegal drone drops,” she confessed. “Also, I may have called a budget ‘very carefully budgeted’ in front of people whose job it is to actually understand budgets.”
Tommy was quiet for a long moment. Then: “How illegal are we talking? Like, ‘minor paperwork oversight’ illegal or ‘federal prison’ illegal?”
“Somewhere between ‘career-limiting’ and ‘what were you thinking?’”
“Ah. The sweet spot.”
Despite everything, Ruby’s mouth twitched. “I left my laptop connected to the projector and ran away. Literally ran away, Tommy. From a room full of government officials who control our funding.”
“Did you at least run with dignity?”
“I stumbled. Into a wall. While apologizing to a potted plant.”
Tommy set the thermos down on a nearby stump and turned to face her. “Okay, that’s impressive. Most people just stumble into walls or apologize to plants. You multitasked.”
Ruby let out a shaky sob of a laugh. “This isn’t funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
“It’s not—” She stopped, looking at him. At the gentle humor in his eyes, the complete absence of judgment or frustration or disappointment. “Why aren’t you angry?”
“Why would I be angry?”
“Because I probably just tanked our grant application. Because you’ve been working toward this expansion for months, and I walked into that room and word-vomited all over it like some kind of professional disaster.”
Tommy stepped closer, close enough that she could see the tiny lines around his eyes, the way one eyebrow sat higher than the other.
“Ruby,” he whispered. “One bad presentation tanks nothing. You know what you’re talking about—you just had a rough day in a room full of people who make everyone nervous.”
“Marisol Vega has seen me stumble through drills, stammer through debriefs, and now flee from basic questions about drone deployment. She probably thinks you’d be better off with a trained monkey as your flight medic.”
“First of all, monkeys have terrible bedside manners. Second of all, you’re being ridiculous.”
Ruby’s throat tightened. “Am I? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like I’m failing at everything they’re evaluating us on.”
Tommy was quiet for a moment, watching her face in the fading light. Then he reached out and touched her arm.
“You want to know what I see when I watch you work? I see someone who figured out that the cardiac patient last week was having an allergic reaction to his medication, not just chest pain. Someone who talked a kid through his first helicopter ride by teaching him how to identify landmarks from the air.”
Ruby blinked, surprised at the specificity of his observations.
“You see all of that?”
“I do,” he confirmed. “And so does everyone else, including Marisol Vega. One awkward presentation doesn’t erase months of you being brilliant at your job.”
“I threw up in the hospital bathroom after my shift,” Ruby admitted. “Stress vomit. Very professional.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“Just my reflection. She was very judgmental.”
Tommy’s mouth quirked. “Your reflection’s always been a perfectionist.”
“She has unrealistic standards.”
“Terrible quality in a reflection.”
“I keep thinking about their faces,” she said. “When I mentioned the drones. Like I’d just suggested we prescribe essential oils for appendicitis.”
“To be fair, lavender oil does smell nice.”
“Tommy.”
“What? I’m trying to find the silver lining here.”
“How do you do that?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Make everything feel less catastrophic. Like maybe the world isn’t actually ending because I embarrassed myself in front of some bureaucrats.”
“I’ve done the same thing, and the world’s still here.”
“When?”
“Last month. I called Deputy Director Walsh ‘ma’am’ seventeen times in one conversation because I forgot her title. She started counting. Out loud.”
Ruby blinked. “Seriously?”
“By the end, she was taking requests on whether I wanted to go for twenty.”
“What did you do?”
“I asked if she was accepting bets on the over-under.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did. She laughed. Turned out she’s got three sons who do the same thing when they’re nervous.”
Ruby sighed. “So what you’re saying is, these people are actually human?”
“Shockingly human. Marisol Vega has a border collie named Rocket, who she posts about on Instagram. Dr. Peterson makes woodworking videos on YouTube.”
“How do you know this?”
“I looked them up. Know your audience, right?”
Ruby stared at him, amazed. “You researched our auditors’ social media presence?”
“I did,” he confirmed, looking embarrassed. “Marisol’s dog is very photogenic, for the record.”
“That’s…” Ruby paused, considering. “Actually brilliant. And slightly stalkerish.”
“I prefer ‘thorough.’”
They stood there smiling at each other as the sky faded into evening blue, and Ruby felt the disaster of her day reshaping itself into something more manageable. Not erased, but put into perspective by someone who somehow knew exactly what she needed to hear.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“For what?”
“For not telling me it wasn’t that bad. For not trying to fix it. For just… this.”
Tommy’s expression grew serious but tender.
“Ruby, you don’t have to be perfect. Not for them, not for the grant, not for me. You just have to be you.”
“What if ‘me’ isn’t enough?”
“Then they’re idiots. And we’ll figure something else out.”
The certainty in his voice, the casual way he said ‘we,’ made something flutter in her chest.
“We?”
Tommy ducked his head. “Well, yeah. We’re a team, right? In the bird, at the cabin, dealing with your accidental drone smuggling suggestions…”
Ruby laughed, really laughed.
You have been reading Love's Landing Zone...
Tommy LaRoche was the best pilot Ruby had ever flown with. He was also hiding something that could get them both killed.
As a flight medic, Ruby Olsen’s career depends on control, but she’s losing it fast around her partner—a six-foot-two river cowboy with a quiet confidence that unravels her.
Living at his family’s fish camp, she finds herself drawn into his world. He sees past the competent medic to the woman underneath, and his steady support becomes the one thing she can’t live without. But the closer they get, the more she fears his carefully guarded secret is a danger to them both.
With a high-stakes government evaluation threatening to ground their program for good, Ruby must convince the man she’s falling for to trust her with his career—and his heart—before they lose their jobs, their grant, and a love that’s just beginning to take flight.
