The Inspector Walter Darriteau Murder Mysteries - Books 1-4 by David Carter (best finance books of all time .txt) 📕

of each other’s whereabouts. The chances are, we would have gone through the rest of our days pining for the other half that we knew existed, but could never find.

It was a Saturday morning, and I was terrified.

Some idiot at the tax office where I worked at the time decided it would be a good idea to improve team bonding, and the best way to do that, they reasoned, was through skydiving. I confess I didn’t want to participate, and would never go again, but the shame and embarrassment of being seen as a coward forced me from my bed that clear and dry Saturday morning.

A coach took us to the aero club where we’d gone through all the procedures and prelims. We were packed into our multi coloured gear and we headed outside. She was coming in. Some idiot at their place, Eden Leys, had had the same peculiar idea. Parachuting brought people together, they said, killed people too sometimes, I recalled, but there we are, and just this once, it did bring people together, though not as they imagined.

She was coming back, walking along the narrow tarmacked path. I was going out, same path, same place, same time.

We set eyes on one another at the same moment.

We were the same height and almost identical weight, and we even possessed the same sized feet. Eye contact was easy, straight ahead; there it was, eye to eye. Hello there!

I stared into her mesmerising dark eyes. She told me later my blue eyes were the first thing she saw, like lasers spearing into her soul. She said she couldn’t look anywhere else. She felt as if she were being hypnotised. It was the same for me. I couldn’t look anywhere else.  

I paused on the path, maybe five paces away.

She paused too.

‘Hi,’ I said, ambling closer.

‘Hi,’ she said, her white teeth picked out against her rustic skin, as she smiled that special smile reserved for the one we love. I doubt if she smiled in precisely that way again in her entire life. I know for sure I didn’t.

I was lost for words, said the first thing, nay the only thing; that came into my pounding brain.

‘Just been up?’

She grinned and glanced down at her spent chute.

‘Yep,’ she said, still smiling beams as if from an ultra-violet lamp, pausing, waiting, hoping, for me to speak again.

I was struck dumb.

‘Just going up?’ she said.

‘Yeah, looks like it. I’m so nervous.’

‘Don’t be, there’s nothing to be nervous about, you’ll be fine,’ and she reached across and squeezed my wrist. Electricity charged into my arm, sweeping through my entire body. I swear to God I could hear it crackling, see it arcing.

Her friends had passed by and had moved on toward the buildings. One of them turned round and shouted back, ‘Come on, Desi! It’s your round!’

She glanced at them and shouted, ‘Just a minute!’ Glanced back at me and said the most warm and kind thing that anyone has ever said to me in my entire life.

‘Would you like me to wait on for you?’

No one had ever said anything like that to me before. No one had ever wanted to wait for me for anything, not since I was a child. I could barely find the words to reply. Of course I would like her to wait.

I said, ‘I’d love you to wait.’

She moved closer, smiled at me again, zipping sparks down my spine, as she said, ‘I’ll wait. For sure. What’s your name?’

‘Sam.’

‘OK, Sam, mine’s Desi.’

‘I know.’

Alan Steadman, the office wet, turned round and saw me standing close to this dark and pretty girl, and shouted: ‘Eh up, looks like yellow balls is ducking out. Come on, Sam, if you’re coming,’ and he started making chicken noises.

We glanced back at Steadman and scowled, and she said, ‘You’d better go, Sam,’ and she leant across and kissed me on the cheek. I couldn’t believe it. I could feel the fire on my face. I cannot explain in writing how I felt back then. Certainly I had never experienced feelings the depths of which swept through my entire body at that moment, being kissed tenderly by a complete stranger, though of course we were not strangers, we never were. It was as if we had known each other since the womb, and I still cannot explain that, as I write this memoir of the earth shattering events of that late Saturday morning.

What kind of girl kisses a total stranger?

In broad daylight.

In front of other people.

How much courage did that take?

What kind of person could do that?

I know I couldn’t.

Can you imagine how special I felt at that second?

I suspect there are no words in the English language to describe it.

Far better men than I have tried and failed. The closest I can get is to say that if the whole of a person’s life could ever be compressed into a split second, then that second was that exact moment.

The Glendower Aero Club, I will love you forever!

‘I’ll wait for you,’ she said again, ‘Good luck, Sam, you’ll enjoy it.’

I doubted that. But she smiled me away, and I ran after the others with springs on my feet, and bragged about pulling a new girlfriend. Me, the same guy who had pushed Machara up against the bus shelter and forced her to kiss me, the same boy who was rude to Jillian’s friends, the same guy who had to be drunk to find a girl at all, and she drunker still.

They didn’t believe me, of course, my friends from the tax office, that she said she’d wait for me, and I had my doubts about that too, and as I jumped from that plane, I volunteered to be the first to go. I was in a hell of a hurry to get back down to earth, and the moment before the chute opened, I thought that if ever God was going to be nasty, mean and wicked, now would