the floor. Bills. Second Notice. Final Notice. She sorted and tossed them one by one into the wastebasket by the door. Problem solved. For the moment. Then, she caught sight of the light blinking on her answering machine. Hoping it was a crew leader having come to his senses, she hit playback.
“Ms. Parrish, my name is Jack Chaney. I’m looking for a pilot with a lot of moxie. If you’re looking for a job that pays a helluva lot more than you’re making now, give me a call.”
“What’s that all about?” Charley asked, observing her odd concentration.
“I’m not quite sure. Maybe just the life ring we need to keep us from going under for the third time.”
She’d made the follow-up call to Personal Protection Professionals out of curiosity. What would a private protection agency want with someone like her? But after talking, first over the phone, then face-to-face, with its owner and badass operator Jack Chaney she got to thinking that maybe, just maybe, she was in the right place at exactly the right time. Chaney was looking for someone to do piloting security work on an on-call basis. The money was good. The money was actually great—and just the infusion of life-sustaining capital to support her and her uncle’s air charter service until Quinn Naylor saw fit to give her a break. There was nothing in the short assignments to get in the way of the everyday operation of Wings of Fire. And Chaney clinched the deal by paying off the balance on her overdue insurance to keep her airborne. She had the talent and the tools and he had the connections. A marriage made in bartering heaven.
Four weeks later, feeling silly in her formfitting flight suit with its howling wolf logo stitched over her left breast, with her licensed weapon tucked almost as an embarrassment under the seat of her Bell Long Ranger, she set down in Las Vegas to pick up her first assignment. Newly trained in firearms skills, hand-to-hand, surveillance and the legal ins and outs of employing any of those methods under the guise of a bodyguard she felt strong and confident in her new role. Until she got her first look at her client.
Xander Caufield, an insurance specialist carrying a fortune in rare stamps to an exhibit/trade show in Reno. That didn’t sound too dangerous. Or exciting. She was to ferry him wherever he wanted to go and keep him and the contents of his locked case safe. Not exactly shuttling military secrets. Old stamps were about as thrilling as the envelopes she’d tossed into the waste can. She couldn’t imagine any high-level intrigue going on there. But it was her first sizable paycheck, slotted to cover her fuel bill, and she would take it as seriously as the number of zeroes ahead of the decimal point.
She waited in the broil of the midday Nevada sun as a sleek limo approached, fighting the impulse to shade her eyes to get a better look at the man stepping out of that big backseat toting a metal courier case and a garment bag. With the glare off the hardtop, all she could discern were polished shoes and an immaculate suit. The first thing that impressed her, because she couldn’t see his features, was the way he moved. He had a quick, aggressive step implying no hesitation in wherever he was going. An all business stride. Together with the expensive suit, that got her hot-guy Geiger counter ticking away at a brisk pace. Then he crossed into the shade of the Ranger and the needle went off the charts.
He was Maxim gorgeous. Dark, styled, but in no way soft. Chiseled masculine features, a heavy slash of brows, uncompromising mouth and a direct stare that could probably bend steel bars. She caught herself before wetting her lips but allowed an inner rowl-rowl. His gaze touched on her briefly as she came forward to greet him, her hand extended to take his bag.
“Mr. Caufield, I’m Mel Par—”
“Let’s go. I’m in a hurry.”
She rocked back on her heels as he strode by, her brows lifting slightly. Aware that her hand still hung in midair, she scrubbed it against the other one and let both fall to her sides. “All righty then. Welcome aboard, buckle up and we’ll get airborne.”
He climbed up into the copter, giving her a glimpse of a monumentally nice butt. But since he was acting like one, her interest cooled considerably. Sometimes good looks just couldn’t overcome bad manners. A shame.
He settled into the back, draping his suit bag over one seat, strapping into the other. Situating the case between his elegantly clad feet, he looked purposefully out the window. Dismissing her as if she were invisible.
Great. See if she’d offer the in-flight movie.
After a quick preflight check and a chat with the tower, she had them up and off the flat Vegas desert.
The flight was silent and uneventful. Easy money. Because small talk with her coldly gorgeous passenger was off the table, she fiddled with the radio, trying to pick up chatter on the latest blaze chewing its way through remote California forest land, heading for her back door. So far, they were trying to contain it with backfires and burnouts, but it was proving to be a tricky beast. Dry conditions and high winds had it skipping and shifting one step ahead of their best efforts to suppress it.
Listening to the dispatcher and the back-and-forth banter, a fierce longing to be in the thick of it had her clenching her teeth and calling down all manner of ills upon Quinn Naylor. It didn’t matter that she had a job, that her time was well paid for by her arrogant passenger in back. If she thought there was the slightest chance she could zip over the state line and be toting hand crews and hotshots from dawn until dusk, she’d have pushed Mr. Xander I’mtoo-damned-important-to-give-you-a-polite-nod Caufield out the back door to let his glacial attitude warm a bit out in the sun and sand. But that wasn’t going to happen and Caufield’s comfy ride was guaranteed for the moment.
And it didn’t hurt that he was so easy on the eyes.
She settled back in her seat and tried to calm her mood toward her meal ticket.
Mel appreciated affluent men…from afar. She enjoyed fantasizing about those almost too pretty glam boys in the designer suits who attended the theater and drove cars with unpronounceable names. The ones who wore silky scarves or pastel sweaters draped around their necks for no apparent reason and had their nails done. After a long day in the air, after sharing raucous laughs and longnecks with the crew, she found herself imagining what it would be like spending the evening with a man who didn’t smell of smoke and sweat, who didn’t pepper his sentences with profanity and fire acronyms, who could talk about something other than weather systems, fuel management and the closest available waitress with big hooters. A man who didn’t live from season to season on a puny GS rate that hardly covered the bets laid down at the pool table. One who could take her to a restaurant that didn’t serve hot wings as the main entrée.
The men she knew were her drinking buddies, her coworkers, and not the stuff of romantic dreams. In the air and on the ground, they were heroes. Up close, they tended to be petulant, obnoxious, controlling or just plain more trouble than they were worth. She didn’t actually know what she’d do with one of those swanky cover boys if he stepped off his pedestal and into her rather grimy check-to-check existence. But she did like ogling them. And Caufield was worth a long, long look.
She glanced back at him in her mirror. He was staring straight at her, and from the furrowed concentration of his brows, apparently had been for some time. That intense and not quite flattering study gave her a sudden chill. She wasn’t unfamiliar with men’s attention. She’d had them stare at her in lust, in anger, in warm camaraderie. But this was none of those things. His look was as sharp and precise as a surgeon’s blade and her pulse jumped in alarm. What on earth had she done to deserve a slashing tribute from a man she’d never met, didn’t know and had no intention of getting to know better? Maybe he didn’t like to fly. Maybe he didn’t like women who flew. Maybe he didn’t like women. Whatever his problem was, it was giving her the creeps.
Reaching up, she snagged the curtain that separated the cockpit from the back and jerked it closed. Still, she felt the prickle of his stare and was glad to crest the mountains to see the soup bowl of Reno below with its handful of resort hotels sticking up from the desert floor like dominoes. Great. Her first assignment and she was stuck shuttling some weirdo with an attitude and issues. And a great butt.
A car was waiting. She had