Chapter 8
Tuesday morning, Kaci careened into her office thirty minutes early. In her Jeep, thank you very much.
She hadn’t been entirely convinced Lance’s squadron would bring it back, and she’d been on the verge of reminding him she knew the number to the police station when they’d shown up.
She’d watched from the window while they pulled it off a flatbed trailer and delivered it safely into her normal parking spot, and now she was done with Lance forever.
To compensate for the weird feelings in her heart and belly, she’d had two brownies from Jimmy Beans for breakfast with her coffee, and she was bound and determined to do some research on overcoming phobias before she was due for any meetings or lectures.
Her phone was blinking, so while she waited for her computer to boot up, she checked the voicemail.
And all the fizzing in her veins from the caffeine and brownies instantly turned to flat-out jitters.
Except the jitters were eighty percent hormonal and twenty percent scaredy-cat.
“Hey there, Dr. Kaci,” Lance’s voice drawled in that subtle twang of his.
“Just wanted to thank you for making sure Gertrude was safely guarded until we could get there to pick her up yesterday. If she had to be kidnapped, we’re all relieved she was with someone who had her best interests at heart.
Hope you found your Jeep without any trouble this morning.
But there’s still that matter of Pony’s keg to settle. Appreciate if you’ll give me a call.”
That arrogant, muscle-headed son of a cow’s uncle. She didn’t want to call him. She didn’t want to hear his voice. He was nothing more than a—
“And in case you’re wondering,” his message continued, “I did feel something when I kissed you. Both times.”
All the jitters in her veins swirled together and her heart gave a big ol’ thump.
This man was dangerous.
And lately, danger was exactly what she wanted.
Kaci could fire a potato gun without flinching, even if she could never aim the darn thing straight. She could set off fireworks with her eyes closed. And she could stare down a uniformed military man without so much as a twitch.
But she wasn’t sure she had it in her to knock on the door of the gray brick cookie-cutter mini-mansion where she had it on good authority that Lance lived.
If he rejected her proposal, she might just crawl into a hole and never come out again.
Not that she liked him.
Not like that. Why would she? First of all, she didn’t date flyers. Secondly, he was entirely too young for her. She liked her men with some experience under their belts.
But having a…a friend was never a bad thing. Right?
Of course, friends probably didn’t need to call in favors to figure out where their friends lived. But he’d found her apartment—and temporarily commandeered her Jeep—so turnabout was fair play.
Or she could leave.
Nobody had to know she’d been here.
This was a stupid idea anyway.
James Robert College had a perfectly good psychology department. She’d go talk to an acquaintance or two over there, and—
“Huh. Am I supposed to be surprised or terrified?”
So much for the chicken way out. She lifted her eyes to look at the man who had just opened the door. “Honored, sugar.”
His eyes went smoky and black holey, sucking her in while his lips curved in that maybe-I’ll-smile, maybe-I’ll-smirk kind of way he’d apparently mastered. “Don’t hold your breath.”
His green flight suit shouldn’t have been sexy, but something about the way it hung off his broad shoulders all the way down to his boots was doing weird things to her belly.
Like the suit said I am man and I can fly.
Like men and flying were suddenly sexy.
“I assume since my door isn’t smoking and hanging off its hinges that this is a friendly visit,” he said.
The man knew her too well. “Doesn’t have to stay that way.”
His pearly whites flashed, and there went her femininity swooning. “I’m not here to do anything I wouldn’t do in front of my momma. Just so you know.”
“Or your ex-husband?”
She had a sudden flash of Lance’s hands on her rear, his tongue in her mouth, his heady male scent enveloping her while his surprisingly strong body pressed against her, and she had to remind herself she was the daughter of a fighter pilot and a beauty queen before she felt her chin lift and her spine straighten.
“You like sleeping with roadkill? Because I know where you live, which means I know where you sleep.”
He chuckled and held the door open wide. “You coming in?”
Her pulse ricocheted.
She’d been alone with him, but never this alone.
But she wasn’t here for his killer smile or his lean strength or even his suck-her-in bedroom eyes.
She was here to improve herself.
So she marched inside. “Hope you got sweet tea.”
“Pretty sure I need mine leaded,” he muttered.
But when she arched a look back at him, he was grinning.
She flipped her hair and faced forward again, then stopped flat out.
His living room was a shrine to the unholy Crimson Tide.
A University of Alabama blanket was tossed over the brown leather couch, and Bama bobbleheads lined a shelf beneath the big-screen TV on the wall.
Surrounding the TV were Bama football and Air Force airplane posters tossed in for what was undoubtedly his idea of balance.
Strikes eight and nine against any possibility of this man being good dating material.
Though she’d bet that TV was fabulous for watching Ole Miss football.
“You shouldn’t let your frat buddies decorate your house. It’s unbecoming.”
He snorted. “And your apartment doesn’t have Razorback crap and Albert Einstein posters all over?”
Only because Tara had threatened to call and invite her momma to do some more redecorating if Kaci didn’t relinquish that job to her.
Also, she was a Mississippian through and through, and not a single soul from her bloodline had ever come from Arkansas.
“I’m a Rebel, not a pig, thank you very much.
You gonna offer me something to drink, or just stand there acting like you’ve never had company before? ”
“Depends on why you’re here.” He dropped onto his couch and propped his boots up on an ottoman, watching her.
She blew out a short breath and took a stiff position in his matching recliner, idly wondering if he had any tequila in those cabinets she could see behind the half wall separating the living room from the kitchen.
He was right. Might as well get to it.
“What we have here is a classic problem,” she said. “You got a buddy with a blown keg, and I’ve got this little discomfort with being airborne. So I’ll go flying with you, and you’ll let this whole bill-over-the-keg thing drop.”
He didn’t blink. “And I get what out of this bargain?”
“You get to watch me be miserable. There’s nothing good about me being in an airplane.
But if you can fly it low enough and slow enough—but not too slow, we don’t want to negate Bernoulli’s principle here—then we might could both survive.
Trust me, sugar, we both live through that, you’re gonna be begging me to never get within three states of you again. ”
“Huh.” He stroked his chin, lazy eyes watching her. “Still not seeing what’s in it for me.”
“You get to get rid of me.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
He’d gone and popped a button in his brain. “You hit your head somewhere today?”
His wolfish grin made her ovaries stand up and do a striptease. “If I say yes, you gonna check me out, Dr. Nurse?”
She’d known he wouldn’t cooperate easily. But did he have to go and torture her with his nurse fantasies? “If you hit your head, there’s no way I’m flying with you, no matter how hard you beg.”
“Won’t be me doing the begging, Pixie-lou.”
“So I could walk right on out of here this minute, and you’d never wonder what it would’ve been like to have me at your mercy in a—an airplane?”
In an airplane.
Thousands and thousands of feet above ground.
Oxygen so thin a gnat couldn’t survive.
Temperatures so cold a polar bear would freeze.
If a plane busted up there, she’d turn into a popsicle in four-point-three seconds.
And then there would be the descent.
All her blood rushed to her toes.
She’d be falling.
Down, down, down. No net. No hope.
Her head went woozy.
Her bones turned to fluff.
She knew everything there was to know about forces, about statics and dynamics, fluids and pressure and airflow, but the safety and security of physics only went so far when the contraptions were built and flown by man and still subjected to Mother Nature’s whims.
Lance’s brows knitted together. “Okay there, Dr. Boudreaux?”
“You bet your britches,” she gritted out. “So. When we going flying?”
Lordy Jezebel.
Flying.
Her feet off the ground. A plane off the ground. Soaring at unnatural speeds. The world shrinking. Until the plane stalled out and went into a tailspin, hurtling faster and faster, the wind ripping her hair out, slicing her skin off her bones—
His boots thumped to the ground while black spots danced in her vision. Her head felt funny, like someone was churning butter out of her brains, and she suddenly realized she couldn’t feel her fingertips.
Did she even have fingertips?
A solid, warm hand settled on her neck and pushed. “Head between your knees,” he said. “Breathe.”
Breathing.
That was what she was missing.
Once she found it again, she’d kick his ass for seeing her like this.
She couldn’t feel her lips either, but she thought she parted them. She could hear something that sounded like a dog panting. Heat flushed her skin. A rush of sensations swirled where his hand touched her neck.
“C’mon, Kaci,” he said. “Slow down. Close your mouth. Breathe in slowly.”
She latched onto his voice, and her body instinctively reacted to his orders. Her lips sealed. Her nose quivered. Fresh oxygen channeled to her lungs while the churning in her head slowed.
“There you go,” he murmured. His thumb brushed her hairline, and she gasped out a mouthful of air.