Chapter 7
SEVEN
The last thing I’ll ever see
Georgie
Inverness is experiencing spring, though you’d never guess.
It’s technically still Britain, but I feel like I’ve been dropped into a Scandinavian crime drama where everyone wears hand-knitted jumpers and solves murders while staring pensively at lochs.
Any minute now, someone will hand me a pickled herring and ask me to identify a body.
On the plus side, I’m approximately five hundred miles from Craig.
Following HR’s instructions, I make my way to a reception building near the airport. Skye’s at least four hours away by road, with a single bridge onto the island.
“Hiya, um, I’m Georgie Fitzgerald,” I tell the woman behind the desk. “I work for McLaren Hotels, and I’m picking up a car?”
She gives me a friendly smile and taps on her keyboard. “Let me check the system for you, love. Though it won’t be a car.”
“Oh?” I frown. What the hell will it be?
She squints at the screen, then bellows over her shoulder: “Angus! Miss Fitzgerald’s here. Can you take her out back?”
A burly guy in his fifties appears, all salt-and-pepper beard and weathered lines, looking like he’s just wandered off a shortbread tin. “Aye, of course.” He grabs my suitcase. “This way, lass.”
I follow him through a door, expecting… I don’t know. A communal minibus with tartan seat covers, maybe.
What I do not expect is a runway. With helicopters.
“Head straight down to bay forty-two,” Angus says cheerfully, setting my suitcase beside me. “Mind and stay on the path. We’ve had folk wandering before.”
I’m sorry, what?
“My car is down there?” I squeak.
He looks at me like I’ve just asked if haggis grows on trees. “Car? No, lass. Mr. McLaren’s ready for departure.”
My stomach backflips.
“Mr. McLaren?”
“Aye.” He shrugs. “Best have a wee chat with him yourself.”
With that helpful nugget, off he goes, leaving me alone with my roller suitcase and a deep sense of unease.
I walk shakily down a tarmac path lined with helicopters. My suitcase bumps along behind me like it’s just as confused as I am.
This can’t be right. Surely they’re not helicoptering me to Skye?
And surely they don’t mean that McLaren.
McLaren’s common in Scotland. Like Smith in England. Must be some other McLaren. Maybe a cheerful, nonthreatening Bob McLaren, who works here, with a beer belly and a receding hairline.
I reach bay forty-two.
Oh fuck.
There’s not a Ford Focus or a harmless Bob in sight.
Just six feet plus of pure masculinity leaning against a matte-black helicopter with McLaren Hotels gleaming in sleek silver lettering.
He looks like he was ripped from a Bond film. Dark aviators that hide those blue eyes. The kind of man who’d shout, “We’re not leaving anyone behind” while something explodes behind him.
This is so much worse than Office Patrick.
He runs a hand along a helicopter blade, checking for… blade problems? Loose helicopter bits?
“Patrick?” I squeak. It comes out like a question, as if there’s any possibility this is some other intimidatingly handsome man in aviators leaning against a helicopter with his name on it.
He turns toward me. Even through the dark lenses, I can feel him cataloging every tragic detail of my appearance.
“Georgie.”
“Yeah, um, I was told to come here, but I think there’s been a mistake?”
One dark brow lifts above the aviators. “Such as?”
“I’m supposed to be getting a car?”
“You’re coming with me. I need to get to Skye, and apparently, you need to be there too.”
Absolutely fucking not.
“I don’t want to impose. I can totally catch a bus. Or hitchhike! Or just run behind the helicopter!” A manic laugh bubbles out of me. “Honestly, don’t worry about me. You’ll have so much more room to stretch out without me cluttering up the aircraft.”
I gesture to emphasize the space thing and end up pointing directly at his crotch.
His jaw flexes. “As entertaining as it would be to watch you attempt a Mission: Impossible stunt off my tail rotor, I need to be in Skye before the weather window closes.”
There might be a joke buried in all that Northern steel, but it’s hard to tell when he’s looking at me like that.
He steps closer, until I’m acutely aware of how much bigger he is than me. “I don’t have time for this. You’d rather spend four hours on public transport than see the Highlands from above?”
The majestic scenery of the Highlands is great, but it can go fuck itself. I’d rather have the inside of a Ford Fiesta, a service station sausage roll in hand, and zero risk of dying in a propeller-related accident. Thanks very much.
But then again… Patrick’s a billionaire. He’ll have hired some world-class pilot—ex-RAF with thousands of flight hours who could land this thing blindfolded in a blizzard. I’ll be perfectly safe.
I give him a panicked smile. “Right. Yep. Helicopter it is. Sorry for holding things up.”
His gaze drops to my suitcase. “Is that all you’ve got?”
I nod, hoping he doesn’t notice how my knuckles have gone white around the handle.
He swings open the passenger door and jerks his head toward the seat. “In you get, then.”
Totally casual, like this isn’t the opening scene of my glamorous but preventable obituary.
“I’m sitting up front?” I blink at the cockpit.
“Someone’s got to keep the pilot awake,” he says, so deadpan I genuinely can’t tell if he expects me to provide in-flight entertainment.
I hover at the helicopter door. The step’s higher than I expected, awkwardly spaced, and I perform a tentative test bounce.
“I’m not much of a climber,” I mutter, instantly cringing. It’s three feet, not Everest.
He clears his throat. “May I?”
Before my brain can process what’s happening, his hands are on my waist. Not in a swoony romantic way, more like I’m an awkward piece of equipment he needs to hoist into the overhead compartment.
Holy hell, his hands are huge. They practically span my entire waist, warm and solid through my coat. I suck in a sharp breath as he lifts me like I weigh nothing and deposits me onto the seat.
My bag follows, tossed into the back.
“When does the pilot arrive?” I ask, my stomach doing gymnastics.
He pulls off his aviators. When those glacier-blue eyes lock onto mine, my lungs forget their job.
He braces one arm against the open door.
Did he not hear my question?
Or did the words just dissolve into the Highland air?
His gaze drops to my lap.
For one panicked moment, I’m convinced I’ve done something catastrophic like split my leggings or started my period all over his expensive leather seats.
He nods at the harness beside me. “I prefer to do it myself. Need to make sure you’re secure.”
“Sure,” I squeak.
Then he moves into my space.
Into it.
One knee braces against the edge of my seat, his thigh pressing into the cushion so close I can feel the heat radiating through his trousers. The helicopter cabin feels about ten times smaller.
His eyes drop to my chest. “You’ll need to take that off.”
My hands freeze on my lap. What?
“The coat. The harness won’t fit properly over it.”
“Right. The coat,” I mumble, fumbling with the buttons.
When I finally wrestle the coat off, the cool air hits my blouse and suddenly this feels far too intimate.
He reaches behind my left shoulder, and I stop breathing entirely. His chest is right there, inches from my face, while he draws the safety belt across me.
His hands are careful not to brush anything inappropriate, but that almost makes it worse. Like he’s hyperaware of my breasts and actively navigating around them.
I hold my breath, partly because he smells incredible and partly because if I breathe, my chest will rise, and if my chest rises, it might touch his hands. If that happens, I might pass out.
He reaches for the right shoulder strap, his fingers grazing the hollow at the base of my neck. My pulse jumps like it’s trying to get his attention.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, meeting my eyes for the briefest second.
I can’t speak.
His brow creases as he tugs the strap snug. Like this is the most important thing he’s ever done. Like making sure I don’t fall out of his helicopter matters to him.
There’s a scar across the bridge of his nose, another along his temple.
Battle scars from some insane adventure with Jake—black diamond runs, off-piste disasters, the kind of risks that sensible people avoid.
I heard he lost a toe on one of their Arctic expeditions, though I’ve obviously never seen the evidence.
Do not make this weird, Georgie.
“Need to fasten this last one,” he says, voice lower and rougher than before. Then his gaze drops.
The fifth strap. The one that goes between my legs.
Oh, sweet fucking hell.
This is a five-point harness, and Patrick is about to put his hands between my thighs.
“Right,” I croak. “Safety first and all that.”
I shift awkwardly, parting my knees for him to reach the buckle. The movement feels obscene, like I’m spreading myself open for my boss, which technically I am, but for safety reasons, not sexy reasons. My body doesn’t seem interested in that distinction.
His hand slides between my thighs. Fingers wrap around the strap. He draws it up slowly, the back of his hand grazing the sensitive inside of my leg. Every nerve ending lights up as if I’ve been electrocuted.
The buckle clicks home. His jaw is tight as he runs both hands along the length of the harness—checking tension, pressing everything flat against my body in a way that’s necessary and professional and absolutely going to star in my dreams for the next four decades.
“All secure,” he murmurs, and when his gaze meets mine, the corner of his mouth curves into the faintest, most devastating smirk. “You’re looking at him.”
Words.
He just said words.
“What?”
“The pilot.”
It takes ten full seconds for the meaning to penetrate the lust fog.
“You’re flying this thing?”
“I am.”
A shriek tears out of me, bouncing off the cabin walls like the Grim Reaper just tapped on the glass.
“Sorry, hang on. What? Have you… done this before?”