Chapter 4
Dammit.
What the fuck had he just done?
Duh.
Kissed a woman he’d known for all of five minutes. And it had impacted him like nothing in his past that he could recall.
He should know better. But Trask felt like he’d been hit with a bolt of lightning.
Standing still like a dork, he knew he should go help Jett—whose dogs might be creating havoc—but his feet refused to move. It was as if the heat and shock of that kiss had seared his feet to the pavement.
Had he ever, in his entire life, lost control like that?
The easy answer was no.
The harder question was, why?
He’d recently vowed not to get involved with any woman whose history he didn’t research really well.
Was his brain in such a turmoil from civilian life that he’d lost he’s frigging mind?
It wasn’t as if Jett was even his type. He’d always been attracted to women who were tidy, well organized, and methodical, like him.
Jett was the antithesis of all that. From the little he’d seen of her, and from all that she’d cheerfully revealed—regaling him with her unfiltered diatribe—she was the polar opposite of, well, every woman who’d ever made it into his bed.
So, why had he kissed her?
He groaned to himself.
He knew.
Perhaps.
And it made him feel a little better.
It was most likely because she’d said she was going to kiss him, and there were two things that yanked Trask’s chain faster than anything else. One, was being given a dare, and the other was not being in charge.
The former had been a result of his childhood, growing up with seven brothers. He and his sibs, once they’d reached an age of competitiveness, had always been testing each other to see who could perform better, run faster, think smarter. Being the oldest, Trask had pretty much always been top dog.
The latter caveat came from his years serving as a regimental commander.
He’d been well known for his near perfection on the job.
Nobody questioned his authority. No one.
At least until he’d been blindsided. And that had one-hundred percent gone to his head.
Not that he had minded his bossiness…until now.
He almost wished he could have stepped back and seen whether she’d actually dared to kiss him.
But again, what the hell was he doing?
Currently, his life was upended. He was floundering.
Trying to fit back in with his family. Attempting to carve out a niche for himself at Diver Downeast. Finding a place to live.
And here bursts in one very incendiary ball of combustants who, without even trying, seemed intent on setting his every underpinning ablaze.
Not if I can help it. I can shut this down, he assured himself.
There’d never been something disturbing or out of place in his life that he’d failed to end up controlling until just recently and he wasn’t about to let that be a trend.
Trask chose to ignore the fact that he’d been so turned on by having Jett in his arms, that the airport could have blown up and he wouldn’t have noticed. He scoffed at his unaccustomed lapse. No woman had the power to disengage him from reality.
Which meant…
He must be coming down with something.
Or maybe he was calorically challenged.
Yeah. That was it. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and his brain was starved.
Feeling like he had himself under control again, Trask determined that when Jett returned from retrieving her pups, he was going to place things between them back on a professional footing; unload the dive gear she’d brought, and wave goodbye.
See you later.
Just as he made up his mind to that, he caught sight of Jett again, laughing and stumbling across the tarmac, headed back his way.
She was…a sight, and she had to have treats in her hands that were held high, because the dogs were dancing and prancing around her, doing bouncy, half-pirouettes that had Jett in danger of losing her balance.
Again. The damned woman. She was clearly destined for a face-plant. How often did that happen?
With a huge sigh, Trask forced himself to stride toward her, where—without asking—he took the biscuits from her hands and barked an order to the dogs. “Down,” he snapped.
Both dogs stopped jumping.
“Sit,” Trask continued, and two butts descended.
“Paw?” he questioned, glancing at Jett.
She was grinning like a loon, but nodded.
Trask sent out one hand, which immediately received two excited paws, one on top of the other, as if they were playing a game of what he’d once called “Slapsies”, in his youth.
“Good boys,” Trask praised, then gave them each a treat.
He turned his attention back to Jett. “Do you need leashes for them so we can keep them under control while we unload your plane? I really need to be on my way, and you probably do too, so we should speed this up.”
Trask didn’t miss the look of hurt and disappointment that instantly swept across Jett’s highly expressive face, and he immediately wanted to take back his last sentence.
Yeah. He was an asshole, giving her mixed signals. And he must seem like a nutcase; kissing her like his life depended on it, then blowing her off.
“Unless you’d like to grab something to eat before you leave,” he amended almost immediately.
Fuck. Where the hell had that come from? He’d made up his mind to be shed of Ms. DeLuca, and now he was issuing a lunch invitation? The woman was clearly trouble, with a capital “T”. So why had his big mouth offered food?
Her smile broke back out. “Which question do you want answered first?”
She’d really brightened with his mention of a meal.
“The dogs,” he gruffed, wondering if there were some way he could rescind his proposal.
“That’s easy. They’re usually not the type to wander off, but this time their noses got the better of them.
There’s a man over there loading food onto a small, private jet, and part of today’s menu is steak.
” She hitched a thumb over her shoulder and smirked.
“What dog could resist that?” she asked without concern.
“Luckily, I got there before they grabbed any of the food containers. So, to answer your question, no, they don’t normally need leashes.
” Her smile actually grew, if that were possible.
“And the guy I talked to? Super sweet. He even asked me if I needed any help; that he'd be more than happy to assist me with anything I wanted.”
Trask nearly growled. He just bet the guy did. How dare some rando try to make headway with…
Shit.
He was acting like some rando.
Trask didn’t really know Jett from beans, and he’d kissed her, rubbed his hard cock into her tight belly, and… Now he’d invited her to eat with him.
“As to your second question,” she continued as if his pained expression was par for the course. “I’d love to grab food. But is there a place where the pups will be welcome?”
Trask suppressed a sigh. It looked like there was no getting out of this.
“There’s a diner about three miles from here, but I don’t think they let dogs in. At this time of day, however, we can probably park the truck right out front where we can keep an eye on them through the big picture windows.”
“Sounds good to me,” Jett answered happily. “Now let’s get your stuff out of my plane, then I’ll chock my wheels, tie down, and we can be off.”
Why was it that Trask didn’t think it would be that simple?
Damn. He was always right.
Fifteen minutes later, if Trask hadn’t been so excited about the scope of equipment he was receiving, he probably would have been pulling his hair out.
The gear, of which there was a lot, had been piled in the Cessna’s fuselage…haphazardly. Trask searched for a word that was even more disorganized than “haphazard”, but his brain couldn’t come up with one. Messy was far too understated.
The haul, however, had him practically salivating.
There weren’t just the impressive dive helmets, historically significant suits, or the hard-to-find boots in the load that Randal DeLuca had described.
Nope. That was just scratching the surface.
Trask uncovered vintage regulators from several different countries. There were 1950’s era swim fins, and at least two Sea-View masks. He spotted a pile of 1970’s decompression meters, an old US Diver’s watch, and a couple of Mega-Sport, wrist depth gauges that he knew were made in Italy.
There was a tangle of well-worn tank pressure gauges, several ancient looking horse-collar buoyancy devices, and don’t even get him started on the more recent model, yet vintage dive suits.
The volume of them was staggering. Trask even unearthed two, very early canvas belts with round, cast iron weights from amongst the plethora of treasures which included harnesses and the like.
“The newer gear in the hold up front is mine,” Jett told him. “Everything else is yours.”
“Where did you say your father had these things stored?” Trask asked Jett as they loaded up and carried the first pile to his truck. He, of course, wanted to stack everything as neatly as possible once they got there, but Jett’s idea of repacking was to toss, and hope for the best.
That wasn’t going to cut it.
Trask easily hoisted himself up into the bed, and perused what they had so far while she answered.
“Oh, Dad’s a bit of a pack rat. Especially since he has that big barn. A lot of stuff he collected wasn’t in great shape, but he had all this equipment in old trunks, and luckily the mice couldn’t get to it.”
The lot smelled musty, certainly, but everything, even the suits seemed to be in excellent condition.