Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
The man offering Jo Talbot ten thousand dollars looked like a model.
Not one of the super-slender, pinch-faced, hollow-eyed haute couture models from fashion week in Paris, though.
No, he had a beautiful brawny thing going on, like he'd be a model for Lands' End or some other flannel-heavy outdoorsy-man-vibe catalog.
Insanely thick dark gold hair, cut a little too long.
Deep, deep brown eyes with unfairly long lashes.
A full mouth with a desperate quirk at one corner.
An extremely well-cut wool coat that went to his knees, beneath which he wore a nubbly cream-toned Aran sweater that had flecks of autumnal colors in the yarn.
Stone-washed jeans that fit well, not too tight, not too loose.
Warm hiking boots, suitable for a Montana winter.
Well, if his clothes said anything about the man, it was that he could afford the ten grand she'd just demanded. It looked like he could afford more.
That had not prepared her for him actually offering to pay that kind of money. She stared at him, trying to collect her thoughts. Usually her thoughts were pretty collected. Then again, usually supermodels hadn't offered her a ridiculous amount of money for a forty minute flight.
After long and careful consideration, Jo said, "Uh."
"Twenty," the guy said, desperation now clear in his voice. "Ten now, ten on arrival."
"Jesus. Are you late for your own wedding or something?
" That would be awful, Jo realized. Just awful.
She didn't want Mr. Handsome to be on his way to his wedding.
She wanted him to marry her. Possibly right here and now in the airport.
She wondered if an airline pilot, like ship captains, had the ability to perform marriage ceremonies.
Slow your roll, she told herself firmly. There was no universe in which this city-slicker guy was going to marry her at all, much less on a two-second-long acquaintance.
What a pity, though. He was gorgeous and she bet he smelled really, really good.
To her horror, Jo found herself taking a step forward, like she'd sniff the guy. Her feet would have taken her right up to him for a sniff, if he hadn't said, "No!"
Jo flinched and stepped back. "Yeah, no, sorry about that, don't know what happened to my boundaries.
" She knew exactly what had happened to her boundaries.
They'd all melted into a wave of toe-curling heat the moment she laid eyes on the most beautiful man she'd ever met.
It was perfectly normal. Probably. Probably deciding you wanted to marry somebody as soon as you saw them was totally normal.
Mr. Handsome blinked at her. "You didn't cross any boundaries. I mean, no, I'm not late for my own wedding."
"Oh! Oh, good. Because really, you shouldn't be in a position of needing to fly out of a snowstorm close enough to your wedding for it to be an issue.
Like, there should definitely be a moratorium on travel at, say, what, at least three days before your own wedding?
No Vegas bachelor parties the night before when you're supposed to be getting married in Vermont.
That kind of thing." This was awful. She was talking and she couldn't shut up.
Mr. Handsome drew a careful breath, like he was trying to avoid saying all the things he probably really thought about the crazy woman he'd just asked for a lift from.
Possibly he was trying to avoid saying "NEVER MIND, I'VE THOUGHT BETTER OF IT" very loudly and with a lot of emphasis, which Jo really couldn't blame him for, if he had.
Instead, though, he said, "I've always been a little concerned about Vegas bachelor parties anyway," like he'd really put some thought into it. "I feel like if you're doing a 'what stays in Vegas' kind of party, maybe getting married isn't quite the thing for you right now?"
"Exactly! You get me!" Maybe the imaginary wedding was back on. Or maybe, Jo thought, maybe she needed to get out of the house more often, so that she wasn't planning weddings to men she'd exchanged fifty words with.
Mr. Handsome's smile absolutely lit up what was otherwise a perfect, flawless, chiseled face. Because of course it did, Jo thought: of course his smile would make him even more beautiful. That wasn't fair.
"So we're on?" he asked hopefully.
"For the wedding?" Jo's voice cracked. She was almost certain she hadn't said anything about a sudden marriage aloud, but she couldn't think what else Mr. Handsome might mean.
His brown eyes widened slightly. "…for the plane flight?"
If the world would just open up and swallow her whole, that would be great, Jo thought.
If she could sink into the magma at the center of the earth, or wherever it was the magma resided, then that would be perfect.
She stood there a few horrified seconds, hoping it would happen, and when it didn't, whispered, "Right.
The flight. Are you nuts? Have you seen the weather?
If it's not a wedding, what is it? Oh no. Not a funeral?"
Mr. Handsome's expression softened into a flickering smile that made Jo feel inexplicably safe and warm. "No. No funeral. I'm supposed to get back East for work, that's all. Something big came up."
"Twenty grand worth of big? I mean, what do you do—are you a model?"
His eyebrows shot upward. "No? What? Why?"
"Oh." Jo felt herself blushing all the way to her hairline. "Because you look like you could be? TV star, maybe?"
"No." That disarming smile of his was back, teasing at the corners of his mouth and eyes as he offered a hand. "Colton Drew, attorney-at-law."
"Jo. Uh, Jo, uh, is there another kind of attorney?" She pulled a glove off to shake his hand—big, square, incredibly warm—and his eyebrows crinkled again.
"Not as far as I know, Jo Uh."
"Talbott," she said with momentary sour amusement, both at his teasing and her brief inability to remember her own name just because a boy was shaking her hand.
"Jo Talbott. I just suddenly wondered. Because why would you—not you, but attorneys—have to say 'at law' if there wasn't another kind of attorney? "
Colton Drew, attorney-at-law, opened his mouth and shut it again before pursing his lips, staring into the distance, and finally shaking his head.
"No idea. It's just an affectation, I guess.
It's a case being brought by a group of teens trying to prevent further damage to the climate, and the defendants have manipulated the system to move the court date up by several months.
I need to get home so I can finish preparing the best possible case for them. "
"Oh." Something else inside Jo melted. "So you're one of the good guys?"
He offered that absolutely devastating little smile again. "I hope so. I practice environmental law on behalf of the children of the future, anyway."
"And that pays enough to spend twenty grand on an emergency flight?"
Colton chuckled, an inviting, quiet sound. "It does when we win suits of this magnitude, yes. These wins also let us take on the equally important but less financially fecund suits."
"Fecund?"
To her surprise, Colton Drew looked a little abashed. "Extremely productive."
"I know what it means, I just don't think I've ever heard anybody actually say it before! Anyway, have you seen the weather out there? That's a whole-ass blizzard, Mr. Drew."
"Colton, please. And I know, but the woman at the desk said you could get off the ground…"
"She's right, I can, but I wasn't going to.
I mean, I had been going to, but then I wasn't." On the other hand, twenty thousand dollars would go a long, long way toward…
well, not just the back mortgage, but going forward, too, and maybe, just maybe, helping to save the little ranch she and her brother had grown up on.
She could see Colton gathering himself to make a persuasive argument, and raised her hand to stop him. "Are you serious about the money?"
"Entirely. If you want to give me your bank information I'll authorize a transfer right now."
Jo took a deep, deep breath, held it, and finally let it out in a sigh. "You're going to need snowpants."
"…is it likely to snow inside your plane?"
She ducked her head, smiling briefly at her feet.
"No, but it is going to be cold, and Cessna 172s are tiny planes without much meaningful insulation.
I can't have you freezing to death before you authorize the second half of that transfer.
" Or ever, Jo thought, but since that would make her sound like a lunatic, she didn't say it aloud.
Although she supposed that in fact, no pilot, or anybody else, wanted somebody to freeze to death on their watch. So she added, "Or ever," after all, and Colton smiled at her.
Really smiled at her, not just smiled because he was hoping she'd agreed to fly him out of the mountains.
His eyes crinkled again, and the warmth of that expression set a fire inside her that she thought might never go out.
He was so absurdly attractive, sharp-dressed and well-coifed, so him smiling like that at her, a rough-and-tumble pilot from the Montana hills, was nuts. She wanted it to never end.
He was still smiling as he agreed, "Or ever. No freezing. Do you have snowpants that will fit me?"
Jo's gaze travelled down to his legs and lingered there.
He had terrific thighs, even if they were half-hidden by his knee-length coat.
His calves, which were obviously not hidden by the knee-length coat, filled out the denim of his jeans nicely there, too.
It took a while for her to remember what she was doing, besides admiring his legs.
Then she shook herself and tried to take in the whole of his legs, judging them for length.
"I think so. I carry a lot of that kind of gear in the plane, in case of emergency.
That coat, ah. God, it's beautiful," she said a bit involuntarily.
Colton brushed his knuckles over the coat and smiled again, almost shyly this time. "It is, isn't it? This was a treat for myself when I won my first big case. I never thought of myself as a clothes-horse guy, but it turns out I love a good coat."
"I have an embarrassing weakness for long coats," Jo said, trying to sound like it was the coat she had an inexplicable weakness for, and not the man inside it. "I own about five of them and never wear them anywhere."
"We'll have to find an excuse for you to," Colton murmured, and Jo's entire body, soul, and brain melted into a soft bowl of bubbling heat.
She smiled up at him, afraid she might actually be simpering.
This was the worst crush she'd had since she could remember, and she was only going to be in this guy's presence for a couple of hours.
For a delicious moment she imagined making the absolute best of those hours, and then remembered that the Cessna's seats weren't that comfortable even if it wasn't twenty-three degrees and snowing out there. And also, as an afterthought, she remembered she also did have to fly the plane…
"Snowpants," she said much too loudly, and spun around to get some from the plane. To her surprise, Colton followed, turning the collar of his coat up.
"Can I help? Gosh, it's not really big at all, is it?" he said as he reached the plane a few seconds after she did.
Jo, very unwisely, mumbled, "That's what she said," and she could hear Colton's grin from behind her.
"Not to me, she didn't."
Jo was pretty sure her ears flamed hot enough to melt snowflakes near them.
Instead of answering, she grabbed a big bag of winter gear from the behind the seats and tossed it to Colton, who caught it easily, and, still grinning, went back inside to root through it.
By the time she got back in herself, Jo had recovered enough to manage, "I was going to say, you might want to get another coat, too.
That one might be warm enough, or it might not. "
"I run pretty warm, so I'll probably be okay for a couple of hours." Colton did get another coat, though, and tried it on before digging an overall-style pair of snowpants out of the bag. "Those look like they'll fit. No dignity to them at all, but they'd fit."
"Dignity is deeply overrated when you're waist-deep in snow. Not that I expect anything to go wrong, but much better to be safe than sorry. I gotta ask, though: you're sure this court case is really that important?"
Colton hesitated, one leg in the snowpants.
"Some of these kids have been working toward this since they were eleven or twelve.
And the corporation they're suing is moving fast now because they think there's a real chance they'll lose, now that it's come up this far through the system.
So…it is, yes. It is to me, at least. But I understand if it's not, for you. "
"It's your money." And she needed it, but Jo wasn't going to say that to a stranger, no matter how attractive he was.
She glanced out the window at the blowing snow, and at the stretch of runway the snowplow guy had managed to keep clear.
It was comfortably enough for a Cessna, and there wasn't much wind, just a lot of snow.
Although the sky was brightening, too, snow slacking off a little.
It might not be too bad. And of course, appeal of the money aside, she really wouldn't fly if she didn't think she could do so safely.
"All right. Let me lay in the flight plan and look at the weather predictions, because if it looks too bad I'm not flying.
But you're going to have to keep me updated on your court case, too. "
Colton flashed a smile and finished pulling the snowpants on. "Deal. Don't forget to give me your bank info."
"Yeah, here…" Jo wrote it down for him, handed over the piece of paper, and went to lay in the flight plan, which came back approved in a matter of minutes.
"Great Falls says there's a warm front coming in from the east that's pushing the storm back up the mountains, so there'll probably be a bouncy section, but once we break through that it should be smooth flying.
" She glanced out the door, where the snow had slacked off enough that the whole world had changed color, from deep dark grey and white to considerable brightness as storm clouds passed over.
"Honestly, it looks like it's clearing up.
You might even want to wait until the jets are flying again. "
"Too late." Colton waved his phone at her. "I've already paid you. Might as well make an adventure of it. Besides." His smile flashed again. "I wouldn't want to miss a single minute with you."
Jo's heart flipped upside-down in her chest, and with a dippy, goofy smile, she took Colton Drew for a flight.