The Wedding Hangover (Billionaires of Yosemite Ranch #4)

CHAPTER 1

Declan

There’s nothing better than hot pussy at thirty-seven thousand feet.

To be clear, I’m a fan of hot pussy at any altitude. But life is never sweeter than when I’m cruising above the clouds with my jet’s GPS engaged, the autopilot tracking, the engine humming, and a beautiful woman moaning as I plunge deep inside her.

Nothing else even comes close.

I glance at the woman in the copilot chair next to me and sigh with resignation.

That kind of crazy shit is behind me. No more mid-flight juicy snacks for this guy—I’ve got way too much on the line these days.

I can’t afford to be caught with my pants down during a frequency changeover radio check from the tower.

Again.

I’d rather keep my pilot’s license.

This means that hot pussy will have to wait until we land in Maui, in about four hours and two minutes. That’s if the weather remains clear and the headwinds stay steady, or about eleven a.m., Hawaii time.

Bryttni swings her long, strawberry-blond hair behind her shoulder and leans forward in her low-cut top. I watch as she examines the high-res LCD screens of the main control panel.

Her shiny lips open as she concentrates. Then she looks out the window at the choppy surface of the Pacific Ocean and back to the control panel.

“So many lights and buttons!” Bryttni straightens in the chair and frowns at me. She has a spectacular cleavage. I think I see the outline of a nipple. “How do you even know which knobs do which kind of thing? Or what colors mean good news and what mean bad news? Do you ever get totally confused?”

I’ve just been reminded why I need to get Bryttni naked and distracted. It’s that voice. Bryttni’s a very nice young woman. She seems legitimately kind. But when the girl speaks…

It’s painful. Like someone’s just jabbed a letter opener through my ear canal and into my brain stem. Her voice is a cross between a screech owl and a catfight. The sound skitters up my back and makes me shudder.

Chatting through our cockpit headsets only adds to the nails-on-chalkboard effect.

But I grin at her. She grins back.

So, I decide to forget about her voice and focus on more important things. Like her double Ds, the legs that go on for days, and ass cheeks that could pop a champagne cork. Her face is cute, too. And her smile’s sincere.

“I realize we’re just starting to get to know one another,” I tell Bryttni, wiggling a raised eyebrow.

“But rest assured that I’m an expert with buttons and knobs, highly skilled in understanding what each one does and how to turn it on.

And I plan to go above and beyond so that only good-news lights flash for you and me—over and over and over again—if you’re up for it. ”

Her mouth slackens again. I can almost see the cogs of her brain spin as she tries to decide what I mean by all that.

Bryttni isn’t the quickest plane on the tarmac, but I can look past this, too.

She’s a twenty-something hottie I met in an ice cream shop in Reno. She gave me a free scoop of rocky road.

I gave her my number. Within minutes we were planning this trip. She’s a woman after my own heart.

She slaps my arm. “Buttons! Ha, ha! Funny!”

She squirms in her seat and giggles for a solid two minutes. I must admit that her laugh is way better than her voice. Less cat-adjacent. And when she comes up for air, she bats her fake eyelashes at me, puckers her lips, and then asks, “Want to know what I think?”

“Absolutely.”

“I think you’re a very, very bad boy, Declan McCall. And I love bad boys. Are you a bad boy?”

Unfortunately, what should have been some top-shelf sexy banter just hit my auditory nerve endings like a sledgehammer. Plus, my name is MacLaine, not McCall, but I refuse to ruin this vibe. So I nod and say, “Bad to the bone, babe.”

That sets her off giggling again.

At least I know where we stand and where we’ll be gettin’ this party started. A woman after my own heart, indeed.

Maybe Bryttni and I are meant to be. I’ve always preferred women who prefer bad boys. It’s what I am, what I’ve always been, and what I’ll forever be.

I’m damn good at bad.

We’re continuing our southwest heading at thirty-seven thousand feet with a speed of four hundred knots when the radio crackles to life. I hear my call sign, Phenom six-niner-Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot. The Oakland Center controller gives me updated vectors due to air traffic detected on radar.

“Roger that, Oakland Center,” I respond, adjusting the GPS and confirming their instructions. “Climbing up to and then maintaining three-niner-zero, and right to two-niner-zero, resume own-nav in four minutes, Phenom six-niner-Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot.”

I end my exchange with the tower and turn to find that Bryttni’s eyes have popped wide with wonder. She sweeps her tongue across her bottom lip. “All that pilot talk is superhot. I like it when you talk like that. Can you say something else a pilot might say?”

“Sure.” I double-check that my radio isn’t live because this is the kind of bullshit that turns a pilot into a legend, and not in a good way.

I tell Bryttni all about some of my favorite toys.

I start with my Bell Long Ranger helicopter, which features a C30 engine, a rotor diameter of thirty-three feet and four inches, room for five passengers and a pilot, a double wire-strike system, skid floats for emergency water landings, and a maximum air speed of 110 to 120 knots.

“It’s fully kitted out for rescue operations,” I add. “In fact, I just rescued one of my brothers and his girlfriend a few days ago. They got caught in the blizzard.”

“No shit! You’re a hero, Declan!”

“Stop. You’re making me blush.”

Next, I tell her about my vintage World War II–era Navy seaplane and my super-rare 1948 single-engine Aeronca Chief taildragger. But I notice her eyes have started to glaze over. I recognize the look because it happens to all my brothers when I talk about aviation history.

I decide to pivot.

“And of course, we’re sitting in the epitome of single-pilot private luxury jets.” I reach over and gently rest my palm on her bare thigh. It may be New Year’s Eve in the Sierra Nevadas, but she was thoughtful enough to wear a miniskirt for our flight to paradise.

I don’t bore her with all the specs of this sleek, single-engine sex kitten of a private jet. I just focus on the fact that less than six hundred of the Embraer Phenom 300s have been made. Why I chose it. What it’s capable of. Where I’ve flown it and how I trained to be a pilot in the Navy.

That last part catches her attention. It usually does.

“Like Tom Cruise?”

I smile mysteriously, because the answer is no.

I wasn’t a Top Gun fighter pilot. I wasn’t any kind of fighter pilot. I either flew transport planes or helicopters, and usually in support of top secret Special Forces insertions and extractions in the cover of darkness, the kind of crazy shit that rarely gets acknowledged in the light of day.

But Bryttni doesn’t want to hear that. She’d rather see me as Tom Cruise. And what kind of asshole would I be to disappoint her with cumbersome facts?

It’s true. This is not my first mid-air seduction. And I’ve learned two things. One is that even women who don’t care about planes start to care about planes with the right guidance. Two is that any man who can conquer the skies can conquer a woman.

I verify the autopilot settings and squeeze out of my seat so that I can stretch, which is impossible, since my six-foot-five frame barely fits in the cockpit when I’m sitting, let alone when trying to lift my arms overhead. I unsnap Bryttni’s seat belt and offer her my hand.

“Is this safe?” she asks, as I stoop and pull her out into the main cabin. “Nobody’s flying the plane.”

“I’m flying the plane, sweetheart. I’m so good that I can fly it with my mind.”

Her eyes grow wide. I can just make out the green color of her irises from behind the long, thick eyelashes glued to her lids. “Like a Jedi?” she breathes. Her voice almost sounds seductive when she whispers in awe like that.

Note to self—make sure Bryttni experiences a steady stream of awe on this trip.

“Just a pilot,” I tell her.

“A hot pilot.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

The truth is, I’m also a rancher, a tech wizard, and a former Navy SEAL. But I don’t mention any of that. I get the impression that Bryttni is happy with a one-dimensional hot pilot.

But it makes me wonder. With all the ways I could define myself these days, is pilot even at the top anymore?

Especially with the success of StellaR Tech.

A few years ago, I could not have imagined that the cyber-surveillance technology my older brother Finn and I created would become a billion-dollar business, with the help of my other brothers, Cal, Evander, and Special K.

I slip an arm around Bryttni’s waist, then palm her ass and tug her close. She giggles when she feels my hard-on press against her belly and raises her face to mine for a kiss. I feel her fingers unbuckle my belt. Unzip my fly. She’s shoving my pants to my knees.

Fine. Maybe if I stay within arm’s reach of the radio…

“I’m about to hurl!”

I spin around. Summer Stevens sways in the center aisle, grabbing on to the back of a leather passenger seat for balance.

“Summer? What the fucking hell are you doing on my plane?”

My best friend slaps her free hand over her mouth and lurches forward. She points at Bryttni.

“Huuumm-ammt?” she asks.

Bryttni crosses her arms under her double Ds and frowns. “Who am I? Who are you?”