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Buck heard that sound and felt his heart slam. Okay, so maybe he wouldn’t kill the pilot. The guy had come in on fumes. But then his anger surged again. What the hell was he doing flying on fumes anyway?
What if he hadn’t found Buck’s airfield?
Worse yet, what if that jet had rolled off the runway and over the lip of the plateau?
And why couldn’t he have waited until Buck finished the hand?
HANNAH LAMONT SAT at the controls, her hands still frozen on the yoke. Ahead of her, just a few feet from the end of the runway she had almost run out of, spread a beautiful view. All of it sharply downhill. All of its tropical glory shouting: “Death!”
She actually wasn’t sure she was alive until she realized her hands hurt from gripping the yoke. Prying her right hand free, she reached for the throttles and pulled them back, shutting down the already silent engines.
Then she started shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Adrenaline, which had carried her this far, fled like a rat off a sinking ship, leaving her all too mortal and filled with aftershocks.
It wasn’t that her life had never been on the line before. When you flew smaller aircraft, you often had a lot of near-misses. But this one was different somehow.
Different, she realized suddenly, because it never, ever, should have happened.
Anger sparked in her again, renewing the strength in her limbs. Unclasping her harness, she rose and stomped back behind the pilot’s cabin and hit the button that opened the door and dropped the steps. The hydraulics, working like a charm, hissed as the door opened from the top and descended, turning the steps right-side up.
She was just about to step on the first one when a golf cart carrying two men raced up.
She didn’t like the look of the guy who was standing on one foot and hanging onto the rail. He looked like an afternoon thunderstorm that had sprouted the stub of an unlit cigar. Handsome, yes, but angrier than an alligator that had missed dinner.
“What the hell,” he shouted, “did you think you were doing?”
“Choosing life,” she shouted back. “I suppose you’d have preferred I ditched it?”
“Radio,” he said. “You have heard of the concept?”
By this time he was off the cart and standing at the foot of the stairs, glaring up at her.
“It went out on me. Half an hour ago. Then I started losing fuel.”
“And you were idiotic enough to take this piece of crap into the air?”
That did it. The rats returned to the sinking ship and brought more adrenaline along with them. She stomped down the stairs, stopping on the bottom one so she could look this jerk in the eye.
“It wasn’t a piece of crap when I left. You got a problem, take it up with my mechanic. I sure intend to.”
Then she pushed past him and started striding back up the runway, going she knew not where, just needing to be away from this idiot until she had sorted through the last half-hour and decided just how she was going to kill Len, her mechanic.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the guy demanded. “This is my airport and you can’t leave this garbage on my runway.”
She turned and faced him, hands on her hips. “Just how do you propose I move it? There’s a leak in the fuel line somewhere, and there aren’t enough fumes left to taxi her. Maybe, Mr. I-own-the-airport, you can tow it? I’ll pay.”
Buck watched her storm away, and the funny thing was, all he noticed was the beautiful red hair and the way her rear end swayed. A beautifully shaped rear end, cased snugly in her green flight suit.
“Dammit!” he swore.
“Come on, Buck,” Craig said reasonably. “Let’s get the trash off the runway before someone else tries to land. Then you can argue with her some more, ’cuz she sure as hell ain’t going anywhere.”
Buck was in no mood to listen to reason. He bit down so hard on the end of the unlit cigar that his teeth cut through it. Swearing, he spit the pieces out and glared toward the woman’s retreating back as if she had caused it to happen.
Hell, she had caused it. If he weren’t so damn mad at her…. And who the hell did she think she was anyway? The Queen of England?
“Come on, Buck,” Craig said impatiently. “We gotta get this thing off the runway. It’s a hazard.”
Grunting, Buck hopped up on the golf cart and the two of them zoomed—well, as fast as they could in a golf cart, anyway—back toward the hangar.
She was a woman, he reminded himself sourly. A woman. God had put women on this earth to make life hell for men. They were trouble on two feet. Headache and heartache and every other kind of ache. He should have known there was a female at the yoke of that plane. It should have been obvious from the moment she zoomed over his head.
Craig spoke as they neared the hangar. The woman pilot was approaching one very angry crowd. “Whatever you’re thinking, Buck, just put it aside for now. This is business.”
“Yeah. Like my cards weren’t business?” Business. That’s all it was. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have to deal with idiots on a regular basis. Just because she’d scared the bejesus out of him didn’t make her a worse idiot than the rest.
But she had cost him a critical win. Now he’d have to play another match against Anstin to save the island, and he didn’t like having all of that riding on his shoulders. Another match. He swore savagely.
He felt his breast pocket and realized he didn’t have another cigar on him. Hell’s bells. Glumly he folded his arms and decided he could grind his teeth for a while instead. He wasn’t all that anxious to face that wasp again, and certainly not just for a cigar.
No, he’d rather take the whole thing on the chin at once.
HANNAH THOUGHT she had lost her mind, run over the edge of the cliff and landed in hell. H—E—Double-hockey-sticks, hell.
Because, as she approached the crowd that had been gathered around a small table, cards wafted on the breeze and people started yelling at her and each other.
“You idiot!” one man shouted. “He was gonna win!”
“I saw it,” yelled another. “He had a full house.”
“Yeah, right,” said a woman. “Like I believe your lying mouth.”
Then they all turned and glared at Hannah.
“You,” said a short, stubby man with the face of a bulldog, “may have just cost us our island!”
Well, someone was insane, she thought. Not knowing what else to do, she fled into the office beside the hangar before they could gather a lynch mob.
THE OFFICE was tiny but it was surprisingly neat. Hannah found a coffeemaker with a pot on the hot plate that looked freshly brewed. She sniffed it warily and realized that not only was it fresh, it was Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. Her favorite. She inspected one of the dozen ceramic mugs hanging on hooks from the wall, found it apparently clean, and poured herself a cup.
She sat on one of the plastic chairs before a window that gave her a view of the entire runway. Her blood was still boiling, and she could hardly wait to find a way to phone Len and tell him what she thought of him.
Then her hands started shaking violently. She had to put the mug down on a dusty table as shudders began to run through her. The adrenaline was letting up and reality was sinking in. She had come that close to dying. That close. Those engines had quit at the end of the runway. Too close.
Then the tug drove past the front window, and Mr. I-own-the-airport gave her a mocking salute. Anger flooded her again, saving her from her momentary weakness. It took a lot of effort not to flip him the bird in return.
That shocked her. She didn’t do stuff like that. She didn’t use those words or gestures. Maybe she was a little…crazy right now?
The anger had done her good, though. Her hands were no longer shaking, and she picked up her mug, determined to look as if she made emergency landings on a regular basis. As if not a single one of her feathers had been ruffled. She wouldn’t give that idiot male the satisfaction of knowing that she had, for even a few seconds, been terrified out of her mind.
The coffee was delicious.
CHAPTER TWO
BUCK AND CRAIG MANAGED to coax the dead jet back down the runway and into the already crowded hangar without so much as scratching the paint. They greased the job with some colorful language, but, at last, the shiny but dead Learjet 36 was parked next to Buck’s pride and joy: a fully refurbished, heavily pampered and polished DC-3 he used to ferry supplies to the island.
Unfortunately for Buck, the DC-3 didn’t have quite the charm when viewed beside the sleek, self-important jet.
“She’s a beaut, ain’t she?” Craig remarked as he came to stand beside Buck.
“She can’t fly, that’s the kind of beaut she is.”
“Aw, Buck, can the crap, will ya? The woman had no choice about landing. You heard those engines die. She’s a damn good pilot for pulling it off in one piece.”
That was the part Buck wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge. He wanted to stay mad for a while, especially when his mind insisted on resurrecting the image of her bottom as she walked away. He didn’t have room in his life for that kind of stuff. At least not the kind of stuff she was probably handing out with all the usual emotional strings as the price tag.
In fact, he’d moved to this godforsaken island to get away from all the Delilahs of the world. Last thing he needed was to get the hots for one who was not only beautiful, but a pilot, as well. Dangerous territory there.
“Let’s close up,” he said, refusing to respond directly to Craig. The daily afternoon thunderstorm was rolling in, and while he’d built this hangar to withstand almost anything, you never knew. But one thing was for sure, the reinforced steel doors had to be closed and barred for maximum security. He didn’t care about much, but he cared about his planes.
Outside again, with the hangar securely buttoned down, he paused to take in the golden glow of the late evening, and the reflection of it on the arcs of cloud that were approaching. Tropical Storm Hannah was edging toward hurricane force, last he’d heard. There was still a chance she would miss the island, but that chance was shrinking steadily.
From his aerie, Buck saw that the cruise ships had already vanished from their moorings, sailing off to friendlier, safer climes. Anstin’s casino, a series of huge tiki huts that sheltered the machines, tables and bars, was probably already moving everything into storage. The fishing town itself, of late containing more casino employees than fishermen, had started battening the hatches that morning.
But Hannah might pass them by. Even if she hit, the storm shouldn’t be too bad.
Shaking his head, he realized he couldn’t find an excuse to stand out here any longer. He was going to have to go into his office and work out the business details with the Valkyrie.
He still believed that Eve was the biggest joke God had ever played on mankind.
THERE SHE WAS, sitting on one of his plastic chairs, looking like she owned the universe, holding a cup of his finest Jamaican. Had he offered her coffee? He was sure he hadn’t. But then, a redhead who looked like that was probably used to having the world at her feet, used to having her own way. Delilah.
He wiped his hand on his pants, just to make a point of it, then extended it. “Sticks, I’m Buck Shanahan,” he said, adding nothing that might illuminate her.
“Hannah Lamont.” She shook his hand a little too firmly, as if she were used to the world of men and the handshake. Maybe to make a point.
“So what the hell happened, Sticks?” he asked as he rounded the counter and opened his humidor, seeking further dental protection in the form of a cigar to chew on. It was better than grinding his teeth.
“I don’t know. My mechanic signed off on that plane before I left. I was on my way to Aruba to drop her off for her new owner. All of a sudden I was leaking fuel like a hose. Then my radio went out. And while we’re talking, my name is Hannah, not ‘Sticks.’”
“Seems like you might need a new mechanic. And until I decide otherwise, you’re ‘Sticks,’ because that’s what I was holding, ready to even things up with that bastard Anstin, when you tore in here like a bat out of hell and killed the hand.”
“Pocket Sevens?” she asked.
“Damn right. I made Sevens full of Jacks on the turn and was about to get all of his chips. Instead….”
She held a hand up. “I’m sorry I messed up your little game for something as silly as trying to survive.”
“Little game?” He took a slow breath, willing himself not to tell her exactly what he thought of her. “That was no little game. It was a heads-up match to determine the future of this island! Or did you think those people you passed on the way in here were joking?”
“You’re not serious,” she said.
“I’m dead serious, Sticks. That’s how we decide things around here. Only fair way to do it, and a damn sight fairer than U.S. elections lately. And it saves us from being overrun with lawyers.” He let out a huff. “Little game. You know about as much about life as your mechanic knows about jet engines.”
She didn’t even smile. “He’s certainly going to be dead once I get back to Houston.”
He wanted to like her then. He really did. But he decided he didn’t need the headache.
“We’ll take a look at her,” he heard himself volunteering, then wanted to kick his own butt.
“Thanks. My company will pay, of course.”
“Of course.” Then something struck him. “Your company?” She bristled a bit, as if expecting a comment about how it was rare to see a woman who owned an aircraft company. It would never have crossed his mind if she hadn’t bristled. Now he needed to bite back the urge to tick her off.
“I own it.” Her voice was sterner than it needed to be, a sort of tacit offer of a duel at dawn. “Lamont Aircraft. We buy and refurbish private planes.”
“Looks like this one didn’t get refurbished enough.”
“Do tell.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.
He unwrapped his cigar and stuck it between his teeth, deciding it was safer to bite tobacco than bite her head off. God should never have invented women. Or if he had to, then maybe he should have made them more like men: uncomplicated.
And now he found himself feeling almost sorry for her mechanic. Damn! “How long you had that mechanic?”
“He’s been with the company fifteen years.”
“You don’t look that old.” He was almost delighted when he saw her grind her teeth.
“I’m old enough. It’s my company. And I want to know what went wrong with that aircraft.”
“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” he promised, which he shouldn’t have done, but when Delilah was in the room, men were known to do stupid, stupid things. “Craig and I are pretty good mechanics.”
Instead of saying something snappy, she merely said, “Thank you.”
Well hell. Now she was going to get nice on him? No thank you!
He rolled his cigar to the other side of his mouth and clamped down on it. “It’ll take a while, of course.”
Her eyes widened. “How long?”
“Well, I don’t exactly carry a parts store for Learjets. In fact, this’ll be one of maybe three or four times I’ve worked on one.”
“Oh, great.”
He grinned, enjoying her discomfiture. “So I’ll have to figure out what’s wrong, then fly out to get parts. And I can’t do that until after the storm passes.”
“Storm?” She looked even more unhappy.
“Don’t you pay attention to the weather reports?” That would be a mortal sin for any pilot.
