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She snapped. “Of course I do!”
“Then you can’t have missed the fact that we have a tropical storm headed our way. It might even be a hurricane by the time it gets here.”
“I was flying around that,” she said.
“Well, Hannah, get ready to meet Hannah, because you sure as hell flew right into her path.”
“THAT WOMAN IS a piece of work,” Buck told Craig as they stood staring up at the Learjet while waiting for the shop computer to download schematics of the plane.
“Yeah. All women are,” Craig agreed. And he was married and had three kids.
“Why do you suppose that is?”
“I dunno. I just know we can’t live without ’em.”
“I’m working on it.”
Craig snorted. “That woman volcanologist—Edna, isn’t it?—she’s got her snare set for you.”
Buck looked at him, and Craig finally shrugged. “Okay. Have it your way, boss.”
“Believe me, I intend to.”
Craig rolled his eyes. Buck chewed a little harder on his unlit cigar and wondered why it was that men who were married wanted every other man on the planet to be married, as well. It was almost like some kind of brainwashing.
“That Mary Jo must’ve really been something.”
For an instant, Buck froze. He couldn’t believe Craig had mentioned that woman. His former wife in his former life. The woman who had screwed around with all the available navy guys while her husband, Buck, was at sea as a carrier pilot.
“I told you not to mention that name.”
“Sorry, boss.”
That would teach him to have one too many beers. A slip like that and he was hearing about it for the rest of his life. He glared at Craig who held up both his hands.
“Sorry,” Craig said again.
“You better be.” He returned his attention to the jet, thinking he wouldn’t mind sitting in the left hand seat and taking her out for a spin. It had been a while since he’d flown anything that fast, and sometimes he still yearned for his fighter-jock days. The speed, the g-forces…they got into a man’s blood.
He sighed and went over to the computer to see how far along they were on printing out the fuel-line schematics. Sheesh, the thing was as slow as molasses at the North Pole.
“It’s the satellite uplink,” Craig said knowingly.
“Yeah? Then fix it.”
“Damn, boss, you don’t want much!”
“Then tell me why the satellite uplink should be so slow.” He rotated his unlit cigar to the other side of his mouth.
“Do I look like a psychic? Probably because of the approaching storm. Traffic is likely heavier than usual. I dunno. Maybe it’s not the satellite uplink at all. Maybe it’s the printer.”
Buck was acting like an ass and he knew it. Admitting it didn’t make him feel any better. But the truth was, it was getting late in the day, and the probability they would have those schematics in time to work on the plane today was highly unlikely.
And worse, his win against Anstin, his prime opportunity to save the island, had fluttered away in a blast of jet winds.
“Why don’t you just go home?” he suggested. “Unless the storm hits, we’ll start in the morning. And take the woman with you.”
“To that motel? No way. I wouldn’t put my worst enemy in that cockroach pit.”
“Then what am I supposed to do with her?”
Craig shrugged. “She can sleep on her plane.” He jerked his thumb toward it. “It looks posh enough for a sultan.”
“Except a real sultan would be buying a new one.”
“Quibble, quibble, quibble. You need to get laid, man. Then maybe you wouldn’t have all that energy to waste on stupidity.”
With that, Craig stalked out the side door, a man-sized door, that hadn’t been locked up yet. Buck stood alone in his hangar with two large planes and a couple of small ones that belonged to island residents, and wondered why he put up with Craig.
Of course, Craig was a natural-born mechanic. That helped. In front of him, the computer still hummed, a bar showing that the download had progressed eleven percent. Beside it, the big printer was busy drawing schematics. How complicated could it be?
Complicated enough. A plane, any plane, was a complex beast, and the newer they were, the more that complexity had been magnified.
So he had two choices. One of them involved going back to his office and facing the redheaded Valkyrie. The other meant sleeping out here on a battered recliner in the small parts office.
He decided the Valkyrie presented the lesser of two evils. He’d shoo her off to sleep on her plane, then peace would prevail, at least until morning.
He opened the door to the outside, rather than the one farther to the rear that joined with his living quarters behind the front office. Whenever he could, he preferred to walk outdoors.
But this time he froze on the threshold. Red sunsets weren’t unusual in the tropics, but this one blazed like fire, and it raged in the east, rather than the west, high in the sky because of the clouds of the approaching storm.
Magnificent. He soaked it up, filling his heart, mind and soul with the beauty. That was why he’d moved to this godforsaken island with its loony inhabitants and crazy casino. Because here he could live halfway up the side of a volcanic cone and be left pretty much alone while still running an adequate business.
Stepping out, he worked the mechanism that safely reinforced the door from the inside, then walked around to the front of the hangar to look west.
The sun was riding the rim of the Caribbean like an angry red eye. The water, usually a soothing Caribbean blue-green, was dappled in red and purple, and beginning to look choppy.
There was nothing in the world, he thought, like the sunset before a tropical storm.
Then, without warning, a different red filled his vision. It was silky, redder than red in the evening light, a fluffy cloud around a perfect face with challenging green eyes.
“Did you find out what was wrong?”
He might have sighed, except he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. Instead he clamped down on his cigar. “Nope.”
“Why not? I thought you said you’d find out what was wrong?”
Now he bit down hard. “Actually,” he said between his teeth, “I’m printing out the fuel line schematics right now. At the rate it’s going, it’ll probably take all night. You can thank the manufacturer for that.”
Her eyes flashed. In that instant, they looked like lightning reflected off the stormy gray-green shallows of the Caribbean Sea. But then, as if something flicked a switch in her, the flare quieted.
She nodded acknowledgement to him. “Thanks.”
To his surprise, it didn’t look as if she had to force the word out. Temperamental but in control. Despite himself, he was piqued.
At that moment, Craig roared by on his way down to his home in town. His Jeep kicked up a little loose gravel as he went by, waving at them.
Hannah Lamont waved back, then returned her attention to Buck. “I’ll sleep on the plane then.”
“Sure. No problem.” He pointed to the door. “Bar it when you get inside. No telling when that storm is going to hit.”
She nodded, but this time a flicker of uncertainty crossed her face. “See you in the morning, then.”
She started to brush past him, but then he had to deal with the fact that not only was he being a jerk, he was being a rude jerk. There were some courtesies he couldn’t ignore even in an attempt to avoid Delilah. “You got anything to eat on that plane?”
“I was supposed to be in Aruba shortly.”
Mentally kicking his own butt, he said, “Come on back to the office. If I have to make dinner for myself, I might as well cook for two.”
“You cook?”
He wasn’t sure if that was an intentional insult or just genuine surprise. So he opted for surprise. “Yes.” He rolled the cigar a little before adding, “Not all men are helpless without women.”
Her eyebrows arched. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t cook.”
No! He didn’t want to like her. No way. Instead of responding, he stalked past her toward the office and soothed himself with the reminder that she would vanish from his island the very instant he repaired her plane.
There was security and safety in that. A promise of the uncomplicated future he really wanted.
CHAPTER THREE
HANNAH WAVERED between wanting to strangle Buck Shanahan, and wanting to like him. He was as prickly as a pear cactus and seemed to have taken her in instant dislike. Other than ruining his poker hand (and she still did not believe that so many people could be insane enough to determine the fate of their island with a poker game) during her landing, she couldn’t imagine why. Well, she had been a little…upset when she deplaned, but any person with a half-ounce of common sense would understand what she’d just been through. Adrenaline tended to make you that way.
Still, he fed her. He didn’t invite her into the inner sanctum behind his office, nor did she especially want to go there, but when he emerged a half hour later he offered her cold potato salad, cold fried chicken and a healthy serving of steamed broccoli. All of it was savory. She gave him marks as a cook, if not as a mechanic or human being.
“That was wonderful,” she said when she’d sucked the last bit of meat off the bone. If it hadn’t been rude, she’d have licked the plate, too.
“Thanks.” He sounded gruff. Then he took their plates into the back, leaving her alone to look out at what was now getting to be a very dark night. She could see a portion of the earth’s shadow on the highest clouds, an arc of darkness moving toward zenith now, the red winking out behind it.
She supposed she ought to go out to the plane before it got any darker, but she felt strangely reluctant to move. So instead, she helped herself to another cup of coffee, and settled back in the chair.
She expected Buck to remain in his hermitage, but to her surprise he returned and sat on the far side of the counter from her. She could just see his head above the countertop.
She decided to try being sociable. “How long have you had this airport?”
“About eight years.”
“And before that?”
He looked at her. “Top Gun.”
She sat up straighter. “Really?”
He scowled at her. “Why would I lie about that?”
“I can’t believe you could give that up!”
That made him smile for the first time since she’d met him, and oh, what a smile it was. It transformed him completely.
“Eventually my back had enough of the g-forces. And I had enough of the Navy.”
“But you must miss it.”
“Yeah,” he admitted reluctantly. “Once in a while.”
“This must sometimes seem pretty tame.”
He cocked a brow at her. “Not when people try to take my head off with their wings. It reminds me of that Samuel Johnson quote. ‘Nothing concentrates the mind like the imminent prospect of being hanged.’”
She nodded, wondering if there was more to a man who could quote Samuel Johnson, but said only, “I wondered if I’d have to ditch her.”
He shook his head. “Not a good thing, ditching. Planes tend to fall apart in all the wrong ways.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Silence fell between them for a few moments. Then she asked, “Where did I land, anyway? There are so many small islands out here, and while I have a general idea where I am, I’m not sure which lump of rock I’m sitting on.”
He rotated his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “This lump is called Treasure Island.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. The first person known to have settled here was One Hand Hank Hanratty about eighty years ago. He was a fan of Robert Louis Stevenson, I hear.” The cigar bobbed as he resettled it. “Rumor has it the alligator bit off his hand.”
“The alligator?”
“Yeah. Apparently Hanratty brought him as a pet. Says something about the guy’s character. Anyway, Buster, the gator, is still around. Hanratty isn’t.”
“Well, if he brought only one gator, I can understand why the thing bit off his hand. Buster must be lonely.”
Buck shrugged. “He goes to Bridal Falls sometimes and scares the tourists when they’re having a tropical wedding. Mostly he just keeps to himself. Nobody wants to get him a mate, though. This isn’t his native habitat, and we don’t want the place crawling with gators, either. It’d scare the tourists.”
Hannah nodded. “What do tourists come here for?”
Apparently she’d asked exactly the right question, because Buck suddenly grew expansive. “Well, now, there are really cheap cruise lines. They like to pull into harbor here and let their passengers gamble at the casino. They market it as tropical charm, but what it really is is a bunch of big tiki huts with games, slots and a couple of bars. I guess it impresses people who come from way up north.”
Hannah nodded, envisioning it. “It would have a certain kind of charm, I guess.”
“If you’ve never been to Vegas or Reno, yeah. Anyway, they pull in for a day of gambling, and sometimes passengers will get married by the captain at Bridal Falls. I don’t reckon anyone knows who was the first person to do that, but it’s become a bit of tradition in these parts. Townfolk will attend to make it festive.”
