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He was being felt up by women in line at the bank, and having notes and drinks delivered to him in restaurants. One brunette with about ten carats of diamonds glittering from her fingers had been sitting on the hood of his Porsche last week. He’d been so concerned about possible dents in his car that at first the woman’s lack of panties beneath her short dress hadn’t registered. Once it did, his only reaction had been annoyance that he was also going to have to get the car washed.
“It’s gotta be the cologne,” he muttered, wondering if he was the subject of a secret scientific experiment. Maybe Calvin Klein was slipping some kind of animal secretion into his aftershave. Something that made Max give off irresistible pheromones that turned women into sex-starved vixens.
“Mr. Taylor…”
Or sex-starved bovines.
“Return to your seat,” he said from between clenched teeth. He didn’t look around, focusing instead on the blue sky spread in a brilliant panorama outside the windshield. Not on the age-spotted lady in the doorway spread in an Eve-old invitation. “Get dressed and sit down or I’ll return to the airport.”
“You can’t mean to tell me you’re refusing.” The spoiled, rich socialite wasn’t used to being told no. And as the owner of a young private charter company that was still struggling under last year’s expansion from a four-jet fleet to a six-jet one, he wasn’t used to saying it—not when it came to business.
Max had worked his ass off in the past three years, determined to get himself out of the quagmire his life had become after he’d left the Air Force. After a brief, yearlong bout of drunkenness during his divorce, he’d pulled his shit together and had launched his small, regional airline. It was something he’d dreamed of doing since his teenage years when he first learned to fly over the African desert, taught by one of his grandfather’s cronies.
Since then, his airline had become one of the fastest-growing private carriers in Orange County. Especially with customers like Mrs. Rudolph Coltrane, who freely shelled out major dollars to grab a ride to Vail or down to Cancún.
Of course, he’d always thought he’d be living this life after he finished a career as an Air Force pilot. That hadn’t exactly gone as planned. Don’t go there, he silently reminded himself.
“Look, I’m willing to fly you wherever you want to go,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. “As long as it’s within the safety parameters of the aircraft. And sex in the cockpit is not.”
He didn’t go into the whole “I’d rather poke my liver out with a burning pogo stick than have sex with you” bit. Hopefully the woman cared enough for her own skin to sit down.
“Rubbish.”
Okay, apparently she didn’t.
“I know you have autopilot,” she added. “Everyone knows about this airline and your new planes.”
Yeah, they did. Word had spread about Taylor Made until they could barely keep up with demand. So the idea of merging with a large outfit trying to break into the lucrative southern California market had seemed perfect when he’d been approached by a New York executive a few months ago.
The merger was progressing nicely and would be wrapped up later in the year. Determined to make it happen, Max was working double time to keep the business lucrative. He could take a vacation after he had a partner.
Mrs. Coltrane put her hand on his shoulder. “Now, set the autopilot and turn around.”
Pleasing the customer was a top priority in his business, and he didn’t want to alienate someone with as powerful a reputation as Mrs. Coltrane. But despite the special extras and level of excellence he advertised in his promotional material, flying the twin of the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” lady to the heights of passion was not in his job description.
“You’ve got to the count of five, then I radio the tower and we make an immediate landing,” he said, trying to shrug off her hand.
“Don’t be coy. I know all about you.”
He stiffened, having no idea what she meant. “One.”
“Surely you can at least do me the courtesy of a quickie.”
The woman’s indignance would have been laughable if Max’s laughter hadn’t been sucked out of him like spit through a dentist’s tube. “Two.”
“But I thought…”
He reached for the radio handset. “Three.”
“Well,” the woman said with a phlegmy harrumph, “if I don’t have a thing or two to say to Grace Wellington.”
The word four died on Max’s lips as he focused on the name his passenger had uttered. Grace Wellington. What on earth a woman he’d gone out with a few years ago could have to do with Grandma getting naked in his Cessna, he had no idea. But he’d very much like to find out. Especially because he couldn’t help wondering if all the other strange experiences he’d been having with women were also connected to Grace, whom he’d dated briefly after the death of her scandalous politician husband.
“What about Grace?” he couldn’t help asking.
“She’s a liar, that’s what I think,” Mrs. Coltrane said, her tone nasal.
He didn’t have to look over his shoulder—and wouldn’t have for the single winning lottery ticket in the biggest Powerball jackpot in history—to see the woman’s chin jutting up and out, and her nostrils flaring with patrician arrogance. He was familiar with the expression, having seen it on the faces of a lot of his rich, female clients.
Of course, most of them were clothed when they got all haughty and pretentious. Wrinkly nudity probably ruined the effect—not that he wanted to find out.
“I never was certain whether the stories she wrote about you were true—that any man could be as sexually potent and addictive. Now I’m quite sure they’re not.” The woman grunted. “Some sexual fiend you are—a naked woman standing a foot away and you couldn’t even manage a quick game of hide-the-joystick.”
He didn’t know whether to be relieved that she’d given up her seduction attempt, or offended that she thought him incapable of, uh, playing her game. But since the only place he wanted to hide his joystick was behind his own zipper, maybe her interpretation wasn’t such a bad thing.
Then the rest of her words sunk in. Sex fiend? “What stories? What, exactly, are you talking about?”
She was silent for a moment. If he had had a whole lot more nerve, he would have turned around to see if she was wearing a guilty expression at spilling some kind of secret. He wasn’t that brave, however, so he settled for prompting her. “Mrs. Coltrane?”
“You’ll know soon enough, I suppose.” Her voice sounded farther away, meaning she was back in the passenger cabin, hopefully getting dressed. “The book comes out this fall. And there’s talk of a story in the Star or the Globe or something.”
“Book?”
“Grace’s autobiography. Huh! As if that woman is interesting enough to need a whole book. If not for the scandals, it would be nothing more than a page.”
An autobiography. Grace Wellington—spoiled socialite turned scandalous widow after her bribe-taking politician husband had eaten the muzzle of a gun—had written her memoirs. And included him. Damn.
Almost afraid to hear the answer, he asked, “What exactly did Grace have to say about me in this book?”
The woman snorted an inelegant laugh. He realized she’d returned to the cockpit and was right behind him. When she moved her arm within view, he saw the sleeve of her designer blouse and breathed a deep sigh of relief.
“There’s a whole chapter devoted to you, my boy, and it’s been making the rounds. The lurid details are enough to make even the most risqué piece of erotica look tame.”
His stomach rolled over. It hadn’t done that in a cockpit since the first time he’d sat in an F-15 during his Air Force days…the early ones, before an unplanned pregnancy and a fucked-up marriage had derailed his plans to complete the pilot training program. “I can’t believe this.”
He didn’t want to believe it, but Mrs. Coltrane seemed sure of herself. Grace had written a bunch of raunchy stuff about him and circulated it among her highbrow friends. Which explained why he’d become the flavor of the month among the Beverly Hills set.
“The book’s coming out in hardcover in November.”
His temple began to throb as the full implication hit him. A book with a chapter full of sordid stories about him was about to go public. Now. Right when he was entering negotiations to take his company to the next level with a major merger.
God, how he wished he’d never laid eyes—or hands—on Grace Wellington.
“This is wrong.”
His passenger seemed unaware of his dismay. “If the rumors of an accompanying tabloid article are true, I imagine the book will sell well.”
Tabloid article. He felt like throwing up.
“Well, if you’re really not going to provide me with any form of entertainment, you may as well turn around. I want to go home,” Mrs. Coltrane said, her voice sharp with annoyance.
Max didn’t have to be asked twice. Within a half hour they were on the ground and Mrs. Coltrane was flouncing toward the terminal used by the private airlines. Max, meanwhile, stood on the tarmac, cell phone in hand, dialing a familiar number.
His brother Morgan—who lived in New York managing the family assets when he wasn’t off on some wildlife photographic safari—would know what to do. Or at least, who to call. But the minute Morgan answered the phone, Max heard a surprising note of excitement in his normally calm and collected older sibling’s voice.
“Max. You heard?”
“I heard.” He covered his free ear as a small Lear roared to life nearby. “Who’s the best literary attorney you know?”
“Literary?” A crackle of static interrupted, then Max thought Morgan said, “…a real estate attorney!”
Jogging toward the terminal entrance to get better reception, he spoke loudly so his brother could understand. “I don’t want to buy the woman’s house, I want to stop her damn book.” Speaking as he stepped inside, his raised voice garnered the attention of a number of people. This was so not his day.
“A book? Max, I’m talking about Trouble.”
Max strode into the private pilot’s lounge, which was, thankfully, deserted. “Tell me about it. I know I’m in trouble.”
“You are? You’re there? Then you’ve seen him?”
“Seen who?”
“Grandfather.”
Grandfather. Ah…that explained Morgan’s excited mood. If anything could send his level-headed older brother into a tailspin, it was their wildly flamboyant grandfather, the elderly man who’d raised them after their parents died. “Where is he and what has he done now?”
“I just told you, he’s in Trouble.”
“Yeah. I got it. He’s gotten himself into another mess.”
“No.” His brother’s voice was impatient. “You don’t get it. Grandfather is in a small town called Trouble.”
Max had to laugh. Because if there was anywhere Mortimer Potts was destined to be, it was in a town with that dubious name. “Okay. So he’s visiting a weird town. That’s nothing new.”
“He’s not on vacation,” Morgan said. “He owns it, Max.”
“Huh?”
“Our grandfather has purchased an entire town. He now officially owns Trouble, Pennsylvania. One of us has to fly there right away to get him out of this mess.”
One of us. Max could tell by his brother’s voice which one of us he meant. And it sure wasn’t Morgan—or their younger brother, Mike.
He was about to refuse, knowing there was too much at stake with the merger to take off on an unexpected vacation. Then he thought it over. Maybe getting out of town for a while would be a good thing. He could disappear—away from more crazy, horny old moneybags like Mrs. Coltrane. And in the meantime, get the best attorney he could find to stop publication of Grace’s book.
Besides, his grandfather was always a lot of fun. Right now, he could use some fun…not to mention the distraction. A false identity wouldn’t hurt, either, at least until this book thing was taken care of.
Neither would a sip of alcohol.
Forget it. He didn’t do that anymore—couldn’t do that anymore. Not ever.
If the eccentric old man who’d raised him was in a bad way, well, there wasn’t much Max wouldn’t do for him. Wasn’t much his brothers wouldn’t do for him, either. They were family, after all, the four of them. Had been for eighteen years, since Max, Morgan and Mike had lost their dad to the first Gulf War and their mom to cancer.
“All right. I’ll do it,” he said, trying to look on the bright side. “It’s not a bad time for me to get out of Dodge.”
“What’s wrong? Is there a problem?”
Max suddenly didn’t want to talk to his brother about the Grace Wellington situation. Considering his older sibling had been hounding him since they were young about the scrapes Max got into with women, he couldn’t give the other man the satisfaction.
He had to laugh at the irony. His grandfather’s new town was aptly named for Max, too. Though he’d done everything he could to stay out of trouble for the past few years, he just seemed destined to keep landing in it.
“I’m okay,” he finally replied. “After I make some arrangements here, I’ll be getting the old man out of trouble. Figuratively and literally.”
Two weeks later
SABRINA CAVANAUGH had heard the old saying about a place being so small you’d miss it if you blinked. But she’d never realized it could really be true of an entire town.
She couldn’t have driven through Trouble and not realized it, could she? That awkward conglomeration of falling-down houses, boarded-up businesses and doleful people hadn’t been her destination, right? Because she came from a dinky little Ohio town, population twelve, and it still seemed bigger than this.
Pulling her rented car over, she parked on the side of the dusty, two-lane road on which she’d been traveling since leaving the interstate. The road that had none of the shady trees, rolling hills or charming scenery she’d seen since leaving Philadelphia this morning. Then she reached for her map.
“Darn.” She had missed it. That small cluster of buildings she’d barely noticed out of the corner of her eye must have been the town she was looking for.
Maybe it wasn’t so surprising. The closer she’d gotten to Trouble, the more her mind had filled with doubt. The whole idea for this trip had seemed ridiculous when she and her senior editor at Liberty Books had conceived it, and it was much more so now.
“Yeah, right,” she muttered, “a rich, hot pilot is really going to fall down with desire for a small-town minister’s granddaughter turned junior book editor.”
Why on earth had she ever gone to her boss and convinced her that she could do this? That she could stop a womanizing playboy from suing them for libel by proving he was a womanizing playboy?
She really needed to stop watching old movies—this was so Rock Hudson/Doris Day. Maybe it would have worked for Doris, but no way was it going to for Sabrina Cavanaugh.
She was in way over her head. Unless wanting it to happen was enough. Because Sabrina did. She desperately wanted Max Taylor to fall crazy in lust with her. Not so she could have wild, passionate sex with the man—liar, liar—but so she could nail him for the womanizing deviant Grace Wellington’s book made him out to be. The book that was right now in jeopardy since the rich, slimy playboy had hired a shark lawyer to threaten a lawsuit.
“What man wouldn’t want to have his wickedly erotic sexual exploits glorified in a well-written memoir?” she mused.
Okay…sort of well written.
Apparently not this man. He, it seemed, had pulled out an angel costume and hired the best lawyer he could. Taylor’s lawyer was demanding that publication be stopped, threatening a libel lawsuit over Grace’s descriptions of their wild and kinky affair, her subsequent heartbreak and Max’s jaded lifestyle. And in the post–James Frey era of memoirs, Liberty was threatening to pull the book altogether.
“Oh, no, you will not ruin this for me,” Sabrina muttered, determined all over again to out the man for the reprobate he really was.
It was only because of the book—because of how important the success of that book would be for Sabrina. It had absolutely nothing—zero, zilch—to do with the man himself.
Keep telling yourself that, kid.
Sabrina never had been able to lie well, despite having a lot of experience with it as a kid. Lying had been a necessity for a troublemaking rebel trapped in the body of a small-town minister’s granddaughter who wasn’t allowed to wear jeans and had been called a harlot by her grandfather the first time she wiped a streak of pink lipstick across her mouth.
God help her if the old man had ever found out Sabrina was the one who’d put twenty packets of red Kool-Aid mix in the fountain outside his church. And had thrown one of her grandmother’s old wigs in with it so the whole thing resembled a murder scene.
She’d had a vivid imagination as a child.
