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How long did it take to unbraid hair, for crying out loud? His torturously slow progress, those hands whispering against her scalp, sent shivers prickling down her spine.
The craziness had to be a by-product of abstinence. She didn’t miss her ex-husband, but she certainly missed regular sex. That had to be the reason her body responded to a man she respected but wasn’t quite sure she even liked.
Her mind taunted her with how much she’d enjoyed his impromptu shopping spree through the gift shop. And she couldn’t recall ever being so turned on by a guy simply playing with her hair.
His fingers massaged her scalp as he swirled her hair forward. She barely managed to bite back a moan. His pupils widened in response.
Enough.
Forget camaraderie. This had to stop. Kathleen stepped back.
“Thanks. I can finish.” She combed her shaking hands through her hair, the strands suddenly unbearably sensual caressing her neck. “Okay now?”
“Perfect.”
His tone, low and intimate, sent a fresh wash of shivers all the way to her toes. Tanner’s chest rose and fell, faster, each speedier respiration telling Kathleen more than she could handle about how much she affected him, as well.
She wanted her uniform back, with all the protection and distance its familiarity offered.
The loudspeaker crackled, announcing flights, theirs ending the list. Christmas carols replaced the droning voice. Tanner’s head cocked up to the sound, his face hardening with an intensity that nudged concern past her own needs.
She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “You okay?”
He looked down as if he’d forgotten her. Not very complimentary since her every tingling nerve still remembered his touch.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Tanner palmed the small of her back. “Come on, Mata Hari. Let’s make tracks.”
She shielded her senses against the heat of his hand. Why turn sappy just because they’d actually laughed together and he’d bought her a few tourist tokens? It wasn’t like they had anything between them except a common alma mater, years of bickering…
And one unforgettable kiss.
A kiss she prayed Tanner had forgotten. If not, they had larger problems than unraveling the crash of an aircraft worth $125 million.
Chapter 4
Tanner shifted, turned, shifted again but still couldn’t manage to wedge himself comfortably in the microscopic airline seat. He would have better luck stuffing the drink cart through the tiny window beside Kathleen.
Flipping another page in his paperback, he tried to ignore his grumbling stomach. In the past five hours, he’d only eaten a cardboard croissant sandwich, five tiny bags of pretzels and two of Kathleen’s Toblerone bars. He stared across the aisle with envy at the kid snoozing the flight away.
Tanner’s hand itched to grip the stick of his C-17, to fly, instead of being chauffeured around in a civilian air taxi. He second-guessed every whine and drone of the humming engines.
Being a passenger stunk for him on a good day. This wasn’t a good day. His back hurt, his stomach was snacking on itself. And Kathleen looked so hot he couldn’t even enjoy the latest techno-thriller novel.
Tanner gave up trying to read or get comfortable and studied Kathleen, instead. She fitted in that confined space, no problem, working her way through a stack of files on the seat between them. He sometimes forgot how small she was, probably not more than five foot four.
Dwindling light filtered through the oval window, glinting off the thin wire frames of her reading glasses. They gave her a schoolmarmish air that proved curiously sexy, like her standard tight braid.
Her hair.
Tanner slammed his book shut and rubbed his palms together as if that might dispel the lingering sensation of her hair sliding between his fingers. The lingering scent of her minty shampoo on his hands. Caving to the temptation to untangle her braid had been insane. But she’d looked so cute in her tourist getup. So unusually approachable.
Like now.
The window light sparked off her free-flowing hair. Threads of gold shimmered through the auburn. Kathleen retrieved another file from the stack, the nutcracker necklace swaying between her breasts. Settling back, she compared the columns of figures on one page with another.
She’d always been the studious type, a real curve buster who set a high bar for others to match, and heaven knew he enjoyed competition. Other than those glasses and the longer hair, she didn’t look much different from the Academy cadet who’d hunched over textbooks in the library.
The woman he’d kissed until they both couldn’t breathe.
Did she remember? The thought that she might have forgotten jolted a dangerous frustration through him.
Suddenly he had to know. He had to have an acknowledgmentof that moment, even if they never intended to repeat it. Maybe then they could defuse the attraction lurking between them.
“Do you ever think about Academy days?” The question fell from his mouth, and he didn’t have the slightest desire to recall it.
She didn’t answer, didn’t even twitch or move to acknowledge she’d heard him. But her gaze stopped scanning from side to side along the page. Slowly she slid her glasses off and turned to him, her eyes wary. “Sure.”
His stomach took another large bite out of itself. “Really?”
“Of course. I spent four years of my life there.”
“Yeah.” Not what he was looking for in the way of a response, but then O’Connell had never been easy. “I remember sharing a couple of them with you.”
“Uh-huh.” Cool professionalism plastered itself right over the wariness. Kathleen shoved her glasses back on her nose. She whipped a file from the bottom of the stack and dropped it in his lap. “Check out the crew’s training reports while I review their seventy-two-hour histories prior to the crash.”
“Okay.” He opened the file and thumbed through the pages. Determination kindled within him, fueling the same competitiveness that had carried him across the goal line more than once.
It was only the first down. Be patient. Hang tough. Wait for the opening.
He read through the contents of the thin manila folder, then thumped the stack of papers in front of him. “Training reports look good. The copilot busted a check ride two years ago, only hooked the test on something minor, though, nothing reckless enough to wave a major red flag about.”
“Isn’t the copilot kind of young?”
“Compared to me? Yeah. But I pulled time as a C-130 navigator first.” Which made him all the more anxious to speed through the upgrade from right-seat copilot to aircraft commander flying left seat. He had to establish an uncomplicated working relationship with her to prove his professionalism to the Squadron Commander.
Tanner stacked the training reports and slid them inside their folder. Time for his next play, a surprise sweep around to her blind side. “It’ll be good to see ol’ Crusty again once we get to California. Remember how he used to catch hell from you about his sloppy uniform?”
“Uh-huh.” She plopped another file in his lap. “Take a look at the pilot’s seventy-two-hour history. It says here Crusty only ate burgers and dill pickles for two days before the flight. That seems odd, like he’s forgotten something. Who eats nothing but burgers and pickles?”
Second down. Stopped short of the ten-yard gain. Damn it, he would make all the time in the world for the case, after he got one thing settled.
With her head bowed over the file on the seat between them, he could see a third color threading through her hair. A deeper shade of copper mixed in with the red and gold. She glanced up. Her blue eyes shone as clear as the sky whipping past that tiny window, taunting him with a small peek when he wanted the wide open expanse.
“Bennett? Burgers and pickles?”
He regained his footing before he lost critical yardage. “Oh, uh, yeah. Crusty’s a bachelor. That probably explains it.”
“If you say so.” She scribbled a note on the top corner and flipped the page as a mother and toddler eased out of the seat in front of them.
Tanner shifted his legs from the aisle to let a woman hurry her child toward the bathroom. Minimal privacy established, he stretched his legs again. “Back at the Academy, whenever Crusty saw you coming, he would untuck his shirt or scuff his shoes, anything to catch your attention. Sure enough, you would stop and chew him out. He really had a thing for you.”
“Apparently, he got over it.”
Time to press. “He had to get over it. The whole doolie-upperclassman taboo.”
Her hands faltered. The paper shuffling stopped, and he thought he had her. Finally she would say something about the night that should have gotten them both kicked out of school.
She glanced toward him, and it was all there for him to see. The memory of that kiss scorched her mind as much as it singed his. She stared back at him, drawing him into her sky-blue eyes filled with memories. Filled with hunger. With fire.
Twelve years ago the two of them had been brimming with need and seriously lacking in sense as they’d fed on each other. Mouths meeting, hands almost as frantic as her breathy moans, sweet sounds that had eased the roar of pain in his head.
Tanner canted forward, his hand reaching. Still he remembered the glide of her hair against his skin. He couldn’t resist her healing warmth now any more than he could then. “Kathleen—”
Her eyes shuttered like clouds in front of his windscreen blocking the sky. Without a word she returned to the open file on her knees.
But her eyes weren’t scanning. Her spine couldn’t have been any straighter if she’d snapped to attention.
He slumped back against his unforgiving cement-slab seat. The woman had defensive moves that would garner serious bucks in the big leagues. He wasn’t going to get anything out of her this way.
She’d obviously done a better job at putting aside the past than he had. As if he could ever forget any of it. Of course, that night had been…beyond hell, and she’d been there for him.
Forget a touchdown. Punt the ball and salvage what he could. “About that night. I never had a chance to say—”
She slapped her file closed. “Bennett.”
“What?”
“Save the apology.”
He stared at her blasé face, her tight jaw. He hadn’t planned to apologize at all. He owed her a big fat thanks for dragging him through the worst night of his life. “Kathleen—”
“It was one kiss twelve years ago.” She flung half the stack in his lap. “We’ve got work to do. Look over these maintenance records.”
Her bland expression didn’t fool him for a minute. The slight tremble of her hands told him so much, an understated sign that screamed a clear message coming from this restrained woman.
He’d won. She’d admitted she remembered, and it had dogged her as much as it did him. Now they should be able to jettison all the sparks arcing between them.
Except he still wanted her. A woman who played by the rules scorned rule breakers like him and wouldn’t pass up the chance to ground his butt permanently if he misstepped.
Maybe Kathleen had the right idea. Reviewing pages of maintenance reports was a hell of a lot less frustrating than acknowledging those memory missiles lobbing between them.
Yet his gut told him otherwise, and flyers learned to follow their instincts. If he and Kathleen didn’t figure out a way to face the attraction and move on, it would keep tracking them, waiting until their defenses were lowered.
Then it would blast them both right out of the sky.
The Fasten Seat Belts light switched off with a ding. Kathleen slid the folders into her I Love Germany bag and readied to disembark. Ready? She was beyond ready to end the transcontinental journey and Tanner’s persistent questions about their good old Academy days.
Eleven hours total in the air, broken by a three-hour lay-over in New York, had wasted her resistance, and they still had a ninety-minute drive to Edwards ahead of them. Their flight from New York to California had been packed. They no longer had the neutral zone of an extra seat between them.
Exhausted and more than a little irritable, she’d spent the past four hours with her body molded from shoulder to ankle against Tanner. Masculine heat and musk saturated right into her. His every muscle-rippling move, and he shifted way too often for her comfort level, left her swallowing a case of sodas from the drink cart.
Not that it helped moisten her dry mouth. She didn’t bother deluding herself that it had anything to do with cabin pressure.
He moved in his seat again, stuffing the doll-size pillow behind his head before his snores resumed. Poor guy. That tiny airline seat had to have made a mess of his back. At least he’d finally acknowledged his mortal status a few hours ago and downed a couple of muscle relaxers.
Kathleen studied the big lug sprawled asleep in his seat, his broad chest clearly outlined even under the drape of an airline throw blanket. The man had a great body, always had. She would have to be blind not to notice. And she would be crazy to do anything about it—other than occasionally admire the view.
One muscled leg extended out in the aisle, with the other knee wedged against the seat in front of him. Figures he’s a sprawler.
Probably a bed hog, too.
Whoa, girl! Those kind of thoughts could just hike right on back into her subconscious, because she had no intention of exploring them further. She had a case to solve and a promotion to secure. No way would she let another hotshot flyboy interfere with her career.
Especially one with such damned distracting dimples.
Kathleen started to reach for his shoulder and he shifted, flinging his arm across her lap. His hand rested, palm up, searing her leg through her cotton slacks.
She forced her breathing to regulate.
Just a normal hand, five fingers and his Academy ring. Except that hand flew planes with the same finesse he’d used to scramble her brains back in the airport with a few caresses to her head.
What would those callused fingers feel like exploring her bare skin? Her heart rate kicked up a notch.
Scooting her leg from under his hand, Kathleen gently nudged his foot with hers. “Rise and shine, hotshot. We’re here.”
He jackknifed upright, eyes wide as he woke without hesitation. At the sharp movement he paled, and a curse slipped free with enough force to make her wince.
“Are you okay?”
“Take off your stethoscope, Doc. I’m fine. Just slept crooked and moved too fast.” He shoved aside the pillow and blanket and stood, stretching. His arms arced over his head in a muscle-rippling reach.
She tore her attention from his chest.
Couldn’t she display a little sympathy without him turning defensive? Given the thrust of his jaw, apparently not. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” He hefted his bag from the overhead storage.
“Fair enough. I’ll put away the MD.” Kathleen shoved aside her hurt feelings and shrugged her bag onto her shoulder.
She wedged into the crowded aisle behind Tanner as he turned sideways to fit through the narrow passageway. Did his slow swagger hide genuine pain? He needed bed rest, not an eleven-hour flight in a cramped airline seat.
Had he been home in Charleston, one of his girlfriends would have been pampering him, plying him with eggnog and TLC. Who was he seeing now? Tiffani, Brandi or some other woman with a name ending in an I with a heart over it.
Kathleen inched forward, mentally kicking herself for thoughts that bordered on petty. Tanner wasn’t a bar hound collecting a different bimbo every week like some crew dogs, such as her ex-husband or Lance Sinclair before he married. Gossip and her own observations revealed Tanner had a relationship pattern.
She didn’t want to ponder overlong on why she’d bothered to listen to gossip about his love life.
All stories ran the same path. He held steady for six months to a year. Then one of them broke it off for any number of lame reasons.
