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But she didn’t.
Because it suddenly occurred to her that maybe, just maybe, Lucas did need a bit of nurturing companionship, at least. It couldn’t hurt to extend the hand of friendship.
If only she had the courage to offer it to him.
Willa wasn’t accustomed to rash, impulsive decisions. But something in the mid-morning air urged her to follow her heart just this once. Just for the time she had left here.
“Stay there, my prince,” she called, laughing. “I’m coming down from my tower.”
Lucas watched as she strolled down the garden path toward him, her smile as radiant as ever. Even if she did have shadows underneath those brilliant blue eyes.
He reached a hand out to her. “Did you get your business taken care of?”
“Yes and no.”
“And none of my concern, I suppose.”
She shook her head, causing her long ponytail to loop over one shoulder, which only made Lucas want to pull her hair out of its trendy barrette and pull it through his fingers. “No, it’s not that. I talked to my agent, and he’s fussing for me to come back to New York. Obligations and all of that.”
“Ah, obligations.” Lucas gave her a quick sideways glance as he tugged her down the path. “We do have to live up to those, don’t we?”
“I’m afraid so,” she replied. “But I told him I need a few more days here. I’m staying until Sunday, at least.”
“Or until the reporters return, at least.” He gave her a direct stare, watched as her skin blushed pink. Wondered just what was going through her mind.
“Well, I don’t want to involve you and your family in my crazy lifestyle. So, yes, if the reporters return, I’ll have to leave sooner.”
He tugged her close, bringing her around so he could hold her in his arms. “Then we’d best make good use of the time we have together. Are you afraid of flying?”
She looked puzzled, then amused. “I’ve flown in airplanes all over the world, Lucas. No, I don’t think I’m afraid of flying. In fact, it’s become a way of life.”
“Oh, really now?”
“Really.”
“But you’ve never flown with me, now, have you?”
“Well, no.” She grinned, then glanced around as they neared a large white barnlike building, where vehicles and yard equipment were kept. “And I don’t recall seeing a plane in the garage.”
“Come with me, then,” he said, coaxing her toward his Jeep. He had some obligations to fulfill, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t come along with him.
“Lucas, last time I checked, that was an automobile, not an airplane,” she said, pointing toward the sleek black vehicle.
“Yep. That’s correct.” He opened the passenger side door and bowed gallantly. “Your carriage awaits, milady.” When she stood there, he said, “Last time I checked, the private airport on the other side of town had a pretty little single-engine top of the line Ag Cat with my name on it.”
“What’s an Ag Cat?”
“A crop-dusting plane.”
“You’re teasing, right?”
“Not at all. I do a little aerial application on the side. And a few loopty-loops when the mood hits me. Want to come along for a look-see ride?”
“What’s a look-see?”
“I’m going to do a pass over of a soybean field about ten miles from here. It’s located between two thickets, so I have to decide if the chemicals can be dumped in such a way as to keep the thickets environmentally sound. Don’t want to kill anything but the bad bugs.”
“So, you won’t be spraying any chemicals today?”
“Non. In fact, after I show off my Ag Cat to you in the safety of the hangar, we’ll take out another plane—a sweet old Piper Cub J-3 that belonged to Lacey’s late husband, Neil. I use the Cub for all the fun stuff.”
He stopped, remembering how touched he’d been when Lacey had given him the plane after Neil’s death. But he didn’t want to talk about death. Not today. Not with Willa. So he went back to business.
“I couldn’t take you along on a for-real spraying. It’s illegal, for one thing, and while I’d enjoy being very close to you, we’d be a bit cramped for space, since my Ag Cat is built to precision for only one person. Plus, the chemicals are nasty.” He twisted his nose, then made a face. “Gets to the old breathing system if you don’t wear protective clothing and a respirator.”
Rolling her eyes, she said, “And you enjoy doing this? Inhaling chemicals in midair?”
“I adhere to all the safety precautions. That’s one reason I decided to become a crop duster—so I could keep an eye on the environment around here and try to control what chemicals are dumped and sprayed—and yes, I do enjoy it. It’s all in the calculation, you see. The weather, the wind, the lay of the land, they all play a part in the whole thing. When everything is in place, I just drop and dump.”
Willa shook her head, then glanced down. “I don’t know about this—going up in the clouds with a real barnstormer.”
Thinking she was going to turn him down and head to the seclusion of her room, Lucas tugged her ponytail. “I promise you’ll be safe—I’m a very good pilot. And you won’t be bored.”
She hopped up on the seat. “I can’t imagine ever being bored with you, Lucas.”
“Then let’s go. It’s a perfect day to see the whole view from up above.”
“I’d like that,” she said.
Lucas took that as a yes.
He was right. She wasn’t bored.
The view was breathtaking, a country canvas of square fields of rich, fluttering green and clusters of all types of houses tucked between forest thickets and lush swamps near the slinking dark ribbon of the Mississippi River. The sky was a clear, warm blue with bursts of billowing clouds here and there overhead, while the carpet of the ever-changing land lay beneath like a giant picnic quilt.
He’d also given her a view of his home in all its splendor. From this height, it looked like a beautiful dollhouse, complete with tiny flowers and trees. The double line of great oaks stretched toward them like two arms opening in welcome.
The bayou stretched and shifted beyond the gardens, its dark waters and bearded cypress trees holding their secrets close. In one quiet cove, a dense clutter of cypress knees held a nest of egrets. The birds sat on the gray-tinged limbs and moss-draped stumps, looking like white flower petals. But the roar of the big bird overhead caused the elegant birds to lift and fly en masse across the black-bottomed bayou.
Willa had been in all types of airplanes, but she’d never felt so alive, so exhilarated. Maybe that feeling of complete freedom and lightness had more to do with the highly skilled pilot at the controls than it did with being in the clouds.
Lucas was an expert, but he was also certainly a daredevil, a combination that made him that much more appealing in her eyes.
He’d promised her some loops and twists.
And he’d given her exactly that.
Lucas apparently liked to live on the edge.
Willa laughed over her shoulder at him from where she sat in the front section. He rewarded her with a brilliant grin. With his dark hair tucked beneath a vintage World War Two aviator cap, he looked even more dashing and dangerous than he did out in a pirogue.
Then her heart dropped to her shaky feet as Lucas tilted the plane into a quick spin, setting it right before she had time to be scared. Willa screamed, both delighted and relieved, as he did what he had earlier explained as a P turn, taking her right over Bayou le Jardin and the surrounding swamps and woods.
“It’s a tricky maneuver, because the plane can stall out and you’re flying about one hundred feet above the earth. You have to concentrate and have good coordination. But don’t worry. I’ve done about a thousand or so such turns and I had to do about a third of those in flight school just to get my license.”
She’d believed him when he’d told her this inside the hangar, and she believed him now. And she felt completely safe in his capable hands.
Which was amazing.
Willa knew she’d never been one to take chances. She liked everything laid out in an orderly, chronological fashion. Perhaps she’d learned that trait from her precise, carefully in-control mother. Candace didn’t make a move unless it was completely calculated. And each move had been one step up the social ladder, one more planned achievement for her mother to celebrate.
Yes, Willa had learned from the best. She’d mapped out her career as a model, grim determination making her want to become the best, to show her parents she could, for one thing, and to prove to herself that she could be self-sufficient, for another.
But in all those years of working and traveling and setting almost unreachable goals for herself, she’d never once felt like this.
Only Lucas could make her feel this way—as if each step she took was like jumping off a cliff into clear blue waters. Jumping without a parachute.
A leap of faith.
Get your head out of the clouds, Willa, she told herself as Lucas banked the purring yellow plane and brought it down for the landing. She reminded herself she’d be leaving here soon; she’d be back in New York, back to globetrotting and working long, grueling hours in what most thought was a very lucrative, glamorous job. Her work was that and more, but was it still enough? And did she have enough time to stop and enjoy living? She was the only one who could find the answers to those questions.
But being with Lucas was making her see her life in a whole different light. And from a very different view.
As her heart settled to a steady rhythm, Willa looked at the sky, of which she’d just so daringly been a part.
And suddenly, she wanted to live. Very much so.
She just didn’t know how she was ever going to face all the turmoil in her life in order to be able to do that, at long last.
About an hour later they pulled into the long drive leading to the back gardens of the mansion. After parking the Jeep, Lucas came around to Willa’s side to open the door, then leaned in through the open window, his face inches from hers. “What can you imagine with me, then?”
She hadn’t said much on the short drive home. He wondered if she was having second thoughts about hanging with him. Maybe he’d scared her off before he’d even had a chance with her.
She blinked. “What?”
“You’ve been so quiet since we came back down to earth,” he said, his need to get inside her head flaring with a liquid warmth. “Earlier, you said you couldn’t imagine being bored with me. So what are you imagining right now, chère?”
Her eyes turned a sparkling blue, as pure and wide as the Louisiana sky over their heads. Her luscious mouth parted as she took a quick breath. Then she spoke. “I imagine being with you will always be like a wild airplane ride, with lots of loops and free falls.”
He lowered his head just a notch. “And that’s a bad thing?”
“No, no.” She held his gaze, then placed a hand on his arm. “It’s just that…Lucas, I came here to work through some things in my life, to make some decisions about my future—”
“A future that doesn’t include any heavy commitments and any flighty flings with a poor Cajun boy?”
She shook her head. “A future that is very unsure right now. It wouldn’t be fair to drag you into my problems.”
“If you’re talking about finding your birth mother—”
“It’s more than that. I’ve just got a lot to deal with and not much time to get it all figured out.”
“So I don’t fit into the equation?”
“I don’t want to fit you into the equation. I hope you understand. It wouldn’t be right between us, it wouldn’t be fair to you.”
He leaned closer. He wanted to kiss her bad, but instinct told him that wasn’t such a good idea when she was giving him the proverbial brush-off. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that—unless of course, I’m reading all the signs wrong and you’re really not as madly in love with me as I am with you.”
She reached up then, to touch a hand to his face, to run a slender, polished nail through his wind-tossed hair. “Lorna told me you fall in love very easily.”
He grabbed her hand, brought it to his lips. “My sister should mind her own business. Just because she’s finally found her soul mate, she thinks she’s the local authority on the rest of this miserable lot.”
“She cares about you and she worries about you.”
He kissed her fingers one by one and enjoyed the way she blushed, the way she seemed to like his touch. “I can take care of myself. Been doing it for years.”
“Can you?” Willa watched as he touched her fingers to his mouth, her eyelashes fluttering softly against her cheeks before she looked into his eyes. Lucas saw the attraction jolt through her as it had pushed through him.
Okay, she did have a point. He was losing control. This could turn out to be more dangerous than any of the other stunts he’d tried.
“I used to think I could handle anything,” he admitted as he held her hand against his lips. “But it’s different with you. I think…I think I’m scared of you, certainly of what you do to me.”
She touched her forehead to his. “Oh, Lucas, I don’t think you’re afraid of anything. I just think you need to know…you need to be warned…I’m not right for you.”
Abruptly, he let go of her hand and backed away. “Then maybe I should be scared. At least, that’s what you’re trying to tell me.” Irritated, he opened the door and tugged her out of the Jeep and right into his waiting arms. “Am I right? Are you deliberately trying to scare me away, Willa?”
He saw the answer in the blue of her eyes. And he also saw the contradiction. She was trying to deny her feelings toward him. Lucas took that as a personal challenge to win her over.
“Answer the question, chère,” he said, his voice low.
She looked down, her expression full of regret. “Yes, I guess I am. For your own good, Lucas.”
The anger flared deep inside him, but he tried to hide it as he shifted her closer in his arms. “I really wish everyone would quit telling me what’s for my own good.”
“Look, I didn’t mean to make you mad. It’s just that—”
He didn’t let her finish that sentence. He couldn’t bear to hear the words. Instead, he gently nudged her against the Jeep so he could wrap his arms around her. Then he kissed her with all the pent-up frustration and long-held need that was raging inside his heart.
With the first touch of their lips, however, his rage turned to relief. She was sweet, soft, yielding, promising. She filled that empty place in his soul, the place he only brought out whenever he visited his lost, forlorn garden. The place he’d often prayed would be healed.
Willa was like that prayer being answered at long last.
When he lifted his head, he couldn’t take his eyes away from her. He could tell the kiss had affected her, too. It was there in the bright hope of her eyes, there in the sweet innocent flush of her skin, there in the soft sigh of her breath on his cheek. She might be able to deny her feelings, but she could never again deny the attraction between them.
Their kiss had pretty much made that a certainty and a fact.
But kisses aside, they had a lot of ground to cover before this was settled between them.
“Je regrette—I’m sorry,” he told her in a whisper. “It’s just that…I really needed to do that. For my own good.”
