by Caro Carson
“My assistant sent a floor plan.”
He slowed his strides for the woman by his side. He’d worn business attire, because he wouldn’t lose his composure as E.L. Taylor. He knew how to meet the expectations others had of him when he wore a suit and tie. Mallory was wearing a skirt and heels to match his business attire, because...
Because she was his friend. He hoped the journey from friends to lovers would be brief, because he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman in his life.
He paused outside the correct room. Mallory had her hand tucked in his elbow. She squeezed his arm. “He’s probably apprehensive about this meeting, too.”
For once, Mallory turned out to be wrong.
Owen was unabashedly glad Eli had come. Mallory stayed awhile, a star by his side, and then she stepped out. Eli shut the door after her and walked back to Owen. The time for real talk had come.
Looking down at the man in a wheelchair got to him. They’d been about the same height on the airstrip, two big men buckling into a tiny cockpit, oblivious to how they’d get back out.
“Owen. Let me say this. I appreciate your courtesy this morning, but I don’t know how you can even talk to me. The guilt is mine. I know it.”
“Whoa. Hold up. What are you guilty of?”
Eli gestured toward the wheelchair. “This. All of this.”
“Sit down, man.” Owen rolled his wheelchair over to a table.
Eli sat. Eye to eye, he saw that Owen was still the same formidable man who’d once pushed hard to make his crew team.
“You got me out of that cockpit alive. You swam me to safety. You may think it’s terrible that I’m sitting here, but it is the God’s honest truth that it’s a miracle I’m sitting here at all. You saved my life. You were a hero that night.”
Eli wasn’t impressed with that assessment. “I’m a good swimmer. I’m in shape. That doesn’t make me a hero.”
“No, it doesn’t. Look at Adrienne. That canoe-paddling angel is in her late seventies and barely five feet tall. She pulled us both to shore.”
“Exactly. That’s a hero. She had no quit in her. She could have called 911 and waited on the shore, and nobody would have thought poorly of her. She jumped in a damned canoe and tried to get to the plane before it sank, just in case anyone had survived.”
She’d refused Eli’s financial reward, too, saying she’d only been doing the right thing. He’d paid off her mortgage, anyway.
“One-hundred-percent agree,” Owen said. “But that’s you, too. You could have escaped from that cockpit and swum to shore, and nobody would have thought poorly of you. You didn’t do that.”
Eli took a slow breath, the same kind Mallory had taken so many times in difficult moments. Two peas in a pod. He needed to match her determination.
He gave voice to the worst truth. “You wouldn’t have been in the air in the first place if it weren’t for me. You only flew me because I’m E.L. Taylor.”
Owen laughed at that. “Sorry, I’m not a big fan. On the crew team, I didn’t even like you that much. You didn’t know who the heck I was that day, did you?”
It was not the response Eli had expected, but he rolled with it. “Actually, you did look vaguely familiar. That’s unusual. A thousand times, I don’t know the person who swears they know me. I looked you up in the yearbook, after. I remember you now. You were a sophomore when I was a senior.”
“Don’t worry about it. I couldn’t name the sophomores on the team when I was a senior, either. You didn’t make me fly you anywhere that day. I only flew you because I needed someone to cover the fuel costs. I wanted to log some more hours.”
Then it was Owen taking the big breath, bracing himself. “I was the pilot. I don’t think you really get what that means. It was on my shoulders to make the flight as safe as possible. Sometimes, it’s not possible, and then it’s still the pilot’s job to preserve life.”
“Your skill set us down in one piece, mostly. Thank you.”
“Your skill pulled me out of that wreckage. Thank you.”
They looked at each other a moment longer.
Owen shook his head. “Well, look at us, a couple of heroes sitting here at a table without a damned beer in sight.”
“I’ll bring the whiskey next time.”
“You do that. Seriously. This is far from over, and it’s been brutal, but I’m going to walk again.”
If sheer willpower could do it, Eli knew Owen would walk. If not, that wouldn’t stop him from having a good life.
Eli might even be able to help out in more ways than paying hospital bills. “It’s come to my attention that I have a bad habit of just dropping gifts on people whether they want them or not. While you’re working on your recovery, would you want to give a few top of the line kayaks a test run?” Eli barely hesitated. “With me? I need someone to race against.”
He didn’t make friends in his line of work. That didn’t mean he couldn’t make friends at all.
“Hell, yes.” Owen held out his hand.
Eli shook it, fully aware that a friendship was an incredible gift to receive in the face of a tragedy. “In that case, I look forward to giving you a new kayak for Christmas and then immediately kicking your ass in it.”
Owen laughed. “You can try. Merry Christmas.”
* * *
The private plane was posh.
Mallory could appreciate it, but she couldn’t enjoy it. Not with Eli sitting next to her silently, concentrating deeply on something she wasn’t part of. The private jet seats were full-size recliners, so being next to him wasn’t as close as she wished it were.
He’d tossed his suit jacket aside and sat, looking out the window, his chin resting on his fist, Rodin’s The Thinker—or just a man who’d done a lot this week to think about.
“How are you doing?” she asked in her most gentle, most positive tone, the one she’d used with the people whose bodies were so very sick and in need of comfort. She craned her neck a little bit, trying to see what had him so entranced.
Eli dropped his hand and looked her. Blue skies reflected in his blue eyes. “It’s beautiful out there. This isn’t as comfortable as a tree branch, but you could sit with me, and we’d be able to see everything together.”
He really was okay. She’d thought so, but it was good to know he thought so, too. Because if everything else was good, there was one thing that could be better.
Once she was in his lap, she told herself to take a deep breath—and went for it. “Excuse me, Mr. Taylor?”
That took his eyes off the view. He looked at her with one eyebrow raised. “Yes, Miss Ames?”
Oh, he did deliciously bossy so well.
“I would like to review my policy on kisses.”
That made him set his hands on her waist. “Please do.”
She fiddled with his loosened necktie for a moment. “I want to redefine a real kiss, because as you know, that’s the only kind I allow.”
He settled back in the seat, a powerful man at leisure, but under her hands, she could feel the rise and fall of his chest. Under her thighs, she could feel the tension in his.
“From now on, the criteria is simple. I have to want to kiss the person badly, and he has to want to kiss me, too. I have been dying to kiss Eli for days. He bought me a hundred-dollar cup of hot chocolate and told me I met all his standards.”
“I told you that you exceeded them.”
In his voice, she heard everything she could have wanted to hear. Warmth, admiration, affection—desire. This was going to be wonderful. He wanted her as much as she wanted him.
She ran one finger over his shoulder, over the polished cotton of his dress shirt. “Eli kissed me only once, but it was the kiss of a lifetime. I’m not sure what happened, but he hasn’t tried to kiss me again. I’m going to have clarify that all kisses from him
qualify as real and are quite welcome. But in the meantime, while we’re on the plane, I wondered if you, Mr. Taylor, would like to kiss me? Because I don’t really care which name you go by. You are always you, and I would like to kiss you, oh, so badly.”
“Ms. Ames. Mallory. From now on, and I do mean for the rest of my life, I’m Eli Taylor. Both names. And all of me would very much like to kiss all of you. But I’ll start with your perfect mouth.”
She could hardly kiss because she could hardly breathe, she wanted this so badly. Their lips met, softly. Pulled away again, slowly. She kissed his lower lip, which had smiled under her thumb, and she kissed the corner of his mouth, which was far too busy returning her kisses to smile at the moment.
He tapped the center of her upper lip with his finger, then kissed her there reverently. Then her cheeks, her eyelashes.
With a little breath, she turned so she would be chest to chest with him, one bent leg against his hard stomach, which was only possible to do if she let her pencil skirt ride up very high. Her breath was all shivery as she ran her fingertips down the smooth shirt that hid his hard chest from her view—for now.
He placed one hand on the side of her neck, his thumb on her jaw, and held her head steady as he stared her down, not angrily—oh, no—but seriously. His other hand drifted over her hip and her bunched-up skirt to slide over her backside, finding mostly bare skin and a little bit of lace.
The breath left his body. The fire burned in his eyes. He was putty in her hands, a glowering, gorgeous man at her mercy.
“Please tell me, Eli Taylor, that the pilots don’t leave that cockpit.”
“They don’t.”
“Please tell me that we aren’t landing soon while you take me wherever it is we’re spending the night.”
It seemed to take him a great deal of concentration to look at his wristwatch. “We have at least two hours.”
“In that case, this would be the ideal time and the most elegant place with the most beautiful view for us to stop talking like lovers and actually become lovers.”
Chapter Twenty
Final Grade: A+
—Senior Year Project, Mallory Ames
She’d never seen Eli so anxious.
She’d expected him to be very, very relaxed after welcoming her to the Mile High Club, but instead he was at the mirror over the sink in the jet’s spacious bathroom, fixing his hair and straightening his tie. Then he turned around and eyed her critically, head to toe.
“Um...” He looked at her updo. “Maybe you better re-twist that bun. Your lips are a little puffy. I don’t suppose we can do anything about that.”
“Eli. Why are you so worried about our appearance?”
He cleared his throat and looked a little sheepish. “It’s Christmas Eve. This is supposed to be your Christmas present.”
“I loved it. Can I have another?”
He tapped her on the nose. “You’ll notice we’ve been in the air awhile—or maybe you were too busy to notice—but we’ve been heading north this entire time. You were looking for a place to stay for your winter break, and I thought you might want to spend your time off with your grandpa. In Ohio.”
“Grandpa? We’re going to land in Ohio?” She threw her arms around Eli and kissed his cheeks soundly, feeling more like a little girl and less like the femme fatale she’d just so successfully been.
Eli was kind of holding her off, like she was an exuberant, large puppy. “Yes. He’s expecting us. I just had no idea I’d be meeting him after so thoroughly messing up his granddaughter’s hair. And makeup. And clothes.” He looked chagrined. “This is not a good look. I mean, this is a fantastic look, but it’s not a good look for Grandpa. I’d like to meet him, if that’s okay with you. I have to leave tomorrow, Christmas night. I always line up business in Asia over the holidays, but this will be the last year for that. Christmas should be family time, now that I have a family again. But you have a family, so I thought you’d like to be with them.”
He sounded nervous. Mallory was stunned, but this was as close to babbling as she’d bet E.L. Taylor could get.
“I can send the jet to bring you back to me on January sixth. I know that’s a long way away, and I only asked you to pack an overnight bag for this trip. I thought I was being clever that way, to get you to pack your personal makeup and stuff, but I know you need more clothes and coats for a couple of weeks in Ohio. I’m not trying to dump a big gift or a lot of money on you without checking with you first, but in this situation, it wouldn’t be much of a gift if I sent you somewhere with only one change of clothes.”
He was nervous. It was unbearably sweet.
“There are suitcases on board, ready for you. Nothing crazy, just two weeks’ worth of clothes and shoes and whatever, just to get you by. I kept my word and didn’t go into your bedroom, but I sent the housekeeper in to get some clothing sizes for my assistant. Anything that doesn’t fit or that you don’t like you can get rid of. Maybe your sister-in-law would like your hand-me-downs.”
“Are you done?” Mallory asked.
“Yes.”
She launched herself at him and kissed him over and over. “You’re taking me to see my grandpa for Christmas. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“If that’s too expensive, I have another gift that didn’t cost me any cash.” Eli reached into a pocket of the coat he’d hung on the door and pulled out a blue mitten. “The boys of Kappa Lambda were very cooperative when I stopped by their party that night.”
She pressed the mitten to her heart. “I can’t believe it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what? This is a wonderful gift. It cost you more than money. You spent your time and—and I’d bet your swagger and everything else you have that isn’t money to get this back for me.”
“I’m sorry because I shouldn’t have kept it so long. It was all I had of you for a little while. It’s been my lucky charm. It worked for this flight, didn’t it?”
He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her passionately, because her lips couldn’t look less kissed, anyway.
* * *
It was Epiphany, January sixth, and the last of the Yule log was being burned tonight to officially end the holiday season.
Tiny tots ran wild around the park, unable to contain themselves while waiting for the Three Wise Men to arrive with a real camel and bags of candy.
Mallory could hardly wait to see Eli. The last time she’d seen Eli had been Christmas Day. He’d given her one more gift: he’d set up indefinite payment for her grandfather’s assisted-living apartment. Eli had asked her grandfather’s permission to do so. Grandpa had insisted that he had funds to last through September, so it wasn’t necessary. He’d worry about September when September came. Eli had explained that Mallory would be at ease if she knew her grandfather wouldn’t have to move from a place where he’d made so many friends. It wasn’t charity for Grandpa, but a gift to make Mallory happy. That had been a winning argument. E.L. Taylor was a very good negotiator.
After her grandfather had fallen asleep in his recliner during the football game on TV, Mallory had been truly sorry to whisper to Eli that she had nothing to give to him.
Eli had winked. “You could give me an interesting new start-up to invest in.”
They snuck out to have a second round of pumpkin pie in the dining room, and she’d pitched her caregiver-client matchmaker concept. She’d asked him for twenty-thousand dollars in return for a twenty percent share of her company. Eli had countered with twenty grand for thirty percent. They’d shaken hands on twenty-five percent.
Eli had needed to leave for Japan. Mallory had ridden with him to the airport. Limousines were private enough for making love, she’d learned. If her lips had been a little puffy and her hair had been a little messy when the limo returned her to her grandfather’s apartment, Grandpa had been kind enoug
h not to say anything. He’d just patted her hand and said her new fellow seemed to be smart and respectful. He approved.
Her father hadn’t quite believed she was dating somebody as rich as her brother kept claiming E.L. Taylor was, despite the fact that she and Eli had talked every day by phone. Her brother had been even less polite to her than usual, because jealousy didn’t become anybody. Her sister-in-law, however, had swallowed her pride and graciously accepted the cast-offs from Mallory’s new wardrobe.
Mallory was glad to be back in Texas, gladder still when the chauffeur took her from the tarmac to the town park. “Mr. Taylor said you would know where to meet him.”
There could only be one place Eli was waiting. She headed for the bonfire at a brisk walk, taking confident strides. She skipped the crowd and headed for the darker side of the sandpit. When she caught sight of Eli, she ran.
He scooped her up and spun her around under the starry sky.
“I missed you,” she said between kisses. “Take me home and make love to me. Hurry, or we might get caught for public indecency.”
“I don’t care where we go, as long as I can throw my wish first.” Eli pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. He held up the pine cone that was attached to it by a ribbon. “Aerodynamics.”
Eli threw the wish up in the air, straight up toward the stars. It came fluttering down, spinning in a little helicopter motion as the pine cone pulled it down to earth. He caught it and held it out to Mallory.
“You’re supposed to throw it onto the Yule log,” she said.
“You need to read it first, or it won’t come true. I read your note before you threw it one month ago, and it came true. E.L. Taylor likes you.”
Mallory unfolded the wish.
I hope Mallory Ames will like me.
“Oh, Eli. I like you. So much more than that.”
Eli kissed her, because he could. Because he needed to kiss her, to hug her and hold her hand, to live the rest of his life with her touch.