Her Mile High Mates [The Hot Millionaires #4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Zara Chase

  “In retrospect, she probably did. She mentioned that she’d met one of the guards in the bar.”

  “What good would that do her?” Fabia asked, sighing with a combination of frustration and annoyance at Sonia’s naiveté. “Was she hoping for a written confession?”

  Both men shrugged. “We left for Seville just after that and—”

  “Just a moment,” Fabia said, glaring at first Peyton and then Clyde. “You said Sonia overheard you talking on your cell about the Russian scam here. Why would you have been doing that?”

  An elongated pause ensued. Fabia continued to glower at them as an unspoken communication appeared to flash between them. It was Peyton who spoke.

  “Because we’re not just flying instructors,” he said.

  Chapter Seven

  “Then what are you?”

  Peyton hesitated. He absolutely shouldn’t be talking about this. But he already knew that he would—to hell with the rules of confidentiality. He’d tell her enough to dissuade her from pursuing the Russian angle. No way in the world would he let Fabia run headlong into danger in the way that Sonia obviously had. His conscience wouldn’t allow it.

  Nor would his heart.

  He’d only known Fabia for a day, but she’d affected him profoundly in a way that no other woman ever had. Sure, he’d wanted to fuck her, but he’d wanted a hell of a lot more than that, and still did. All these years, he’d been skillfully avoiding relationships. Now he desperately wanted to be a part of one. The stifling feeling he usually felt when a woman got too close didn’t put in an appearance, which told him all he needed to know. Fabia Brook was a tantalizing enigma, and he wasn’t about to let her slip away from him anytime soon. But she wasn’t the type to be satisfied with trite explanations and half-truths. Now that he’d finally found her, he wasn’t prepared to insult her intelligence and risk losing her again.

  He glanced at Clyde. He was looking at Fabia with a combination of concern and protectiveness written all over his face. Unless Peyton missed his guess, he felt exactly the same way about her, which made up his mind for him.

  “It’s kinda complicated,” he said, still playing for time.

  She folded her arms beneath her breasts, her features arranged into a mask of firm determination. “In your own time.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Peyton exhaled a long breath. “I’ll tell you what I can, but it won’t be everything.”

  “You’re here to sort out the Russians.” She quirked a brow. “I thought your explanation for how you two teamed up was a bit trite, but surely—”

  “Tell her,” Clyde said. “After what she’s been through she deserves to know, and I reckon we can trust her.”

  “You can. You absolutely can. I don’t care about renegade Russians. I just want to find my sister.”

  “Clyde and I were both in the military. Him in the UK and me in the States. We got selected for special duties that involved both nations. Secret stuff that required our flying skills and balls of steel—”

  “He doesn’t do modesty,” Clyde said in an obvious attempt to lighten the mood.

  “What we did then isn’t germane to this situation. It’s just background.”

  “It’s how you really met?”

  “Right. When we left the service, we did find this place and decide to team up and give it a go. We’d done more than our share of the James Bond stuff and just wanted an easy life.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “Interpol decided we might be useful folks to have on the payroll.”

  Fabia looked sceptical. “They just happened to know where you were at a time when they needed you?”

  “You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave, to quote a phrase,” Clyde said, grinning.

  “We did a few little jobs for them in the region, nothing particularly taxing,” Peyton said, topping up their glasses again. “Then they came to us about three months ago with the story of Asimov. They’ve decided to go after him big time—”

  “So it’s not the Spaniards who want him?”

  “They do, because they’ll be able to confiscate his property, but Interpol want him for a whole raft of reasons. They’re hoping that he’ll give up the really big guns—nasty people who are spreading their ill-gotten gains worldwide—in exchange for a lighter sentence.” Peyton shrugged. “Can’t see it myself, but I just do as I’m told.”

  “When it suits him.”

  “Interpol’s responsible for organized crime when it crosses international borders, and they want this guy badly.”

  “If he’s so well protected, how can you help?”

  “We figured out that David Field had to be involved. From what we heard at the monthly meetings, it didn’t take us long to finger the other people he’d dragged into it.”

  Fabia frowned. “So let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’re gonna put pressure on Field to give Asimov up.”

  “Yep. We figure there’s got to be a shed load of dirty money coming through the casino soon.”

  “We reckon it’ll be during the gala on Friday,” Clyde put in.

  “If we know in advance, the powers that be can swoop.”

  “Would Field actually know in advance?”

  “He would have to. He has total control over this place, remember.”

  Fabia paled. “And Sonia’s put herself in the middle of all this?”

  “I sure as hell hope not,” Peyton said. “But I can’t think of any other reason why she’d just up sticks and disappear like that.”

  “We have to get inside that house you call the Kremlin.” Fabia, clearly agitated, stood up and paced. “I know she’s still alive. They must be holding her in there.”

  Peyton and Clyde shared a glance. “Even if they are, we’d never get past the gates.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “Show her,” Clyde said. “I’ll stay here and finish cooking dinner.”

  Peyton pressed a button on an intercom and spoke to someone in the hangar.

  “Push out Oscar Bravo,” he said abruptly.

  “Will do,” said a disembodied voice.

  “Come on.” Peyton reached for Fabia’s hand and headed for the door.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To take an aerial look at the Kremlin. Then perhaps you’ll believe me.”

  “Er, would this be a good time to tell you that I hate flying?”

  Peyton grinned. “Baby, you’ve never flown with me.”

  By the time they reached the doors to the hangar, a helicopter was waiting for them on the runway. Peyton did his external checks quickly and then helped Fabia into the cockpit.

  “Been in one of these things before?”

  “Never had the…er, pleasure,” she said, trembling.

  “Don’t worry, you’re in good hands. Just put your foot on the skid and pull yourself up.”

  She managed it easily. Peyton got into the left-hand seat and handed her a pair of headphones with a microphone attached.

  “Put these on,” he said. “This thing’ll be pretty noisy when I switch the engine on.”

  She donned the headphones, and Peyton did the same with his, adjusting her microphone so that it was at the right angle in front of her mouth.

  “All right? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, fine. What’s this thing?” She pointed to the cyclic. She’d had to place one leg on either side of it in order to get comfortable.

  “Dual controls,” he said, grinning. “You’ll enjoy it when I start up. It’ll vibrate between your legs.”

  “I’m not that desperate.”

  “I should hope not, after Clyde just fucked you senseless in the shower. His ego would never recover.”

  “Clyde’s kinda cute,” she said, flashing a saucy grin.

  Peyton was pleased that she’d stopped thinking about her sister, or her fear of flying, for long enough to flirt with him.

  “Yeah, that’s what he’s always telling me.” Peyton
chuckled. “And himself.” He did his final checks, literally on autopilot. “Like being fucked by Clyde, did you?”

  “As you Yanks would say, it was awesome.”

  “Glad to hear it, ’cos you ain’t seen nothing yet.” He winked at her. “Ready to go?”

  She shuddered. “As I’ll ever be.”

  Peyton started up and the rotor swirled slowly into life, quickly picking up speed. Peyton increased the power and checked there was no other traffic in sight. It was an instinctive reaction. He knew there was nothing else around because they were the only game in town. With no tower to clear his takeoff with, Peyton smoothly lifted the chopper off the ground, tilting the cockpit toward the ground as they ascended.

  “Wow!”

  “That good, eh?”

  Fabia smiled. “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, but I think I left my stomach on the floor.”

  “Most people say that first time up. You’ll get used to it.”

  “You make it sound as though I’ll be doing this again.”

  “I hope you will.”

  “You don’t have to be nice to me just because you’ve told me your secret. I promise not to tell.”

  “I know you won’t.” Peyton made a ninety-degree turn, taking them out over the sea. “Can’t I be nice to you just because I want to?”

  She chuckled. “You’re in control of this damned bubble, so all the time we’re up here, you can do whatever you like.”

  “That’s what I like to hear. A little subservience.”

  “Make the most of it.”

  “That would be, make the most if it, Master.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Enjoying the cyclic?”

  “The what? Oh, yes I…Wow, will you look at that?”

  It took a moment for Peyton to realize what she meant. He did this so often that he hardly noticed the Mediterranean spread beneath them, sparkling like a torpid liquid blanket. The setting sun cast light and shadow on its surface, reflecting a dozen different shades of turquoise. It was beautiful. So was the expression on Fabia’s face as she peered down at it with delight. It was one of the reasons that he’d taken this detour. He wanted her to relax and appreciate the view, and she was certainly doing that.

  “It’s so lovely,” she said wistfully. “Makes you feel very small and insignificant.”

  “There’s nothing insignificant about you, babe.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  He placed one hand on her thigh and left it there, rubbing his palm across the taut surface, feeling an urgent need to express himself in a more direct way. It was important that she understood she wasn’t in this thing alone anymore. If finding her sister was what it would take to give her peace of mind then that’s what he and Clyde would do. If it compromised their orders from Interpol, then tough. For once, they would put personal considerations ahead of duty.

  “This is really lovely, Peyton.”

  “Yeah, it’s a good time of day to take a look.” He paused. “Not frightened anymore?”

  “Strangely enough, no. I can see what you’re doing, so I guess that makes a difference.”

  “It ought to. I’ve been doing this a long time. Never lost a craft yet.”

  “Shouldn’t we be looking at that Kremlin place rather than sightseeing?” she asked, sounding as though she didn’t particularly want to cut the trip short.

  “We’ll fly back in over it, but if we’d headed that way directly, it would have looked suspicious.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Peyton flew them down to Alicante and circled the marina, careful to keep out of controlled airspace. Not a problem, since he was flying so low, but Alicante Airport was pretty busy this time of year, and he didn’t want to drop himself in it with the authorities. He radioed the tower as a courtesy to let them know he was in the vicinity.

  “I can read the road signs, you’re flying so low,” she said.

  Peyton laughed. “Yeah, more than one pilot has prevented himself from getting lost by doing the same thing.”

  “You’re joking!”

  “Afraid not. It’s one of the advantages that helicopters have over fixed wing.” He turned in a tight circle. “Ready to go back?”

  “If we must.”

  “I’ll go as low and as slow over the Kremlin as I can,” he said as they approached that building, “but I can only go over once, so be ready.”

  She nodded. “I am. Let’s do it.”

  Fabia had been enchanted by the sightseeing. That much had been obvious by her relaxed expression and childish pleasure at flying over territory she knew so well. Now the tension was back in her expression. She fisted her hands in her lap, looking nervous and on edge.

  “Don’t worry,” he said as they approached. “We’ve made a point of flying over here a lot just so they don’t think it’s odd.”

  “It isn’t that.” She lifted her shoulders, her voice tinny through the microphone. “It’s just that I could be looking down on Sonia but can’t do anything to help her. It’s so bloody frustrating.”

  Peyton thought that if Sonia had gone into that place, she would be beyond help, but now wasn’t the time to say so.

  “We’re here. What do you think?”

  Peyton slowed to just above stalling speed and dropped altitude.

  “Blimey! It’s huge.”

  “It’s also a fortress. Those gates are electronically controlled, the walls are too high to scale, and you can’t approach it from the sea. As you can see, the cliff is high and sheer. Even an experienced rock climber couldn’t get up there undetected.”

  “What are those buildings in the grounds?”

  “We think they’re for the guards. They patrol twenty-four/seven. There are also dogs and sophisticated alarms.”

  “Only someone with a lot to hide would need that sort of security.”

  “Precisely.”

  Peyton had lingered for longer than he’d intended. He increased speed and altitude and headed back to the hangar. Fabia didn’t speak again until they were back on the ground and Peyton cut the engine. He climbed out of the chopper and walked around to help her down, wondering if he’d convinced her to back off from Asimov.

  “Keep your head low,” he said. “The rotor’s still turning.”

  Once they were clear of the machine and Peyton’s mechanic stepped up to manoeuvre it back into the hangar, Fabia finally spoke.

  “I see what you mean about it being impregnable,” she said.

  “Fabia, I—”

  “Don’t! I know what you’re going to say, but don’t,” she said, anguished. “You think if Sonia went in there, she won’t be coming out, but you don’t know that for sure. If she hit it off with one of the guards, perhaps—”

  “I doubt it, babe.” He took her hand as they took the steps back to the loft. “Keeping someone on the premises who isn’t supposed to be there would get the guard into deep shit. He wouldn’t risk it.”

  Clyde greeted them when they returned to the loft. So did an appetising smell.

  “Enjoy the ride?” he asked Fabia.

  “Yes, it was quite an experience, but I didn’t like what I saw of the Kremlin. You’re right,” she said, sighing. “There’s no way Sonia could have gotten in there.”

  “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “So if she isn’t in there, where the hell is she?”

  Chapter Eight

  “I can’t believe how hungry I am,” Fabia said, tucking into Clyde’s spicy shrimp curry. “This is really good.”

  Clyde winked at her while Peyton refilled her glass. “Glad you like it.”

  “Any ideas what I should do about Sonia now?”

  Fabia pushed away her empty plate, still surprised that she could eat so much when her sister was missing. Up until now, food had stuck in her throat and she’d had to force herself to eat enough to keep her body going. Perhaps it was the relief of a burden shared. She glanced first at Peyton, his handsome f
ace partly in shadow as he flashed a raffish grin that brought to mind their activities in the hot tub the previous night. He was ethical and reliable, she already knew that much about him. More than that, just looking at him turned her on. Meeting his hungry gaze and watching desire swirling in the depths of his incredible eyes made her hot as hell.

  She absolutely shouldn’t be thinking about sex at a time like this. Disgusted with herself, she glanced away, only for her eyes to clash with Clyde’s. When she saw an identical message in his expression to that which Peyton was making no effort to conceal, she knew she was fighting a losing battle. Especially since she could no longer fool herself into pretending indifference. She wanted them both as much as they seemed to want her, and she reckoned they knew it. Her pussy clenched as she held Clyde’s magnetic gaze, and she recalled the feel of his long cock buried deep inside her in that shower. This was so not a good idea.

  Think about Sonia.

  She was, but it didn’t help. She still felt as horny as hell. Desperately grateful to no longer be floundering alone in the dark with no clear purpose, she now also needed to feel cherished and protected. It was a weakness she could ill afford to indulge, but the messages her body was sending out appeared stronger than the power of positive thinking and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.

  “Have you reported her missing to the guardia?” Peyton asked, amusement in his tone, as though he’d read her thoughts.

  Fabia rolled her eyes. “Yes, but they won’t do anything. She’s an adult, and there’s no sign that she left against her will, so basically, they don’t want to know.”

  “Yeah, that figures.” Peyton stretched his arms above his head. “You working tomorrow?”

  “I have a couple of lessons booked in the morning, but that’s it. I only get paid if there are clients, so I don’t have to hang about if there’s nothing to do.”

  “Stay here tonight, then.”

  She blinked in confusion. “Why?”

  Stupid question, Brook.

  Clyde grinned. “I can think of several reasons straight off.”

  “Me, too.” Peyton’s lazy, appreciative smile made her gut churn with desire. “But it would also be safer.”