by Lisa Childs
“And when he figures out you’ve duped him,” Grant continued his lecture, “it’s going to be a hell of a problem. Not only will we lose him as a client, but he might be pissed enough to sue us.”
She shook her head. “Sue us? How? He’ll make himself look like such a chauvinist pig if he publicly objects to a woman pilot.”
“I really think you overreacted about that whole thing,” Grant said. “It didn’t sound like he doesn’t think women can fly. It sounded more like he didn’t want to have to deal with another female.” He wriggled his brows at her. “And I can totally relate to that. I had made an exception for you—until your recent wacko behavior.”
She flipped him off.
“Exactly.”
Had that been Teo’s issue? He seemed to dread dealing with his sister. And he’d turned to a dating service because the women he’d dated on his own hadn’t been honest with him.
A twinge of guilt struck her heart so hard that she sucked in a breath over the stabbing pain. She should have been honest with him from the start instead of calling herself Savannah. What the hell had she been thinking?
She needed to be honest with him now. “You’re right,” she agreed with her brother.
Grant opened his mouth wide as if totally shocked that she’d conceded. “What?” he asked. “I don’t understand. You’re actually admitting I’m right about something.” Then he tensed and narrowed his eyes, staring at her with suspicion. “What exactly are you saying that I’m right about?”
She drew in a deep, steadying breath. “That I need to tell him the truth.”
Moving surprisingly fast for such a big man, Grant jumped up from his chair. “Hell, no! You can’t do that!”
“You just told me to come clean,” she reminded him.
“That was before it occurred to me that he might sue us,” he said. “No. It’s better that he never learns that you’ve been the one actually flying him.”
She touched her chafed face. “You expect me to wear that beard forever?”
“No,” he said. “I expect you to stop flying him.”
Another twinge—of panic—struck her heart. Even though they barely spoke, she had come to enjoy those flights, knowing where he was going—what he was doing. It made her feel close to him albeit not as close as she would like to be.
Oh, God, she’d become a stalker. She wasn’t much better than those other women he’d regretted dating—the women who’d wanted him for his money or for connections he’d made through his business. He would probably think her motives were the same.
When she’d only been trying to protect herself and her business...
She nodded in reluctant agreement. “Yes, you better assign another pilot for his flights. Or better yet, you should fly him yourself.”
Grant chuckled. “He likes having a former fighter pilot fly him around. That’s not me.”
Blair wasn’t so sure. Five years older than she was, her brother had joined the navy first, but his service was even more top secret than hers had been. He always shrugged off questions about it and acted as though he’d been drummed out. But she wondered if he still took missions from time to time since he often disappeared without ever saying where he’d been. When she’d been serving, too many people had asked her about him...with a mixture of amusement and awe.
“Whatever,” she said, knowing that probing Grant for more information got her nowhere. “It just can’t be me.”
She couldn’t fly Teo anymore. But could she see him again as Savannah? Because she already missed him...missed being in his arms, missed the passion that always burned so hot between them. She had never felt that intensity or that ecstasy with anyone else. While she agreed that she should give up flying Teo, she didn’t think she could give up sex with Teo...not when it was the best she’d ever had.
Not when he was the best lover she’d ever had. Maybe Miranda had actually found her soul mate for her—her sexual soul mate.
* * *
“I’ve had the best,” Teo said. “And I won’t settle for less than that now—from anyone.” He wasn’t talking about Savannah at the moment, but he was thinking about her. Always. He forced his mind to stay on task instead of straying to more thoughts of her...naked, moving over him...
He cleared his throat and continued, “I want Bill flying this plane. No one else.”
“Bill?” The pilot turned around in the seat, his brow furrowed with confusion. “Who’s Bill?”
“You know Bill,” the male attendant told him. “You know...”
The pilot just shrugged. “I just know that Grant told me I was taking over these flights.”
“What about Bill?”
“I don’t know who—”
“Bill is busy,” Jean-Claude interjected.
Teo narrowed his eyes and studied the young man’s face. Was he lying?
“Family issues,” he continued.
“So he’ll be back?”
One flight he could handle. Maybe...
Maybe he needed to make this permanent though—hire Bill away from Private Flights to become his personal pilot. He’d come to rely on Bill’s smooth flying. It was the one thing that eased the tension that gripped him whenever he wasn’t with Savannah.
Savannah eased his tension more than anyone else ever had. Unfortunately she also created it, too. Just thinking about her made his body ache with need. It wasn’t even desire anymore. It had gone beyond that—into dangerous territory.
He didn’t like it—didn’t like not being in control. He couldn’t reach Savannah without going through the damn dating service. And he couldn’t reach Bill to fly his damn plane without going through the charter company, either.
He needed to take back control of his life.
“Do you want me to fly you or not?” the new pilot asked impatiently.
Teo sighed in resignation. “This flight.” He had a meeting in Paris that he couldn’t miss. But as he walked away from the cockpit to take his seat, he pulled out his cell phone and made a call.
“Private Flights,” a female voice answered.
And his pulse quickened. She sounded so much like Savannah...
So much so that he had to clear the desire from his voice before he could speak. “Uh, this is Matteo Rinaldi, I’d like to speak to the owner.”
“Uh, uh...” the woman stammered, then coughed. Instead of clearing her voice though, it sounded gruffer when she replied, “Mr. Snyder isn’t available right now. I can have him return your call.”
“What about the other owner?” he asked. “Blair Snyder?” Of course if she’d heard from her brother that he hadn’t wanted her flying him, she might not want to speak to him.
He’d been an idiot to want to avoid another female, and he’d probably come across as a real misogynist when he’d specifically requested a male pilot. But given how scrambled his brain and his heart was from Savannah, he didn’t regret his decision. He was drawn to strong women, and from what her brother had said about her, Blair Snyder sounded much stronger than most.
“Ms. Snyder is not available either,” the receptionist replied.
He uttered a groan of frustration as that feeling of being out of control intensified.
“How the hell do they run their damn company then if neither of them is ever available?” he asked. But then knowing the receptionist was not to blame, he added, “I’m sorry. I know it’s not your fault.” Any of it. She had nothing to do with his frustration; that was all Savannah’s fault. “Just please make sure one of them returns my call today.”
“Yes, sir.”
That tone, that sassy tone...
His skin tingled in reaction to whom she reminded him of. She sounded so much like Savannah that he began to ask her name. But before he could finish his question, the line disconnected. It might have been that the plane was readyi
ng for takeoff and the connection was lost, or she might have hung up on him, thinking their conversation had ended.
Or, just like Savannah, she might have been avoiding a question she didn’t want to answer. He preferred the way Savannah had avoided answering his questions to having someone hang up on him, though.
How she’d driven him completely out of control and out of his damn mind. He could have talked to her on the way back from the fashion show, but she’d teased him...with her bare skin...
And he’d had to do the same to her—drive her out of her mind. But somehow, she always seemed more in control than he was. She always seemed to be able to handle how hot it got between them and still walk away unscathed.
He was the one who kept getting burned. And yet he was too fascinated to stay away from the flames. He just kept wanting more and more of her heat.
But he was starting to want more than that.
Like maybe her heart, too.
Or did that already belong to someone else?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BLAIR KNEW WHERE Teo would be...and not just because he’d left a message for her with the dating service. She knew because one of her pilots had flown him to Paris. He hadn’t been happy about that; she’d heard the frustration in his voice when he’d called Private Flights to complain.
She’d nearly blown it then. But she didn’t want him to learn the truth over the phone. She wanted to tell him in person. So she’d flown herself to Paris.
Flying, as always, had been easy for her despite a storm that had blown in just as she’d been landing. Walking across the hotel lobby to Le Bar where he’d gone for drinks was hard. Her legs trembled with each step.
Despite what her brother had said, she knew she needed to come clean. She wasn’t worried about Teo suing them. From what she knew of him, he was not a petty or vindictive man. He was too loyal for that, and he looked for that loyalty in others. So she was worried about him hating her.
Her heart pounded harder and faster with each step she took toward the bar, her heels clicking against the marble floor. If not for the music playing softly within the bar, he might have heard her coming. Maybe he had, because the moment she stepped inside the beautiful bar, with its glowing chandelier hanging from the coffered ceiling, he looked up—as if he’d been expecting her.
Had he known she was coming?
When Miranda had given her the message he’d left for her, Blair hadn’t even known that she was going to actually meet him. She’d actually told Miranda that she wasn’t going to, that she couldn’t.
But then she’d kept thinking about Teo, as she always did. And knowing that he was in Paris, one of her favorite cities, she’d had to come. She also hoped that she would come—the way only he had been able to make her come. So easily, so powerfully, so damn many times...
He jumped up from his chair and greeted her. “You’re here.”
She crossed the room to join him at a marble-topped table in the corner of the small bar. “I’m here.”
He reached out his hands but then, as if he thought better of it, he didn’t touch her. Instead he touched only the velvet chair as he pulled it out for her. “You’re here,” he murmured again as he sat down across from her.
“Is that okay?” she asked. Maybe Miranda had misled her; maybe he hadn’t actually wanted her to show up at all.
He sighed. “I never know with you.”
“You didn’t extend an invitation for me to join you if I was available?”
“Are you available?” he asked.
“I’m here.”
“But are you really available?” he asked. “Or is a husband the reason for your unwillingness to give me your last name and your phone number?”
She laughed at the thought, but the sound echoed hollowly off the coffered ceiling. “God, no,” she replied with a shudder. “I’m not married.”
He narrowed his brown eyes and skeptically studied her face.
“You should already know that,” she said. “Miranda makes it very clear that all the members of Liaisons International are unmarried.”
“What about attached?” he asked. “That wouldn’t be something she’d be able to learn from the public records she probably checks for marriage licenses. Are you living with someone? Involved?”
“No,” she said. But she suspected that she was lying now about the involved part. She was getting involved with him. Too involved.
He just stared at her, as if trying to see inside her. “I feel like I don’t know you at all.”
“I don’t know you, either,” she said.
He chuckled. “You know me very well. You’ve met my sister. My friends. I don’t even know if you have any family, any friends...”
“Miranda is my friend,” she said. “You know that. As for family...” She didn’t really count her mother, not with as seldom as they talked, and her father had been dead for a few years. “I have a brother.”
A brother who would be very pissed if he found out that she was dating their richest client. Actually, her friend wasn’t happy with her, either.
“You’re risking the reputation of my agency with your damn game,” Miranda had complained when she’d called her earlier. She wanted Blair to be honest with him. Maybe, like Grant, Miranda was worried about being sued.
A pang of guilt struck her over her petty thought about her childhood friend. Miranda cared more about her than she did her company. She wanted Blair to be honest because she was worried about her getting hurt.
“So tell me about your brother,” Teo implored her, and he seemed genuinely interested. Most of the men she’d dated in the past had only wanted to talk about themselves. She already knew Teo wasn’t like that, though. He was more like Grant.
She shrugged. “There’s not much I can tell you. He’s a pretty private guy.”
“Must run in the family,” he mused. “Maybe if I get you drunk, you’ll share all your secrets with me.”
“You can try,” she challenged him. Even though she rarely drank more than one cocktail or glass of wine, she could hold her liquor. Maybe it was a family trait, because Grant was known to have a hollow leg when it came to alcohol as well.
“Champagne cocktail?” he asked.
It was what the bar was known for, so she nodded.
Holding up his empty glass, he gestured at the bartender for two. Either the service was very good, or the bartender knew who Teo was because the drinks were delivered quickly.
“Merci,” she murmured in appreciation.
“Merci,” the bartender replied with a big smile of appreciation of his own—for her.
Her face flushed with embarrassment. After spending so many years in uniform, she wasn’t used to how men occasionally reacted to her when she wore street clothes—like the dress she currently had on.
“You look beautiful,” Teo said, “as always. Stunning actually.”
She wasn’t wearing one of Tony’s gorgeous designs. In fact, she’d only packed the dress because she could wad it up in her carry-on, and the stretchy fabric didn’t wrinkle. It did cling to her curves, though. “I figured you probably had an event here,” she said. “That’s why you wanted a date.”
He shook his head. “No event. Just a meeting earlier today.”
“Then why did you need a date?”
“I didn’t need a date,” he said.
“But you left the message...”
“For you,” he said. “I needed you.”
Her pulse quickened with excitement. Could he want her as much as she wanted him? Could he really need her, too?
He drew in a deep breath as if to steady himself. “I needed to share this city with you. Being alone in Paris is no fun.”
She’d always been content here on her own, sightseeing, stopping in cafés and bars, but that had been before she’d met him.
Now she wanted to share it with him, too.
“What are your plans for the evening then?” she asked. “Besides getting me drunk?”
He grinned but didn’t deny his plan. “I have a reservation at Le Cinq,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Soon...so getting you drunk with have to wait.”
Given the three-Michelin-star reputation of the restaurant, it wasn’t easy to get a reservation. She’d never managed one before, and she’d been eager to eat there. Until now.
Now she wasn’t sure she would be able to manage with her stomach already churning with nerves over her decision to tell him the truth. But the truth would have to wait, too, until they were alone and in private.
But hours later, after a delicious dinner and a carriage tour of the city, she didn’t want to make her confession. She didn’t even want to talk, like they had at dinner and during the carriage ride, of their favorite cities, favorite museums, favorite restaurants. She didn’t want to talk at all. Neither did Teo as he pulled her into his hotel suite at the Four Seasons George V and kicked the door shut behind them.
Then, finally, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders, she clung to him, pressing her body against his long, muscular one. His erection strained against his dress pants, rubbing against her lower abdomen.
A moan burned in her throat as the heat of passion streaked through her. She wanted him so badly.
No. She needed him. And that scared her as much as telling him the truth scared her. She didn’t want to need him, didn’t want him to become this obsession he was becoming for her. But at the moment, her need for him was greater than her fear, so she focused only on her need.
And on him...
She needed to be on him. She pushed against him, walking him backward until his knees struck the edge of the bed and he tumbled back onto the mattress. But he took her with him as he held her tightly in his arms.