by Cindy Dees
Abruptly, she seemed to shake herself out of her sexual trance and batted ineffectually at his hand. Bemused, he stepped back and let her unlatch her seat belt. She stumbled on the skid in her haste to get out of the helicopter, though, and staggered forward. He caught her up against him.
Her belly slammed into his zipper, and she couldn’t fail to feel the gigantic erection straining against the denim. Her eyes went wide and her fair skin blushed bright pink. Yup, she’d noticed his hard-on.
“Easy, there, Grace,” he muttered.
She was as light as a bird in his arms. He’d registered her as being reasonably tall the first time he’d seen her. But in fact, she barely reached his nose. Must be the mile-long legs in tight jeans that had given him the false impression. His heavy leather jacket prevented him from feeling her breasts smashed against him, but the view as he looked down the V-neck of her T-shirt was compensation enough. Marley Stringer was stacked.
“I’m such a klutz,” she mumbled self-consciously.
“I’m pretty sure Minerva tripped you. She’s the jealous type, you know.”
Marley smiled up at him a little and his heart did something strange in his chest.
“Archer! My office. Now.” Steve Prescott’s voice carried clearly across the ramp, low and hard.
“Been nice knowin’ ya,” he muttered to Marley.
“You think he’ll fire you?” she asked, her expression dismayed.
“Hell, yeah. I’d fire me.” He had to act like just one of the guys—not a special operator brought in to find and stop whoever was causing accident after accident on the movie set. Film crews were among the most superstitious of all professions, and if the problems didn’t get resolved soon, this film—heck, the whole studio—was in serious jeopardy.
Frankly, the timing of Steve’s private call for help couldn’t have come at a better time for him. He was on sixty days’ forced leave from his unit overseas—thirty days of regular leave and thirty extra days of medically directed leave by his unit’s flight surgeon.
If he had to sit at home staring at his toes all that time, he was going to lose his mind...or do something really dumb. Last thing he needed to do was actively tank his career. Or his life.
Besides, it wasn’t like he really believed that there was a saboteur running around a movie set trying to kill people. It was a movie, for crying out loud. Not real life. It certainly wasn’t anything like the war zones he’d been operating in for the past decade. Now those were places where people were overtly out to kill a guy.
But this—he looked around the quiet airfield with its orderly rows of toy airplanes, all neatly tied down and waiting for their wealthy owners to come play—this was not the kind of place that harbored dangerous killers.
Maybe he should consider retiring. Stunt flying in the movies. It was a sweet gig, after all. The pay was great, and the wild flying was every chopper jock’s dream.
Nah. He was an adrenaline junkie at heart. Truth be told, he got turned on by being shot at. By cheating death.
He took off walking toward the hangar where Steve’s on-set office was located.
The good news was that it would take almost his whole two months of leave to do the movie shoot. God knew, he could use the distraction. He’d been more relieved that he cared to admit when Steve had called to ask for his help.
“I’m coming with you,” the girl declared, falling into step beside him.
His gut twisted unpleasantly. Was she inserting herself into this confrontation to find out if anyone suspected a saboteur yet, perhaps?
Aloud, he asked, “Why? You like having your butt handed to you in a sling?
“No, but I’m still coming.”
It wasn’t like he could stop her from trailing along beside him to Prescott’s office. Hell, maybe her presence would tone down the epic ass-chewing he was about to receive—for the benefit of the plentiful mechanics and crew hanging around in the hangar, no doubt to eavesdrop on the reaming Steve was about to lay on him. The one thing more distinctive about movie crews than their superstition was their love of gossip. They were veritable hotbeds of it. And Steve was no dummy. He would know full well that this conversation would, in effect, have an audience.
The two of them would talk more tonight. In private. But for now, for public consumption, he was in big trouble.
The idea behind today’s change of flight crew/camera operator matchup had been to test Marley. To see if she would actually go up in his helicopter with him. They’d gotten an anonymous tip that Archer would be targeted today.
And Steve’s investigation to date had uncovered that she had been seen in the vicinity of every one of the half dozen near-disasters the movie had experienced so far. She was the only crew member who had been. As unlikely a saboteur as she seemed at a glance, the facts all pointed at her.
Today’s plan had never included actually taking her up flying with him, particularly since she’d been seen fooling around near this bird earlier this morning.
Steve was going to be rip-snorting mad that Archer had had an impulse to go through with the flight, to see if she would actually put her neck on the line. His logic had been that no sane saboteurs put themselves into a position to die, after all. He’d assumed that, since she was willing to go up with him, she either wasn’t the saboteur or knew his helicopter was not tampered with. Wrongo, buddy.
What the hell had happened to his bird back there, anyway? Steve was sure to ask, and he didn’t have a clue. He’d headed down that valley, the explosions had started and the next thing he knew, none of his flight controls were functional. There hadn’t been any noises like something had broken. The helicopter hadn’t lurched as if something related to the flight controls had given way. Nothing had hit the aircraft to his knowledge.
Frankly, he was eager to tear into the guts of the bird and figure out exactly what had happened. He’d gotten an aircraft mechanic’s license in his spare time a few years back that helped him to converse with his maintenance crews intelligently and diagnose and deal with mechanical problems while airborne. But he’d never even heard of something like this, let alone seen it.
How in the hell did Marley know to shake the stick from side to side like that to break loose whatever was obstructing its movement? Was she the saboteur, after all? If so, why would she cut it that close? He’d barely managed to turn the bird in the nick of time. Were he one iota less strong or less quick in his reflexes, the two of them would have died in a blazing fireball against that cliff. His rotor blades hadn’t missed the mountain by more than a few feet.
All of a sudden, he became aware of his legs feeling weak as he walked to the back of the hangar. His knees were shaky, and his whole body felt like a rag doll’s. And he was thirsty. So thirsty that it was abruptly all he could think about. Startled, he put a name to his symptoms.
Shock. He was in mild shock. Jeez, that had been close. The adrenaline that had gotten him home in an unnaturally calm, hyperaware mental state deserted him all at once, leaving him wrung out and wobbly as hell. His breathing was too fast, his pulse too shallow, as he opened the door to Steve’s office and ushered Marley inside.
No surprise, Prescott didn’t offer him a seat when he stepped into the ex-Marine’s office. Aww, hell. Theater though this might be, this was gonna suck.
Archer stood at attention out of habit, not that he’d often stood at attention to get reamed out during his military career, which had been exemplary to date.
Prescott asked grimly, but with admirable restraint, “Care to tell me what happened out there?”
Archer glanced at Steve to see which one of them Prescott was addressing—him or Marley. Him. Yup, Steve was planning to keep up the charade of acting like she wasn’t a suspect.
Too bad he had no idea how to answer Steve’s question. He opened his mouth with the intent
to say something brief like “No excuse, sir” or “Lemme tear apart the bird and I’ll get back to you,” but Marley dived in before he could get a single word out.
“He just did what I asked him to. When I saw the combat unfolding, I saw an opportunity to push the shot and get a more extreme perspective on the battle. The footage I got is spectacular. I’m so grateful he followed my instructions to the letter.”
Archer didn’t know if his jaw or Prescott’s fell open farther. What the hell was she doing? He didn’t need her to take the fall for him like this. Steve wouldn’t actually fire him. After all, he was here at Steve’s request to help the guy with an urgent problem. And Steve couldn’t fire her. She wasn’t in his chain of command. She worked for the director of photography, not the stunt crew.
Glaring at her, Archer bit out, “I take full responsibility for going off our flight plan and off course, sir. She had nothing to do with...”
Marley interrupted, “If Mr. Turnow doesn’t love the footage we got, I’ll take full responsibility for it.”
Prescott looked back and forth between the two of them suspiciously. Archer knew better than most just how smart a man Steve Prescott was. And the guy smelled a rat. He thought Marley Stringer was behind the near-crash.
Thing was, he wasn’t about to talk openly with Steve about the mechanical failure in front of her. For now, his hands were tied. They had to fake out Marley and pretend the flight control failure wasn’t out of the ordinary. That no one was thinking about sabotage.
“Archer, if you ever pull a crazy stunt like that again, regardless of what your camera operator asks you to do, I’ll fire you so fast your head spins. You got that?”
Wow. Steve had really mastered that whole quiet, menacingly restrained thing since the last time they’d been together. In his younger days, Steve would have yelled his head off. Archer sincerely hoped Marley was taking note and figuring out that now would be a good time to lie low for a while and cut out the shenanigans.
The ex-Marine growled, “Get out of my office. I’ll take this up with Adrian. He can decide what to do with you two mavericks.”
Marley opened her mouth to say something—whether an apology or more arguments on his behalf, Archer couldn’t tell. But he recognized all too well the tight set of Steve’s jaw. It was time to make like the wind and blow. He gripped Marley by the elbow and hustled her out of Prescott’s office in spite of her protests.
He hauled her all the way out of the hangar and out of their boss’s earshot before turning her loose and demanding, “Why did you leap to my defense and not tell him what really happened? What the hell was that?”
“That was me saving your ass,” she snapped.
“But— Why?” If she was the saboteur, why didn’t she let him take the hit for not finding the flight control problem before they took off? Wouldn’t it hurt the movie more to have a highly experienced pilot like him get fired? If she wasn’t the saboteur, he’d nearly killed her, for God’s sake.
One thing he did know, she’d been legitimately scared to death up there. He might have called her bluff, and she might have called his, but she understood full well just how close they’d both come to dying today.
“Give me just one reason why you covered my ass like that,” he demanded.
“I have no idea why I did it.” She gazed up at him, and she did, in fact, look genuinely perplexed. Almost as perplexed as he was. He shoved a hand through his short hair.
“The footage I shot really is phenomenal,” she offered. “Adrian Turnow’s going to go nuts over it. It’s one of a kind.”
“For good reason. No rational pilot would ever do what we did today.”
“What happened up there?”
Right. Like he was going to talk with her about it. No way was he giving her the satisfaction of watching the aftereffects of her handiwork. He was not going to admit that she’d scared the bejeebers out of him, or that he was now genuinely worried about the future of this movie. Was she a nut ball operating alone? Or was she working for someone who’d hired her to do this? “No clue what happened, babe.”
“Oh.”
Yeah. Oh. “Hey, I’ve got to put Minerva to bed. After I’m done buttoning her up, though, do you want to get a beer or something? I could meet you back at the motel in a few hours.”
He could already see it coming now. Steve’s next assignment for him was going to be to get close to Marley. Win her trust. Hell, maybe even to convince her he was hot for her. Not that something like that would be too much of a stretch for him. She really was an attractive woman. But he couldn’t take her to bed for a little out-of-school pillow talk. Even he had his limits. He would have to find another way to make her talk.
He was startled out of his grim thoughts by her unsure answer to his invitation. “A beer? Um. I guess so. Yeah. Sure.”
She was cute when she got flustered. “Great,” he replied, a little startled to realize he really meant it. She was about as far from his usual type as a girl could get. And yet, there was something about her...
* * *
Marley watched Archer stride away. She figured she’d earned the right to admire the hot ass she’d just saved. Truth be told, she wasn’t that worried about the director’s reaction to their unscheduled filming. Turnow was going to love the footage she’d shot, or she wasn’t half the photographer she thought she was, and he wasn’t half the visionary everyone said he was.
“That man has one fine caboose.”
She looked up sharply at the tall, lean, African-American man who’d stopped beside her to ogle Archer. “Hi. I’m Marley. Camerawoman.”
“Tyrone. Makeup. Damn, girl, you got good taste. Everyone on the crew’s talking about the new, hot-stick helicopter pilot. Did I hear him invite you out for drinks?”
“It’s just a beer. A guy like him would never be really interested in a girl like me.”
The makeup artist threw her a withering glare. “Why the hell not?”
“Look at me. I’m as plain as mud and he’s...he’s...godlike.”
Tyrone studied her critically. Reached out to grasp her chin and turn her face side to side. “Good bones. Great skin. Best features are your sweet eyes and those divine lips. With a little Tyrone magic, you’d be pretty smokin’ hot, yourself. You’ve got a Marilyn Monroe quality to you.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh aloud or snort in disbelief. She settled for asking, “Are you high?”
“Did you just diss my artistic mojo?”
She wrinkled her nose. “C’mon. A guy like him would go for one of the lead actresses. Or a high-fashion model. Someone sexy and spectacular.”
“You ain’t never gonna be tall enough for the runway, sweetie. But you could definitely give any model a run for her money in the sexy-thang department. My room—number 208. Six o’clock. Be there.” With a snap of his fingers, the makeup artist turned and strode away.
Was Tyrone right? Did she maybe have a shot at Archer, after all? But then reality slammed back into her. She was a cat-lady-in-training. She wore baggy sweatpants and played computer games in her free time. Every guy she knew thought of her as a little-sister surrogate. She had no social life, heck, no social skills. She watched life through her cameras, she didn’t actually live it.
Mina was the adventurous sister. The one who grabbed life by the horns and wrestled it into submission—for better or worse. As for her, she was the...other...sister, as quiet as Mina was loud, as shy as Mina was brash.
A psychologist would probably have a field day analyzing her and Mina. He would probably say she was compensating for her out-of-control sibling.
Marley shrugged. After all her bad luck with guys, she was seriously starting to wonder if she was the sister with something wrong going on.
Six o’clock came and went, and she sat on the bed in her mo
tel room, morosely munching on chocolate-covered raisins. The crew would be gathering at the buffet downstairs to eat dinner—the production company had rented out the entire motel for the next two months—and then most of them would adjourn to the motel’s sports bar. It was the only drinking hole in this godforsaken corner of nowhere. Only the folks with early showtimes or those handling explosives would skip what had become the daily happy-hour routine.
No way did she need Archer buying her a beer in front of the whole crew. They would rib her about it forever, and there was no need to embarrass him, either. With her luck, he’d keel over dead from an aneurism as soon as she got near him.
No, she would just stay in her room. Some hot actress would move in on him this evening, and by tomorrow he’d have forgotten his offer. It was for the best this way.
Angry pounding exploded against her door and she leaped about a foot straight up in the air. “Girl, you in there? Open up, you scrawny little white-meat chicken!”
Tyrone. Crap.
* * *
“Tell me again why you think this girl is your saboteur?” Archer asked Steve skeptically.
“Our security guys have gone over the footage from the security cameras. Every single time there’s an accident, she was seen immediately before the accident in the exact place the sabotage occurs. What are the odds that it’s a coincidence six—no, seven times now, if you count your helicopter today?”
Archer frowned. It just didn’t feel right. She was pleasant, struck him as a little naive, if anything, and didn’t seem to be the type to be hiding a thing. Either he was right, or she was one hell of an actress.
“What about someone high up in the movie’s production? If this film shuts down, the insurance company would have to make a hefty payout to the producers. Isn’t Adrian Turnow the executive producer on this project?”
Steve frowned. “He doesn’t strike me as the type.”