Crash Landing

by Lori Wilde

  “Thanks for that.” Sophia crossed her legs. The orchid slid off the brim of her hat, landed on her nose. Sophia brushed it aside.

  “You can’t keep hitting the snooze button on your biological clock.” Josie pressed her lips into a disapproving line.

  “I’m not even remotely thinking of babies yet.”

  “I know, but you should be.”

  “I’m not done having fun yet.”

  “Babies are a different kind of fun.”

  “Uh-huh. If you say so.”

  “You love your nieces and nephews.”

  “I do. Stop trying to sell me on motherhood. When I find the right relationship—packed with tons of passion—the rest will take care of itself.” Sophia’s eyes were on the hombre who was going to pace a hole right through the wooden planks of the balcony.

  Josie canted her head. “The American isn’t right for you.”

  “Of course he’s not. I never thought he was. He’s caviar and I’m black beans, but a girl needs her sexual fantasies, right?”

  “Give Emilio a chance,” Josie advised and picked up her sandwich bag. “Bring him to Sunday dinner.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Josie pointed a finger at her. “Just bring him.”

  Sophia rolled her eyes. Their mother had died of bacterial meningitis when Sophia was twelve and after Sophia had returned from living in California with Aunt Kristi, Josie had taken over as Mother Hen and sometimes she could be a bit overbearing. “Sí.”

  “I mean it.”

  Sophia made shooing motions at her. “Go back to rubbing that rich cover model’s backside.”

  “I love you,” Josie said sweetly over her shoulder.

  “You’re not going to make me feel like a brat.”

  “Even if you are being one?” Josie laughed and went into the spa.

  Sophia pursed her lips and looked back to Gibb Martin’s bungalow. Blondie was gone, but he was still pacing and talking on the phone.

  Did the man ever slow down? Take a deep breath? Relax? Enjoy himself for half a second?

  She shifted her gaze to the sky and estimated the time by the sun’s position. She never wore a watch. Two o’clock was perhaps thirty minutes away. Just enough time to fuel the plane and do her flight checks. Yawning, she rolled out of the hammock and stretched big, reaching for the clouds, her crop top rising up high with her movements.

  Gibb Martin leaned over the railing of his balcony.

  He was watching her!

  Her stomach churned and she had the strangest feeling that something monumental was about to happen.

  Those compelling gray eyes stared straight at her. Thank God for her sunglasses.

  A slow smile slid across his face.

  Excitement shot through her and she suppressed a smug grin. He might not be paying Miss Cover Model much attention, but he was certainly focused on her.

  What she did next wasn’t noble, but it was human. She pretended she hadn’t seen him watching her. She swept off her cowgirl hat, tilted her head back, and ran her fingers through her long hair, fluffing it up in a sexy, just-rolled out of bed style and bit down on her bottom lip to make it puffy.

  Bad girl, bad. Mala. Mala.

  She strolled away, emphasizing each sway of her hips, and headed for the plane. Was that the heat of his gaze she felt on her shoulders?

  Casually, she turned, looked up at the balcony, only to find it empty.

  Her face flamed hot as she realized she’d strutted for an audience of no one.

  Idiot.

  Never mind. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t even a flirtation. That’s how limited their exchanges had been, a few furtive glances, a handshake that lingered a bit too long, that’s all there was to it.

  But the fact that she was fantasizing about a good-looking stranger who had a cover model girlfriend told Sophia that this thing with Emilio simply wasn’t working for her. They would be better off as friends.

  It was time to tell him that.

  After work, she had planned to fly to San Jose for a cookout with Emilio. In spite of the provisions she’d packed in an Igloo cooler this morning, she would forego the cookout, sit him down and make it perfectly clear she wanted nothing more than friendship from him.

  Was she stupid for cutting loose a good guy who would make a wonderful husband? Maybe. But something told her that she did not have to settle. Somewhere out there was a good man who would also ignite passion in her heart and she wasn’t going to stop looking until she found him.

  2

  THROUGH THE OPEN wooden slats of the bamboo blinds, Gibb watched the sexy little bush pilot’s butt bounce. He shouldn’t be looking. He was here with Stacy after all, but there was something about the sultry Costa Rican that had captured him from the minute he’d laid eyes on her in Libera Airport.

  And this thing with Stacy had just about run its course. Two years was already eighteen months longer than he’d anticipated it would last. Both of them had known from the beginning it wasn’t a long-term relationship. He required a poised, beautiful woman on his arm to take to business functions and she had wanted someone with an unlimited expense account.

  They’d met each other’s needs at the time, but now they were starting to get on each other’s nerves. Stacy continually accused him of being a workaholic—hey, how did she think he paid for her shopping sprees?—and he’d wearied of her constant bid for his attention. Bringing Stacy with him to Bosque de Los Dioses had been a mistake and not just because he wanted to flirt with the pilot.

  She was examining her plane, doing a preflight check, and as she reached up to inspect the flaps, her white crop top moved up to expose even more of her smooth, tanned skin. Sunlight glimmered off her gold navel ring and her long black hair swung just above the curve of her back.

  Gibb gulped. She curved in all the right places. The white cotton top stretched over breasts the size of perfectly ripe peaches. His mouth watered instantly.

  She wore cutoff blue jean shorts with frayed threads dangling down her firm thighs. The pink straw cowgirl hat was tipped back on her head, and the matching pink heart-shaped sunglasses slid halfway down her pert little nose. The woman had a thing for pink. On the flight in, she’d smelled of delicious pink grapefruit, fresh, clean and tartly sweet.

  What did she have on beneath those jeans? Pink boy shorts? A pink thong? Maybe nothing at all?

  His body heated all over.

  Hang on there, Martin. He might not be a long-term commitment kind of guy, but when he was in a relationship—no matter how casual—he didn’t mess around.

  “You’re a serial monogamist,” his best friend Coast Guard Lieutenant Scott Everly often teased. It was true, he never dated more than one woman at a time.

  Gibb’s cell phone rang.

  He stepped back from the window, pulled the phone from his pocket and looked at the caller ID.

  Speak of the devil.

  Scott had been dodging his calls of late and Gibb wondered if it was because his buddy was having second thoughts about leaving the Coast Guard. He and Scott were going into business together on this clandestine, environmentally green project that promised to revolutionize the way people traveled.

  That was what Gibb was doing here in Cordillera of Tilarán. The planning stage was finally complete. And although the patent was still pending, it was only a matter of time until it was granted. He had complete confidence in that. The inventor would be arriving next week. It was time to start building the prototype track for the breakthrough monorail system that would extend the thirty miles from Bosque de Los Dioses to Monteverde.

  Building the prototype track here would serve two purposes. One, it would eventually make Bosque de Los Dioses accessible by some other mode of transportation besides bush plane. And two, the remote location and thick vegetation discouraged the corporate spies that had dogged him. Twice in the last two years, spies from Fisby Corp had burned him by stealing the ideas he’d invested in and getting them to market b
efore he did. He wasn’t going to allow that to happen again.

  That’s where Scott was to come in. He was the only one Gibb trusted to handle his private security. They’d been talking about partnering up for the past two years, ever since Gibb had first invested in this project. They’d just been waiting for Scott’s commission with the Coast Guard to be over to get started on it. Waiting, however, was making Gibb antsy. The longer it took, the more likely it was that someone would rip off the idea before the patent was granted.

  Gibb hit the talk button. “Guy, where have you been?”

  “Falling in love,” Scott replied.

  Gibb laughed. “So when are you getting out of the Coast Guard? How long before you can get to Costa Rica? I need you here.”

  “I’m serious,” Scott said. “I’ve fallen in love with the most amazing woman. She’s smart and sexy and—”

  Gibb snorted. “Stop pulling my leg. We’re ready to hit the ground running. I have to tell you that arranging to have supplies delivered up here, while trying to keep things tightly under wraps has been nothing short of a logistical nightmare.”

  “You’re not listening to me.”

  “Sure I am, you’re madly in love. Good. Great. Congrats. Now when can I expect you?”

  “She’s the daughter of Jack Birchard, the renowned oceanographer, but Jackie is a damn fine oceanographer in her own right,” Scott went on as if he hadn’t said a thing.

  Gibb scratched his head. “You’re serious?”

  “I’m stone cold in love, buddy.”

  “Okay.” Gibb plowed fingers through his hair, tried not to fret. “What does Jackie think about you living in Costa Rica for a couple of years?”

  “I’m not leaving the Coast Guard.”

  “C’mon. We’ve talked about this forever. I can’t do it without you.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “All right, I don’t want to do it without you. This project has the potential to make us billionaires.”

  “You’re already a billionaire, Gibb.”

  “Not now I’m not. Not after all I’ve got invested in this technology.”

  “Aw, so now you’re only a multi-millionaire? How will you ever survive?”

  “Scott, I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. Remember when we were kids, camping out in a tent in your parents’ backyard? Even then we talked about working together someday, but you had to go off and join the Coast Guard.”

  “You were supposed to join with me,” Scott reminded him.

  “Is it my fault that I get seasick?”

  Joining the Coast Guard was the best thing Gibb had never done. If he had joined the Coast Guard, he wouldn’t have invented a popular gaming app that had made him a multi-millionaire and started him on the road to becoming a venture capitalist, investing in other people’s ideas.

  He had a knack for spotting trends before they took off and it paid big dividends. Charismatic forward thinker, Wealth Maker Magazine had called him. Unfortunately, that had made him a target for the unscrupulous looking to get in on his action. Forcing Gibb to become even more secretive and suspicious of others than he already was. Scott was the one person in the whole wide world that he trusted with his life.

  “No, just like it’s not my fault that I fell in love.”

  “You’re leaving me hanging?”

  “I’m sorry, Gibb, but I’ve found something more. I don’t want to end up like you.”

  Two whips of hurt and anger lashed through him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t want to be consumed by work the way you are.”

  An accusing silence stretched over the miles between them.

  “If I wasn’t consumed by work, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” he said.

  “Where are you, Gibb?”

  “At the top of the freaking world.”

  “Alone.”

  “I’m not alone. I have a cover model girlfriend and my Bentley and my beach house and—”

  “I’m getting married on Saturday in Key West on the Fourth of July, aboard the Sea Anemone, Wharf 16 at 4:00 p.m. I hope you’ll be there.”

  It wasn’t until this very moment that Gibb understood exactly how much he’d been looking forward to not only working with Scott, but bringing him in on this deal. It was Gibb’s way of paying his buddy back for the time Scott had literally saved his life.

  Gibb pushed the platinum bracelet up on his wrist. Scott had a matching bracelet. They’d bought the man jewelry together, a symbol of their brotherhood and undying friendship after that crazy diving trip to the Great Barrier Reef where Gibb had been barbed in the chest by a stingray. Only Scott’s quick action and first aid training had prevented Gibb from removing the barb. He’d come within seconds of ending up like the famous crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin.

  Reflexively, Gibb rubbed his chest. “This Saturday?”

  “This Saturday.”

  “But it’s Wednesday!”

  “I know.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “Because Jackie and I just got engaged.”

  “What? Why so fast?”

  “When it’s right, it’s right. We can’t wait any longer to be together.”

  “So she’s pregnant.”

  “No, she’s not pregnant.” Scott sounded irritated.

  “Whoa, back up the truck. I talked to you six weeks ago and you didn’t say a word about this Jackie woman. How long have you known her?”

  “A month,” Scott confessed, not sounding the least bit sheepish.

  “A month! You’re marrying someone you’ve only known a month?”

  “Don’t rain on my parade. She’s the love of my life,” Scott growled.

  Taken aback, Gibb blinked. He couldn’t believe this was his childhood buddy. “I recall you saying a time or two that you were never getting married.”

  “Dumb. That was back when I was dumb and stupid. I’d never been in love before. I never knew it could feel like this.”

  “I recall you once said the same thing about that waitress in Panama.” Who in the hell was this woman who’d woven such a spell over Scott?

  “That was lust. There’s a big difference. I know that now. You’ll know it too when you find it.”

  Gibb frowned. “Hang on, this too will pass.”

  “No. No, it won’t.” Scott sounded adamant.

  “You say that now—”

  Scott cut him off. “Can we expect to see you at the wedding?”

  “There shouldn’t be a wedding. You’re throwing away all our plans, and re-upping in the Coast Guard when you’d planned to get out and—”

  “Sorry, but meeting Jackie has changed everything.”

  “I get that. It’s what scares me.”

  “Come to the wedding if you want, but you’re not changing my mind.”

  “This is craziness!” Gibb yanked at the knot of his tie. “You’ve lost your mind over a piece of—”

  “Don’t say it,” Scott threatened.

  Gibb was so upset that he couldn’t stop himself from saying it. “Tail.”

  A dial tone sounded in his ear.

  His very best buddy on the planet had just hung up on him. Shocked, Gibb stared at the phone. Disturbing how fate could turn life on a whim.

  * * *

  SOPHIA WAS FILLING up the gas tank on El Diablo when Gibb Martin came stalking up to her, his eyes narrowed, his jaw tight and a determined expression on his lips.

  “I need you to fly me to Key West, Florida,” he demanded.

  She cocked an eyebrow at him, holstered the nozzle back into the pump. “What bit you?”

  “I want to leave right now.” He tapped the face of his Rolex with an impatient finger.

  “Mosquito? Botfly? Hornet?”

  If he were a cartoon, steam would be shooting out of his ears. “No joking around. Time is of the essence.”

  She lifted one shoulder. “Sorry, amigo.”

  “I’ll pay handsomely.
”

  “No can do.”

  “What?” He looked stunned that she’d refused him.

  “N.O. Nada.”

  “How much would it take to change your mind?”

  “Money is not the issue.”

  “What is?”

  “Well, for one thing, I already have a 2:00 p.m. fare.”

  “They can wait. Call another bush pilot.”

  What an arrogant tool he was. “My, we have a grand sense of our own importance, don’t we?”

  Gibb snorted, pressing his lips into a firm line. “This is an emergency.”

  “An emergency?” That changed everything. Why was she such a smart mouth? “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said contritely. “Did someone die?”

  “Worse.”

  Sophia put a hand to her heart. “What is worse than death?”

  “Marriage.”

  Confused, Sophia pushed her hat back on her head. “Someone is getting married? That is your emergency?”

  “Yes.” His voice was flat, brooking no more questions.

  Sophia questioned anyway. “You’re against marriage?”

  “Not in general. Not for most people. It’s just not my personal bailiwick.”

  “Bailiwick?”

  “It means sphere of knowledge.”

  She grimaced. “Fan-cy.”

  “Once upon a time I hired a vocabulary coach, deal with it.”

  She raised both palms. “Communication doesn’t work unless you can speak so that others understand you.”

  “Andalé, andalé.” He made shooing motions at her. “How’s that for communication?”

  “Have you been watching old Speedy Gonzales cartoons?”

  “It’s not the correct word?” His face colored.

  “Not if you don’t mind sounding like a cartoon mouse. Vámonos or rápido might be what you’re looking for.”

  “Well, let’s vámonos, rápido, rápido.”

  “There’s one thing I’m still unclear on.”

  He exhaled loudly. “What’s that?”

  “How is marriage an emergency?”

  “I have to stop the wedding.”

  “Ah, I see.” She nodded.

  “See what?”

  “You are still hung up on a former lover and she has broken your heart by marrying another before you could reconcile.”