by Kira Archer
“Is that all the luggage you brought?”
She nodded. “My luggage tends to go missing when I travel. So I only bring what I can carry. It’s easier to buy what I might need once I get there.”
She got her bag stashed and then climbed into the seat beside Mr. Lachlan, her eyes darting across the massive dashboard full of blinking lights and gauges.
“Do you like it?” he asked, his gesture taking in the plane. The pride in his voice made her loathe to say anything unflattering. And really, if she hadn’t been moments from hurtling through the air in the thing, she’d be enjoying the experience much more. Even the cockpit seats were more comfortable than her couch at home.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, glancing around again. “But…why aren’t we taking one of the bigger planes?”
“There’s only the two of us. We don’t need that many seats.”
“Right. Okay. But…shouldn’t somebody else be flying?”
Chris shrugged. “Why pay money for a pilot when I’m capable of doing it myself? Besides, I enjoy flying, and I don’t get to do it as often as I’d like.”
She quickly typed a note into her tablet. He rolled his eyes, and she turned the tablet away so he couldn’t see what she was writing.
He snorted and kept flipping switches and checking panels. “You know, statistically speaking, you’re safer flying than driving in a car. And we’re much safer with me flying than relying on someone else. I’m trained, licensed, and experienced. I also know for a fact I’m sober and well rested. The same cannot be said for whatever random pilot might happen to be flying another plane we could get on.”
Charley thought about that for a second and hated that it sounded so reasonable. “Okay,” she said, “but aren’t these little planes more susceptible to crashing than the larger ones? Every time you hear about some celebrity crashing, it’s in some tiny plane.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with the plane or its safety. I bet you hear more about celebrity car accidents than other car accidents, too. That doesn’t make cars less safe or keep you from operating one, does it?”
“No.” She frowned. No way would she win this argument if he kept bringing logic into it.
“Besides, these babies are actually quite a bit safer. We don’t fly as high, there’s less luggage and passengers and therefore less possibility of passenger interference, and a whole bunch of other statistics that I could spout at you but won’t. I’m trying to keep my company here. Do you think I’d purposely do something I considered dangerous when I know you’re going to be sitting there judging my every move?”
“No. I guess not. And I’m not judging your every move.”
“Uh huh.”
She ignored that but narrowed her eyes and stared at him for a moment, trying to gauge how truthful he was being about the plane. But again, she had to admit he sounded pretty reasonable. She’d have to do some research and look into the true statistics. She jotted down another note in her tablet.
“Are you going to be messing with that thing the entire trip?”
“Yes. That’s kind of the point of the whole trip, isn’t it?” she asked. “I’m here to watch what you usually do and assess how risky your behavior is.”
He shook his head and turned his attention back to the plane. “Well, I can’t imagine we’re off to a good start when you’ve already made six notes in your tablet and we haven’t even left the hangar yet.”
She couldn’t help but grin at that. “Don’t worry about it. They aren’t all bad. I promise I’ll be fair.”
“If you say so.” He flipped a few more switches and then spoke to someone over the headphones he was wearing, instructing them that he was ready and to close the door.
“What?” he asked, his eyes wide with what looked like first shock, then irritation. “You have got to be kidding me,” he grumbled, unbuckling his seat belt and striding out of the cockpit and then the plane.
“What are you all doing here?” she could hear him ask. There were some responses she couldn’t quite catch. Then a, “You are not coming…” from Chris.
And then feet, many feet, quickly moving up the few steps into the plane. Charley climbed out of her seat and stood in the cockpit doorway to see what was going on.
“Hi there, Charley! Nice to see you again.” The bubbly brunette with black-rimmed glasses she’d met at Cass’s party boarded the plane with a huge grin.
“Hi…Nikki,” she said, glad to have remembered the woman’s name but completely at a loss as to why she was there.
She didn’t have too long to wonder, though, because Leah, Kiersten, and Izzy were right behind her. She greeted them all as they boarded and found a seat, trying to look over their shoulders at the men whose voices were raised but indistinguishable. She finally gave up and turned back to the women.
“Are you all coming with us?”
“Not for the whole trip, just the first leg,” Izzy said. “Cass is opening a mini-hotel in Costa Rica in a few weeks, and since you guys are headed there first, we figured we’d hitch a ride.”
“Oh. That’s convenient,” Charley said with a smile, relieved, and slightly disappointed, she wouldn’t be alone with Chris. She ignored the disappointment. Was it fun to be going on a trip with a hot billionaire? Sure. Mostly. Okay, it was a bit intimidating but still, once in a lifetime, right?
But—and this was a big but—this was a business trip. And things needed to stay businesslike. Something she could see getting out of hand far too easily. Well, if he didn’t totally resent her for her very existence and if she could figure out how to just have fun for once in her life. All moot points as this was a business trip. Any hint of anything going on between her and Chris and her career was over.
She was a woman in a mostly male industry. Any time she even glanced at a man in a senior position for a fraction of a second too long, she was accused of trying to use her body to gain a leg up. Pun totally intended. Now she was trying to start her own business, and not being totally honest with her first client was already a strike against her. Getting involved with him in any personal capacity would be the kiss of death. She’d always be known as the chick who slept with her clients to get ahead. No way was she going to let that happen, no matter how much her neglected hormones perked up every time he was close to her.
The presence of her cousin and his friends would help her keep that straight in her head. Hopefully. She didn’t like the speculative gleam in their eyes when Chris re-boarded, gave them all a good grimace, and headed back to the cockpit.
Before she could say anything, the rest of the men entered. They introduced themselves in short order, each shaking her hand and looking her over the way her father used to look over her dates, before going to sit with their wives. Izzy sat on the couch with Cole and Kiersten while Brooks and Leah took the two seats up front, and Harrison and Nikki took the two in back. Which meant Charley had nowhere to go but back in the cockpit.
“Ms. Claybourne!” Mr. Lachlan said, summoning her from the front. “Let’s go!”
She gave her audience a smile and then retook her seat next to Chris, who handed her a pair of headphones. He didn’t look happy.
“I guess you weren’t expecting them?” she asked.
“No, but I probably should’ve been.”
She glanced at him with a frown, confused, but he shook his head. “Never mind. Let’s just say my friends need to work on their boundaries.”
Yeah, she got that, especially since Izzy was a pain in the ass they shared.
He turned his attention back to the plane while the crew outside got them sealed up and ready to go. He seemed to relax a little as he concentrated on what he was doing, and she realized the tension tightening a knot in her shoulders eased up as he did.
“Here we go,” he said, edging the plane out of the hangar and slowly out onto the runway.
She cinched her seat belt and held onto it as if that would somehow help if the plane fell out of the sky.
“You might want to stow that tablet somewhere,” he said. “If we crash, it’ll just become a projectile.”
She sucked in a breath, her eyes darting over to his. She tried to keep her face neutral but knew she failed when he started chuckling.
“Relax,” he said. “I’m teasing. I mean, I’m not. It’s true. But you don’t need to worry about it. We’ll be fine.”
“Uh huh,” she said and turned her attention back out the window. She knew the motor beneath them was a lot less powerful than the ones in the big jets that she usually flew in, but for some reason, the rumble of the building power felt a whole lot worse. Maybe because this time she was sitting right on top of it.
He leaned over and straightened out her seat belt, his fingers grazing against her hip when he tugged. The movement had her sucking in a breath. A motion that had her drowning in his intoxicating scent. It reminded her of clean laundry and something…spicy. He was close enough that if she sat forward ever-so-slightly, she’d be able to press her lips to that delicious spot right where his neck met his broad shoulders.
“There,” he said, glancing up at her but not moving away. “Now you’re all safe and secure.”
“Thanks,” she said, though the word was barely more than a whisper. She licked her suddenly dry lips and then forgot how to breathe when his gaze zeroed in on her mouth. “Hey, Chris,” one of the guys called from the back. “What’s with the tiny plane?”
Chris closed his eyes for a second, like he was trying to get a grip on himself, and then scowled and sat back. She sucked in a ragged breath, understanding the feeling completely. What the hell had that been? The man got within a few inches and barely touched her, and she’d been ready to throw her career out the window and go all vampire on him. She seriously needed to rein it in.
Business trip, business trip, business trip, she repeated to herself over and over in her head.
“Yeah,” another voice—Brooks?—said. “Why aren’t we taking one of the bigger planes?”
Chris redid his own seat belt. “Because I wasn’t expecting a plane full of passengers,” he called over his shoulder. “If you’re uncomfortable, you’re welcome to hop out. I might even slow down first.”
His tone was irritated, but his lips twitched when a chorus of laughter followed his suggestion. She hadn’t been sure about his friends joining them when they’d first shown up. The trip was awkward enough without seven people watching them like they were the hottest show in town. But their presence also took a little pressure off her. Being comfortable alone with a guy like Christopher Lachlan was definitely something that was going to take getting used to and having the friend buffer was kind of nice. Plus, it meant his attention wasn’t 100 percent focused on her the whole time. That would make assessing him easier. He was already twitchy every time she so much as glanced at her tablet.
“They have a point,” she said. “If we’re going to be in this tiny little thing, we might as well have taken that little crop duster you had sitting in there.”
“That would have solved our unexpected passenger problem,” he said. “But that plane doesn’t have a big enough fuel tank to get us to where we need to go.”
“And this one does?”
He shrugged. “It should get us most of the way there.”
The blood left her face in a rush that made her dizzy, and his laughter filled the cockpit. “Oh my God, you really need to relax. It’s just a plane. It’s perfectly safe. It’s constantly inspected and maintained. In fact, I guarantee you this plane is better inspected, better maintained, and piloted by someone with more experience and a better record than any of the planes you’d climb on in a commercial airport. My goal isn’t to pack in as many people as cheaply as possible to make a buck. My goal is to get us where we need to go safely. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
She released a deep breath, somewhat comforted by his logic. So, she sat back, determined to chill as much as possible. But there was no way in hell she was going to enjoy the ride. Flying wasn’t her favorite thing to do anyway, but at least on a commercial airline the airplane was big enough that she could fool herself into believing she was anywhere else except hurtling through space with hardly anything between her and the huge sky.
The plane picked up speed and launched into the sky with a bump that had her pressing back into her seat, though she tried to keep her face neutral.
“Want to hold my hand?” he asked with a laugh, holding it out to her.
Yes, she did. She really, really did. But she shook her head. “No, thanks.”
“Probably best. I kind of need it to fly.”
She gave him as much of a smile as she could muster. He winked at her, turning her insides to mush for an entirely different reason, and then turned his attention back to the horizon.
She took a deep breath, determined to maintain her composure even if it killed her. Not that losing it would kill her. A tiny little toy plane falling from the sky was probably going to kill her. But screaming like a maniac wouldn’t make that circumstance any better.
Once they’d left the ground, though, her death grip on her seat belt loosened a bit as her attention was drawn to the scenery spreading out before her. In the larger planes she’d flown in, she’d seen the ground getting further away, of course, as the plane ascended. But she’d never seen it from the front of the plane. Never been just a pane of glass away from the sky that they were currently slicing through. It was an all-together different experience, one that fascinated her enough it pushed her fear aside. A bit, anyway. They went through some low-lying clouds, and she sucked in a breath at the wispy whiteness that floated past their windows before disappearing as the sky once again filled her vision.
She sighed, more in awe than fear, leaning forward a little so she could look out from all the windows.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Chris asked, his gaze laser-focused on her.
She glanced at him, but the intensity of his expression, and the fact that he was looking at her, not out the window, had her quickly averting her eyes back to the window. “It really is. Everything looks so small from up here. Like we’re looking down at a toy landscape or something.”
He laughed. “It does.”
“I mean, I’ve been in planes before, and it always looks like that. But, in this plane, it just seems…I don’t know…closer.”
“Well, it is. Technically.” He gestured out the window. “In a larger plane, you have a good deal more plane between you and the sky. It’s why I like flying myself in these smaller planes. Feels more like I’m actually soaring through the air and less like I’m in some overstuffed, earthbound train.”
She nodded, understanding the feeling completely.
“It’s not so bad, is it?” he asked, with a smug but friendly smile.
She smiled back. “No. Not so bad.” She glanced back out the window. “So far, anyway.”
He laughed at that. “You’re hard to impress, aren’t you?”
“I don’t think so.” She looked back at him. “Are you trying to impress me?”
He frowned a little, his forehead creasing with slight look of confusion. “I was going to say no, but you know what? I might be.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s not something most guys would admit to.”
He shrugged. “I’m not most guys.”
Her lips twitched at that, agreeing wholeheartedly, but she refrained from commenting. Things were getting far too friendly in the small cabin. Time to get things back on track. She grabbed her messenger bag from beneath her seat, but the strap stuck on something. Figured. She gave it a good tug, and it came undone with a jerk that had her arm flinging to the side. Right into a control panel.
An alarm immediately sounded, and she shrank back against her seat in a rush of horror.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry! What did I do?” she asked, trying to keep it under control but quickly losing her grip in the flood of terror pounding through her.
; Chris flipped a few switches, his initial shock giving way to an amused chuckle. “It’s fine, you just bumped one of the sensors. We aren’t going to die.”
She slapped a hand over her chest, trying to keep her heart from jumping out of her chest. “Gee, that makes me feel so much better.”
He grinned at her again, and her lips twitched into a smile before she could stop it. She didn’t know what the man was doing running a company for vacation homes. He should be on the covers of magazines with that billion-watt smile.
She took a deep breath, trying to collect herself into some semblance of professional composure, and pulled her tablet out from the pocket where she’d stowed it.
Chris saw it and scowled. “I guess it was too much to hope that you would go more than ten minutes before pulling that thing out again.”
“It is why I’m here.”
“True. But that doesn’t mean you can’t relax and just enjoy the trip now and then.”
“I prefer to keep focused on the task at hand.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
She frowned at that. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged, his gaze on the window. “You seem like the type that always has it all under control, you know. Or at least tries to. Yet even with all that effort, you still seem to be one second away from total disaster. I can’t tell if you know it’s coming or if you’re just prepared in case something does happen, but…and I mean no offense by this…you’d make a hyperactive squirrel on crack nervous.”
That startled a choked laugh out of her. She wanted to be offended, but man, he had her pegged, all right.
“Let’s just say I have enough experience in dealing with disasters that I assume they’re always looming, and I like to be prepared.”
He cocked an eyebrow at that. “Sounds like you’ve got a few interesting stories.”
She snorted. “You have no idea.”
Before he could respond to that, someone piped up from the back again.
“Hey, Captain, are we free to move about the cabin yet?”