“Well, honestly, I thought you two would sort it out eventually, if you wanted to. True love finds a way and all that.”
Julie folded her arms across her chest. All this time, had Priscilla been a secret romantic? “You really believe that?”
“What I believe is that teenagers shouldn’t be making decisions that affect the rest of their lives. Sometimes adults need to step in and guide them in the right direction. Did we really do so wrong? You certainly seemed happy whenever we saw you in Los Angeles. You got a chance to pursue your singing, didn’t you?”
Julie shook her head, bewildered. Even after seven years in their home, she’d never understand the Reinhards.
“What do want me to say, Julie? This all happened so long ago.”
“Well, how about an apology? Some simple humanity? You messed with our lives. You caused us so much heartache.”
“Heartache is character-building. But if you want an apology, then fine. Apology granted.” Priscilla offered her hand with a polished smile.
Julie blinked at her. Was that a real apology? Did the words “apology granted” actually fit the description of an apology?
Nevertheless, she took the older woman’s hand. We cared about you, and still do. Those words echoed through her mind. Were they really true, or more manipulation?
“You should apologize to Ben, too. You lied to him, after all.”
“Should the opportunity arise,” Priscilla murmured, with an expression that clearly said, ‘don’t push it.’ “I’m glad we’ve cleared the air. Now where’s my grandson? I have a project he can help me with. I want to put his obsessive attention to detail to good use. The Winter Ball is in three weeks and he’s going to help me plan.”
“You want him to plan the ball?” Julie couldn’t imagine anything he’d enjoy less. “That doesn’t sound like—”
“It will be character-building. Not everything is meant to be fun.”
Julie rolled her eyes as Priscilla glided from the room. The Reinhards were a law unto themselves.
Her cell phone rang; Savannah was calling. Julie had filled her in on everything Ben had told her. “Well, did you talk to my parents? Did they fess up to their disgusting sabotage?”
“I think so. I mean, yes, they did. They gave all their reasons.”
“Did they apologize?”
“That’s open to interpretation. They sort of did, in their own way.”
Savannah swore. “Typical. Look, just pull the plug on this visit. Bring Felix back to LA, I’ll be done with this shoot soon and we’ll get back to normal. If my parents can’t act like decent human beings to you, they can go fuck themselves.”
Julie stared at her reflection in the antique mirror above the sideboard. Savannah had a point. She could leave Jupiter Point and not look back. Put the impossible Reinhards in the rearview mirror.
Drop out of Grease.
Quit working for Knight and Day.
Say goodbye to Ben.
But she didn’t want to do any of that. She wanted to be here in Jupiter Point. Now that she was back, she didn’t miss the traffic that gave her stress headaches or the dry air that hurt her sinuses. She belonged in Jupiter Point. With Ben.
“Not yet,” she told Savannah. “I’m not ready.”
In the background, she heard someone yelling about lighting. Savannah swore. “I have to go. But Julie, I’m serious. Don’t let my parents mess with you, okay? Love you.”
She hung up. Julie looked at her reflection in the mirror again, saw the determination written on her face.
Nope, she was staying.
Even if she and Ben were just friends and co-workers, she was still staying. Even if she had to hide the fact that she dreamed about him at night, and lusted after him during the day, masking her feelings beneath quips and banter and answers to silly get-to-know-you questions.
Not all the questions were light. They got into other topics, too.
One sunny day, as Ben stood on a small ladder to check the oil level in the Cessna’s engine, she asked him about his time in the Air Force. “Do you miss it?”
“I miss the brotherhood, the sense of purpose, like you’re a band of superheroes saving the world.” He bent over to peer at the dipstick; the pose made her mouth water. “My dad always saw me as the soft one in the family, you know that. Will was going to be a lawyer, Tobias was the fighter. Me, I was the lover.” He smiled ruefully at her over his shoulder, since only the two of them knew that they’d done everything in the book except make love.
“Dad didn’t have a whole lot of respect for that. When I was on active duty, I kept thinking ‘if only Dad could see me now. He’d be so proud.’ So I guess I miss that. Feeling like I’m making him proud. But I’m still in the Air Force reserves, so that’s something.”
“You don’t think he’d be proud of all this?” She waved her hand at the tarmac and the helicopter and the brand-new Cessna. “It’s amazing, what you guys have done. Starting a business from scratch, that’s not easy.”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t say it’s from scratch. We both used the funds from the insurance company after Dad’s death. I think he’d be pretty happy with Knight and Day. We used the Knight name on purpose, to honor him.”
That made her smile. “He would love that, I know. Your father was a tough man, but he really loved his family. Even I could tell that…especially when he gave me that frown, like,” she lowered her voice to a sterner octave, “what are you doing distracting my son from his schoolwork.”
He laughed. “He did. We all knew it. Disappointing Dad was like death. None of us wanted that. Still don’t. I’ll sell off body parts before I let this business fail.”
Her impulse was to ask which body parts, and could she have first bidding rights. But she wrestled her flirtatious urges under control. This was “friendship building.” Nothing more.
He jumped off the ladder and walked around the plane. He crouched down to check the left tire. His thighs flexed and she swallowed, wondering why this preflight checklist operation was so darn sexy.
“Why did you decide to leave the military and come back here?”
“Hang on, isn’t it my turn for a question?” He glanced over his shoulder at her with a grin.
“Nope. I answered all your TV and coffee questions, so I’m just going to keep going here. You could have stayed in the Air Force much longer, right? Why’d you come home?”
He rose to his feet and walked around to the other tire. “A lot of reasons. You know, I read a quote from a four-star general once that said the longer you stay in the military, the harder it is to have a normal life. It’s true. I saw it with my parents. You know me, Julie. I like the ordinary things in life.”
“Ordinary?” That wasn’t a word she would ever associate with Ben Knight.
“I like watching the sunrise with a thermos of coffee in one hand, a girl tucked under the other. I like lunches that last three hours because you’re chatting with everyone who walks through the door, all kinds of people, old, young, accountants, artists, whatever. I like to read. I like stargazing on a winter night. I’d like to travel as a normal person, not a soldier. I wanted to get to know my little brother. Aiden’s in college now. That’s crazy. I missed half his childhood. I love kids. Guys my age here in Jupiter Point are having their own families. And I was still suiting up at zero-dark-thirty for the next mission. I loved a lot of things about the Air Force, and I’m grateful I had the opportunity to serve. But I needed to come home.” He kicked the tire one more time and stood up again.
She stared at him as liquid heat gathered in her lower belly and chills traveled through her body. She loved everything he’d just said, every word of it. All those same things had been true before, but he wouldn’t have been able to express it so well. This grownup Ben, a man who knew who he was and who he wasn’t, was even more appealing than the boy version.
“Can you go tell the clients that we’re ready for them?” he asked as he handed over the check
list clipboard.
Wordlessly, she nodded and hurried back to the office before she did something crazy, like kiss him senseless.
As the days passed, not kissing him got harder and harder.
Every time he walked into the office, a current of desire hummed just under her skin, lifting the hairs on her arms and making her press her legs together under the desk. Oh man, she wanted him. She craved him. And not in the wild, intoxicated way of her youth. Now it was a grown-up, down-and-dirty, nitty-gritty lust. Screw the whole Project Friendship thing. She wanted sex with Ben. Hot, fantastic, mind-melting sex.
Did Ben feel any of those things too? She had no idea. He behaved like a perfect gentleman, a dream boss who treated her with respect and appreciation. But occasionally she caught a certain look from him, a smoldering secret glance. Those moments made her giddy with hope. There were also times when they inadvertently made physical contact. When she handed him paperwork to sign, and their fingertips touched. When she bumped into him coming out of the tiny restroom, and her entire body erupted into flames of yearning.
The sensual tension between them built the more time she spent at Knight and Day. In bed at night, she’d toss and turn and relive every word she and Ben had exchanged that day. He crept into her thoughts at odd moments—during rehearsals of Grease, during phone conversations with Savannah, while listening to Felix’s explanation of the difference between a crescent wrench and a socket wrench.
Somehow, amazingly, she managed to keep her distance.
Until the day when a call came in from Sean Marcus, leader of the Jupiter Point Hotshots.
“Knight and Day Flight Tours, can I help you?”
“It’s Sean, I need to talk to Ben!” he shouted over the background noise—a dull roar she couldn’t identify. “His cell isn’t answering.”
“I’ll get him right away. Hold on.”
She transferred the call to her own cell and ran with it onto the tarmac, where Ben was busy with the Cessna. “Sean Marcus,” she told him, still breathless from hurtling across the tarmac. “Sounds like an emergency.”
Quickly, he hopped out of the fuselage and grabbed the phone from her. His face went grim and dead-serious as he listened.
“What’s your location?” He nodded. “Be right there. Give me fifteen minutes.” He hung up and tossed the phone back to her. “I need your help, Julie. Cancel the rest of the tours for today. Radio Tobias and tell him the Hotshots are in trouble and I’m taking the chopper up.” He headed in the direction of the Robinson helicopter.
Julie followed him outside, her stomach tightening in fear. “Is this about that wildfire up north?”
He nodded, then sped up to a jog. “Keep the radio on. Keep your cell handy. Keep all lines open. When you reach Tobias, fill him in.”
“Ben!” she called after him. “Be careful!”
He gave her a thumbs up as he opened the door of the helicopter, then swung onboard. He moved with such grace and efficiency that before she knew it, the rotors were slicing through the air and blowing her hair from her face.
She drew in a few deep breaths. Ben was a soldier. He’d be fine. He’d flown missions and faced dangers she had no clue about. Surely flying a helicopter into a fire zone would be…well, not exactly safe…
Focus, Julie.
Inside the cockpit of the Robinson, Ben’s head was bent over the gauges. He was doing his job, getting ready to save lives. She sent a prayer in his direction, then ran back to the office to follow his instructions.
Her hands shaking, she radioed Tobias and relayed Ben’s message. Then she set to work contacting the rest of the day’s clients.
The wildfire had been in the newspaper for the past couple of days. She’d been reading about it every morning, and now it was all too real. A winter hiker had left his campfire burning during high winds in the wilderness about two hundred miles north of Jupiter Point. The fire season hadn’t begun yet, but Sean Marcus, Josh Marshall and Finn Abrams, who all lived locally, had headed up the coast to lend a hand.
And now the firefighters were apparently in trouble. She thought about Suzanne, who was married to Josh. And Evie, Sean’s wife. When he sees a crisis, he plunges right in, Evie had told her. Now Ben was doing the same thing. Were they all used to this kind of terror? Could anyone ever get used to it?
When she was done, she checked her watch and saw it was almost time to pick up Felix. But she couldn’t leave, not now. Not while Ben was putting himself in danger to rescue the hotshots.
Gritting her teeth, she dialed Mrs. Reinhard and asked if she could pick up Felix just this once, even though it went against the grain to ask her for anything.
“Of course,” said Priscilla. “Felix can help me with the invitation list this afternoon.”
“He might be anxious because it’s a break from our routine,” Julie warned her.
“Don’t you worry. I have everything under control.”
Julie made a face as she hung up. Did Mrs. Reinhard really think she could control everything, even Felix’s emotional states? Maybe she could control wildfires. If so, Julie would love her forever.
16
During his next contact with Sean, Ben got a few more details about how they’d gotten trapped. Before the hotshots had even reached the command post, they’d spotted a new burn, a finger of the forest fire closing in on the highway, near a small settlement.
They called it in, then set about going door to door, letting people know a wildfire had them in its sights. When everyone had been warned, they got back into their crew buggy and hit the road. Except the road hit back. A deer, panicked by the oncoming wildfire, charged onto the highway. Sean swerved to avoid it and the vehicle hit a patch of melted snow and fishtailed into a tree.
No injuries, just a fast-moving fire and a broken-down truck. They didn’t want to divert resources from the big wildfire, so Sean had called on Ben.
This was exactly why Sean had sold the airstrip to the Knight brothers, and why they’d purchased the Robinson. Helping out the hotshots with rescues and reconnaissance flights had always been the goal. Of course, Ben hadn’t imagined that he’d be rescuing the hotshots themselves.
He kept in close communication with them as he buzzed up the coastline. They’d had to retreat back to the village they’d just warned everyone to evacuate.
“Is there a town square or something where I can land? Or maybe a nice big bank building with a flat roof?”
“There’s a gas station, a video store, couple guesthouses, a pub and that’s about it. Not a flat roof in sight.”
“At least you can check out some videos while you’re hanging around.”
“Jokes. Awesome. Just what we need.”
Ben flipped through his options. A rescue generally required two people, one to pilot the chopper, one to put on a harness and ride a cable to retrieve the victim. The Robinson had been customized with regulation rescue gear. If he could get the door open and the cable lowered, the hotshots could put the harness on themselves. That would bring two up at once, and there were three of them. Two trips up and down.
But as he drew closer to the scene, his strategy changed completely. Wind was pushing the wildfire straight toward the highway and, judging by his gauges, it was picking up speed. Just to confirm, he switched to the nearest AWOS frequency and caught the tail end of the updated forecast. checked in with the nearest air traffic control.
Twenty knots east-southeast and picking up speed.
He switched back to Sean. “I’m going to need you to find the best spot on that highway for me to land. Got any flares with you? That’ll tell me more about the wind too.”
“Yup, we’ll set one off.”
“We need to make this as swift as we can. I just got a look at that fire.” He didn’t want to incite a panic, but he needed them to know.
“Ten-four,” said Sean calmly. “We have line gear with us, and that includes shelters. You’re plan A, but we have a plan B.”
Ben
relaxed a tiny bit. The hotshots were pros, they knew what they were doing. Many of them had survived a burnover a couple years ago, when they’d deployed their emergency tents and a wildfire had burned right over their heads.
He followed the curving line of the highway until he spotted the smoke from the flare. He throttled down and maneuvered the chopper down, down, through gusts of smoky air. It was a tricky descent, with treetops whipping back and forth on either side of the highway, and bursts of wind pummeling the Robinson. But the chopper was a big, heavy, mighty beast, not easily buffeted. Operating a rotorcraft wasn’t much like flying a million-dollar fighter jet. But as soon as he’d left the Air Force, Ben had gotten his helicopter rating, with this exact kind of crisis in mind.
As he lowered down, the wind created by the rotors made the firefighters’ mustard-yellow shirts whip against their bodies. He recognized Sean, Josh Marshall and Finn Abrams. They all wore heavy-looking backpacks and boots, and were grinning at him and waving.
As soon as the helicopter’s skids touched the pavement, he put the hand brake on and yanked open the door. He eyed the rugged firefighters and their gear. Three hotshots, plus him, crammed into a helicopter designed for four—they’d just make it if they didn’t go over the weight limit, which was eight hundred pounds, give or take. He estimated their combined weight, then gestured at their gear bags. “How much do those weigh?” he shouted over the thwacking of the blades.
“’Bout fifty pounds,” Sean shouted.
“Feels like a hundred some days,” added Josh, who was always the jokester of the group. Ben had spent enough evenings with them at Barstow’s to know.
That added up to an extra hundred and fifty pounds. “Easy to replace?” he asked.
Without another word, Finn dumped his bag onto the street. Ben gave him a salute as the others followed his lead. One by one, they ducked under the blades and climbed inside. When they were all aboard, Sean closed the door and gave him a signal.
Hot and Bothered Page 12
