by Rachel Lee
“So it is.” His voice sounded tight, but then he let out a breath. “The important thing is getting everyone out alive. Then I’ll deal with the NTSB, the company that did the overhaul and my insurance carrier. By the time all that’s taken care of, I would almost bet I’ll be ready to kill someone.”
“You’ll certainly be older.”
A quiet laugh escaped him. “Goes without saying.”
Concern for her sister, which had been eating her alive for weeks now, cracked open just a little, allowing her to feel for him. “I’m sorry. I know how miserable that crap can be. I went through it on the blowout. I don’t know what was worse—dealing with the investigators or dealing with the insurers.”
“They were probably both equally bad. They have the same goal after all—to give somebody else a hard time.”
Another chuckle escaped her. “Oh, yeah. And to pin blame, preferably somewhere that doesn’t cause them any problems.”
“So what did they decide on that blowout?”
“I feared it was going to be pinned on me as long as the roughnecks stuck together. Easier to blame the gringa than the guys you have to work with. I was more than a little surprised to find out that a certain amount of gratitude made them tell the truth, how I had ordered the drilling stopped, and then, when I was disobeyed, cleared the area. At least nobody tried to say I should have halted the drilling myself.”
“Could you have?”
“Short of shooting two men, no. And by the time I got back to the site, it was too late. I’d ordered the drilling stopped that morning, then I had to run over to another site where they were complaining that the hole was dry, and by the time I got back…well, we were minutes from disaster. All I could do was tell everyone to clear out.”
She paused to sigh. “Oil wells stink when they’re pumping oil. Gas is mixed in, of course, but the hydrogen sulfide smell—rotten eggs—is enough to make you gag. There was no smell. They drilled into a pocket of pure methane, and it was odorless. That is so freaking rare. I had no idea they had already broken through when I started shouting for everyone to get away, and screamed again for those guys to stop the drill. No idea. I expected the smell. Maybe they did, too. I don’t know.”
“So the gas was everywhere?”
“Damn near. It couldn’t have been long, though. Methane is heavier than air. It sinks to ground level. If enough of it had been out there, people would have started getting asphyxiated, and the flash fire would have singed everything at ground level. Instead, we just blew the well.”
She twisted toward him. “That’s why we have to burn off the escaping gas if we can’t manage to capture it. Because it sinks, and when it sinks it’s deadly. In the case of that well, we may have been saved by a good breeze. I don’t know. I’ll never know. I wasn’t there when they initially busted into the pocket so I have no idea how much gas just dissipated on the wind or how little escaped right before the explosion.”
“But why would those guys press on against orders?”
“Because I’m not the only boss. I’m the geologist. I find the oil, I try to keep them on track until they get the field open. There are other bosses, there isn’t anything like unions for those workers, people get paid crap, and if the guy running the drilling operation, say, is getting paid by the well, and not by the hour, he’d have a lot of incentive not to want things to slow down. And he might create incentives for his crews to push on, regardless of safety. I don’t know. I really, truly don’t know. I know what they want me to know, and I know what I can figure out from my explorations. Beyond that…” she shrugged. “The actual business end of what’s happening is opaque to me. I hear rumors, sometimes, but that’s it.”
“Sounds like a dangerous situation to be in.”
“Not usually. Most drillers are cautious and good at what they do. Most of the people working these jobs want to bring in a sound well, not a rocket. We have more problems from faulty equipment than from greedy people. For all I know, the entire thing may have happened because someone didn’t want to take orders from a woman.”
“Will you be going back when your sister recovers?”
She appreciated the way he posed that question. Her chest tightened a bit, but she squelched the feeling. She’d been alone for a long time, and she could handle this situation on her own. She couldn’t afford to show weakness because a stranger was being kind. “I’m not sure,” she said finally. “We’ll have to see how it goes.”
She heard his seat creak as he shifted. “I’m going back to check on the candle, make sure everyone’s okay.”
“I’ll go with you.” She couldn’t stand the thought of sitting here alone in the dark with that one red, unblinking eye. And checking on Cait had become an absolute compulsion for her.
“How come you have so many candles?” she asked him just before he opened the door.
“I’ve got even more in my hangar. An errant order got me a lifetime’s supply, and the restocking fee was huge beyond belief.”
That brought a smile to her lips and lifted her spirits a bit. It seemed that life happened to everyone.
“They make great gifts,” he said quietly, a note of humor in his voice. “Well, they did until people started running when they saw me coming.”
Everything in the cabin seemed fine. Rory bent over her sister, touching her cheeks, finding them cool but not too cool. She waited a moment, until she felt the flutter of her sister’s breath. All was good for now.
The wind’s buffeting made the plane creak a bit, but quietly now, not as loudly as earlier. Rory guessed that meant they were getting buried.
“I need some coffee,” Chase said. “And since it’s cooling down in here, we need to burn a couple of extra candles anyway.”
“Oxygen?”
He pointed to the door. “I think enough can get in through that hole the lock left, but if it starts to feel at all stuffy, let me know. The candle seems to be burning normally though, which is a good sign.”
Maybe the only sign they’d have, Rory thought. If the candle flames dimmed, they’d know they were in trouble. Like canaries in a coal mine. And a darned good reason to keep watches.
She stepped into the galley and by the light of a freshly lit candle reassembled the stand she’d made earlier from some of the chafing-dish holders. A couple of candles below and soon water was heating.
Rory leaned back against the bulkhead and wrapped her arms around herself. It seemed chillier back here.
“Where’s your jacket?” Chase asked.
“In the overhead bin above Cait. I don’t want to wake her.”
He turned, slipping into the bedroom, and came back a minute later with a royal blue blanket. He draped it over her shoulders and helped tuck it around her. She appreciated the gesture. Maybe not all men were meat-heads, she thought.
“Doesn’t pay to let yourself get cold,” he said, and rubbed her upper arms briskly. “It’s harder to warm up than to stay warm.”
“That’s not something I’ve had to think about the last few years. If anything, I’ve spent most of my time being too warm.”
In the candlelight, she caught the gleam of his smile. It was a nice smile. With that one expression he made her acutely aware that she was a woman and he was a man. And that it had been a very long time since she’d let a man get this close or touch her. She couldn’t afford it on the job, or anywhere near the job, and that consumed most of her life.
It also had left her with a less-than-flattering opinion of men. Getting her a blanket, she reminded herself, didn’t mean he was any better than the rest.
But then she remembered the way he had carried Cait, as if she were precious cargo, and she felt her heart lurch a bit. He could be gentle. Kind. Concerned. And so far she had to admit he seemed admirably calm and collected considering that everything he had worked for lay in ruins around him. She wouldn’t have blamed him for a little display of anger or irritation or something, given what had happened to his plane.
>
Heck, after the blowout, once the injured guys had been removed and the recovery team had come in to try to extinguish the fire, she’d kicked in one of the doors in her trailer. She wasn’t proud of it, but sometimes adrenaline and temper got the best of her.
She shivered unexpectedly.
“You’re cold,” he said.
“I can’t be. I’m not any colder than anyone else.”
“But you’ve been living in southern climes. You’re going to feel it more than the rest of us.”
And without so much as a by-your-leave, he unzipped his jacket, tugged the blanket open and stepped inside it with her. He urged her arms to slip around him inside his jacket, then wrapped his around her.
She sucked a sharp breath, about to protest instinctively. Then, “My God, you feel like a heater!”
“I’ve been nicely bundled up. And I’m willing to share.”
All he did was share. Not by the merest movement did he suggest or hint at anything except that he was giving her his body heat. But he might as well have.
The full-frontal pressure of their bodies immediately unleashed a whole different kind of heat in her. She became all too acutely aware of the hardness of his chest, the flatness of his belly. He managed to keep his pelvis from touching her, so she had no idea if he felt the same response. But she knew what she wanted. She wanted him to bear down on her, make her forget by taking her right here, right now, still fully clothed. A few awkward gropings, some needy pressure…and a rocket trip to the stars would result.
She was that close, and it astonished her that such thoughts should even enter her mind. When she dated, she was a dinner-and-flowers type of woman. She always wanted a courtship, time, a slow progression while she sorted through her feelings.
So much for that. Right now a caveman would have gotten her consent. And all because having Chase Dakota lean against her to keep her warm was suddenly the sexiest damn thing in the world.
She closed her eyes as feelings of desire tormented her. Every nerve in her body seemed to have awakened, become hypersensitive. A heaviness between her legs turned into a slow throbbing, the pulsebeat of need. She heard her breathing deepen and speed up a little all at once, and hoped it didn’t betray her.
Heavens, she couldn’t remember ever having felt a craving this strong or elemental. It had nothing to do with the kind of person Chase was, and everything to do with the fact that she was a woman, he was a man, and her response was coming from somewhere besides her conscious mind.
Basic. Instinctual. And oh, so good. It was as if she had contained a bottled genie all her life and somehow Chase had just pulled the cork. She didn’t recognize the response she was having, but she couldn’t argue that it wasn’t her.
It was definitely her, as well as something about the man who held her close for no other reason than to make her warm.
“Getting warm?” he asked.
She had to struggle against impulses to answer. “Yes. Thank you.” A mere breath of sound.
“Good. We need to keep you wrapped up.”
In his arms? Oh, yes. But of course that wasn’t what he meant.
“You were colder than you realized,” he said. “I felt it.”
And what else had he felt, she wondered. Then to her dismay, he was pulling back from her, tucking the blanket around her. She was definitely warmer now, and his action brought her back to her senses. They were making coffee, not a safe process under these conditions, and one they couldn’t afford to leave unattended, even supposing he had felt the same shaft of desire she had.
He turned, lifted the lid on the chafing dish and looked. “The water’s boiling.”
A few minutes later when they stepped out of the galley area with their coffee, Rory immediately noticed how much cooler the cabin was. She looked at Chase over her shoulder and he nodded.
“More candles,” he said quietly. “You go sit, I’ll get them.”
They had made a little pocket of heat in the galley, even though it had no door on it, but stepping into the larger space gave Rory an indication of just how much the temperature was dropping in here.
Chase returned with a bunch of thick candles and set them on the tables that served the passenger seating. Soon they all glowed, driving the night out of the cabin. Rory wondered how long it would take them to drive out the cold as well.
“Now we absolutely can’t afford to sleep,” Rory remarked as Chase took the seat next to her.
“Nope,” he agreed.
Rory watched the flames as she sipped her coffee, trying to imagine the rate at which those candles would use oxygen, and how much oxygen there was in a cabin the size of this plane. She didn’t have enough information, of course, but making those mental calculations was a distraction.
Distraction from the hunger she still felt for the man sitting beside her. Even though it had been tamped, wisps remained, reminding her.
She glanced his way. “Do you always wear jeans and sweatshirts when you fly?”
A soft chuckle escaped him. “I was ferrying my plane back from Seattle. I picked up Wendy and Yuma because they were out there for a conference and I couldn’t see them taking a commercial flight when I was bringing the plane back anyway. Then you showed up, wanting to go immediately. Sorry, I forgot the uniform at home. I wasn’t expecting to need it.”
“I was just curious. I’ve seen plenty of bush pilots dressed like you, but never one running a business charter.”
“What I wear depends on the client. Most of them don’t see much of me anyway.”
“I guess not. So ordinarily you’d have a cabin attendant?”
“Usually a couple of them. People who hire jets for business expect to be treated like precious cargo. There are exceptions, of course. Some people just want to be left alone to work. Or romance each other.”
Another trickle of desire warmed her between her thighs. It had been an offhand comment but, like a teenage girl, she responded to it as provocative. She wanted to shake her head at herself. “Must be interesting.”
“It can be. But, again, I’m usually at the controls and hear about most of it later. Not that there’s usually a lot to hear.”
“So you actually are based out of Wyoming?”
“Yes.”
“I guess that’s not out of the way, when you fly.”
“Not really. The bulk of my work is out West. I fly a lot of oil types around the Northwest, into Canada, sometimes to Alaska. Some bankers. Some ranchers, but mostly guys who own companies like yours. Only occasionally do I fly someone back East, but it happens.”
“I can’t imagine spending my money this way.”
“Except this one time.”
She looked back toward her sleeping sister. “Except this one time,” she agreed. “I’m not rich. I do all right, and I’m not complaining. But I didn’t get into this to get rich—I got into it because it fascinates me. It’s not every job that can take you all over the world to do the thing you love.”
“True.”
“And it’s not every job that will let you pull out all the stops to help your sister.”
He nodded, his expression hard to read in the flickering light. “I kind of mucked that up.”
“From what you said, it wasn’t your fault.”
“Maybe not. But I hired the company to do the overhaul. I picked them.”
“Have they worked for you before?”
“Yeah.”
“Well then.”
He gave a quiet snort. “Yeah. Well then. We’ll get Cait out of here as soon as the storm is over. Do you believe me?”
“I have to believe you,” she said quietly. “I have to.”
Chapter 4
The wind blew ice crystals hard against the side of the plane, and even with the soundproofing Chase could hear the shhh of it against the metal or windows. A mean night out there, not fit for man or beast. A killer night.
He looked at Rory. “You got enough winter clothes?”
&n
bsp; “You mean we may have to hike out of here?”
“I don’t know yet. But if we do, what have you got? Boots? Gloves?”
“Yeah. I picked up a bunch of stuff from an outfitter in Seattle. I was promised Minnesota gets pretty cold in the winter, and I figured I couldn’t spend every minute at the hospital.”
“Where is it?”
“In my carry-on in the overhead bin.”
“Which one?”
“Why?”
He sighed. “Because I want to check it out. I want to know everything we’re up against. Right here we could make it a few weeks with candles and food. But your sister can’t. We may need to make some decisions.”
“You want to know if I can walk out of here.”
“If necessary.”
She shook her head. “My sister can’t.”
“I know that. I’m already figuring out how to deal with that. But what I need to know is if everyone else can walk out of here.”
At last she quit questioning him and stood up. She popped the bin open and pulled down a large carry-on. He was just glad she hadn’t said it was all in the cargo space below them. First of all, he couldn’t get to it, and second of all, it would probably have been flattened like a pancake if not ripped up.
Somebody had advised her well, he thought as he clicked on a flashlight to look at what she had. Waterproof boots with removable liners, great for hiking. A parka for subzero temps with a snorkel hood to protect the face, a thick pair of lined gloves, a pair of ski overalls to protect the legs from cold and wind. Even some Thinsulate undergarments. She’d be okay.
“Good,” he said, and leaned back. “I suggest you put those boots on now. You never know. Did you get extra liners for them?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “You got good advice.”
“I never settle for less.”
He could well believe it. And it also seemed to him that she had come totally prepared for something a lot less civilized than the Minneapolis area. But maybe that was her mind-set after so many years drilling in jungles and on mountainsides. Never cut a corner.
He was a great believer in that himself. He leaned back while she put the boots on. Then she walked quietly down the aisle, just a few feet, to check on her sister. He watched the tender way she touched Cait’s cheek and adjusted the blankets around her, careful not to disturb her.
