His face was relaxed, his dimple flashing. “Who knew?”
“So what was it?” She’d finished her sandwich and hadn’t even realized it, and still hungry, she poked inside the basket and discovered a small bag of potato chips. She tore it open and sank her teeth into one of the salty crisps with relish. “The flying bug that ended up biting you?”
“I was afraid I’d start drinking again after I turned Anthony over to the authorities.”
She went still.
“Not long after I gave him up, I was driving to the old bar where I’d always hung.” His voice was casual, though she didn’t buy it for a second. “Just wanted to get my hands around a bottle of whiskey and forget everything.”
She was almost afraid to speak for fear that he’d stop. “What happened?”
“Gary—my first instructor—was tending at the bar. His son Jack owns the place.”
Her lips parted.
“I ordered the shot and that old man just took one look at my face and said, ‘Son, what you need isn’t here.’” Max’s gaze met hers. “I reached over to grab the booze anyway and he grabbed my shirt.” He fisted his hand, holding it against his throat. “Right here. And even though I was taller, younger and outweighed him, he pulled me out of the bar, pushed me back in my car and gave me a business card. Told me to get my head on straight and give him a call. First lesson was on him.”
“What’d you do?”
“Drove to a different bar. Put back more shots of whiskey than I can remember and nearly drove myself into a tree.” His gaze didn’t shirk from hers. “I was lucky I didn’t end up killing someone.”
“Including yourself,” she managed faintly.
His lips twisted. “That, too. I cleaned up. Sobered up. I was lucky that I’d never been picked up for DUI. And then I went out and took that first free flying lesson.”
“And you were hooked,” she finished. “How did Gary know that’s what you needed?”
“Because he’d been there himself.”
She absorbed that. Thank heaven for Gary. As far as she was concerned, he’d started earning his wings before he’d ever left this life. “And now?” She lifted the stemmed glass of lemonade. “You’re not tempted?”
“I won’t lie. Sometimes I think I am. But—” he shook his head “—it’s just not worth it. I can look in my mirror these days and not hate the guy staring back.”
“I think the guy staring back is quite remarkable.”
Max felt his neck get hot. He hadn’t been asking for her praise, just had wanted her to know where he came from. He managed a rakish grin. “That’s just because I succeeded in stripping you naked while sitting on a boulder.”
As he’d hoped, Emily’s cheeks went red. Her lashes swept down and she shoved a potato chip between her soft, pink lips. “What happened after the free lesson? Is that when you started doing odd jobs for Tanner?”
He nodded. “In exchange for the fees that would have easily taken me five times as long to afford.”
“So you had a plan,” she murmured. “And you worked the plan.”
“Yeah,” he agreed slowly. “I guess you could put it that way.”
“How far does the plan extend?” Obviously finished with the chips, she dusted her fingers on her napkin and handed him the bag to finish. “Just through getting your instrument rating?”
He narrowed his eyes. “What are you trying to get at?”
She lifted her shoulder in a casual move that he didn’t buy for a second. “Nothing. It just seems a shame not to continue pursuing something you clearly love.”
“Is that what you always do? Pursue the things you love?”
She turned and looked at the creek, presenting him with the lines of her perfect profile. “I…pursue the things that I know I want,” she said.
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“I’m not sure.” She finally looked back at him, her gaze meeting his only to flick away again. “Probably.”
He watched her for a moment. “What is it that’s really keeping you in Red Rock, Emily? What is it that you’re pursuing?”
“Do you remember what you said to me at the airport that day? When the tornado hit?”
He didn’t have to work hard to recall the horror of that day. Or the impact he’d felt when she’d looked up at him. But what he’d specifically said? “You were pinned under a rack of metal chairs and a helluva lot of other debris, I remember that. I told you they were going to get you out.”
“You also told me I had a future just waiting for me to live.”
“Did I?” He pinched his earlobe, more clearly remembering that he’d been trying to say something, anything, encouraging to a terrified woman. “I remember thinking you had the prettiest green eyes I’d ever seen.”
She smiled slightly, seeming to lose some of whatever tension had gripped her. “Even though I was covered in dirt?”
“Even though.”
“Well, you did say it.” Her slender fingers toyed with the stem of her glass. “To me, it felt like you’d been reading my mind. But even if you weren’t, your words mattered. That day changed my life,” she said simply. “It brought into very clear focus how little everything I’d done up to that point actually counted. My career. FortuneSouth.” She shook her head. “That’s what I’ve been good at, but in the end, it’s not what really matters.”
“Which is what? Relationships, I suppose.”
“Relationships. Friends. Family.” She hesitated, her gaze glancing over his yet again. “Children.”
“Well, nothing against relationships.” He crumpled the potato chip bag he’d emptied and reached out to grab the picnic basket. “Or family or friends. But children definitely aren’t in the cards for me. Anthony proved that.” He found the enormous chocolate bar he’d packed and held it up. “Chocolate. The richest, most sinful-looking kind I could think of to bring to a picnic.”
She barely glanced at the candy. “Just because Anthony isn’t yours biologically doesn’t mean you can’t have a relationship with him.” He gave her a look and she flushed. “Wendy told me that even though you’ve had opportunities, you’ve steadfastly refused to see him.”
“Wendy talks a lot.”
“She’s my sister,” she defended. “She’s lived in Red Rock longer than me. I asked about you and things…came up.”
“And Lily Fortune is related to you,” he concluded. He still got a paycheck from the woman even though they were becoming more and more infrequent due to the decreasing hours he’d been putting in working at the ranch. She’d never been anything but kind to him, but he knew the fact that he’d refused her attempts to arrange a meeting with Anthony had to have come directly from her. His sister knew about it, naturally, but he was fairly certain that Kirsten wouldn’t have blabbed his personal business to anyone, even Wendy Fortune Mendoza.
“It’s all water under the bridge,” he said, though it wasn’t entirely true. “Anthony’s got his real father now and a stepmother who loves him as if she’d given birth to him, herself. He’s got everything he deserves. Will continue to have everything he deserves.”
Emily’s brows pulled together. Her eyes were filled with shadow. “I can tell that you miss him, though. What about what you deserve?”
He didn’t want anything ruining his afternoon with Emily. “The only one deserving anything right here is you, who won that bet of mine when we were at Red, fair and square. The stakes were dessert.” He peeled the thick, glossy paper away from one end of the chocolate bar and broke off a piece. “Sinful, rich and chocolate, I believe you said.” The warm afternoon had already begun to soften the chocolate and between his fingers, it grew even softer. He leaned closer to Emily. “Open up and take your winnings.”
She hesitated for a moment. Then she exhaled and obeyed.
He nudged the chocolate past her pearly white teeth and her lips closed, catching the tip of his thumb, as well.
A bolt of heat shot straight down his spi
ne.
The shadows in her eyes shifted and her lashes fell, but not quickly enough for him miss the way her pupils dilated.
He slowly pulled his hand away. Her tongue snuck out, swiping over her lower lip, leaving it shining and damnably tempting and he scooped his hand through her silky hair, tugging her to him to cover her mouth with his.
She made a soft sound, her hands splaying against his chest as she kissed him back, just as hungrily. He could taste the chocolate on her tongue, smell the sun in her hair. And even though they’d just made love, he wanted her all over again.
He groaned. Kissed her hard and set her away from him. “Stop tempting me.”
Her eyes had turned drowsy and color spiked in her cheeks. “Why?”
“Because I only had one condom.”
“If you’d been a Boy Scout, maybe you’d have come prepared with more than one.”
He gave a bark of laughter, grabbed her close and kissed her again, twisting her right around until she lay on the blanket. Her hair spread wildly around her shoulders, looking nearly white against the red-and-black plaid. “Who knew my misspent youth would one day lead to this particularly frustrating moment?”
She giggled and the sound was so unexpected coming from her that he could only laugh again. And then he could only kiss her again. And know that the taste of her was a lot more addictive than chocolate.
When he lifted his head again, her eyes seemed to glow as she stared up at him. He could see her pulse beating at the base of her throat and he slowly lowered his head, pressing his lips right there, feeling the quick swallow she gave, the faint, breathy sound that rose in her throat.
“Max,” she whispered. “You said we couldn’t…couldn’t—”
“Take a chance. We won’t.” And he meant it. He traced the tip of his tongue against her exquisitely fine collarbone. “Just let me touch you.” Her legs shifted restlessly against his. She’d dropped the chocolate bar on the blanket and he tossed it carelessly toward the opened picnic basket. “You’re so damn beautiful,” he muttered, sliding his thigh over hers, mostly to keep her movements from sending him beyond the limits of his control.
But she just made that soft, needy sound again in her throat, the one that raised his blood pressure about a million points, and boldly ran her palm down the front of his abruptly strained jeans. He swallowed an oath and grabbed her hand, pulling it away from him, pressing it back against the blanket. “You’re gonna play with fire, there.”
“I was trying,” she said huskily.
He groaned and rolled right on top of her, hitching her thighs up against his hips. He dragged down the neckline of her blouse again, exposing her pink, pebbled nipples to him, the sky, the sun. “I really love this shirt of yours,” he muttered.
“I…didn’t realize it would be so handy.” Her voice was breathless. And then she gasped, her hands sliding over his shoulders, fingers kneading against his flesh like a needy cat when he lowered his mouth to the sweet, warm valley between her breasts.
Her hips arched against him, and even though there were layers of denim between them, he still felt bathed in fire. He shifted, kissing his way down her belly, shoving the white blouse out of his way as he went, tasting the flat little indent of her navel, reaching the low-cut jeans that hugged those racehorse hips and legs of hers so maddeningly. He freed the button and wasn’t sure who he was torturing more as he slowly dragged down the zipper.
“Max—”
“I just need to touch you,” he murmured. “I won’t do more than that, I promise.”
She gave a choked laugh. “Is that what you said to your brace-faced friend Stacey?”
“You kidding? She was the one calling the shots that day. I was too damn scared to move.”
“I think I’m too scared to move,” she admitted. “You make me lose control.”
And he loved it that he was the one she’d lose it with. “That’s the best part.” He slowly pulled her jeans down her hips. Her panties were white and sheer; little more than a few strings and a tiny triangle with a little bow right at the top. For a woman who’d been so buttoned up when they’d first met, she definitely indulged a liking for sexy panties.
He let his fingers drift slowly, tantalizingly, down one string, toward the triangle, and watched, up close and personal, the way her flat stomach seemed to flinch as he grazed his fingertips past the bow, right over her mound.
She inhaled audibly and suddenly twisted her legs, kicking her jeans off the rest of the way. He exhaled, not sure he’d ever felt more relieved than he did knowing she didn’t want him to stop.
He bent sharply, kissing the flat of her belly again. Then her knee. The taut curve of her smooth thigh. He let his fingers slide a few inches more, finding her just as hot and slick as she’d felt on the boulder.
She gasped. Closed her hand around his wrist.
But she didn’t pull his hand away from that most intimate part of her and when his mouth followed the path his fingers blazed, she cried out his name, her body arching against him. Her hands twisted in his hair and she gave herself over to pleasure.
And it was one of the sweetest things he’d ever known.
* * *
“Finish your chocolate,” he said a long while later, after she’d finally regained enough energy to dress and he’d regained enough control to stop pacing back and forth alongside the creek while she did. “We’re going to have to get back soon.” They’d already stayed out longer than he’d planned.
She pulled the enormous chocolate bar out of the picnic basket where he’d tossed it. “You must think I have a really, really big appetite.” But she broke off another piece and popped it in her mouth, obviously savoring it.
“As long as you keep an appetite for me, eat as much as your heart desires.”
“I desire you,” she murmured, her lips twitching. “But you didn’t think ahead well enough to be better prepared.”
“Next time I’ll have the entire box of condoms,” he warned, not entirely joking.
Her cheeks went wildly pink, but her smile didn’t fade.
He dragged on his wrinkled shirt and shoes and socks and started packing up the picnic basket, leaving the blanket for last. She wrapped up the rest of the chocolate and tucked it beside the empty glasses, then moved off the blanket to hunt for her sandals that she’d left lying in the grass.
He shook out the blanket and folded it up, but his eyes were on her. Swishing her feet around again in the grass, a daisy in her hand as she searched. The bottom of her jeans was still wet from the creek even though she’d folded them up around her calves, and her hair hung tangled and shining down around her sun-pinkened shoulders.
Then she turned her head, as if feeling his gaze. Her nose was as pink as her shoulders. She smiled at him. “Everything all right?”
Something inside his chest ached. He cleared his throat. “Yeah.”
Everything was great.
Except for one problem.
He was falling in love with her.
* * *
Flying back to Red Rock felt strangely bittersweet to Emily. The flight back itself was no less exhilarating, but it felt to her as if something perfect and promising was at an end.
And she didn’t want it to be.
Max wasn’t like anyone she’d ever known. And when she was with him, she felt like she’d never felt before. Let herself behave as she’d never behaved before.
Even now, her body felt liquid and lax, and she still wanted more. More of him. More of everything.
Was it Max himself that caused it all?
Or were her hormones going stark mad because she was already pregnant, just like Wendy had talked about?
She pushed away the thought. It was bad enough that she hadn’t told Max anything about her plans yet.
Maybe that made her the worst sort of coward. And if not that, then it was certainly selfish. She wanted her cake and to eat it, too, no matter what she caused along the way…
; It made her feel like she possessed the very traits that she’d often blamed her father for possessing.
She listened to Max talking to the control tower at the Red Rock airport and stared out at the ground below, seeing the same sights she’d seen so many times as she’d flown there from Atlanta over the past several months, but seeing them now in such a remarkably different way that it was brand-new.
She didn’t interrupt his concentration as he settled the plane on the ground in a way she couldn’t help but admire, considering how loudly the air was screaming past the windows. It was like he managed to catch a bullet with goose down. Once they’d landed, he taxied around the airport, clearly knowing where he was going and what he was doing even though to her it all just seemed like a maze, marked with strange signs and markings. He returned the plane to the same tie-down where it had been located before, helped her out and walked her back toward Tanner’s hangar.
The sun was beginning to lower, painting the horizon in brilliant reds and oranges. The lights around the airport were coming on.
“I need to take care of some paperwork. It’s going to take me a while,” he told her as they came abreast of the office door. “There’s no reason you need to hang around and be bored.”
She wanted to argue that nothing about him bored her, not even waiting quietly for him to complete his tasks. But she suddenly felt tongue-tied. Which she knew was ridiculous considering the way they’d spent the afternoon, but knowing still didn’t help. So she didn’t voice the question clamoring inside her—would they see one another again?—and made herself nod. She held the bunch of daisies up a few inches. They had finally begun to wilt a little, but she couldn’t bear to part with them. “Thank you again, Max. For the flowers. For…everything. It was a wonderful day.”
“So polite. Must be that finishing school thing.” He smiled slightly. Touched her nose. “You’re sunburned. Should have warned you to bring sunblock. Don’t want anything hurting that smooth skin of yours.”
“I’ll be fine.” Her skin would be, anyway. She wasn’t so sure about the rest of her. “What, um, what day do you take your exam?”
“Thursday.”
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