by Anne Stuart
Trust her to check all details. But somehow, he had to make sure that all didn’t go well. Her father didn’t want her back for two days.
“Certainly we can fit lunch in there somewhere,” he said.
“I’d like to be back for my shift tonight.” She handed him a bite of a blueberry scone.
He popped it in his mouth. “I thought your father gave you the day off for this trip,” he said after swallowing the scone.
“He did. But this shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. And if I don’t come in, he’ll be shorthanded and he’s not as young as he used to be.”
“He’s strong as a bull.”
He heard the little expelled breath that meant she was getting huffy. “I know you think you’ve learned everything about Umberto’s in the two weeks you’ve been there, but he had a heart attack last year. It was just a small one, a sort of warning, but he’s no longer strong as a bull, though he likes to think he is, and my job is to be there.”
“Pardon me, Your Highness,” he said. There was no other way to respond to that tone. “I just thought it would be nice not to rush. If he gave you the day off, I’m sure he’s brought someone in to cover for you.”
That exhalation of air again. “And in what lifetime would you want to dally with me, Mr. Stratton?”
“Dally?” Now there was a word you didn’t hear every day.
“Linger over,” she relied. “Spend time with.”
A very honest answer to that was right on the tip of his tongue. He didn’t need to complicate an already tricky little trip, but what the hell. She had it coming. And it had been an undercurrent beneath the waves of conflict between them for two long weeks. He braked at a red light and was able to turn and look right into her eyes. “In any lifetime offered me, Miss Como.”
He enjoyed her openmouthed expression of complete confusion. The light turned and he drove on.
“You don’t like me,” she reminded him.
“I don’t like your presumption of superiority,” he corrected, passing a small pickup burdened with lumber, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not sexually attracted to you.”
“Sexually att—” She said that on a gasp, then added, “You are not! You never have a kind word to say to me. And that cool courtesy isn’t courtesy at all, it’s disdain.”
“It’s disdain for your attitude,” he corrected again, “not your appeal.”
She said nothing for another five minutes, then he turned onto the airfield property. He pulled into a parking spot by the tiny terminal and coffee shop.
“Rest room’s in there,” he said, pointing to the coffee shop. “You look as though you need to splash water on your face. I’m going to check the plane.” Then he pointed again to the yellow Cessna at the edge of the field. “Right there.”
She studied him one speechless moment, then scrambled out of the car and headed for the coffee shop.
CHAPTER THREE
KAT WAS SHAKEN to her very femininity by Hal’s admission. And that’s just where she felt it—a little tremor where there’d been very little action in a long time. It was strangely exciting and a little alarming to experience a distinctly sexual reaction to a man she thought she despised, and who she’d been sure despised her.
She looked at her reflection in the age-spotted oval mirror above the sink in the ladies’ room, teased by the notion that she attracted him. What was it about her? she wondered. Certainly not her brown hair—it was long and thick, but just…brown. Not the dark eyes—they were thickly lashed but not particularly wide or sparkling, and again…just brown.
Her body wasn’t bad, but it was small with none of the voluptuousness men seemed to prefer. She’d been complimented on her smile acquired after two years of metal braces when she was a preteen, but she doubted she’d used it often enough lately for anyone to notice. Sad but true.
In fact, she’d been thinking a lot about where her life was going. She’d broken off an engagement last year when her fiancé had impregnated her best friend and left Kat’s sense of self in tatters. To recover, she’d worked longer hours, weekends, painted her bathroom, learned to sew.
Her efforts to stay busy were a combination of a cowardly need to hide, and the conviction that she couldn’t let what had happened destroy her faith in herself. Her mother had sewn, and she was the most womanly woman Kat knew, so Kat bought a machine and took a class.
But she’d turned out to be more adept at hiding than at sewing. She found any kind of fabric difficult to deal with, seams difficult to align, zippers and buttonholes impossible to accomplish, and once took a desperate trip to the E.R. with a sewing machine needle in her thumbnail.
But she couldn’t hide forever; she knew that. She wanted a home and children, and though some women managed those successfully without husbands, she wanted a man in her life. She liked hand-holding, snuggling, sharing. She was a smart and capable woman who wouldn’t be offended by the assistance of a smart and capable man.
But Hal Stratton?
There was that little tingle again at the very mention of his name.
She was going over the edge. That’s all there was to it.
She brushed her hair, straightened her jacket and stepped back from the brink of attraction. He couldn’t possibly be the man for her. With a family composed of determined and authoritative Italian males, she knew she needed something else. She had dreams of a gorgeous young Adonis wealthy enough and sufficiently besotted with her to set her up in her own restaurant on the coast and give her four little girls and a house overlooking the ocean.
God? Was that too much to ask?
Apparently. Because instead, He’d sent her a George Patton wanna-be with likely only a two-seater airplane to his name who probably lived on tips.
Well, she was stronger than this unexpected little burgeoning of desire. She squared her shoulders, set her jaw and headed for the plane.
HAL PREPARED for takeoff. At least, that’s what she presumed he was doing. He wore a headset and talked to the tower while adjusting gauges, flipping switches, an occasional joke injected into the conversation suggesting a familiarity with the person he spoke to. The voice was female and Kat heard her ask if he was in pursuit of a bad guy.
“Not this time,” he replied after a moment. Then he added to Kat with a smiling side glance, “In another life, I was a skip tracer.”
“That’s tracking down suspects out on bail who don’t make their court appointments, right?”
“Exactly.”
He continued with the checklist. The powerful motor growled to life and made the small plane shudder. For one moment, she wondered what on earth she was doing with a handsome man in a small plane on a Wednesday morning when she should be home doing laundry because she had to be at work by eleven for the lunch rush.
Linens, she reminded herself. She was flying to San Francisco to pick up linens to make sure her father had them in time for the Ferreiras’ party. That was an odd thing to do, but her father did odd things all the time, and she knew how eager he was to make a good impression on the couple and their society friends.
“Buckled up?” Hal asked, leaning forward to look at her seat belt.
“Yes,” she replied, feeling as though his hand rather than his eyes had stroked across her stomach.
She had to think about other things.
Life and death seemed worth consideration as the little plane shuddered into the air and climbed toward an army of puffy clouds in a clear blue sky. Hal held the controls confidently, still talking to the tower. Then he finally leveled out, made a few adjustments to the intimidating panel of controls, thanked the tower and slipped off the earpiece and mike.
“Good day for flying,” he said. “Weather’s even good over the Siskiyous. That’s a rare thing in February.”
“Good.” She made an effort to appear at ease. The principles of flight had never made sense to her, but then she was no scientist. Millions of people got safely to their destinations every day and she
would, too. “You’ve flown this way before?”
“All the time. My sister lives in San Diego.” He was quiet a moment, then asked with a smile, “This your first date in an airplane?”
“Date?” Her determination to remain sane was not going to be undermined by his in-your-face charm. “This is a business trip.”
“Come on,” he chided. “Only if we allow it to be. Let’s make it a business trip that turned into a date. Let’s go sightseeing, have dinner at the Top of the Mark, then stay overnight in the hotel.”
It was naive to be disappointed in him for suggesting they get a room together, so she kept her feelings to herself.
“Stay over?” she asked coolly.
“So we can see the sights,” he replied, “take in a few clubs. It’d be criminal to travel this far with each other just for the tablecloths.”
“It’s a business trip,” she said again. “My father wants those tablecloths back for the Ferreiras’ party.”
“That’s tomorrow night. We’ll leave early in the morning and be home by lunch. Come on, Katarina. Don’t you feel like dancing?”
She loved to dance, but she’d had no one to dance with in over eight months. She could almost see the lights turned down low, hear saxophones and drums thrumming in the shadows where couples clung together and moved lazily to the music.
But that wasn’t her life, now. These days she worked until she dropped.
“No,” she said stiffly. “I feel like picking up our order and getting it home. I know you manage to charm everyone around you, but I’m impervious to you. I like to see substance and stability in a man and some respect for my opinion before I sleep with him.”
He smiled again. “You’re inviting me to sleep with you if I can show you substance and…?”
“No.” He was trying to embarrass her and she refused to allow it. “You said…”
“I said ‘stay over.’ But I could be talked into sleeping with you if that’s what you want.”
If they hadn’t been hanging thousands of feet above the earth, she would have slapped him. But she didn’t want to do anything to distract him. She was beside herself with frustration.
He reached a hand out to pat her knee in a curiously fraternal and affectionate gesture. “Relax, Kat. I’m teasing. I’ve been lusting after you for two weeks, but I respect your father and I wouldn’t seduce you when he sent me to look out for you.”
He’d said this was a short flight, but it was entirely possible she could go bananas before they were halfway to San Francisco.
“Just stop talking to me!” she ordered in a strangled voice.
He’d been lusting after her? There was that tingle. She pressed her knees together and folded her arms. “And my father sent you to transport me, not to look after me. I can take care of myself, and I assure you I’m in no danger of falling for your seduction.”
“Transport,” he said, “could have an entirely different…”
“Stop it!”
“Sure, Your Highness.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THEY REACHED San Francisco by midmorning, its beautiful skyline glistening in the sun.
“If you were any fun,” Hal teased Kat, “we’d leave the plane to be refueled overnight and find somewhere down there to have a good time and get to know each other.”
“Why does that even occur to you?” she asked. “You’ve told me over and over again that I’m bossy and compulsive and no fun at all.”
“But you could be if you’d just relax your grip on authority and see that the world goes on, even when you’re not in charge.”
She glanced at her watch. “Would you just get us down, please?”
“I’d like to wait for the airport, if you don’t mind.” His radio squawked, he pulled on his earphones, and there were spurts of conversation until they finally landed fifteen minutes later at the small airport on the north end of the city, just a quarter of a mile from the linen company.
The moment Kat stepped off the plane, she called them.
“What?” she demanded as someone apparently responded unfavorably to her announcement that she was on her way. “They were supposed to be ready. I’ve flown in from…yes, I appreciate that, but I have to…” She finally sighed, her shoulders sagging. It amazed him that she felt called upon to bear the weight of the world on them. “Fine,” she said. “Two hours.”
She stabbed the phone off and frowned at Hal. “They won’t be ready for two hours. Two of the tablecloths got oil on them from a machine when they were being bundled, and they had to make two new monograms.”
He caught her hand. It was time he took charge of the situation. “Good. Then we’ll have lunch somewhere romantic, even if you refuse to have dinner with me.”
He found a lone cabdriver near the terminal and gave him instructions.
“Somewhere romantic,” the driver said to himself. “A man’s idea of romantic, or a woman’s?”
“Ah…” Hal considered that. “Well, a man’s, I guess, because this is an unusually practical woman.”
“I know just the place.”
“Hal, we don’t have time to be romantic,” Kat insisted, “even if I wanted to be.”
He frowned at her. “How much time do you think it takes? Romance is a look, a touch, secrets exchanged in a quiet corner.”
She fell back against her seat with a groan, either tired of listening to him or deciding that arguing with him was hopeless. Either way, he lucked out.
The cabdriver deposited them in front of an English lodge-type building with a hanging sign proclaiming it The Royal Dragoon. On it was painted a man in military garb wielding a saber.
“Nothing says romance,” Kat said coolly, “like a drawn sword.”
He was beginning to wonder if his faith in cabdrivers had been misplaced when they were led into a large room decorated in the style of an old manor house, all columns and gilt, dark wood, leather, silver, copper and a fireplace.
Kat stopped in surprise, her determination to be uncooperative undermined by their surroundings. A waiter in livery guided them to a table by the fireplace where a real fire crackled behind an iron grate.
Hal pulled out a chair. Kat sat, still gawking.
“Wow,” she said simply.
“I know,” he agreed. “We live our everyday little drudgeries and forget sometimes that style and grace exist.”
“We try to remind people of that at our restaurant,” she said a little absently, studying the fireplace. When she looked at him again, she was focused once more, but seemed as though she’d relaxed just a little, less tense than the woman he’d flown with. “In an Italian way, of course. We’re a little more raucous than the British.”
He laughed at that. It was hard to think of her as raucous.
They ordered shrimp and angel-hair pasta in a light cream sauce.
“Salad’s very fresh with interesting greens,” she said when it came, poking into it with her fork.
“You don’t have to critique the food,” he said. “That’s too much like work. We’re on a date, remember? A romantic interlude.”
“Hal, no matter how hard you try to make it otherwise,” she disputed, “we’re here on business.”
“The linen company is business,” he granted, “but they’re not ready for us. This is two hours of time just for us.” He leaned toward her over the table and smiled into her eyes. “It’s that dallying we talked about earlier.”
SHE WAS STARTLED by how much she wanted to believe that. Two hours just for her with a man intending to romance her. She even felt herself open to the idea, wanted to be receptive to whatever might happen. But playing coy wasn’t in her nature; she had to be direct.
“You said you were attracted,” she said, half-expecting him to now deny it.
Instead, he replied firmly, “Yes, I did. Attracted in every sense of the word.”
“You never said anything before.”
“You were always being a boss and never just a woman. It m
ade it hard to approach you.”
“I’m usually…all business.”
He studied her now with a concentration that seemed to stop the breath in her lungs, slow the beat of her heart. “Why is that?” he asked. “When you’re so beautiful and you have a body that would stop any man in his tracks? Has someone hurt you? Made you think it isn’t safe to be who you really are?”
She opened her mouth to tell him her fiancé impregnated her best friend, but everyone had their problems and she preferred to suffer in private. She didn’t want to share, but she didn’t want to lose this moment.
She tossed her head. “I’m over it,” she said. “What about you? I suppose there are women everywhere who love your take-charge approach.”
He shrugged. “I’ve been busy, too. Not a lot of time for myself. But I’d like to change that.” He tilted his head and eyed her. “What are you doing on Valentine’s Day?”
“Working. You?”
“I have it off,” he said. His eyes played over her face. “Why don’t I pick you up after work?”
She shook her head. “It’ll be midnight before I’m finished.”
“Midnight is good. The romancing hour.”
She couldn’t help a laugh. “I thought it was the witching hour.”
“If you’re a witch, maybe. If you’re a romantic, it’s the romancing hour.”
The food arrived and they concentrated instead on idle conversation. Then the clock on the mantel struck two, and it was as though the two loud gongs brought Kat to her senses.
“We have to go,” she said hurriedly, standing up and digging in her purse for her credit card. She’d never lost two and a half hours before. It was unsettling.
He stayed her hand, giving his card to the waiter when he came to see what they needed. She saw Hal’s eyes question her sudden change of mood and didn’t know how to tell him that as appealing as this sudden attraction was, she was afraid of it. She wasn’t sure what had gone wrong with Dave, and he hadn’t been half as threatening to her peace of mind as Hal.
