“You got stood up? I’m sorry.” Megan gave his shoulder a sympathetic pat that lingered long enough to send tendrils of heat everywhere.
Ben shrugged, and his loosened tongue took over. “My buddy and I were going to go camping, but his ex—Amber the baker—decided she was on-again.”
“And now you’re alone for your vacation. That sucks. Are you here for the whole week?”
He shrugged. “I’ve got a month of leave.”
“You’re in the military?”
“Navy.”
“Sweet,” she said. “What do you do?”
He hesitated. Usually when he told a woman he was interested in about his job, he was done. She’d take over. Invite him to take her home. He could choose to take the next step or not.
He was definitely interested in the next step with Megan, but there was something different about her. She was more real than anyone he’d met in a long time. For once, it would be nice to wind up in bed with a woman because she liked him, not his job.
“Sooo…” she prompted.
Unfortunately, before he could decide whether to tell her he was an accountant or a crane operator, his libido stepped in. “I fly jets.”
“Of course you do.” She rolled her eyes.
She didn’t believe him? Two seconds ago he’d been trying to lie, but now for some reason he really wanted her to believe him. “Really.” He nodded. “Just like Tom Cruise when he was cool.”
She snorted. “Top Gun. I should have known. Although the last three guys who tried to pick me up in here all said they were SEALs, so it’s nice to have some variety.”
He laughed and reached into his pocket for his wallet. He showed her his ID, along with a snapshot of himself in his flight suit in front of the Boeing F-18 he buzzed around in over the Pacific and Middle East.
One elegantly sculpted eyebrow rose. “Okay, I’m more or less convinced. That’s pretty cool. It sounds like you love it.”
“I only take leave when they make me,” he admitted.
“What do you like best about flying?”
“Everything.” Which was true, but she probably wanted more detail. He searched his brain for something to add. “It’s really pretty up there.” God, he was lame, but she was listening. He took another drink of beer, and surprising himself, elaborated. “I like the adrenaline rush, especially taking off and landing on the deck of a floating runway.”
“Is it scary?”
“Not if you know what you’re doing. As long as I do what I’ve trained to do, I’ll make it out safely. Sometimes things go wrong, but we’ve got contingency plans.” And when he was in his plane, he didn’t have to try to think of things to say to people.
“Not quite as wild as managing a variety act in Vegas,” she teased. “There’s no way to plan for some of the crazy stuff that goes wrong in the middle of a show, but I’m a quick thinker. We’ve only lost a few audience members to accidents over the years.”
He laughed.
Maybe he’d come to one of her shows while he was here. It wasn’t like he had other plans. Would she want him to come to see her?
She watched him over the brim of her glass as she took a sip of her beer. The noise around them faded into nothing while his eyes dropped to her mouth. She licked a stray bit of foam from her fat bottom lip. He glanced back up. She was still watching him, but now she was looking at his mouth, and he wondered what she would taste if he were to lean forward and—
“Hey, I’ve got to get home before my wife and kids decide to move out.”
Ben was yanked back to the room by the checker-suited clown’s announcement. The other brother said, “Well, mine wouldn’t pack up and leave, they’d just throw my stuff out in the yard.”
They both looked at Ben. “I don’t have a wife,” he said.
“Omigod, what time is it?” Acrobat Sister asked. “I’ve got car pool tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah, we’d better get going,” Megan’s dad said.
Ben quashed his disappointment that the party was over. He’d looked forward to finding out more about Megan and watching her eyes dance as she described her life in crazy Las Vegas. He should ask for her number. He tried to frame the question while her family began to gather belongings. Mom the Magician asked Megan if she wanted a ride home, but she said, “No, you’re all going the other direction. I’m fine.”
“Okay, sweetheart,” her mom said, with a long, concerned look. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’ve got a million Uber credits,” she reassured her.
He could offer to drive her home. Except he’d been drinking. He could offer to share the price of a ride with her…stop for waffles along the way…lick a stray drop of syrup from her lip…
“I mean, are you okay about the birthday?” her mother said in a not-very-quiet whisper.
Megan rolled her eyes. “Yes. I’m fine. Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Before he knew it, everyone was hugging and wishing each other good night. Ben picked up his beer glass, wanting to ask her to see him again,.
And then he was standing alone with her, amid a tableful of birthday detritus—dirty cake plates, tissue paper, and empty beer glasses. She heaved a huge sigh and turned toward him. Instead of reaching for the stack of gift bags on the floor, however, she said, “Phew. Survived another birthday party.”
“Don’t you like birthdays?”
She laughed. “I love birthdays, actually. It’s just I’ve managed to reach the ripe old age of twenty-nine without a husband, and my family’s concerned that my ovaries are about to dry up and blow away.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not out to snag a spouse tonight.” She patted him on the forearm.
“I wasn’t worried,” he protested.
“That’s what he said.” She grinned up at him, so close he could feel energy arc in the space between their bodies, close enough to smell flowers, vanilla, and something deeper, richer. God, he wanted to lean down and kiss her, right in the middle of the bar.
That might be a little forward, his inner chicken squawked in a slightly slurred voice.
When he straightened and stepped back, her lips tightened a fraction, as though she were disappointed. And then he realized he didn’t have to figure out how to ask to see her again just yet. Thanks to just enough beer and the reluctant arrival of his inner smooth talker, he said, “Can I buy you a nightcap?”
Her smile was brighter than the sun when she put her arm through his and pointed toward the bar. “Let me get my stuff.”
…
“What would you like?” Ben asked in that amazing voice. He had a tiny chip in his right front incisor—the thing that saved him from being too pretty to look at.
This guy almost made Megan forget her family existed. She could have sworn he was about to kiss her a minute ago, but maybe she was a little drunk.
She’d put herself on a man-diet anyway, and had been doing pretty well, too. It had been months since Brad, the last needy guy in a medium-length line of wannabe actors, musicians, and Great American Novelists, dumped her as soon as he realized she wasn’t going to leave her job to spare him from her family. Sorry, babe. Your family— I just can’t take another one of those Monday dinners. It’s like I don’t matter. They make you forget I’m even there.
Yeah, she did get sucked into work things pretty easily, but unlike people who made big scenes and then ran away when she didn’t pay enough attention to them, her family stuck around. They were there for her. So she was there for them. No more giving her heart up to the next guy who smiled at her.
Like this Ben guy. At first she thought he was only sticking around to be polite—and maybe for the free beer—but then he started talking a little more. She noticed a certain amount of heat in his eyes, and he seemed interested in what she had to say.
When he asked if she wanted to have another drink, all her resolutions tried to escape. She reined them back in, even as she rationalized that
her virtue—and her heart—would be safe for the length of time it took to have one drink in a bar on her birthday. Then his sandalwood-and-sky scent wove around her as she settled onto the barstool next to him. Probably two drinks would be fine.
Bobby, the bartender, cleared his throat expectantly.
Oh yeah. Drink order. “Um…” What to get? She was usually the designated driver, the argument settler, the bar tab payer, and the hangover aspirin provider.
As an independent woman, she should probably have had a few go-to drinks, things she knew how to order for occasions like these. Maybe a martini? Stirred, not shaken?
“How about a shot?” Bobby suggested. “Schnapps? Jell-O?”
“Okay. But not one of those froofy things. Bourbon?” That sounded sophisticated and worldly, didn’t it? “Not anything too…biker chick.”
Ben and Bobby both laughed.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with being a biker chick!” she said, sending a mental apology to her cousin Quinn, who owned a custom motorcycle shop, and his fiancée, Kellie. So much for sophisticated and worldly.
“Okay,” Ben said. “That sounds good. Two shots of Blue Mountain bourbon…the older stuff, not the 8-Ball.”
“Coming right up.” Bobby delivered their drinks, and she took a sip.
Whoa. The liquor had a sweet burn on the way down that nearly made her eyes water. She wasn’t a quitter, so she took another. It went more easily.
“So you’re a costume designer,” Ben said.
Her pleasure at being called a costume designer sent a not-unpleasant thunk through her chest, and she said, “Well, that’s my dream, anyway. I spend every chance I get working on new ideas for the family. They’re only willing to be my guinea pigs for so many designs a year, though.”
“Isn’t it easy to get that kind of work in a town like this?”
She made a so-so motion with her hand. “It might be, but I’m pretty busy with my family.”
“You only live once. Don’t let your dreams get pushed too far out of sight.” He looked down in his bourbon glass as though his words had come from the liquor.
It occurred to Megan that she sported a nice warm buzz, too.
He raised the glass to his lips, and light glinted off the ring on his hand.
“What’s this?” she asked him, reaching to slide her finger over the large blue stone set in a chunk of gold.
He took it off and handed it to her. “Class ring.”
“Wow.” She held it up to the light. “United States Nav…you went to the academy?”
“Yeah.”
She blinked.
“You didn’t put money on Army to win the football game, did you?” he asked.
She snorted. “No.” But then she took him in—tall, dark, and handsome; polite, attentive, and employed… “You’re the whole package. The real deal, aren’t you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She didn’t even think about the fact that he seemed like the perfect man, because as soon as she started to like him, her family would show up and scare him off. So instead, she took another sip of bourbon and said, “You’ve got it all going on. I bet you always wanted to be a pilot, and then you did it.”
“Well, yeah. Did you always want to be a costume designer?”
She considered his question. “I always kind of liked to make clothes for my toys. My Jessie the Cowgirl doll had the best prom dresses ever.” But she wasn’t really a costume designer in the full-time sense of the term. “My real calling is managing the Waltzing Wallaces. I fiddle around with fabric when I have time.”
“No law that says you have to stick with the same plan forever.” He laughed and turned to Bobby. “Can we have a couple more?”
Bobby refilled their glasses, then with a shrug, left the bottle for them.
“I hope you don’t let the Wallaces hold you back,” he told her.
She shrugged. “I’m pretty happy with my life. And it’s Shuttlekrump,” she told Ben.
“Huh?”
“Waltzing Wallaces is a stage name. Flying Wallendas was taken.”
His eyebrows rose.
“I know, right? It’s no wonder my sister got married the minute she graduated from college or why my brothers both took their wives’ last names instead of the other way around.”
“Why haven’t you changed your name to Mrs. Right?” he asked.
She snorted. “Because none of the Mr. Rights I’ve met can put up with my life. It seems like most guys find my family a bit overwhelming.” To say the least. “And then when they realize I owe the Shuttlekrumps my life—” Oh shit. She hadn’t meant to say that.
“You owe them your life?”
She decided to get it over with and explained, “I’m a Shuttlekrump by adoption. My birth mom was my now-mom’s younger sister. She had a drug problem, and my sperm donor bailed as soon as he found out she was pregnant, and so on. Fortunately, my now-mom and -dad took me in. Birth mom died a few years later.”
Ben’s eyes were sympathetic, but not judgmental. “I’m sorry.”
“I think I’m lucky.” She smiled to indicate the conversation was over and refilled her glass and topped off Ben’s. This bourbon was awesome.
“So you feel like as long as they need you, you’ll be there for them.”
“Eggsackly,” she said, realizing she might be getting a bit drunk. “So I might become an old maid Shuttlekrump, but I won’t complain about it.”
“Too bad your love life isn’t what you’d like,” he told her, sounding thoroughly insincere. “But it’s great that you’re close to your family.”
“Yeah. They scare off all the guys I bring around, but still worry about me for being single. At least I have people who appreciate me and want me around. I don’t need dumb guys who are leavers.”
“Losers?”
“No, leavers. They leave. Leaving is bad.” She took another sip of bourbon. This true-confession stuff made a girl thirsty. “What about your family? Where do they live?”
He shook his head. “My mom and grandma live in Memphis. My parents split up when I was little.” A shadow passed over his expression. “My dad died a couple of years ago, but I hadn’t seen him since he left us.” He grimaced, and then his jaw hardened.
“I’m sorry,” she told him, and meant it. Which must be why she was leaning so close to him and had her hand on his thigh. That, and she needed another lungful of delicious Ben scent.
“Are you okay?” he asked when she inhaled loudly.
She pulled back, but he’d put his hand on top of hers, so she left it where it was, trying not to knead those hard muscles.
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. I just… Wow. I’m sorry you don’t have a close family or a wife and kids.” Although she didn’t really mean it. About the wife and kids, anyway.
“It’s cool. I’m at sea most of the time.”
“I thought you were a pilot.” She was getting buzzed, but she definitely remembered seeing the picture. If he was going to switch things up and tell her he was a SEAL now, she was going home.
“I am a pilot. I fly from an aircraft carrier.”
“Oh yeah. Don’t women fall all over you when you’re home?” She glanced around, but Bobby was the only other person in the bar, and he was engrossed in a rugby game on some sports network. Her hand was still on Ben’s thigh, and his quads rippled under her fingers as she leaned in closer to whisper, “You’re seriously hot. If you’re not attached, there must be something seriously wrong with you.”
His deep chuckle vibrated over her skin and deep into her midsection, stirring heat low in her belly. “I think my last girlfriend would agree with you, that there’s something seriously wrong with me.”
There really wasn’t anything wrong with him, at least not that Megan could see. And she was close enough now to admire the slight stubble on his chin, to wonder how it would feel rasping against her skin as he pulled off her tank top with his teeth… Th
e thought made her nipples tighten while arousal throbbed between her legs.
Somehow, they’d moved close enough that their knees alternated each other—her leg, his leg, her leg, his leg… If she scooted forward just a couple more centimeters, his knee would be right against her, easing that ache…
She straightened and moved back a smidge, lest she start humping him right here in the bar. Instead, she found herself interlacing her fingers with his so they were palm to palm. Nice. Now what were they talking about again? Oh yeah. His faults. “What is it that’s so wrong with you?”
He looked up from their joined hands. “I’m gone too much.”
“Gone? Like off fishing?” What kind of psycho control freak won’t let her guy go hang with his friends?
“No, like at work. For weeks and weeks.”
Well, that would suck. If she had a boyfriend like Ben, she’d want him around all the time—especially if he kept stroking his thumbs over the backs of her hands like that, so sweet and sensual.
Except that boyfriends were the bane of her existence. Hmm. “I totally need a guy who works too much, because so do I. If you’re gone all the time, you wouldn’t be here to get mad if I didn’t pay attention to you. I should just marry you myself.”
“You two want another one? It’s last call.” Bobby held the bottle of bourbon poised over her glass.
Ben looked at her with a question in his eyes, and she decided to throw caution to the wind. After all, it was her birthday. She could go back on her man-diet tomorrow.
Chapter Three
Megan’s first semiconscious thought was that the air conditioner in her apartment should be serviced soon, because it was making an odd wheezing sound, but she was way too comfortable and snuggly to get up and do anything about it. As a matter of fact, she felt pretty good, considering there was a major hangover lurking at the edges of her brain.
Accidentally in Love with the Pilot Page 2
