by Sandra Owens
“I’ve been right here.” She really was gorgeous, with her dark brown bedroom eyes and long hair a man would fantasize about wrapping his fist around while he explored her lush body. Up close, she was a little older than he’d thought, maybe even had a few years on him, but she vibrated with sexuality and the confidence that no man could resist her.
Like a cougar separating its prey from the herd, she pushed between him and Charlie and leaned against him, her soft breast pressing into his upper arm. “I saw you watching me. Come dance with me.”
CHAPTER TWO
Charlie refused to lower herself to even try to compete with every man’s fantasy. To hell with him. Coming to a pickup bar had been her stupidest idea ever. As she passed an empty table, she plopped down her beer and kept going. Once outside, she took a deep breath of the damp, salty air.
More depressed than when she’d left her house, she headed for her car. The moment when he’d forgotten all about her wouldn’t have stung if she hadn’t liked him so much. “I saw you watching me,” she mimicked the she-witch. Of course, he would watch someone like whatever her name was. Probably something adorable like Heather or exotic like Francesca.
Charlie was used to being ignored. On the air show circuit, some of the other aerobatic pilots resented a female who was as good as or better than they were. She’d never understood why it mattered that she was a woman. If you were good, you were good. Plain and simple. And she was damned good at what she did—something no one could deny.
In her personal life, she’d only had one real boyfriend: another show pilot who, in the beginning, she had believed supported her wholeheartedly. Aaron had been new on the circuit when he’d approached her, gushing compliments left and right. She’d fallen for him, and the stars in her eyes had blinded her to his real motivation. Taking him under her wing, she’d spent months teaching him complicated maneuvers.
Lesson learned. Never trust hot guys. As soon as he believed himself as good as she was, he’d ended the relationship. Well, she had news for him. He wasn’t near her level, and his arrogance was going to get him killed someday. She just hoped that when it happened, he didn’t crash into a crowd of spectators.
On that depressing thought, she hit the remote to unlock the Corvette.
“Nice car, cherub.”
Charlie froze when a hard, warm body wrapped around hers from behind, pushing her stomach against the door. He hadn’t stayed with the sex goddess?
He put his hands on the vinyl roof, caging her between his arms, and nipped her earlobe. “Leaving without me?”
Unable to find any words, she settled for breathing in his masculine scent, a combination of soap, starch, and a hint of spice. She couldn’t think of a more intoxicating, manly smell and had a sudden longing to rub her nose all over him. What would he say if she asked to sniff him from head to toe? Imagining his reaction, a giggle slipped out before she could stop it.
“Wanna share the joke?”
Not even. With his mouth still near her ear, his voice was a low rumble that sent a shiver through her. The man was entirely too potent, and probably more than she could ever handle. But she’d sure like to give it a go for just one night.
“I thought you’d be dancing with the beautiful one.” Her voice was no longer hers. It had turned all husky and tremulous.
“I plan on it, beautiful one.”
She almost gave him a snarky retort, but when he turned her and took her hands, putting them on the sides of his waist, the words died on her lips. The heat in his eyes as he peered down at her sparked a low-burning fire inside her. No man had ever looked at her like that. A killer smile curved his lips as he spread his fingers over her hips, then began to move them to the music coming from the bar.
Wow! Zip bang bam! Chubby little Charlene Morgan was dancing in the parking lot of Buck’s on the Beach with the hottest man to ever touch her. But she wasn’t that girl anymore, she reminded herself. She had worked hard to shed the forty extra pounds her body had once carried, and she had worked even harder to make it in the world of aviation, mostly a man’s domain. She was Charlie, and Charlie was going to damn well enjoy this moment.
The song was a slow one, “Picture,” by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow. She only caught snatches of the words through the open door whenever someone entered or left, and she wished she’d listened to it more closely whenever they’d played it on the radio. When she got home, she was going to download the song so she’d be reminded of this night every time she listened to it.
“What’s your first name?” she asked as he swayed them to the beat of the music. Earlier, she hadn’t wanted to know, but now it seemed important.
“Ryan.”
“Irish?” Although, inside the bar, she’d been more interested in the muscles stretching his T-shirt, she’d noticed how green his eyes were. There had been something unique about them, but danged if she could remember, considering the strong hands he was stroking over her back.
“All the way down to my Boston-born toes.” He pulled her against him. “Come ova heah, sugah.”
Hearing him speak with that accent did funny things to her. If she begged, would he talk like that while making love to her? With their bodies pressed against each other, she could feel the hard bulge of his arousal. She wanted to tell him how good it felt, that part of him rubbing against her. She wanted him to know that she was a hair’s breadth away from leaping up and wrapping her legs around his waist to get even closer. She wanted him to tear off her clothes and show her all she’d been missing. Because she was positive he could.
All that was too much information, so she settled for pulling his face down, reaching for his lips. He let her play with his mouth for a moment, then he took over. Charlie had never, ever been kissed like that before, and felt as if she were in the middle of a hammerhead stall where she’d cut the engine and was plummeting nose down as her heart raced with the pure thrill of it.
“Jesus, cherub,” he gasped when he tore his mouth away. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Did he mean that in a good way or a bad one? The bar door opened as a couple came out, and the words to the song floated to them, something about putting her picture away. Ryan stilled, but before she could ask what was wrong, he began moving again. Something had changed, though. She could feel it in the tightening of the abs under her thumbs and in the very air separating them.
The song ended, and he stepped away. “Thank you for the dance, cherub,” he said, then brushed his mouth over hers, a fleeting touch before he disappeared into the night.
Charlie stood alone and stared into the dark, wondering if she’d hallucinated him. She touched her tingling lips and knew he’d been real. Or maybe he’d just been a lost ghost who’d somehow managed to materialize for a brief return to earth. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes at the feeling that she’d just lost something important.
“Utter nonsense,” she admonished herself, swiping at the stupid tears with a balled-up fist. Lesson learned. Stay away from bars that men with sexy Boston accents might frequent.
On a whim, she put down the top to her Corvette, then got in and started up her baby. For the next hour, she slow-cruised along US 98 to Navarre before making a U-turn and heading home.
There was now one more thing to add to all the regrets she refused to think about. She would not think about a stepsister who blamed her for so many things. Some rightfully so, some not. She would not think about her mother who’d died brokenhearted.
She would not think of a stepfather habitually writing her from prison the first of every month, swearing his innocence and begging her to recant her testimony. Oh, and postscript, if he was guilty, which he wasn’t, but if he was, he’d found Jesus and didn’t belong there for that reason alone.
She would not think of the hate-filled glares her stepsister had sent her way during the parole board hearing five months earlier when Charlie had spoken against giving Roger Whitmore his freedom.
Most of all, she would
not think about a man who’d made her feel beautiful, even if only for one dance.
As she rode home with the wind caressing her hair and the moonlight casting yellow ribbons of light dancing over the gulf, Charlie imagined herself seated in her plane as she pointed its nose up, up, up.
Never was she as happy as when piloting her red-and-white Citabria aerobatic plane, and she didn’t need a ghost man who disappeared like a wisp of smoke, making her wonder if he even existed.
Up. Up. Up. She needed no one to soar.
Ryan opened his T-shirt drawer and removed his wife’s picture. “I wanted her, Kathleen. More than I’ll ever admit to you.” He set the photo back on his dresser where it belonged, brushing away a piece of cotton lint. “Are you ever going to let go of me?”
She didn’t answer.
Why did that particular song have to be playing? Why had he frozen up like a slab of ice on hearing those words? And after one of the hottest kisses he’d ever experienced, he should be covering a cherub’s sweet body about now. Dammit to hell, when would he be able to put the past behind him?
Toeing off his shoes, he kicked them across the room. The heel of one caught the wall just right, leaving a gouge a quarter inch long. “Just great.” He’d never had a temper before reading Kathleen’s autopsy report, but if anything would unleash it, that fucking did.
His clothes landed in a trail that would have allowed anyone to follow him to the shower. Rage simmered under his skin, feeling like a bed of red ants lived there and were angry with him. So much to be sorry for. So many unanswered questions.
It would have been better if he hadn’t read the words on that Goddamned report. Even better, if Kathleen had lived to tell him the truth. The answers had died with her though, leaving him to always wonder. Had she ever loved him?
The lingering smell of Buck’s cleansed from his body, he slipped on a pair of sweatpants and, shirtless, walked into his spare bedroom and sat at the corner table. After searching through a box of gemstones, he chose one large gray-blue stone and two small ones. Two hours later, he held up a single polished opal pendant on a thin silver chain and a pair of matching earrings. The set would look great on Charlie, but he would never see her again. Wouldn’t ever learn her real name.
He methodically took the jewelry apart.
Ryan breathed through his nose as he ran along the street in the gray light of dawn. Another mile and he could turn and retrace his steps home. Two weeks had passed, and still, he couldn’t forget a curly-haired cherub.
Although he’d thought he was ready to venture out of his self-imposed exile from everything but work, he’d learned he wasn’t, if the mere words of a song could turn his brain to jelly. Because that was the only excuse he could think of for walking away from the first woman to interest him since the third grade. He smiled, remembering his first sight of Kathleen Donavan.
“Kathleen Donavan!”
Eight-year-old Ryan O’Connor held his breath as Sister Mary Rose, hands on her hips and lips thinned in anger, stared real hard at someone behind him. It was the first day of the new school year, and already she was mad. They had all heard stories about the dragon, and he’d begged his mother to let him go to public school because, really, Sister Mary Rose was worse than having a monster living under your bed.
“Bring your book and that paper you’re trying to hide to the front, Kathleen Donavan.”
Although he wanted to turn his head and see who had caught Sister Mary Rose’s attention, he forced his eyes to remain on a picture just past the nun’s shoulder. The scrape of shoes sounded on the room’s floor, and he almost smiled at how slow the dragon’s victim was moving, but caught himself just in time.
A girl wearing her school uniform of a green-and-black plaid skirt, white blouse, and knee-high white socks entered the corner of his vision. He eased his head a little to the right to see her better. A long braid of hair almost reached her waist, and the color reminded him of the candied apples his mom always made for the school fair. Her eyes were a darker green than his, and they were trying to blink away her tears.
Right then, he hated Sister Mary Rose for making the girl cry. During recess, he approached Kathleen Donavan and told her he was sorry she’d had to stand in the hallway and say the Hail Mary so many times. It was the start of a friendship that led to being inseparable best friends, then boyfriend and girlfriend, then lovers, and finally husband and wife. It was the start of something he’d once believed would never end.
Ryan turned onto the street leading to his apartment. It bothered him that he couldn’t remember why she’d been in trouble that day. He should remember, shouldn’t he, the thing that brought them together? Already, memories were slipping away; how it felt when he held her, the lilt of her voice, the way her eyes sparkled with amusement when she teased him.
“Why, Kathleen? Just tell me that much.”
Halfway up the sidewalk leading to his door, he stopped and put his hands on his knees, inhaling air into his lungs. It was probably time he broke the habit of talking to her, but she’d been a part of his life for so long that not talking to her seemed wrong. He’d loved her for what seemed like forever. He didn’t know if he even knew how to love someone else.
Straightening, he did a few stretches before heading inside. With a foot on his bottom step, he stopped and stared. A champagne-colored, nose-twitching, floppy-eared rabbit stared back at him. The creature turned toward the door as if waiting for it to open.
“Not happening. Off with you, bunny.” The rabbit didn’t shy away when he moved beside it and nudged it toward the steps with his foot. It just hopped right back and pressed its nose against the wood.
Heaving a sigh, he opened his door. Mr. Bunny hopped in as if he lived there. The thing looked as if it had been kept groomed and well fed, and was obviously someone’s lost pet. Ryan put a bowl of water down, then rummaged around in his refrigerator, finding two wilted carrots and a head of lettuce he’d forgotten was in there.
Mr. Bunny ate the carrots, then some lettuce, and finished off his meal with a long drink of water. Nose still twitching he—she?—plopped down on the tile floor, and after watching Ryan start the coffeemaker, lowered his chin to his paws, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.
A much-needed cup of coffee in hand, Ryan took a picture of the snoozing rabbit with his phone, and then headed for his computer. Once he’d made a dozen posters, he checked on his guest.
“You stay out all night, Mr. Bunny?” he asked the still-sleeping rabbit. Getting no response, he took his posters with him to the garage, grabbed a hammer and some nails, and spent the next thirty minutes tacking them to trees and light poles around the neighborhood.
Confident he’d soon be getting a phone call from a relieved pet owner, he returned home, showered, and dressed for work while his houseguest slept on. After a bit of deliberation, he decided the bathroom would be the best place to leave his temporary friend. Mr. Bunny barely stirred during the moving process, and Ryan left him, the bowl of water, and the remainder of the lettuce on a large towel he’d placed on the floor.
As he drove to K2 Special Services, he thought about Charlie. Was that even her real name? Not that it mattered since he would never see her again.
CHAPTER THREE
The Citabria’s left wing dipped as Charlie angled her plane toward the Gulf of Mexico and the rising sun. It was her favorite time to fly, and over the gulf was her favorite place to practice her aerobatic maneuvers. As one hundred percent concentration was a must, she cleared her mind of all her problems.
Once there was nothing below her except sparkling emerald-green water and nothing above but endless blue sky, she checked her altitude and speed. Satisfied, she searched for a fishing vessel, usually an easy thing to find in the early mornings. Spying a slow-moving trawler, she positioned her plane at a ninety-degree angle to the boat. To warm up herself and her aircraft, she always began with an easy wingover maneuver.
Approaching at a right angle to
the trawler, she lowered the plane’s nose to allow for acceleration, then pulled up into a climb until the nose was twenty degrees above the horizon. After an eye scan of the area around her to be certain there were no birds or other planes nearby, she focused on the trawler. She rolled the Citabria to a ninety-degree angle, but before she could complete the maneuver, her oil-pressure light came on.
“Damn,” she muttered, tapping on the glass. The pressure continued to fall, and she darted her gaze to the oil temperature, which was rising, a clear indication of imminent engine failure. That wasn’t good. Not good at all.
“What’s wrong with you, baby?” Adrenaline raced through her veins, and she took several calming breaths. Although she’d trained for such a catastrophe, she’d never thought it would happen to her.
Charlie took a deep breath and did nothing because that was what she had been taught to do. She brought to mind the instructor who taught her to fly.
“Pay close attention to this part, Charlie, and you might be one of the lucky ones who lives to see another day,” Captain Shafer had said. Even after they’d become friends, he had been Captain Shafer to her. “If you ever have an emergency, you will want to panic. By all means, do that. Yell, scream, curse. Whatever. You can take three seconds to do that. Then do nothing.”
“Nothing?” She remembered thinking at the time that maybe she had a stupid instructor.
“Nothing. But only for another few seconds. You’re in trouble. You’re going to crash and die. But you just might survive if you listen to me.”
He had drilled those deceptively lazy brown eyes into hers. He had flown a fighter jet in the Iraq war, the first one—Desert Storm. Since maybe he knew what he was talking about, she had paid attention.
“I’m listening.”
“Smart girl. Okay. You’ve taken the first three seconds to express your rage by yelling words that would make your mother wash out your mouth with soap. Then you’ve done nothing but take a few calming breaths. Both those done, you’re gonna get that emergency checklist you have at the ready, because if you don’t, I’ll refuse to admit I taught you on the day I read your obit. Got that?”
