Lovelace, Merline

by Dark Side of Dawn

  Her lids fluttered down, shutting out the slice of sky, the domed roof, the storm in his blue eyes. Shutting out everything but the heat of his mouth on hers and the brand of his hand at the base of her spine.

  Greed licked at her veins when he dragged his head up. Pupils dilated, nostrils flaring, he stared down at her swollen lips for several moments before pulling in a long, ragged breath.

  "This isn't working, Jo."

  "Funny," she got out on a surprised laugh, "it was working pretty well for me."

  "You don't understand." Curling a hand under her chin, he tipped her head back. "I want more than mere hours with you. More than a few measured days. I want to stretch you out on silk sheets and kiss every inch of your body, without worrying about some damned ticking clock."

  That sounded like an excellent plan to Jo, too, but the idea of stretching out with Alex on that expanse of pale, snowy white she'd glimpsed in Katherine's room kept her from saying so.

  If and when they made love, she vowed, it wouldn't be in a mausoleum. As if reading her thoughts, he dangled the promise of sunshine and pleasure.

  "Come away with me," he urged, smoothing back the tendrils that had escaped the silk scarf. "Next Saturday's your birthday."

  She didn't have to ask where he'd gleaned that bit of information. The dossier. No doubt the background check had listed her birth weight and place, as well as the exact minute and hour.

  "Spend it with me in Provence," he murmured, punctuating his request with a teasing kiss.

  She pulled back, not quite believing he was serious. "Provence, as in France?"

  "I bought a villa overlooking the Mediterranean last year, thinking it was time..." He stopped, finished on a quieter note. "Thinking I might need a change."

  He did, she thought fiercely. He did!

  "You'll love it, Jo. The sea sparkles in the sun, and the front of the house faces fields of red and purple poppies. We'll leave on Wednesday or Thursday, spend a week—"

  "Whoa, Alex, as wonderful as that sounds, I can't just take off for a week in France."

  The enthusiasm in his eyes dimmed. His mouth took a decidedly displeased downward turn. "No, I suppose not."

  Somehow, the idea that one of the richest men in the country could sulk like any other thwarted male made him irresistibly human.

  "I'll tell you what. Let me check with Scheduling tomorrow and see what they have on the books. Maybe I can swing next weekend. But," she added when his sulk melted into a knee-knocking grin, "France is out."

  "Where would you like to go, then?"

  "Maybe it's time I showed you some of my world." She cocked her head, thinking fast. "If I guarantee a total absence of reporters and photographers, can you handle a squadron picnic?"

  "I don't know. Can I?"

  When he smiled at her like that, Jo didn't doubt he could handle anything she threw at him.

  "Just wear jeans and a sweatshirt you won't mind getting dirty and you'll do fine."

  She strolled back to the house beside Alex, almost one hundred percent sure she was doing the right thing.

  He wanted her, and needed change.

  Well, he'd get a taste of both this weekend.

  Chapter Nine

  The next week couldn't have started off on a better note. Jo arrived at work early Monday morning to find a message directing her to report to Colonel Marshall. She made a beeline across the hangar, answering the greeting from one of the maintenance crew chiefs with a wave but not stopping to chat. As soon as she cornered Marshall in his office, he gave her the news she'd been waiting for.

  "Headquarters has completed its review of the inquiry, West."

  Her heart thumped. "And?"

  "And they concur you stretched FAA and Department of Defense directives to the breaking point."

  That sounded ominous. Swallowing, Jo dropped into Lyndon Johnson's chopper seat and prayed for a "but." Fortunately, it came immediately.

  "Given the circumstances, however, the board concluded that you acted within your prerogatives as aircraft commander by putting down to assist in an emergency situation."

  "Sierra Hotel!"

  Marshall's flickering smile indicated that he agreed with the phonetic abbreviation for "shit hot," the military aviator's all-purpose expression of approval.

  "The fact that the Secretary of State weighed in with a written endorsement didn't exactly hurt your case," he added dryly.

  "Mrs. Adair wrote to the board?"

  "She did. She's also recommended you for an Airman's Medal."

  "No kidding?"

  Jo shook her head, amazed at how her career had ping-ponged from almost in the toilet to a possible award for heroism in a few short seconds.

  "Now get out of here," Marshall directed, "and put yourself back on the flying schedule. You're going to have to hump to make up the hours you lost this month."

  Only too happy to comply, Jo made Scheduling her next stop. In an age of computers and scanners, the NCOs who manned the section still relied primarily on their wall-sized grease pencil board to match crews to projected sorties.

  "Colonel Marshall says to put me back on the board, troops. Double me up wherever you can. I need to make up some air hours."

  The NCO in charge turned away from the board, grease pencil in hand. "Great timing, Captain. We just got word one of our birds PL'ed in a high school soccer field halfway to Norfolk. Ops is generating another sortie now to pick up their passengers."

  So one of their helos had flashed a PL—a precautionary light—and had to put down. From past experience, Jo would bet the stranded crew was killing time while they waited for maintenance by giving the high-schoolers an impromptu tour of the chopper. In the process, they'd engage in some on-the-spot recruiting.

  "It should be ready to go within a half hour. We can put you on if you weren't out carousing too late last night."

  Jo's lingering guilt over allowing Alex to believe she'd needed to go into crew rest last night evaporated on the spot. The aviation gods must have intended for her to reject Alex's tempting offer to stay at Chestnut Hill.

  "Nope," she told the sergeant with a cocky grin. "I was home last night, sleeping the sleep of the pure. I'll take the sortie. Who have you got for copilot and engineer?"

  "We're working on them now."

  "Okay, I'll go get my gear and start the mission planning. Tell whoever you line up to meet me in the briefing room as soon as they can."

  Humming happily, Jo headed for the training section. Life was good. Better than good. Her wings were no longer clipped. She'd strap herself in for at least one sortie today, maybe more tomorrow. And a check of the alert schedule showed it had already been filled for the coming week. Barring unforeseen disasters or late-generating missions, she could give Alex the whole weekend she'd promised him.

  Even the sight of Henry Kastlebaum in his customary pose—boot heels on desk, newspaper in hand, and toothpick at full mast—couldn't pierce her bubble.

  "I'm outta here," Jo announced cheerfully.

  Toothpick rolling, Kastlebaum lowered the paper. "Got your wings back, babe?"

  Jo took a mental ten count. If she didn't believe in handling matters herself, she might have considered slapping the jerk with a sexual harassment charge. But growing up in a family of boys had taught her patience and cunning. Sooner or later, fate would hand her the means to cut this cretin's legs out from under him. She'd wield the ax with pleasure.

  Grabbing her helmet bag, she decided to empty the borrowed desk of her few personal items later. "See you around, Kastlebaum."

  "You, too, West. You looked good on TV last night, by the way." His eyebrows waggled suggestively. "Real good."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Guess you didn't catch the late-night news."

  Obviously not, or she wouldn't be asking. Impatient to start planning for the sortie, Jo almost brushed him off.

  "It wasn't your best shot," he added with a gap-toothed smirk. "Not like the
one of the wanna-be soap opera star with the world-class tits who went skinny-dipping with a very married senator a few years ago. Now that photo was a work of art."

  Jo vaguely remembered a scandal involving a grossly overendowed starlet and a legislator, but couldn't figure how that story involved her.

  "Okay, I'll bite. What's the connection between me and Miss Silicone?"

  The toothpick took another roll. "The photog, sweet thang, the photog. Eric Stroder, I think his name was."

  Stroder!

  The bastard who'd sped by a car crash, then doubled back to capture the carnage on film. The same bastard who'd camped outside her bedroom the morning after the accident, then waited in the chill darkness to take that picture of her after dinner with Alex at the White House. Surely he could not have made his way onto the grounds of Chestnut Hill yesterday!

  Disgusted, Jo shook her head. "What did a sleaze like Stroder do to warrant a TV spot?"

  "Evidently he got crosswise of a mugger or car-jacker last night. The park rangers found him with his brains splattered all over his van and his expensive equipment ripped off. The local news carried the story, and included a little retro of some of his more, shall we say, artistic shots."

  Jo tried to work up some sympathy for the man. Remembering the warning scrawled across the back of that black-and-white glossy, the best she could manage was the fleeting thought that Stroder should have followed his own advice and been more careful. She wouldn't wish that kind of end on anyone, even him.

  Leaving Kastlebaum to his toothpick and his paper, she slung her helmet bag over her shoulder. An hour later, she and her crew stepped out to their aircraft.

  The gray, scurrying clouds to the north didn't dampen her pleasure at the sight of the blue and white helo waiting for her on the ramp. The Huey might have a good twenty years on Alex's slick new Sikorsky, but it had more than proven itself in flight and in combat. Jo couldn't wait to get back in the seat, her hands on the controls and her feet on the pedals.

  Happily, she stowed her helmet and bag in the cockpit and completed the required walk-around. The wind whipped at her hair and rustled the forms clipped to the board. Jo noted the fire bottles stationed beside the Huey, then, with her engineer, checked every moving part from the skids to the rotor blades. She was grinning when the crew chief closed and latched the engine cowling.

  "Okay, boys and girls, we've kicked the tires. Let's light the fires."

  The rest of the week zipped by. Two of Jo's flights were canceled due to the weather that rolled in on Thursday, blanketing the coast from Washington to Boston with rain and fog, but she still managed to make up a good chunk of the hours she'd lost during her time flying a desk.

  Luckily, the front swept through and Saturday dawned clear, with the temperature registering a brisk thirty-six degrees but projected to climb into the mid-sixties by the time the squadron picnic kicked off at two. Perfect weather for coed flag football, kiddie pony rides, and hot dogs burnt to a crisp over a charcoal grill.

  Perfect weather, too, for Alex to get a glimpse into the lifestyles of the not-so-rich-or-famous.

  Turning on the shower taps, Jo chewed on her lower lip while she waited for the hot water to make its way through the pipes. She didn't kid herself about why she wanted him to see the real Jo West in her natural setting. Despite her initial desire to take things slow between them, matters had heated up considerably last weekend. Her skin still tingled at the memory of his hands roving her back. And, yes, she'd indulged in a few fantasies this past week, most of which took place in a sun-washed villa high atop a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean.

  She had no idea where this simmering attraction would take them, wouldn't let herself even imagine the possibilities. Before they took the next step along that uncharted path, though, she needed to be very, very sure Alex knew the woman she was.

  Or, more correctly, the woman she wasn't.

  Unlike Katherine, she didn't spring from a moneyed background. She hadn't graduated from a seven-sisters college, and certainly hadn't done the debutante bit. Nor could she exist in a rarefied atmosphere devoid of the noisy companionship she'd grown used to with her boisterous family and equally boisterous friends.

  In short, Jo decided, wrinkling her nose at the face in the mirror, she wasn't the white rose type.

  Still, her conscience pinged her as she finished her morning routine and padded back into the bedroom to pull on jeans and her favorite fuzzy purple sweater. She buttoned it slowly, doubts surfacing like uninvited guests.

  By his own admission, Alex had shunned large gatherings since his wife's death, going to great lengths to keep out of the public eye. Now Jo was pushing him right back into it.

  Maybe she'd overstepped herself. Maybe he wasn't ready for this kind of event. Maybe, she thought on a gulp, the afternoon would prove a total disaster.

  They'd only stay for a few minutes, she decided, yanking on a sneaker. Just pop in for a beer and a hot dog.

  Or not go at all.

  By the time she finished dressing and downed a bagel and juice, she'd almost convinced herself that not going was the best option.

  To her surprise, Alex didn't agree.

  Jo was leaning against the fender of her MG, waiting for him, when he drove up to the house a little past one. He was behind the wheel of a gleaming new Ferrari—this one a midnight blue. The car was a work of art, but it was the man who climbed out of the beast who set Jo's pulse to booming.

  He'd taken her at her word, she saw, and wore a faded black-and-orange Princeton sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows and jeans every bit as snug as hers. Sunglasses and a black ball cap shaded his face, but nothing could disguise that sexy, dimpled chin.

  She managed not to drool. Barely.

  "Hi. You're right on time. I like that in a man."

  To her delight, he recognized the echo of his own words and flashed her a grin.

  "I'll assume that's a compliment, although I suspect I'm being paid back in kind for a bit of unintended sexism."

  "It is, and you are. Clever of you to pick up on it."

  He slid his arms around her waist, bringing her mouth to his in a long, hard kiss before answering.

  "Clever is my middle name."

  "Alexander Clever Taylor," she got out when the sky had stopped swirling and her breath had returned. "Catchy."

  "Almost as catchy as Joanna Sylvestra West."

  Jo gave a strangled groan. "As far as I knew, my birth certificate is the only place that name was ever recorded. Whoever compiled your blasted dossier certainly did his homework."

  Laughing, Alex tugged playfully at a strand of her hair. "I pay well for my information, Miss West. Remember that if you ever try to hide anything from me."

  "I will."

  "Are you ready?" he asked, releasing her. "Do you want to drive us to this picnic of yours, or shall I?"

  Her earlier doubts resurfaced with a vengeance. "Maybe we should skip the picnic, Alex."

  "Why?"

  "I know how much you value your privacy. I shouldn't have put you on the spot by inviting you to this kind of public function."

  "I wouldn't have agreed to it if I didn't want to."

  "I know, but..."

  He put his own spin on her change of heart. "Did word leak out? Are you worried we'll be besieged by reporters?"

  "No, I haven't told anyone you're coming. We should be able to make it through the afternoon relatively unscathed. Unless you were followed."

  "I made sure I wasn't."

  She swept the fields around the little rented house, hugging her arms as a small shiver raced over her skin. She couldn't imagine living her life in a fish-bowl the way Alex did, with someone always waiting, watching.

  "At least you won't have to worry about Stroder anymore," she murmured.

  "What do you mean?"

  The sharp question jerked her head around. Alex's sunglasses shielded his eyes, but she couldn't miss the sudden tensing of his body.<
br />
  "I didn't see the news story, but I understand the guy got caught in a mugging or car-jacking that went bad."

  "Well, well." A small, unpleasant smile played at his lips. "Someone just saved me a great deal of money."

  "What?"

  Shock jolted through Jo. An incredulous thought sprang into her mind, dark and unsettling. Surely Alex didn't... Surely he wouldn't...

  He must have read the horror on her face. His smile twisted into a wry grin.

  "No, I didn't put out a contract on him."

  Jo was just chiding herself for her ridiculous doubts when he added a kicker.

  "I considered it. Several times over the past few years, if you want to know the truth. When he began harassing you, I decided it was time to take action."

  "What kind of action?"

  "Money talks, even in this town," he replied with a cynical shrug. "I told my lawyers to put out the word that I was considering a lawsuit against Stroder and any newspaper or magazine that published his pictures. Just the prospect of defending against that kind of legal action is enough to make an editor think twice."

  Under that well-bred, elegant exterior, Jo thought, he was as ruthless as a shark.

  But far more fascinating. Not to mention sexy as hell. Her whole body rippled with pleasure when his hand curled around her neck and tipped her face to his.

  "So, my darling, I suggest we go to your picnic. As you so correctly pointed out, you've seen my world. We'll spend the afternoon in yours... and the night in one we create for ourselves."

  That 'darling' alone almost melted Jo on the spot. His understanding of her need for him to know who she was finished the job. Looping her arms around his neck, she drew him down for a kiss that promised more, so much more, in that special place they'd create.

  Her pulse was racing when she pulled back. Deciding they'd better get it in gear or they'd never make the blasted picnic, she suggested she drive.

  "If you show up in the Ferrari, you'll have a hundred kids with sticky hands climbing all over it."