High-Stakes Playboy

by Cindy Dees

  Dang, she was getting horny in her spinsterish old age.

  “Is Archer your first or last name?”

  “Both.”

  O-kay. Was he some kind of aviation rock star who only needed one name? “Your parents named you Archer Archer? Did they hate you or something?”

  “Something like that.” His eyes went dark and turbulent, and her photographer’s keen eye detected sadness. Regret. Rough childhood, huh?

  Trees were streaking by below their feet now, fast enough to make her nervous. She blurted, “Did your folks give you some horrible first name like, I don’t know, Eugene?”

  He laughed, a little reluctantly if she wasn’t mistaken. But interestingly enough, he didn’t elaborate on his actual name. Ooh, a mystery. She never could resist those. Somebody in the payroll department for the movie would know his full name. She could stroll over there after they landed...

  He interrupted her scheming with “We’ll reach the shoot site in about fifteen minutes. Pretty quickly after we get there, we’ll make our run down the valley. You’ll get one shot at this. My boss reported before I headed out to Minerva that all the pyrotechnics are ready to go.”

  “Who’s Minerva?” An ugly spike of regret poked her in the side. Of course this cover-model guy had a gorgeous, confident, sexy girlfriend with an exotic name.

  He patted the top of the dashboard. “This is Minerva.”

  “You named your helicopter?” Ahh. He’d named it after his gorgeous, confident, sexy girlfriend, then.

  He shrugged. “Yeah. I call every ’copter I fly after my grandmother.”

  His grandmother? That was so sweet! Although he emphatically struck her as the kind of guy who wouldn’t appreciate being called “sweet.”

  “She took me in and forced me to get my head together when my mom died.”

  “Oh,” Marley said cautiously. But she didn’t have a chance to ask him about it.

  “Five minutes to target,” Archer announced in a businesslike tone. He got busy on the radio talking to the film’s DP—the director of photography—and she turned her attention to her camera.

  She pulled her viewfinder in front of her face once more. Beside her right knee, a small joystick remotely moved her camera on its nose mount outside. She tested it carefully, and it responded like a charm. Tall stands of pines skimmed past as the helicopter raced across the mountainous Northern California landscape toward the site of today’s shoot. The crew had spent all morning wiring the pyrotechnics and explosions, and it had taken most of the afternoon to position all the tanks, personnel carriers and extras dressed as soldiers. Which was why the director, Adrian Turnow, was having to race to get in this shot before they lost their light.

  As it was, she had to adjust the light aperture to capture more of the late-afternoon sun’s lingering rays. The quality of the light out here was extraordinary, though. The sky was a deep cerulean blue, the trees a rich, lush evergreen with gray and blue undertones. And the mountains themselves, the northern end of the Sierras northwest of Lake Tahoe, were dark and forbidding, a few even topped with caps of snow. So stark and majestic. She’d love to photograph them sometime.

  The helicopter slowed, topped a ridge, and hovered at the head of a long, narrow valley. Its granite walls were silvery gray, the valley floor a carpet of green. Cattle had grazed this valley for long enough that the trees were mostly gone. It made for a perfect movie battlefield, level and open with sweeping views.

  “You good to go?” Archer asked her.

  “Yup,” she muttered, her eyes glued to her viewfinder. She’d gone over computer simulations of this valley with the DP and the ground camera crew, and she’d chair-flown filming this sequence in her head a hundred times, but seeing it in the flesh was still different. And once the tracers and fake missiles started firing, all bets were off. It would be up to her to see and adapt to capture the best possible shot on film. The footage she shot today would likely determine whether or not she continued to work on this project.

  Adrian Turnow’s voice came over her headset. “I’m turning over control of the shoot to Steve Prescott, head stunt coordinator. Whenever you’re ready, Steve.”

  She listened as Prescott got thumbs-ups over the radio from a dozen stuntmen and explosives operators. He was the ex–Marine officer who’d set up this combat scene to be as realistic as possible. And then he started checking off the cameras. Finally, he announced, “Heli-cam?”

  “Ready,” she replied as snappily as her knocking knees and trembling hands would allow.

  “On my mark, everyone,” Prescott ordered. “Three. Two. One. Go for explosion one.” His orders came hard and fast as wave after wave of gunfire, tanks rolling, soldiers charging on foot, fake missiles, tracer rounds and who knew what else was put into motion. Hundreds of actors, extras and stunt coordinators launched into the complicated ballet that was a big action scene. A dozen cameras rolled, catching the action from every conceivable angle.

  Prescott’s voice came on again. “Archer, start your run on my mark. Three. Two. One. Go.”

  Beside her, Archer slammed the throttles forward and shoved Minerva’s nose down. The helicopter swooped down into the valley in a stomach-dropping dive that threw the bird at the treetops with dizzying speed.

  She felt Archer tense beside her, but her concentration was riveted on her viewfinder. Wow. All hell had broken loose before her. So much was going on she wouldn’t have known where to point her camera had they not gone over it carefully in the simulations. She chanted the sequence in her head. Pan left slowly, zoom fast to the line of soldiers charging. Tank explosion. Hard bank right by the helicopter...

  “You’re supposed to bank right,” she mumbled to Archer.

  “I’m trying,” he ground out.

  A tracer whizzed by wicked close, and although she jerked in surprise, she doggedly held her camera steady. The projectile streaked by dramatically, leaving a trail of sparks and smoke that the helicopter blasted through. That was going to look awesome on film. Good call by Archer to delay the turn.

  They were on top of the action now, and deafening explosions rocked the helicopter. Hard to believe these were fake charges. She couldn’t imagine what the real deal must be like. Hell on earth if she had to guess. Her camera mount had inertial stabilizers built into it, so her shot remained steady in spite of the concussions slamming into Minerva.

  “Time to turn, Archer,” she called out loudly enough to be heard over the war zone outside.

  Columns of smoke rose around them and Archer dropped the bird even lower, skimming across the ground barely above the grass. They buzzed a line of extras dressed as soldiers low enough that some of them hit the dirt in fear of getting brained by the helicopter’s skids. The grunt’s-eye view from her camera was unplanned, but amazing. She went with it, panning across the field of fire and zooming toward the enemy line as Archer raced toward it.

  Something exploded directly in front of them, rocking the helicopter violently. They weren’t supposed to get that close to any pyrotechnics! She lifted her face from her viewfinder to glance over at Archer. “You need to pull up higher and turn the helicopter,” she said distinctly. “All I’m going to be shooting in a minute is dirt.”

  He didn’t in any way acknowledge her. His concentration was one hundred percent on flying. He looked to be fighting hard with the helicopter controls. Was that normal? She knew pilots tended to be fit, muscular guys. Was this why? His jaw was clenched and his knuckles were white on the controls. As well they should be. Minerva was tearing along only feet above the ground.

  “Archer?”

  No response.

  She glanced outside, and the end of the valley was coming up. Fast. Damned fast. A sheer granite cliff rose in front of them.

  “Archer!”

  Nada.

  “Hey! What�
��s going on?” She slapped him on the upper arm to get his attention. But it was as if he was on another planet. He ignored her completely. She let go of her camera controls and tried to turn in her seat, but the tight harness stopped her. She ripped at the belt buckle frantically, but to no avail. She was strapped in tight. The mountain loomed directly ahead, and it was getting bigger by the second. She could make out individual trees racing toward them. They were going to slam into the cliff in a few seconds!

  “Help me pull,” he grunted.

  Shocked, she grabbed the stick between her knees and pulled back on it. It moved a bit as Archer pulled on it, too.

  “Harder, Marley. We’re going to die.”

  Panic slammed into her as full realization of how much trouble they were in finally registered. Something was wrong with the helicopter, and if they couldn’t turn it in the next few seconds, they were going to crash head-on into that cliff.

  She stood on the rudder pedals and pulled for all she was worth on the stick, straining every bit as hard as Archer. It wasn’t working. Frantic, she started shaking the stick side to side in a desperate effort to break it loose.

  The stick gave way all of a sudden, slamming her back into her seat so hard she hit her head on the cockpit wall. Archer flung Minerva into a violent turn that slammed Marley against her door next.

  The bird banked up onto its side, and all she saw in her windscreen was granite and more granite. They were so close to the cliff that she saw individual clumps of grass clinging to its face. Frankly, she was amazed the skids didn’t scrape the rocks as it turned. The helicopter shuddered as Archer hauled it around, creaking under the strain. He gave a tug back on the throttle, and it moved easily, slowing the bird’s breakneck speed.

  As quickly as the crisis had come, it passed. The helicopter flew forward sedately as if nothing had ever happened.

  She became aware of somebody shouting in her ears. Steve Prescott. “What the hell was that, Archer? Report to me when you land.” She winced. Archer’s boss sounded pissed.

  “Copy,” Archer replied tersely.

  Silence, broken only by the steady thwacking of the rotor blades, filled the cockpit. Archer was as pale as snow in the seat beside her in stark contrast to his black leather jacket.

  “Are we okay?” she asked in a small voice.

  “You tell me,” came the grim reply. He flew low and slow back up the valley toward the airport.

  She took stock of the current situation. They were alive. The bird seemed to be responding to normal control inputs. Archer’s knuckles were no longer white. That was all good, right? “What happened back there?”

  “Did you get your film?”

  “I got a few of the planned shots. Then you went off course.”

  His jaw rippled as if he was clenching it, and damned if it wasn’t one of the sexiest things she’d ever seen.

  Stay on point, Marley. You want to know what just happened and why you nearly died just now. You’re not drooling over the pretty pilot.

  “Can you review your footage right now?” he asked. “Those digital cameras have instant playback, right?”

  Confused, she jammed her face to the viewfinder and watched the raw footage she’d captured in their wild ride down the valley at weed height. The images looked about like she’d expected for the first part. The boys in postproduction would need to push the light a little in editing, but that was no biggie. And then the footage got interesting. The tracer ripped past. The trail of sparks looked as great as she’d thought it would. And the perspective from so low, moving so fast, was gripping.

  And that violent pull-up at the end—the camera had continued to run while they’d fought to break the controls free from whatever frozen state they’d gotten stuck in—was outrageous. Any director worth his salt would be orgasmic over it. Adrian Turnow was all about being as realistic as possible. He was going to love this stuff.

  Feeling a little surly that her near-death had resulted in such spectacular footage, and unreasonably ticked off at Archer for getting footage that she would never have gotten herself, she admitted, “Yeah, I got my film.”

  “All right, then. Let’s go home.”

  She didn’t like that he was blowing off the fact that they’d nearly died mere moments ago. Shouldn’t he be upset? Freaking out at least a little? But he was acting like it was just another day at the office. Like this kind of stuff happened to him all the time.

  Well, it didn’t happen to her all the time. And she didn’t like it one bit. He’d scared the living hell out of her back there. The least he could do was apologize or offer her some explanation of what had just happened. But nope. He just flew along, looking around outside and every now and then glancing over at her like they hadn’t just nearly splattered like bugs on a windshield.

  The ride back to the airport was dead quiet. Plenty of time for her to consider how flipping close she had just come to dying. A second or two at most. Had the stick not broken loose and Archer managed to haul the helicopter into that violent turn like he had, they’d have crashed into the side of that mountain for sure. Had she not helped pull, not shaken the stick in panic like she had, she couldn’t bear to think about what would have happened.

  By the time Archer set Minerva down gently, Marley’s entire body was shaking. Adrenaline surged through her and she felt as though she could flap her arms and fly all by herself. As scared as she’d been before, this aftermath was weirdly exhilarating. She was alive. Gloriously, vividly so. Now that she wasn’t roadkill on a mountain, she supposed it might be described as exciting in retrospect. But she’d about peed her pants when it was happening.

  She didn’t know what the hell had happened back there in that valley, but she knew one thing. She’d never done anything that intense in her entire life.

  Never again would she listen to the crew’s war stories about near-misses with disaster the same way. Having experienced near-death up close and personal, now she would hear the harrowing reality behind their tales told laughingly over cold beers. These pilots were crazy!

  The door beside her opened. Archer reached for her lap. But she looked up at him and made eye contact for the first time since he’d nearly killed them both. His stare was dark. Turbulent. Suspicious, even. Shouldn’t he be apologizing to her in some way for nearly killing her? Shouldn’t she be the one staring accusingly at him? Perplexed at his wary distrust, she moved restlessly beneath the confining seat belts. Trapped. She felt trapped.

  Maybe he wasn’t as unaffected by their almost-disaster as he was letting on. Maybe the suspicion bit was just him covering up his own reaction to nearly dying. It wasn’t like she’d had anything to do with the damned helicopter refusing to turn.

  His hand stilled, nestled in the junction of her thighs, as his gaze shifted. Heated with fiery intensity as she stared up at him. His stare scorched parts of her that were not at all used to scorching. And all of a sudden any thought of suspicion flew right out of her head.

  “Admit it,” he murmured low and rough, “you liked that a little.”

  That was nuts. No sane person enjoyed cheating death. Or was he right? The rush of heat between her legs, the hot pulse throbbing there, said he was. She tingled to the tips of her fingers and ends of her hair. Felt restless. Hungry. Alive.

  Shocked, she examined this rush of new feelings more closely. Sought out their source. And reeled mentally when it dawned on her that she was attracted to her death-defying pilot.

  So this was lust, huh? She finally saw what all the fuss was about.

  Chapter 2

  Archer couldn’t have lifted his hand away from Marley in that moment if a dozen men tried to drag him away from her. She probably wasn’t aware of it, but her hips were pulsing lightly against his knuckles, and it was so sexy he could barely breathe. His male parts abruptly swelled hard and painful
enough that he had trouble standing upright.

  Man, that had been a close call back there. What the hell had happened to his aircraft? He’d never seen a complete flight-control failure like that. The collective—the stick that steered the bird—and the throttle were two completely separate pieces of equipment, not related to each other in any way. It was simply not possible that a single mechanical issue had caused both systems to freeze up simultaneously.

  Which left only one glaringly obvious possibility. Sabotage.

  When Steve had called and asked him to come home on emergency leave, to help figure out what the hell was going on with a string of accidents around the movie set, he’d thought the guy had finally given in to his paranoid tendencies. Apparently not.

  Marley shifted restlessly beneath his hand, her body radiating the heat and taut energy of a turned-on woman.

  His throbbing erection blessedly distracted him from the alarming directions his thoughts were headed and he was glad to let it. It didn’t help matters that she was staring at him as though he was some kind of conquering hero. Her lips were parted and moist, her pupils dilated so big he could hardly see their bright blue color. Hell, he could smell the lust on her, sweet and needy.

  Was she seriously a virgin? The thought riveted him. Not that he was the kind of sleazeball who ran around looking for virgins to debauch. Actually, he liked his women experienced. Worldly. The kind who knew the score and didn’t expect commitment or the whole emotional-involvement thing. The kind who wouldn’t freak out when he loved ’em and left ’em. He’d learned very early in life how bad it hurt to be the one left behind and not the one doing the leaving.

  But damn. A virgin. She had to be, what? Midtwenties? Who, in this day and age, hadn’t had sex by that age? He examined her closely. She wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup, but she was still a pretty girl. Really pretty, in fact.

  She had that whole old-school, movie-star glamour thing going. Bedroom eyes. Lush lips. Not to mention she had soft, creamy skin and curly blond hair pulled back into a short ponytail. Kinda looked like a poodle tail, but it was cute. Seriously, those big blue eyes of hers made a guy want to dive into them and go for a swim.