Chapter Five
Grady crawled out of bed before dawn. All night, he kept jerking awake every half hour, haunted by erotic images, until he finally grew fed up with trying to sleep and shoved the sheets off his burning skin. He took a shower. As the water sluiced over his shoulders and through his hair, steaming the air around him, he closed his eyes, rested a hand against the shower wall, and bowed his head. Deciding this had to be about the most confusing moment of his life, he let out a long breath and lifted his face to the spray.
From one perspective, he wanted to hate B.J. Gilmore. She had no right to pressure him into doing anything he didn’t want to do, something he hadn’t been prepared to do. This was his life. He decided when he was ready to move on and when he wasn’t.
Damn some hot-headed tomboy who thought he needed a little prodding.
On the other hand, he wanted to return to her room, lock them both inside, and continue where they’d left off. She’d been right about one thing. Going without sex for too long couldn’t be healthy...hadn’t been healthy. It’d turned him into a maniac, an utter savage. He just wanted to tie her to the nearest bed and keep her there for two weeks straight. He wanted to pound and rut until she passed out from orgasm overdose. The things he had in mind would make it so she’d never walk right again.
God.
Rippling with need, his dick lengthened and his balls tightened. His body wanted more of B.J. Gilmore, and it didn’t care what he had to do to get her.
Yet decency told him he should apologize. His mother hadn’t raised him to be the type of man who kicked up a woman’s skirt twice in a row without protection and then ditched out on her at the first opportunity. He was better than that. A gentleman.
Guilt clogged his throat, and he swallowed, trying to work it loose.
Truth be told, he wouldn’t have survived if he’d stayed in her room. His nerves were rent to hell, and every particle of his being felt scattered and disorganized. He didn’t know who he was or how to be. He just knew he had to get as far away from her as possible.
In his entire life, he’d only been with one woman. He’d dated Amy for three years until they’d had sex on the night of their junior prom. At that point, it was a given they’d eventually marry. So, he’d never thought he’d be with anyone else. She’d been “the one.” He’d assumed he’d never have another for the rest of his life. But he’d had B.J., the very woman his dead wife had helped raise.
He’d always thought of her as the mouthy little Gilmore tomboy whose mama had died in a car accident when she was only three. B.J. was a tough hard-ass who didn’t take crap from anyone. Grady had never looked at her in a sexual light before, not until he’d glanced at her in the elevator and seen her nipples poking through her wet shirt, making him want to warm them with his breath. Of course, she’d been talking to him about sex, so at that point it was the only thing on his mind. But Grady was thirty-two years old, for Christ’s sake. He should’ve had more restraint. The mere sight of a woman’s tits definitely shouldn’t have pushed him over the edge.
Yet it had.
And now, here he was...confused. There was shame, sure. He’d just been with a woman who wasn’t his wife—whom he never intended to make his wife—and he’d liked it. It went against every single old-fashioned moral fiber he possessed.
Then there was anger. If she’d only left him alone, he wouldn’t have touched a hair on her head the entire trip, and none of his morals would be compromised. God, why hadn’t she just left him the hell alone?
The guilt for ditching out on her afterward ate at him the most, but the longing thumping through his bloodstream didn’t help in the least. His libido craved her again. Like a junkie going through withdrawal, his body felt edgy and impatient, needing more...now.
He didn’t want to want her. He wasn’t ready for this pulsing, gut-eating kind of necessity. He still loved Amy. He wanted to be with Amy. He wanted to make love with her, not some rude, irritating wannabe man.
But Amy was gone, and he felt lost and so conflicted, the water turned cold in his shower before he realized how long he’d been standing there.
Cursing under his breath, he shut off the stream and pushed the shower door open to reach for a towel.
One thing was certain. He needed to apologize. It didn’t matter how much he blamed B.J. for their encounter, he’d fully participated. And leaving her alone afterward was inexcusable.
He’d say something on the plane.
But damn...he certainly didn’t relish the idea of being stuck alone with her on a tiny aircraft the entire way back to Tommy Creek...not when she’d be close enough he could smell her or, God help him, lean over and taste her.
****
B.J. arrived at the rented hangar half an hour before their rendezvous. Blood thrummed through her veins as she neared her plane. Today, she wanted to fly fast. She needed to vent, and her skywagon was just the tool in which to do that.
She’d had her Cessna TU206 for five years now. The Gilmore family business already had three planes between them. But ever since she was six years old and her father had taken her up on a crop-dusting job, she’d wanted one to call her own. Pop let her think she was commandeering the throttle, and she’d been a goner. It’d taken her sixteen years to finally get approved for the loan to buy her own.
The money she’d borrowed for her twenty-year-old Cessna exceeded the mortgage on her house, but B.J. thought it was worth it. Her single-engine aircraft did everything she needed it to do. It was an SUV of the air. She used it for aerial photography on occasion, cargo-hauling at other times, and least frequently she transported up to four passengers or flew for skydiving lessons and jumps. She figured it’d pay itself off in another ten years if business kept on as it was.
Thankful it was a bright, sunny day, she pushed her mirrored sunglasses into place, making sure they were snugly settled before she patted the side of her Cessna in welcome. Nothing short of the hand of God was going to make her take those shades off either. Under the reflective lenses, her eyes were puffy and red.
Her hair was up in a ponytail—big shocker there—and she wore a black tank top with blue jeans. It definitely didn’t scream, come and get me, big boy, but when she glanced up and saw Grady watching her as he approached, she felt as if she were wearing the slinkiest, hottest piece of lingerie on the planet. He wanted her. It was spelled out in his clear blue eyes as his gaze slowly traveled down her body and meandered its way back up again.
Shock and animal awareness collided hard in her gut. She still couldn’t believe he’d actually showed. It wasn’t like there would be any commercial flights landing in their small countryside airstrip anytime in the next millennium, but she’d wondered if he’d just rent a car or something and drive home. She’d in no way thought he’d torture himself by riding back with her in a small enclosed space for nearly a whole hour.
But here he was at eight o’clock sharp, staring at her like he wanted her for breakfast.
She sucked in a breath and tried to keep it cool, though questions stirred inside her. Did that hungry look mean he’d forgiven her? Did his presence mean he wasn’t mad? Could she hope all was okay between them?
When their gazes met, he paused, his eyes frosting slightly. She sighed. Okay, so maybe everything wasn’t entirely kosher. Turning away quickly, she opened the clamshell cargo door.
“Come on, B.J.,” she muttered to herself as she tossed her bag haphazardly into the belly of her plane. “You’re the queen of casual. You treat everyone the same. Just imagine he’s everyone else and not Grady Rawlings.”
Yeah, imagine she hadn’t spent a third of the night pissing the hell out of him, another third of the night screwing his brains out, and then the last third of the night sobbing like there was no tomorrow because of him. Sure. No problem.
She sucked in a breath and turned back. He’d drawn close enough for her to see the tired yet wary lines around his eyes and mouth. He looked about as ready for another confrontation with her as she felt about apologizing to him, which pretty much meant neither of them would be doing any talking for the next hour.
“Ready?” she asked.
He nodded and opened his mouth. No words came out.
Her stomach did a flip-flop, but she amazed herself by keeping it cool. Arching a brow, she asked, “Yeah?”
He closed his mouth, shook his head, and then glanced away, obviously horrified with himself for chickening out.
“Then let’s head out,” she answered brusquely. “I just finished my inspection.”
Not bothering to touch his luggage this morning, she deserted him and made her way to the cockpit. Behind her, the cargo doors shut and seconds later, Grady slipped into the seat next to hers. A wave of déjà vu hit. Hadn’t they already played this game before? Uncomfortable silence. Awkward attempts at conversation. Stolen glances.
Except this time around, B.J. knew what he looked like naked.
She didn’t think she could do it. There was no way she could act like nothing had happened. On the other hand, there was no way she could talk to him about what happened either. And there didn’t seem to be any kind of happy medium.
Briefly she wondered what he’d do if she politely said, Hey, would you please step out of the Cessna and find your own way home? I can’t take the sexual tension and all this guilt I’m feeling.
B.J. shook her head and started the plane.
Okay, so they were obviously going to go with the whole memory-loss plan and pretend neither of them could recall attacking each other less than eight hours ago and ripping the clothes off their bodies.
“Here goes nothing,” she muttered under her breath.
From the corner of her eyes, she saw him turn his head her way as if he’d heard her speak but hadn’t caught the words. When he didn’t comment, she blocked him and proceeded to get them in the air.
Five minutes later, they’d climbed as far into the sky as she was going to go, and B.J. pushed the limits of their speed. But it didn’t help. As much as she loved going fast, today it didn’t seem to give her the rush she craved. Instead, she kept staring at Grady’s knee from the corner of her eye. His thigh was incased in tight Wranglers, and she wondered if she reached over and set her hand on it, if it’d still be as hard as she remembered it being last night.
God, she really needed to get her mind away from that. If she was going to do anything about their evening together, she should be giving an apology instead of partaking in a little air action. This was so not the day to join the mile-high club.
She had an awful feeling if she tried to eat crow, though, and own up to her mistake of pushing him into the sack—er, against the door, as was the case—then she’d somehow turn the tables around and demand to know why he’d ditched out on her just when things were getting good.
Okay, so she knew why, and she didn’t blame him a lick. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
Gritting her teeth, she commanded herself to stop thinking about it altogether. There wasn’t going to be any kind of resolution if she tried to bring up the topic, not that she wanted to anyway. So, ignoring the tension was going to have to be her best bet. But, hell, there was no way she could ignore it, especially when he shifted in his seat and stirred the air around them, rustling up his scent so her body responded and the insides of her thighs tingled.
B.J. couldn’t do it any longer. She glanced over. “Want to learn a couple of things about flying?” she blurted out, not even realizing what she was going to ask.
He lifted his face. His blue eyes showed surprise, but other than that, she couldn’t read anything. The nerves in her guts knotted and then tightened painfully. She ripped her gaze away.
“The basic concept is pretty simple,” she started in, ignoring his lack of response and the growing ball in her stomach. She needed to get her mind off...well, you know. And nothing could grab B.J.’s attention like talking planes.
So, she talked planes.
“There’re four forces at work when flying. Lift, weight, thrust and drag.”
Oh, God. Did she just say thrust?
“To take off, your thrust, uh, has to be more powerful than your drag and your lift has to be more powerful than your weight. To land, it’s vice versa. Drag dominates thrust and weight dominates lift.”
When he didn’t say a word in reply, she shrugged and continued. No way was she going to drive herself nuts, just sitting there, letting her thoughts take over. So she blubbered on.
“Weight and drag are natural forces. You see, weight is merely gravity trying to yank the plane back to earth, and drag is like the wind on your face when you’re running. It’s air pushing against you when you’re trying to go forward. Therefore thrust and lift are fashioned by the plane mechanically to get it up and going.”
And here came thrust and get it up in the same sentence. Jesus.
“The propeller makes up our thrust to...to work against the drag and keep us heading forward, and lift happens when air blows above and below the wings, helping us go up and down.”
Grady remained stonily quiet; she didn’t have a clue whether he was listening to her prattle or not. There was no way she was going to glance over again though. Her hormones had nearly fried themselves out the last time she’d snuck a peek.
“So, once you’ve got your lift and thrust overpowering weight and drag,” she droned on, sounding more like an encyclopedia than herself, “you’re in the air. Now once we’re sky bound, we deal with pitch, roll and yaw to keep the plane going in the direction we want.”
Lifting her hand to demonstrate, B.J. held her hand flat, palm facing down.
“Pitch is moving the nose of the plane up and down.” She lifted her fingertips higher than her wrist. “Roll steadies the wings.” She moved her thumb higher than her pinkie and then rotated back to dip her thumb lower than her pinkie. “And yaw,” she finished, “is controlled by moving the rudder to change the direction of the plane left and right.” She kept her palm flat and twisted her hand at her wrist, moving the tips of her fingers to the left and then to the right.
“So, what’re all those meters for?” Grady asked, surprising the spit out of her when he pointed to the gauges in front of her.
For a moment, she was too startled to speak. But Holy Lord, the man was actually listening to her boring lesson. She quickly licked her lips and dove headfirst back into the tutorial.
“This here’s called the instrument panel. And this…” She motioned to six round gauges in front of her. “…is the basic T arrangement. The attitude indicator is always the top center gauge.”
“Attitude indicator?”
B.J. grinned and risked an ornery grin his way. “Yeah, it tells us if the plane’s in a bad mood or not.”
When he just stared at her, she rolled her eyes. “Okay, so it really shows the plane’s pitch and bank. It tells us if the wings are even and where our nose is according to the horizon.
“Here,” she offered. “Let me just roll us a little to the side, and you can watch the change on the indicator.”
When she tipped them over toward the right, Grady immediately snaked his hand out and latched his fingers around the edge of his seat.
B.J. cleared her throat. “Sorry about that,” she offered and leveled the plane back to rights.
Grady remained stiffly quiet.
“Anyway,” she went on, rubbing at the back of her neck, “to the right of the attitude indicator is the altimeter. Right now, it’s adjusted to measure feet above sea level. And to the left of the attitude indicator is the airspeed indicator, comparable to a speedometer in a truck. See this white band here? That’s the normal speed for operating when you’re landing and the flaps are open. The green range is for normal operation without the flaps all the way out. And yellow is for smooth air operation, only you don’t make any abrupt control movements when you’re going that fast.”
B.J. sucked in a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Then there’s this small little red line,” she concluded.
As she pointed at it, she glanced Grady’s way. “Never redline it,” she told him seriously.
The red line showed the maximum airspeed and was never to be exceeded for any reason. B.J. liked to fly in the caution zone under the yellow band, pushing her limits. But she’d never redlined it before. Certainly not like she’d done last night in the hotel when she’d pushed a certain someone beyond his limits. What had resulted was a complete malfunction of a total gentleman. Redlining a plane was a lot like the explosion that had happened to Grady when she’d pushed him past his yellow zone.
“So, where’s the gas gauge?” he asked before she could finish explaining the basic T arrangement.
“Oh, it’s right—” As her finger landed on the gauge, she paused and frowned. “What the hell?”
Instantly alert, Grady whirled from inspecting the panel to studying her face. “What?”
“We’re low on gas.”
“What?” he said again, a little more anxious this time.
“We shouldn’t be this low,” she murmured to herself. “I filled up before we left yesterday, and a single tank should be able to get us—damn,” she muttered, clicking the mike of her headphones to a different frequency.
It took her nearly a minute to make contact, but finally her father’s voice called out, “B.J., what’s the problem?”
“I need to talk to Leroy,” she responded. “Now.”
Once again, a white-knuckled segment of time passed in uncomfortable silence. B.J. could almost see her father bustling from the tower and yelling at his brother to get his butt into gear. He knew full well she wouldn’t be contacting base yet unless there were problems. Pop was probably having a coronary right now, wondering what was wrong with her.
As they waited, the tension nearly poured off her passenger in waves. B.J. was thankful he was keeping quiet, though. She didn’t want to explain what she thought the problem was. She didn’t want to look him in the eye and tell him they might not make it home.
Finally, Leroy’s static-filled voice growled through the speakers. “What?”
“Hey, Bub,” she greeted casually. “Remember when I asked you if you changed that fuel line, because I thought it looked a little ragged?”
“Oh, yeah. Forgot.”
Her blood congealed in her veins. “You forgot? But you said you’d already switched it.”
“I was going to, but…”
“But what, damn it?”
Leroy only muttered a lame, “Sorry.”
B.J. clenched her teeth. “Leroy, when I get home, I’m going to kick your butt to New York and back.” If she made it home.
She glanced over and caught Grady’s face. His features had turned ashen, his upper lip beaded in sweat.
“Just sit tight,” she said in a grim voice.
“Anything I can do?”
Before she could tell him no, Jebediah Gilmore’s voice came back on the line. “B.J., what’s the situation?”
For a second, she couldn’t answer. The engine shuddered; Grady sucked in an audible breath while she cursed.
This was all wrong. There hadn’t been any puddles leaking from the plane when she’d done her pre-flight inspection this morning. No torn hoses. No sign of trouble. The line must’ve finally come loose after they’d already gone wheels up. Damn it.
“We’re leaking gas like a sieve,” she told her father after she spent a moment steadying the wings. “We were three-quarters full when we headed out of Houston, but now it’s less than three-quarters empty.”
“How far away are you?” Pop asked calmly.
B.J. glanced toward Grady. “Halfway there, maybe.”
For a minute, her dad didn’t answer. They were all doing the math in their heads, all realizing she’d be short making it home a quarter of a tank.
“Okay,” Jeb’s voice responded. “Just take ’er easy. Keep me updated.”
“Will do,” B.J. answered.
Once it was just Grady and B.J. again, he finally said, “Is there an airstrip nearby where we can land?”
She shook her head numbly. Not in this part of the state. “We can either head back or keep on toward home.”
“Which is closer?”
“Probably Houston. But it’ll take a lot of gas to get us turned back around.”
“So, we’ll keep on toward Tommy Creek,” he stated more than asked.
B.J. nodded. After a tense moment, she finally glanced over. “If worse comes to worse, we’ll run out of fuel and have to dead stick somewhere.”
He nodded. “What does that mean?”
“It means we’ll have to land somewhere without engine power…” Maybe like in an open field somewhere.
Though he’d already been pale enough, Grady’s face drained of the rest of its grayish tinge. “That’s possible?”
“Hell, yeah.”
He glanced toward her, his blue eyes full of hope. “And you’ve done it before?”
She swallowed. “Uh...no. Sorry.” Wincing, she knew she should’ve joined in when Buck and Leroy had that dead stick landing competition a few years back.
Grady’s head bobbed again. He was taking this awfully well. For all the trouble she’d caused him in the last twenty-four hours, the man should be cussing her up one side and down the other.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, feeling the apology from the bottom of her heart. “About everything.”
Sorry she’d pushed him into cheating on his dead wife and then for maybe killing him today in her plane.
Grady didn’t answer. He just looked out the window at the earth he no doubt didn’t want to crash into. “I shouldn’t have left,” he said and swung his head around slowly to pin her with an intense look. “I shouldn’t have left your room without…”
Good Lord, he was going to apologize to her? After all the things she’d put him through—was still putting him through—he actually thought he’d done something wrong.
Though it did B.J.’s heart good to hear him say such, it only caused her own guilt to multiply.
She shook her head and lifted her hand to shut him up. “Don’t worry about it.” She definitely didn’t want to talk about this right now. If she was going to die in a few minutes, she’d rather just take it all to the grave with her.
But Grady was obviously more into the deathbed confession thing than she. “I was wrong,” he insisted. “I was raised better than to—”
“Look,” she cut in. “We can talk about it on the ground.”
“But—”
“I’ll land us safe and sound, Slim. Don’t go thinking this is it. All right? Neither of us is going to die today.”
He didn’t answer, and she glanced over at him. “We’re not going to crash.” When she noticed he wasn’t strapped in, she scowled. “Put your damn seatbelt on.”
He blinked. “I thought you said it wouldn’t make any difference.”
B.J. sighed. “It was a joke, Rawlings. Can’t you take a joke?”
Grabbing the protective strap, he muttered under his breath, “Next time you want to tell a joke, try knock, knock or why did the chicken cross the road.”
She heard him, but decided to act like she hadn’t. “If we have to make a hard landing, that harness just might save your life and keep you from being jostled around and getting the shit beat out of you.”
Grady clicked the belt into place and then tightened the straps for good measure.
“If you’d feel safer, you can get into a seat in the back,” she offered.
“What about you?”
She was about to come back with a sarcastic crack about who’d fly the plane if she cowered in the back with him, but then the engine cut out momentarily, and she clenched her teeth as the stick became harder to control.
“I’ll be fine.” She held on tight as the engine stopped, sputtered, and then roared to life again.
Grady didn’t move away from her side, and she didn’t want to think about how much that reassured her.
“How are we on gas?” he asked.
“Lower,” was her vague answer.
He looked too pale. She didn’t like scaring him, so, having pity, she reached over and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back and wasn’t going to let go. B.J. would’ve thought his fingers would be freezing, but they were warm and comforting, and she wanted to hang on forever.
But...“Okay, I need my hand back now,” she finally admitted.
He immediately let go, and she wrapped her fingers around the throttle.
The next half hour held some of the most nerve-wracking minutes of her life. The engine kept coughing and wheezing, not getting the gas it needed, and the gauge level kept sinking closer and closer to empty. Her father got back on the radio and started asking for updates more frequently. As B.J. calmly relayed how the steering was getting choppier, she wished Pop would shut up so she didn’t have to say aloud what was going on, letting Grady know how bad things were getting.
When their hangar finally came into view and she could read the large black letters spelling “T. Creek” painted on the silver tin roof, she’d never been so relieved.
“We’re going to make it,” she said and grinned at Grady...just as the engine died.
The only sound that followed was the free wind, whistling through the cracks of the aircraft.
His eyes went wide. “Oh, my God.”
“No, it’s okay,” she assured, her voice calm as she held the throttle, nice and steady. “It’s okay. I’ve got it. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. We’re still going to make it.”
He managed a nod but looked green around the gills. Not that she blamed him. He probably wouldn’t believe her until they actually touched ground.
It wasn’t the smoothest landing she’d ever made, but with shaking hands and no help from her plane, she thought she did damn fine. By the time they stopped skipping down the runway and were slowed to a stop, Grady had his seatbelt off and looked like he was going to leap from the plane and kiss the tarmac. But he stayed rooted to his seat, both hands wrapped firmly around the edge of his thighs as if they might have to be surgically removed.
B.J. tugged off her headphones and undid her safety harness. “You okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah. You?”
“I’m good,” she said, then let out a whoop of triumph. “God damn!” She leapt across the cockpit and right into his lap. Grady jerked in surprise as she threw her arms around his neck and gave him a brief but hard victory kiss on the mouth.
When she pulled away, she grinned and let out a breath. “Was that great, or what? Oh yeah! It feels good to be alive.”
Ignoring the stunned look on his face, she shimmied off him and threw open the door, already hopping out.
Her father and all three brothers barreled toward her. As soon as her two feet hit the runway, she hurried to meet them, aiming straight for Leroy.
“You could’ve gotten us killed, you jackass,” she snarled, her fists already clenching.
“What?” he said. “You landed just fine.”
Growling, she wound her arm back and decked him full in the mouth, causing his head to snap back.
He cursed and covered his face with both hands. Red immediately seeped through the cracks between his fingers.
Feeling no remorse, B.J. raged, “Next time you’re not going to do something I ask you to, tell me so I can goddamn do it myself.”
“Next time, just do it yourself.” Leroy muttered, wiping blood out of his nose. He took a step toward her, his own hand balling. B.J. widened her stance and braced herself, in the mood to fight.
But Rudy caught her around the waist and pulled her away just as Buck put a hand on Leroy’s chest and stopped him midstep.
“Cut it out, you two,” Pop bellowed.
“She hit me first,” Leroy said, scowling around Buck’s shoulder at her.
“And you deserved it,” Pop stated, getting a defiant sneer for his comment.
B.J. was about to smart back something else to set Leroy off even more when she finally noticed Grady exiting the plane with his bag in tow.
She paused and turned. Still pale as all get out, he hobbled past them. Her innards lurched with guilt.
“You sure you’re okay?” she said, moving toward him.
“I’m fine,” he said and held up a hand as if to ward her off.
“Grady.” Pop stepped forward, yanking off his ball cap and holding it to his chest. “On behalf of the Gilmore plane service, I apologize for all this trouble. If you’ll just follow me to the hangar, I’ll write you out a refund right now.”
B.J. gulped, suddenly remembering he was a customer, and she’d just gravely mistreated her customer. Damn, he could sue her if he wanted, and not just for almost getting him killed, but probably for sexual harassment too. Shit.
But Grady shook his head. “No...just...just send it through the mail.”
He began to turn away when Leroy opened his dumb mouth. “Hey, you ain’t going to sue us now, are you?”
B.J. tensed and held her breath. She noticed her brothers and father doing the same.
Grady glanced around to glare at Leroy, and she was sure that was it. They were going out of business from one lawsuit. But Grady’s eyes flickered her way, silently studying her. “No, I’m not going to sue you. I just want to be left alone.”
He pivoted and strode away. Still feeling crappy for the way she’d treated him, B.J.’s shoulders deflated. This just wasn’t his week. And it was all her fault. Realizing the best thing she could do for him was leave him alone, she stood back helplessly and watched him leave.