it, but if you think it’s that important, why don’t you review the employment records and put me on the crew with the best pilot?”
To her surprise, he placed his large hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. But instead of arguing his point further, he stared at her for several long seconds before he muttered a curse and lowered his head to capture her lips with his.
As his mouth moved over hers in a gentle caress, Callie’s pulse raced and her insides began to hum. The last thing she’d expected for him to do was kiss her. But instead of pushing him away as she should have, she reached out and placed her hands on his biceps to steady herself. The feel of his rock-hard muscles flexing beneath her palms sent a shiver of excitement up her spine and caused her knees to tremble.
If she had any sense, she’d put a stop to the kiss right now and demand that he leave. But his firm, warm lips were making her feel things that she’d only read about in women’s magazines and romance novels, and she didn’t want the delicious sensations to end.
When he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him to deepen the kiss, the feel of his superior strength surrounding her sent tiny little sparks skipping over every nerve in her body. Opening for him, she felt her heart skip several beats when he slipped his tongue inside to tease and explore her with a tenderness that made forming a coherent thought all but impossible.
Placing his hand at the small of her back, he urged her forward, but the feel of her round little tummy pressed to his stomach must have brought him back to reality. He suddenly went completely still, then, releasing her, he carefully set her away from him and took a couple of steps back.
“That shouldn’t…have happened.” He ran an agitated hand through his thick dark brown hair. “I think I should probably leave.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Embarrassed and more than a little confused by her uncharacteristic behavior, Callie began packing more cookies into the plastic containers. Why hadn’t she stopped him instead of clinging to him as if she were desperate for a man’s attention?
Hunter O’Banyon might be tall, dark and movie-star handsome, but she was no more interested in him than she was in any other man. But, dear heaven above, could he ever kiss.
Her cheeks feeling as if they were on fire from her sudden wayward thought, she shoved a container of cookies into his hands. “Take these back to the hangar for Mary Lou and the on-duty crew.”
“Callie…I—”
If he didn’t leave soon, she’d be up all night baking. “It’s getting late and I’m sure you need to get back.” She walked into the living room and opened the front door. “Thank you for stopping by. I appreciate your concerns and I will give them some thought.”
“By the way, I know this is short notice, but I’m holding a staff meeting the day after tomorrow at 10:00 a.m.,” he said, looking anything but happy. “Will you be able to be there?”
She shook her head. “I have a doctor’s appointment. But I’ll stop by after my checkup and someone can fill me in on what was covered in the meeting.”
He stared at her for what seemed an eternity before he gave her a short nod. “Good night, Callie,” he said, walking out onto the porch.
“Have a nice rest of the evening, Hunter,” she said, closing the door behind him.
Walking straight to the kitchen, she stacked the containers of cookies on a shelf in her freezer, then pulled out the ingredients for a batch of brownies. Her phone conversation with her mother had been frustrating and caused her to make several batches of cookies. But Hunter’s disturbing kiss was sending her into a baking frenzy, and for some odd reason everything she wanted to make was chocolate.
As she measured cocoa and flour, something she’d heard on a cooking show came to mind and caused her to knock over a cup of sugar. Eating chocolate released the same endorphins in the brain that were released while having sex.
“Not good, Callie. Not good at all.”
Hurriedly opening a bag of milk-chocolate chips, she popped a handful into her mouth, and as the rich taste spread over her tongue, she decided that even if chocolate did make her gain too much weight, it was far less dangerous to her peace of mind than Hunter O’Banyon.
As he descended the steps and walked over to the white truck with Life Medevac painted on the side, Hunter shook his head. He didn’t blame Callie one damned bit for giving him the bum’s rush. Hell, he’d deserved more than that. He’d acted like an oversexed teenager on his first date. But what he was having the devil of a time trying to figure out was why.
Getting into the truck, he started the engine and, backing from the driveway, drove across town. But instead of turning onto the road leading to the Life Medevac hangar, he kept going until the lights of Devil’s Fork faded in the distance behind him. He needed to think, and even though he could go into his room for solitude, he’d found that staring at the vastness of a starlit night always helped him put things in perspective.
When he parked the truck and stared out the windshield at the stars above the Apache Mountains in the distance, he couldn’t help but wonder what the hell had gotten into him. He’d only stopped by Callie’s place to try to talk some sense into her and get her to see the wisdom in grounding herself until after she had her baby. But when he’d placed his hands on her shoulders and looked into her pretty violet eyes, he could no more have stopped himself from tasting her sweetness than he could stop his next breath.
He took a deep breath. Although he wasn’t overly proud of it, he hadn’t exactly led the life of a monk since Ellen’s death. But he’d always been careful to be with women who wanted nothing more from him than mutual satisfaction and had no expectations of their liaison leading to anything more. And Callie Marshall was most definitely not that type of woman. Instead of smoke-filled nightclubs, champagne cocktails and a meaningless one-night stand, she was a cozy little cottage, homemade cookies and a long-term commitment.
But come to think of it, he’d been so busy in the past several months that he’d completely abandoned any kind of a social life. And although he was far from being as randy as a seventeen-year-old boy, a man of thirty-two did have certain needs that couldn’t be ignored.
He frowned. But he’d never in his entire life found a pregnant woman irresistible.
He stared at a shooting star streaking across the inky sky. He guessed it was only natural that he’d be attracted to Callie even though she was expecting a baby, considering his current state of celibacy. She was a very pretty woman with a killer smile, a delightful laugh and a pair of legs that could drive a saint to sin. Combine all those traits with his neglected libido and it was no wonder he’d felt compelled to kiss her.
Satisfied that he’d discovered the reason for his uncharacteristic caveman behavior, he started the truck and headed back toward the Life Medevac base. Now that he had things in perspective, there was no reason that he and Callie couldn’t put what happened this evening behind them and move forward as employer and employee. Hell, maybe they could even be friends.
But much later, as he lay in bed trying to will himself to sleep, Hunter couldn’t seem to forget the sweet taste of Callie’s soft lips or that the blood in his veins had heated considerably when she’d kissed him back. And whether he liked it or not, the very last thing on his mind was friendship.
Three
