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
