what all the fuss was about.
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.
Abruptly, she seemed to shake herself out of her sexual trance and batted ineffectually at his hand. Bemused, he stepped back and let her unlatch her seat belt. She stumbled on the skid in her haste to get out of the helicopter, though, and staggered forward. He caught her up against him.
Her belly slammed into his zipper, and she couldn’t fail to feel the gigantic erection straining against the denim. Her eyes went wide and her fair skin blushed bright pink. Yup, she’d noticed his hard-on.
“Easy, there, Grace,” he muttered.
She was as light as a bird in his arms. He’d registered her as being reasonably tall the first time he’d seen her. But in fact, she barely reached his nose. Must be the mile-long legs in tight jeans that had given him the false impression. His heavy leather jacket prevented him from feeling her breasts smashed against him, but the view as he looked down the V-neck of her T-shirt was compensation enough. Marley Stringer was stacked.
“I’m such a klutz,” she mumbled self-consciously.
“I’m pretty sure Minerva tripped you. She’s the jealous type, you know.”
Marley smiled up at him a little and his heart did something strange in his chest.
“Archer! My office. Now.” Steve Prescott’s voice carried clearly across the ramp, low and hard.
“Been nice knowin’ ya,” he muttered to Marley.
“You think he’ll fire you?” she asked, her expression dismayed.
“Hell, yeah. I’d fire me.” He had to act like just one of the guys—not a special operator brought in to find and stop whoever was causing accident after accident on the movie set. Film crews were among the most superstitious of all professions, and if the problems didn’t get resolved soon, this film—heck, the whole studio—was in serious jeopardy.
Frankly, the timing of Steve’s private call for help couldn’t have come at a better time for him. He was on sixty days’ forced leave from his unit overseas—thirty days of regular leave and thirty extra days of medically directed leave by his unit’s flight surgeon.
If he had to sit at home staring at his toes all that time, he was going to lose his mind...or do something really dumb. Last thing he needed to do was actively tank his career. Or his life.
Besides, it wasn’t like he really believed that there was a saboteur running around a movie set trying to kill people. It was a movie, for crying out loud. Not real life. It certainly wasn’t anything like the war zones he’d been operating in for the past decade. Now those were places where people were overtly out to kill a guy.
But this—he looked around the quiet airfield with its orderly rows of toy airplanes, all neatly tied down and waiting for their wealthy owners to come play—this was not the kind of place that harbored dangerous killers.
Maybe he should consider retiring. Stunt flying in the movies. It was a sweet gig, after all. The pay was great, and the wild flying was every chopper jock’s dream.
Nah. He was an adrenaline junkie at heart. Truth be told, he got turned on by being shot at. By cheating death.
He took off walking toward the hangar where Steve’s on-set office was located.
The good news was that it would take almost his whole two months of leave to do the movie shoot. God knew, he could use the distraction. He’d been more relieved that he cared to admit when Steve had called to ask for his help.
“I’m coming with you,” the girl declared, falling into step beside him.
His gut twisted unpleasantly. Was she inserting herself into this confrontation to find out if anyone suspected a saboteur yet, perhaps?
Aloud, he asked, “Why? You like having your butt handed to you in a sling?
“No, but I’m still coming.”
It wasn’t like he could stop her from trailing along beside him to Prescott’s office. Hell, maybe her presence would tone down the epic ass-chewing he was about to receive—for the benefit of the plentiful mechanics and crew hanging around in the hangar, no doubt to eavesdrop on the reaming Steve was about to lay on him. The one thing more distinctive about movie crews than their superstition was their love of gossip. They were veritable hotbeds of it. And Steve was no dummy. He would know full well that this conversation would, in effect, have an audience.
The two of them would talk more tonight. In private. But for now, for public consumption, he was in big trouble.
The idea behind today’s change of flight crew/camera operator matchup had been to test Marley. To see if she would actually go
