exactly that.
Lucas apparently liked to live on the edge.
Willa laughed over her shoulder at him from where she sat in the front section. He rewarded her with a brilliant grin. With his dark hair tucked beneath a vintage World War Two aviator cap, he looked even more dashing and dangerous than he did out in a pirogue.
Then her heart dropped to her shaky feet as Lucas tilted the plane into a quick spin, setting it right before she had time to be scared. Willa screamed, both delighted and relieved, as he did what he had earlier explained as a P turn, taking her right over Bayou le Jardin and the surrounding swamps and woods.
“It’s a tricky maneuver, because the plane can stall out and you’re flying about one hundred feet above the earth. You have to concentrate and have good coordination. But don’t worry. I’ve done about a thousand or so such turns and I had to do about a third of those in flight school just to get my license.”
She’d believed him when he’d told her this inside the hangar, and she believed him now. And she felt completely safe in his capable hands.
Which was amazing.
Willa knew she’d never been one to take chances. She liked everything laid out in an orderly, chronological fashion. Perhaps she’d learned that trait from her precise, carefully in-control mother. Candace didn’t make a move unless it was completely calculated. And each move had been one step up the social ladder, one more planned achievement for her mother to celebrate.
Yes, Willa had learned from the best. She’d mapped out her career as a model, grim determination making her want to become the best, to show her parents she could, for one thing, and to prove to herself that she could be self-sufficient, for another.
But in all those years of working and traveling and setting almost unreachable goals for herself, she’d never once felt like this.
Only Lucas could make her feel this way—as if each step she took was like jumping off a cliff into clear blue waters. Jumping without a parachute.
A leap of faith.
Get your head out of the clouds, Willa, she told herself as Lucas banked the purring yellow plane and brought it down for the landing. She reminded herself she’d be leaving here soon; she’d be back in New York, back to globetrotting and working long, grueling hours in what most thought was a very lucrative, glamorous job. Her work was that and more, but was it still enough? And did she have enough time to stop and enjoy living? She was the only one who could find the answers to those questions.
But being with Lucas was making her see her life in a whole different light. And from a very different view.
As her heart settled to a steady rhythm, Willa looked at the sky, of which she’d just so daringly been a part.
And suddenly, she wanted to live. Very much so.
She just didn’t know how she was ever going to face all the turmoil in her life in order to be able to do that, at long last.
About an hour later they pulled into the long drive leading to the back gardens of the mansion. After parking the Jeep, Lucas came around to Willa’s side to open the door, then leaned in through the open window, his face inches from hers. “What can you imagine with me, then?”
She hadn’t said much on the short drive home. He wondered if she was having second thoughts about hanging with him. Maybe he’d scared her off before he’d even had a chance with her.
She blinked. “What?”
“You’ve been so quiet since we came back down to earth,” he said, his need to get inside her head flaring with a liquid warmth. “Earlier, you said you couldn’t imagine being bored with me. So what are you imagining right now, chère?”
Her eyes turned a sparkling blue, as pure and wide as the Louisiana sky over their heads. Her luscious mouth parted as she took a quick breath. Then she spoke. “I imagine being with you will always be like a wild airplane ride, with lots of loops and free falls.”
He lowered his head just a notch. “And that’s a bad thing?”
“No, no.” She held his gaze, then placed a hand on his arm. “It’s just that…Lucas, I came here to work through some things in my life, to make some decisions about my future—”
“A future that doesn’t include any heavy commitments and any flighty flings with a poor Cajun boy?”
She shook her head. “A future that is very unsure right now. It wouldn’t be fair to drag you into my problems.”
“If you’re talking about finding your birth mother—”
“It’s more than that. I’ve just got a lot to deal with and not much time to get it all figured out.”
“So I don’t fit into the equation?”
“I don’t want to fit you into the equation. I hope you understand. It wouldn’t be right between us, it wouldn’t be fair to you.”
He leaned closer. He wanted to kiss her bad, but instinct told him that wasn’t such a good idea when she was giving him the proverbial brush-off. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that—unless of course, I’m reading all the signs wrong and you’re really not as madly in love with me as I am with you.”
She reached up then, to touch a hand to his face, to run a slender, polished nail through his wind-tossed hair. “Lorna told me you fall in love very easily.”
He grabbed her hand, brought it to his lips. “My sister should mind her own business. Just because she’s finally found her soul mate, she thinks she’s the local authority on the rest of this miserable lot.”
“She cares about you and she worries about you.”
He kissed her fingers one by one and enjoyed the way she blushed, the way she seemed to like his touch. “I can take care of myself. Been doing it for years.”
“Can you?” Willa watched as he touched her fingers to his mouth, her eyelashes fluttering softly against her cheeks before she looked into his eyes. Lucas saw the attraction jolt through her as it had pushed through him.
Okay, she did have a point. He was losing control. This could turn out to be more dangerous than any of the other stunts he’d tried.
“I used to think I could handle anything,” he admitted as he held her hand against his lips. “But it’s different with you. I think…I think I’m scared of you, certainly of what you do to me.”
She touched her forehead to his. “Oh, Lucas, I don’t think you’re afraid of anything. I just think you need to know…you need to be warned…I’m not right for you.”
Abruptly, he let go of her hand and backed away. “Then maybe I should be scared. At least, that’s what you’re trying to tell me.” Irritated, he opened the door and tugged her out of the Jeep and right into his waiting arms. “Am I right? Are you deliberately trying to scare me away, Willa?”
He saw the answer in the blue of her eyes. And he also saw the contradiction. She was trying to deny her feelings toward him. Lucas took that as a personal challenge to win her over.
“Answer
