of diamonds glittering from her fingers had been sitting on the hood of his Porsche last week. He’d been so concerned about possible dents in his car that at first the woman’s lack of panties beneath her short dress hadn’t registered. Once it did, his only reaction had been annoyance that he was also going to have to get the car washed.
“It’s gotta be the cologne,” he muttered, wondering if he was the subject of a secret scientific experiment. Maybe Calvin Klein was slipping some kind of animal secretion into his aftershave. Something that made Max give off irresistible pheromones that turned women into sex-starved vixens.
“Mr. Taylor…”
Or sex-starved bovines.
“Return to your seat,” he said from between clenched teeth. He didn’t look around, focusing instead on the blue sky spread in a brilliant panorama outside the windshield. Not on the age-spotted lady in the doorway spread in an Eve-old invitation. “Get dressed and sit down or I’ll return to the airport.”
“You can’t mean to tell me you’re refusing.” The spoiled, rich socialite wasn’t used to being told no. And as the owner of a young private charter company that was still struggling under last year’s expansion from a four-jet fleet to a six-jet one, he wasn’t used to saying it—not when it came to business.
Max had worked his ass off in the past three years, determined to get himself out of the quagmire his life had become after he’d left the Air Force. After a brief, yearlong bout of drunkenness during his divorce, he’d pulled his shit together and had launched his small, regional airline. It was something he’d dreamed of doing since his teenage years when he first learned to fly over the African desert, taught by one of his grandfather’s cronies.
Since then, his airline had become one of the fastest-growing private carriers in Orange County. Especially with customers like Mrs. Rudolph Coltrane, who freely shelled out major dollars to grab a ride to Vail or down to Cancún.
Of course, he’d always thought he’d be living this life after he finished a career as an Air Force pilot. That hadn’t exactly gone as planned. Don’t go there, he silently reminded himself.
“Look, I’m willing to fly you wherever you want to go,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. “As long as it’s within the safety parameters of the aircraft. And sex in the cockpit is not.”
He didn’t go into the whole “I’d rather poke my liver out with a burning pogo stick than have sex with you” bit. Hopefully the woman cared enough for her own skin to sit down.
“Rubbish.”
Okay, apparently she didn’t.
“I know you have autopilot,” she added. “Everyone knows about this airline and your new planes.”
Yeah, they did. Word had spread about Taylor Made until they could barely keep up with demand. So the idea of merging with a large outfit trying to break into the lucrative southern California market had seemed perfect when he’d been approached by a New York executive a few months ago.
The merger was progressing nicely and would be wrapped up later in the year. Determined to make it happen, Max was working double time to keep the business lucrative. He could take a vacation after he had a partner.
Mrs. Coltrane put her hand on his shoulder. “Now, set the autopilot and turn around.”
Pleasing the customer was a top priority in his business, and he didn’t want to alienate someone with as powerful a reputation as Mrs. Coltrane. But despite the special extras and level of excellence he advertised in his promotional material, flying the twin of the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” lady to the heights of passion was not in his job description.
“You’ve got to the count of five, then I radio the tower and we make an immediate landing,” he said, trying to shrug off her hand.
“Don’t be coy. I know all about you.”
He stiffened, having no idea what she meant. “One.”
“Surely you can at least do me the courtesy of a quickie.”
The woman’s indignance would have been laughable if Max’s laughter hadn’t been sucked out of him like spit through a dentist’s tube. “Two.”
“But I thought…”
He reached for the radio handset. “Three.”
“Well,” the woman said with a phlegmy harrumph, “if I don’t have a thing or two to say to Grace Wellington.”
The word four died on Max’s lips as he focused on the name his passenger had uttered. Grace Wellington. What on earth a woman he’d gone out with a few years ago could have to do with Grandma getting naked in his Cessna, he had no idea. But he’d very much like to find out. Especially because he couldn’t help wondering if all the other strange experiences he’d been having with women were also connected to Grace, whom he’d dated briefly after the death of her scandalous politician husband.
“What about Grace?” he couldn’t help asking.
“She’s a liar, that’s what I think,” Mrs. Coltrane said, her tone nasal.
He didn’t have to look over his shoulder—and wouldn’t have for the single winning lottery ticket in the biggest Powerball jackpot in history—to see the woman’s chin jutting up and out, and her nostrils flaring with patrician arrogance. He was familiar with the expression, having seen it on the faces of a lot of his rich, female clients.
Of course, most of them were clothed when they got all haughty and pretentious. Wrinkly nudity probably ruined the effect—not that he wanted to find out.
“I never was certain whether the stories she wrote about you were true—that any man could be as sexually potent and addictive. Now I’m quite sure they’re not.” The woman grunted. “Some sexual fiend you are—a naked woman standing a foot away and you couldn’t even manage a quick game of hide-the-joystick.”
He didn’t know whether to be relieved that she’d given up her seduction attempt, or offended that she thought him incapable of, uh, playing her game. But since the only place he wanted to hide his joystick was behind his own zipper, maybe her interpretation wasn’t such a bad thing.
Then the rest of her words sunk in. Sex fiend? “What stories? What, exactly, are you talking about?”
She was silent for a moment. If he had had a whole lot more nerve, he would have turned around to see if she was wearing a guilty expression at spilling some kind of secret. He wasn’t that brave, however, so he settled for prompting her. “Mrs. Coltrane?”
“You’ll know soon enough, I suppose.” Her voice sounded farther away, meaning she was back in the passenger cabin, hopefully getting dressed. “The book comes out this fall. And there’s talk of a story in the Star or the Globe or something.”
“Book?”
“Grace’s autobiography. Huh! As if that woman is interesting enough to need a whole book. If not for the scandals, it would be nothing more than a page.”
An autobiography. Grace Wellington—spoiled socialite turned scandalous widow after her bribe-taking politician husband had eaten the
