those men?” He pointed to the ground crew, all sporting discreetly concealed MP50s. “And those? Of course I have men crawling everywhere, but once we’re airborne, it won’t matter if two or twenty people are onboard. As long as we can fly the plane.” His eyes hardened. “Call me a jerk, but I thought you’d jump at the chance to fly this baby.”
Too late Elizabeth realized she’d insulted him.
“Unless, of course,” he added lazily, “it’s not your life you’re worried about, but your virtue.”
Heat flashed through her. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I mean, think about it,” he drawled. “It’s not like I can drag you into the cabin for a quickie at twenty thousand feet.” He stepped closer, lowered his voice. “Someone’s got to fly the plane.”
She cut him a look. “How reassuring.”
With stunning speed, the hardness dissolved into a smile laced with dare. “Of course there’s always autopilot,” he mused, boxer-dancing out of the way.
A very unladylike noise escaped before she could stop it. “You haven’t flown on autopilot a day in your life.”
He tucked the clipboard under his arm. “What do you say, then? You up for flying?”
More than he could possibly know. She hadn’t realized how confined, how grounded she’d felt.
“Careful,” she said, breezing past him and heading up the stairs. “I might just push you out of the way and take this baby up all by myself.”
“Not in this lifetime, Ellie. You need me too much.”
She stepped into the cool, plush confines of the corporate jet and headed for the cockpit. “Dream on.”
From behind her, she heard his rough laughter. “Trust me, sweetness. You don’t want to know what a man like me dreams about.”
No, she didn’t. That was true.
“You forget,” he added, catching up with her. He slid into his seat and began checking the controls, making sure the yoke moved in all directions. “I know you. Flying by the seat of your pants isn’t your style, and the Lear is a two-pilot plane. If you want to get home today, in this plane, you’re stuck with me.”
Elizabeth said nothing, just blithely reached up and checked the oxygen mask.
“What are you doing?” he asked, as she’d known he would.
She turned to him and smiled. “Just making sure I’ll be able to breathe if your ego takes up all the oxygen.”
From a cruising altitude of thirty-nine thousand feet, the vivid blue sky stretched on forever. Far below, the rugged Rockies jutted up like toy mountains. The snowcaps looked little more than dots of vanilla ice cream.
Elizabeth leaned back and drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. She was eager to get back to Richmond and away from Hawk, but for now she savored the freedom of soaring.
“Isn’t the view gorgeous?”
Hawk glanced at her. “Stunning.”
Her heart kicked, hard. Her throat tightened. “Don’t, Hawk, okay? Not now.” They sat too close, had too many more hours alone together. As it was, she couldn’t breathe without drawing the scent of him deep inside. “Can’t we just enjoy the flight?”
The corners of his mouth curved into a smile. “Whatever you say, sweetness.”
Off to the right, a swirl of gauzy clouds curled like a comma. “Thank you.”
If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn he stiffened. “Just doing my job.”
“For letting me fly with you,” she clarified. For not treating her like a child. Nicholas barely let her drive.
Hawk turned toward her. Mirrored sunglasses concealed the deep butterscotch of his eyes, but she knew they’d be gleaming. “I taught you, didn’t I?”
The question rushed through her. He’d taught her, all right. A lot. Lessons she would never forget.
Hawk Monroe was the best pilot, the best instructor, she’d ever known. He’d mastered flying while in the Army, piloting Black Hawks into hostile territory in faraway places most people only heard about on the news. He never talked about the missions, but from the aftermath she’d witnessed in his eyes, she knew they’d been beyond dangerous. She wondered if he still thought about the years he’d given to his country, if sometimes he still woke up in a cold sweat.
Call me a fool, but “Be all you can be” actually meant something to me.
A smart woman would have turned away, looked straight ahead. Maybe even closed her eyes. But Elizabeth found it hard to look away. He looked deceptively casual sitting there with his headset on, faded jeans hugging his long legs, and the sleeves of his khaki shirt rolled up. On a glance he looked like a thousand other ex-military corporate pilots…except for the Glock shoved snugly into his leather shoulder holster.
“What do you think about when you fly?” she asked before she could stop herself.
Hawk took a long sip from a bottle of water. “I try not to think at all. I prefer to savor.”
Elizabeth smiled. Hawk loved flying every bit as much as she did. Before their relationship had become overly complicated, he’d taken her up often, sharing with her the promise of an early-spring dawn and the vibrancy of a late-summer sunset.
“Have you been up much since the shooting?”
“You know what they say about not keeping a good man down,” he answered with a grin. “I was back up—”
The change was subtle at first, a yaw like brakes on ice. They lurched forward, then backward. Then came the deafening roar of silence. The swirl of amber lights. The drone of buzzers.
And the plane went from fast forward to slow motion.
“Shit!” Hawk grabbed the yoke and immediately launched into the emergency procedures he’d drilled into her.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. “We’re losing altitude!” It wasn’t a dizzying rush or a spiraling plummet, just a gentle sinking in the air, drifting.
The hallmark of an aircraft with no power.
Chapter 4
“Pull up! Pull up!”
“Shut up!” Hawk gritted out, but the mechanical female voice droned on.
“Pull up! Pull up!”
Nothing. The free fall continued with deceptive gentleness, like a toy plane whose batteries had suddenly gone dead.
Amber lights flickered from the instrument panel, warning the obvious. They were going down. From the high altitude corporate aircraft occupied, they had five minutes, seven tops.
“Get
