the meaning of fun, which he seriously doubted.
He followed her from the tarmac into the lobby, nearly losing his nose in the door that she tried to shut on him. “Look at that,” he said in her ear. “As sweet as ever.”
The only sign she’d heard him was her hand curling into a fist at her side.
She wanted to deck him. Seems Little Miss Hot-Head was still quite…well, hot-headed.
Not to mention, just plain hot.
Thrusting her nose high enough into the air as to actually endanger her to a nosebleed, she strutted her stuff across the lobby floor toward the front door, tools clinking.
Once upon a time she’d barely come up to his shoulder, and had been a cute thing with guarded eyes and a slow-to-surface smile. She was still barely up to his shoulder, and he watched with appreciation as she quickly and efficiently moved across the floor with enough attitude for ten women, those coveralls hugging her hips and legs, the radio on one hip and a cell phone hanging off the other, and a wrench in her back pocket, slapping against her ass as she moved…
He rubbed his jaw as she stalked right up to the reception desk, perched a hip on the corner and leaned over the beautiful woman sitting there, whispering something in her ear.
The woman immediately swiveled her head and leveled a shocked gaze on Bo.
Bo recognized her, and could tell by the effort it took her to even out her expression that she recognized him as well. By the time he got over there, Dimi was staring at him with cool eyes that gave nothing away. “Bo Black,” she said as if his name left a bad taste on her tongue.
He hadn’t expected a red-carpet welcome, but this hostility was getting old bugger quick. “Okay,” he said easily. “Let’s get this out in the open.”
Twin glares.
“I don’t have a beef with either of you,” he tried calmly. “I just want to see Sally.” Or wrap his fingers around her neck and squeeze…
“Sally isn’t available,” Dimi said.
Mel had one leg swinging jerkily from her perch, revealing her irritation. As if he couldn’t see it all over her face.
Irritated himself, Bo put his hands on the desk and leaned in closer. “When will she be available? Tomorrow?”
Mel blinked once, slow as an owl, and didn’t answer.
Dimi stared down at her fingers, which were fisted and white-knuckled.
“In a week?” he asked with what he thought was great patience.
Nothing.
Shit. He took a deep breath. “A month?”
Neither woman moved, just Mel’s leg swinging, swinging, swinging. He eyed them both a long moment, then forced himself to relax, because he had two things on his side. One, a boatload of patience, and two, nothing else was more important than this. “I can wait as long as it takes,” he warned.
“You don’t have a job?” Mel asked.
“At the moment, I’m doing a bit of chartering.”
“With the Gulfstream.”
“Yep. And I’m getting back into antique-aircraft restoration.”
“Like Eddie.”
The mention of his father’s name never failed to deliver a rush of memories and nostalgia, and now was no different. Bo found his voice softer when he answered this time. “Like my father, yes.”
Dimi bit her lower lip, looked at Mel. Mel gave her a slight shake of her head, telling Bo what he needed to know.
Mel was the one in charge.
“So what are you going to do?” Mel asked. “Stand around and watch us run the place until Sally shows up?”
Bo made a show of looking around, at the decided lack of customers, at the slightly shabby look to the interior of the lobby, at the nerves leaping off of the two of them that could together provide enough electricity to run a small Third World country. “Seems to me you could use some help around here.”
“We’re fine,” Mel said tightly.
“Fine? Maybe. But who’s got the deed, Mel?”
Myriad emotions crossed their faces at that: horror, dismay, frustration.
“Yeah, think about that,” he suggested, then whistling beneath his breath, he straightened and walked away.
Mel stared at his strong, sleek back as he headed across the lobby toward the hallway that led to the private offices in the back, and felt her stomach sink.
“What is he doing here?” Dimi hissed.
Mel leaned in and grabbed the phone. “You heard him.” Her gaze was still locked on Bo as she punched in the number she’d memorized years ago: Sally’s cell. “He wants to talk to Sally. He’s not sure the deed is authentic any more than I am.” While she waited, listening to the phone ring God knew where, Ernest walked by again, sans cart this time. Mel felt like growling at him, but that would serve little purpose other than to tweak his curiosity, so she managed to control herself.
Sally didn’t pick up the phone, but then again, she rarely did. In fact, it had been nearly a year since they’d last talked, not that anyone knew that, because Mel and Dimi had perpetuated the image that they’d talked to Sally a lot more often. It kept the calm, and Mel liked calm.
She got Sally’s voice mail. “Sally,” Mel said at the beep. “Call me.”
Dimi shook her head. “Is he going to tell everyone?”
“Not if I have a say.”
“How did he get that deed in his name?”
“It wasn’t in his name. It was in his father’s.”
“Eddie Black.”
The man never failed to thrust Mel back in time, to the summer after freshman year. She’d been learning her way around an airplane engine, thanks to Sally and her mechanic at the time, Don, a cantankerous old guy with a cigarette always hanging out one corner of his mouth and a beer at the ready. For whatever reason, he’d taken to Mel, maybe because she’d made it her business to know the difference between a Beech and a Piper, and he liked that in a kid.
Dimi had filed and answered phones in between flirting with the linemen and any customer who happened to possess a penis. She and Mel hadn’t exactly been friends, Mel having come from the trailer park across the tracks, while Dimi ran with her rich-bitch crowd. But that summer they’d shared one catastrophic event that had changed things forever: Mel’s mother running off with Dimi’s father. The remaining parents soon vacated as well, each by different means. Dimi’s mom had chosen prescription meds, which ended up killing her. Mel’s father’s escape of choice…booze.
And so the unlikely alliance of Mel
