brown eyes didn’t need any goopy mascara to emphasize either their depth or their intelligence. And he had to admit the light dusting of freckles across her nose turned him on. That, and her unique scent. It drifted on an air-conditioned breeze, a tantalizing combination of soap and perspiration and aviation fuel.
He needed to keep her off balance, he reminded himself. Prevent her from probing too deeply. Throwing himself into the task, he gave her a wicked grin.
“How about this morning? Nothing says we can’t take up where we left off.”
“Oh, sure! With a rotation crew waiting outside in the heat?”
“I’m game if you are.”
Liz shook her head, suspended between suspicion and disbelief. “You’re something else, cowboy.”
“Yes, ma’am. I do believe I’ve been told that once or twice.”
She was damned if she could figure this guy out. He certainly looked like the roustabout he claimed to be. The sun had bleached his close-cut hair to golden brown. The white squint lines she’d noticed last night cut into skin tanned to dark oak by wind and sun. A couple days’ stubble darkened his cheeks and chin, as if he was getting a head start on the bushy beard most of the crews sprouted while on the rig. Then there was the palm he slid under her hair to circle her nape. It was callused and leather tough.
Liz stiffened at the touch of his skin against hers. Her eyes met his and telegraphed an unmistakable warning, which he ignored.
“If we can’t finish what we started,” he murmured, his gaze sliding downward to fix on her mouth, “how about we just settle for a kiss?”
Holding her in place with that thorny palm, he bent and brushed her lips with his.
Liz stood stiff, debating whether to whip up a knee or ream out his gut with her elbow. Devlin took full advantage of the hesitation, as brief as it was. Shifting his stance, he brought his mouth came down on hers with a hunger Liz hadn’t tasted in seven months.
Or longer, she realized with a jolt as his lips molded hers. To her chagrin, she couldn’t remember the last time a man had kissed her as if he meant it. Donny’s affectionate pecks hadn’t come close to packing this powerful a charge.
She savored the sizzle for a moment, maybe two, before breaking the contact. Feeling the loss of warmth immediately, she buried it in biting sarcasm.
“Finished flexing your masculinity, cowboy?”
“Guess so.”
“Then I’ll chalk this little interlude up to my stupid remark last night and let you walk out of here.” She looked him square in the eye. “Touch me again without my permission, however, and you’ll be drilling for something besides Mexican crude.”
Spinning on her heel, she strode out into the smothering heat. Jorge was waiting beside the pad with a question in his eyes. Liz answered it with a small shake of her head and brisk order tossed over her shoulder to the man who’d followed her from the operations shack.
“Get aboard and buckle up.”
Devlin joined his companions in the passenger compartment. Only after Liz had climbed into the cockpit and buckled her seat harness did she realize she’d bought his story about the supposed thief he’d gone to meet last night.
Frowning, she strapped on her kneeboard and forced herself to concentrate on the power-up sequence checklist. The engines whined. The forty-four feet of main rotor blades churned up dust, slowly at first, then in a reddish whirlwind. The aircraft began to shimmy as Liz radioed the tower.
Once she received clearance to taxi, her years of training and experience kicked in. Flying an aircraft that operated in both horizontal and vertical planes required a level of coordination not all pilots possessed. As always, getting her bird in the air and shifting smoothly from one plane to the other produced an adrenaline rush.
Her second in less than twenty minutes, Liz thought as she banked and aimed for the blue, sparkling Pacific. Her mouth still tingled from the kiss Devlin had laid on her.
Scowling behind her mirrored sunglasses, she set a course for floating the platform designated American-Mexican Petroleum Company Drill Site 237.
She must have made the run to AM-237 forty or fifty times in the past seven months. Every time, the sheer immensity of the ultradeepwater semisubmersible rig inspired awe. It was as big as a city block—a floating platform spiked by two giant cranes and a derrick that rose to impossible heights.
Anchored to the ocean floor by chains and 45,000-pound anchors, the superstructure sat on massive pontoons and four corner columns. Once the platform was positioned over a drill site, the columns were flooded with seawater. This caused the pontoons to sink to a predetermined depth and lessened the platform’s surface movement, making it relatively stable.
Relative being the key word. To a pilot aiming for the helideck that jutted out over the rig’s bow some seven stories above the water, even slight up and down movement had to be taken into consideration. The trick was to contact the helideck at its highest point and ride it down. Slamming into it on the way up stressed the landing gear and made the passengers just a tad nervous.
Liz chose a leeward approach and put the helo into a descending spiral a quarter of a mile out. The fat orange flanges for pumping the crude into tankers stood out like beacons on the east side. She lined up on the flanges to begin her final approach.
“AM-237, this is Aero Baja 214 on final.”
“Roger, 214. We have you on the scope. We’re putting out the welcome mat.”
While the rig’s two crane operators lowered the booms to clear the airspace, a support ship maneuvered into position at the pontoon closest to the helideck. The ship’s mission was to pick up survivors if the incoming aircraft hit the drink instead of the deck.
“The LO is standing by.”
The rig’s landing officer climbed onto the pad, clearly visible in his bright yellow vest.
“I see him,” Liz acknowledged.
Although this was only a secondary duty for him, she knew he’d been doing it a long time and trusted him to guide her in. Keeping one eye on his arm signals and another on the instrument panel, she put her aircraft into a hover above the deck and brought her down.
The skids touched, lifted and settled with a small thump. While the red-vested tie-down crew ducked under the blades to anchor the helicopter to the deck, Liz powered down. Once the blades had chugged to a halt, she keyed her mike.
“Welcome to AM-237, gentlemen.”
Swinging a leg over the stick, she clambered into the cargo compartment.
“Claim your gear and pass it to the deckhands,” she instructed the new arrivals. “Make sure you hang on to the lifelines when you climb out onto the pad.”
The old-timers knew the drill, but there were questions in the eyes of a couple of obvious newcomers. Liz repeated the instructions in Spanish, then in elaborate pantomime. Looking both doubtful and nervous, the newbies poked their heads outside the hatch. Liz saw several Adam’s apples bounce and knuckles turn white as the
