mortified, stricken.
Several members of the crew closed in to try to help, but that was the last thing Cassie’s claustrophobia needed. Though she felt as though a breath was trapped in her lungs, she managed to free a high-pitched scream. She dropped the woman’s wrist, pushed away the coat someone tried to wrap around her, picked up the skirts of her dress and ran away. The scream seemed to fill the night and follow her.
CASSIDY CHAPMAN HELD Grady Nelson’s hand in a death grip as they raced across the tarmac toward her father’s private jet. Footsteps pounded after them.
“Cassie!” a rough male voice shouted from behind them. The rest of what he said was drowned out by the sound of the growling jet, ready for takeoff. The smell of diesel and grass filled the warm, southeast Texas air, making the Christmas carols coming from the terminal some distance away seem out of place.
“Almost there!” Grady encouraged her as they continued to run.
“Thank goodness,” Cassie gasped. “I feel like my feet are wearing through the soles of my shoes.”
“If you weren’t such a celebrity, you wouldn’t have to keep dodging the press.”
They ground to a stop at the steps leading into her father’s plane. The copilot waiting for them directed a passing security guard to stop the pursuing photographer.
“Drew,” she said as she ran past the copilot and up the steps, her small tote bag weighing a ton after that run. “Thanks for being so prompt. But I thought Dad was sending the helicopter.”
“It’s our job to be prompt, Miss Chapman,” he called after her. “Like the Boy Scouts, only we fly. And I was closer than the ’copter.”
The small Gulfstream G450 was luxurious yet comfortingly familiar with its white-and-gold tapestry-covered armchairs around a low table. Several Picasso prints decorated the bulkhead. She’d accompanied her father on business on this plane many times. Flying with him had been part of her therapy. There’d been a point when she’d thought she’d licked all those old problems, but recent events had shaken that belief.
Grady stopped just inside and looked around in apparent astonishment. She hustled him forward so Drew could pull up the steps and close the door. She stowed her bag and took Grady’s from him.
“Ah...” he said, frowning as his eyes went from the Tiffany lamp on the table to the art prints. “I guess we won’t have to worry about legroom.”
“Nice, isn’t it? It’s really hard to fly commercial airlines when you’ve gotten used to this.” She pointed him to the two traditional passenger seats facing forward and put his bag in an overhead bin. “We have to sit here for takeoff,” she said, taking the aisle seat. “Do you mind sitting by the window?” She nudged Grady toward the window seat as she asked the question.
“Happy to.” He sat and buckled his belt, peering out the window, and then looked around, his expression still one of disbelief. She didn’t blame him. He was probably wondering how a trip to spend Christmas with his friend in Texas had turned into a mad chase with her to the central Oregon coastal town where he lived and worked and was a friend of her family’s.
“Are you beginning to regret helping me escape?” she asked, buckling her own belt, the small Chloe suede cross-body bag she still wore across her chest.
“No.” He turned to smile at her. “But I do admit to feeling a long way out of my element. I seldom have reason to fly, much less in a private plane. My life is so much...smaller than this. And I like that.”
Was that a message? she wondered. I rescued you this time, but don’t get used to it. This isn’t going to be one of those cop-rescues-model-in-distress stories with a romance-movie ending.
If so, that was fine with her. She had too much to repair in her life, and that required her complete attention. Like the panic she always felt when flying. And the fact that she may have just killed her career with a major meltdown in the middle of a shoot in Ireland. Both were related to an issue she couldn’t explain, except to wonder if it was left over from her nebulous childhood. She’d done a good job of keeping that to herself, so, to the world at large, she just looked like a white-knuckle flier and to the crew in Ireland, a spoiled brat.
Added to that, she’d been reunited with her siblings after most of a lifetime spent apart, only to have to escape their Texas reunion when the paparazzi appeared.
She’d dreamed of getting her brother and sister back for most of her life. She barely remembered Jack; just an impression of gentleness and a comforting voice.
But she and Corie had corresponded for a while when she was twelve. Then Corie had run away and they’d had little contact since. Until they’d met in Texas.
As though that wasn’t enough to keep a woman up at night, at age twenty-five, she suddenly had this undefined longing nothing seemed to satisfy. It wasn’t related to men because her life was filled with them, and though she enjoyed their friendships, she felt no desire to spend the rest of her life with one. She did not need one more complication. She needed...something.
She patted Grady’s hand where it rested on his knee, just to be able to touch something strong and solid. “Well, don’t worry about it. I’ll be out of your hair as soon as we get to Beggar’s Bay. Your car’s at the Salem airport, right?”
“No. I drove my mother and my aunts to Reno before I flew to Texas. I flew from there to meet Ben and Corie, expecting to fly back to Reno. And then you came along.”
“Oh. Then I’ll rent a car. But how are you getting the Jeep back?”
“Ben will drive me down to pick it up. It’s not that long a drive from Beggar’s Bay.”
“Good.”
Drew’s voice came over the speaker. “Ready? We’re off to the great Northwest, where we’ll be greeted by—big surprise—wind and rain! Temperature is 42 degrees.”
Cassie braced herself for takeoff. Wind and rain. She could deal with them, of course, but she was a hardcore Riviera rat at heart, not for its elegance and famous visitors, but because she loved blue skies and sunshine dancing on the azure Mediterranean. She closed her eyes, unconsciously tightening her grip on Grady’s hand. The weather was the least of her concerns right now.
* * *
GRADY TURNED AS her fingernails dug into his knuckles, saw that her porcelain profile was set as though she was in pain, and concluded that she didn’t like to fly. Seemed odd, since she must have to do it often. But fear was tough to conquer. He turned his hand to hold hers.
He had to tell himself again that this was really happening to him; he wasn’t dreaming. And while it was true that he didn’t regret a moment of the last few hours, he was seriously out of his comfort zone. As long as she looked desperate and lost, he was carried on the tide of rescue. The cop that lived inside him, that most days defined his very being, would move heaven and earth to get her to safety. Not that the pursuing paparazzi had threatened her with physical harm, but escaping them seemed very important to her, so he would do his utmost to help her.
Otherwise, this kind of opulence
