not going to be her favorite part of being the foundation’s director. They definitely hadn’t been her predecessor, Evelyn Wright’s, favorite part. In fact, a trip like this one, to a very underdeveloped area in Arkansas, had ultimately caused Evelyn to resign.
At the first opportunity, Emmy slipped out of her row into the main aisle and began the slow trek to the exit door. Aiden Tarlington was to meet her at the Fairbanks airport and take her the rest of the way to Boonesbury where he was the sole doctor.
She imagined that he’d be a paunchy old country doctor and hoped that, if the remainder of her journey required him to drive, his eyesight and reflexes weren’t waning the way Howard Wilson’s were. The last time she’d ridden with Howard he’d scared her nearly to death.
There were a number of people waiting just inside the gate as she stepped through it into the airport and Emmy initially scanned the crowd for a head of white hair—like Howard’s. She had no basis for that. For all she knew Dr. Tarlington might be as bald as Rooney Whitlove—another of the Old Boys.
Then she realized that a couple of people were holding signs with names on them and she amended her view to read those signs since that was a more likely way to connect with the man she was meeting.
No, she was not Sharon.
She wasn’t Winston Murphy, either.
But she was Emmy Harris….
Only, the man holding the cardboard rectangle with her name written on it was hardly white-haired. Or bald. Or old, for that matter.
Instead, he had a full head of longish, dark-brown hair the color of bittersweet chocolate. And it was combed haphazardly back from the face of someone more her own age. The jaw-droppingly handsome face of someone more her own age.
Emmy rechecked the sign to be sure she wasn’t mistaken.
She wasn’t. It was her name written in big, bold letters. And the sign was definitely being held by a man who was not at all grandfatherly.
Maybe he isn’t Dr. Tarlington, she thought as she took in the full view on the way over to him. After all, he wasn’t dressed to impress, the way the representative of potential grant recipients might be. This man had on a pair of well-worn blue jeans, a V-neck sweater that showed a hint of white T-shirt underneath, and a denim jacket one shade lighter than the jeans.
Not that the attire didn’t suit him, because it did. Although Emmy doubted the guy would have looked bad in anything.
He was very tall—probably an inch or more over six feet—and he had about the broadest shoulders she’d ever seen. He also had a very angular jaw: a full lower lip below a thinner, but very sensual, upper lip; a slightly long, slightly hawkish nose; and deep-set, light-blue eyes that would have made him remarkable even if the rest of his face had been plain.
She stepped up then and said, “I’m Emmy Harris,” not wanting to address him as Dr. Tarlington since she doubted that’s who he was.
Down went the sign and out came a large hand with thick, blunt fingers.
“Hi. Aiden Tarlington.”
Emmy barely took his hand, scanning his face all over again.
“Dr. Tarlington?” she said for clarification, still thinking this could be the doctor’s grandson and namesake.
“Aiden will be fine,” he assured her in a deep, rich voice that was all-male.
“You’re Howard Wilson’s fishing buddy?” she asked somewhat tactlessly.
“We’ve been known to do some hunting, too.”
“So, you’re friends?”
“We are. Why does that seem to surprise you?”
“I just thought… Well, I guess I just assumed that you would be closer to Howard’s age.”
“Ah. No, I’m a long way from seventy-two. But we are still friends. And fishing and hunting buddies. If that’s okay with you,” he added with an amused smile that put tiny creases like rays of sunshine shooting out from the corners of each of his piercing blue eyes.
“It’s not that it’s okay or not okay. It’s just—”
“A surprise,” he supplied for her.
“A surprise,” she confirmed. “I really did think you’d be one of Howard’s cronies.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
Disappointed was not what Emmy was feeling.
What she was feeling was an inordinate—and inappropriate and entirely unprofessional—urge to get her hair out of that bun.
“No, no, it’s nothing,” she assured him. “You just aren’t what I was expecting.”
Of course that had been one of Evelyn’s many laments—that nothing on these trips ever turned out to be what she expected. But this was hardly something to complain about the way Evelyn had complained about so many things.
“In fact,” Emmy added. “It’s better that you aren’t Howard’s age. Now I don’t have to worry about being driven to Boonesbury by someone with cataract-dimmed eyesight and not-great reflexes.”
“My eyesight and reflexes are fine,” the doctor said, and she wondered if she’d heard just the faintest hint of something in his tone that might have been flirting.
Surely she must have been mistaken, she told herself.
Although, those blue eyes of his hadn’t left her for a single moment since she’d approached him and introduced herself.
Then he said, “But we aren’t driving to Boonesbury, anyway. It would take us a full day to do that and another full day to drive back at the end of your stay. We’re flying.”
“Oh?” That news confused her, since she hadn’t been instructed to book a connecting flight. “And you’ve taken care of the arrangements?”
“I have. I flew the plane in and I’ll be flying the plane out again.”
“Oh.” There was a tinge of alarm in that one.
Emmy had been Evelyn’s assistant for a number of years, privy to the same complaints Evelyn had voiced to Howard about the inconveniences and lack of amenities on these trips. But the final straw for Evelyn had been a flight in a small aircraft that had been forced to make an emergency landing. Emmy had hoped never to be in that same position.
But here she was, on her first time out, faced with flying in a small plane. Piloted by a doctor.
“So you’re a doctor and a pilot?” she said, trying not to sound as if that failed to inspire her with confidence.
“Licensed in both, yes.” He seemed amused again, and there was actually a sparkle in his eyes that made them all the more striking.
Then he leaned forward a little and pretended to confide, “I’m a better pilot than Howard is a driver,
