Nothing else left to do, he faced her again. "Gonna hit me with that fence spike?"
"How did you know?" She slipped a hand into her shoulder bag. "Now close 'em and take it like a man."
God, her smart mouth plucked at him as much as those eyes. He shut his before they soaked up any more images of Kathleen.
"Hold out your hand."
Mirroring his presentation from the night before, she inched closer, closer still until the minty fragrance of her shampoo encircled him. The flutter of her shirt across his wrist almost sent him over the edge. Even that whisper of cottony fabric held her warmth, a warmth he'd spent a whole night holding against him. His arms itched to close around her now.
"Ready?"
"Yeah." He pushed the word through his tight throat.
A jingling sounded just before his hand closed around…
Keys.
He opened his eyes and stared at the keys peeking from his fist.
"I took care of getting us another car. But I thought you might like to drive for awhile."
Guilt pinched him. Hard. He knew how difficult it had to be for her to pass over the reins, but she'd done it in the interest of peace. She'd made a real effort toward compromise, and he'd been plotting how to maneuver her so the investigation went his way.
Except, he couldn't escape the niggling fear that something would happen to her. He could almost hear her earlier accusations in his brain.
Stuffing down rogue twinges of guilt, he said, "Thanks."
"No problem." Her smile reached her eyes, reached to him.
Neither of them spoke. The switchboard rang at least twice. A parade commentator droned from the television. The coffeepot hissed. And Tanner simply stared, took in every curve of her face, the faint sprinkling of freckles across her nose while she stared back.
Did her redhead complexion spread freckles in other places? He burned to stroke aside the neckline of her shirt and find out.
Pushing away from the cart and heading straight back to his room seemed the smartest move. "See you in the morning then."
One step later she stopped him with a hand on his upper arm. "Why don't we start now?"
Her hand scalded through cotton. With a will of its own, his biceps flexed beneath her touch. "Now?"
"Sure. We could go over to the hangar and check out the plane again."
An odd request since there wouldn't be any other personnel to meet with, but he wasn't risking another battle. He would find Crusty later. "Let's get to it then."
"I thought you might jump all over that idea." With a decided spring to her step, she shoved through the lobby door.
He felt like scum.
Following her to the car, he tried to dodge the guilt dogging him. She could take her protector-syndrome psycho-babble and stuff it. So what if he watched out for folks, helped when he could? Big deal. That didn't mean he was a control freak who didn't know how to be a team player.
He'd enjoyed the hell out of building a fence for Tiffani's watchdog. Stepping in to coach Candi's son's T-ball team had been a blast.
Then the relationships fizzled when there wasn't a project to hold them together. No problem to fix.
And when the investigation ended, there would be nothing left to tie him to Kathleen.
His fist closed around the keys. If she knew he was secretly keeping an eye out on her, he suspected she might hang him with the few remaining ties they had left.
Maybe if she tied him up…
Walking into the hangar, she stifled a laugh at the very un-Kathleen thought.
Maybe she could just gag him. The guy wouldn't stop talking about the investigation, planning their time together down to the microsecond.
The Air Force had received enough of her efforts for one day. Tomorrow would bring work soon enough.
Putting off work for some kind of social life made for another un-Kathleen thought. Of course an airplane hangar with halogen lights wasn't the traditional nightlife seduction setting, but their rooms back at the Edwards Inn seemed too cliché.
She stifled her inner voice insisting she'd chosen the hangar as a safer, less intimate location.
No, dammit! They both wanted this. Tanner had made his desire very clear at the adobe mission. And heaven help her, she wanted him too—only him—so very much.
Tanner tucked his hands into his back pockets. "Where do you want to start?"
God, she didn't know. So much for being in control of her actions. It had been so long since she'd done this. Not since her divorce, and only once before she'd met Andrew.
Kathleen shoved thoughts of her ex firmly away. He had no place in her life, in her decisions, or in this moment. "Let's sit up front in the cockpit, talk through the case and what we've come up with so far."
"You're calling the shots tonight."
Yes, sir, she was. Kathleen charged through the belly of the plane into the narrow stairwell leading up to the cockpit. Climbing the ladder, she was too aware of the view she presented Tanner. If she was this nervous about him just looking at her, the night wasn't going to play out well at all.
Kathleen scurried up the ladder and plopped into the right-hand seat. Dipping his head, Tanner tucked his shoulders sideways as he cleared the bulkhead, but didn't sit. "That's the copilot's seat. You're in my place."
"Hmmm, so I am." She pointed to the aircraft commander's seat on the left. "That one will be yours in a few weeks. Might as well break it in."
Would he think of her, of this night, when he climbed into that seat for real? The thought brought a heady rush of power. He'd held such sway over her thoughts for so long. How odd to think she could do the same for him.
Settling into the bucket seat, he exhaled, long and slow. His hands skimmed over the control panel with reverence. His fingers wrapped around the stick, muscles in his arm flexing as he began his pseudo flight ritual she'd come to recognize.
"Do you know that you go through the motions of flying even when you're not in the plane? Like when we're in the car or sitting in a restaurant."
He shot her a smile even as his feet gravitated to the rudders. "It's called chair flying. Sort of like air guitar."
"Really? I thought it was something you did unconsciously."
"Sometimes. Other times it's deliberate. Before every flight I sit in a chair, usually at my kitchen table. I spread the chart out in front of me and fly through every step, every radio call. Hands and feet. Stick and rudders. I go through the motions."
"What about lately, when you don't have a flight scheduled?"
"I relive old ones, think through them and analyze for ways I could have tightened the mission." Staring straight ahead, he extended both legs until his feet rested firmly on the rudders.
What did he see in his mind's eye? He continued to fly, almost as if in defiance of the forces that grounded him.
"Where are you flying now?"
Stopped midflight, he pulled his hand from the stick, palm up and studied it as if he'd even caught himself unaware. "Last summer. In Sentavo. The mission to airlift the war orphans out."
"That was one helluva save. Word has it the whole crew's been put in for Distinguished Flying Crosses."
"We were lucky." He dismissed the praise with a typical Tanner shrug. "About halfway through assessing the children and in-processing them, things went to crap outside the hangar. Incoming fire. We had to scramble out. I started the engines while the rest of the crew and rescue team loaded the kids. Mortar rounds tore up the runway. We had to take off on an adjacent field."
"Incredible." And he was—the man even more than the flight.
"Intense. But we airlifted seventy-two children out of Sentavo that day."
As much as she willed thoughts of Andrew away, Kathleen couldn't help but notice the difference in the two men's flyer stories. All aviators had their tales to tell. Some, like An-drew, thrilled listeners with his aerial daring. Why hadn't she realized that others, like Tanner, found their thrill in what the mission accomplished?
Seventy-two orphans saved.
Tanner's hands continued their familiar path along the instruments, each movement executed with a reverent confidence. Like a skilled lover's caress.
His thumb circled over the trim tab button. "Only two weeks on the ground, and I already miss this so damned much."
Kathleen watched that thumb's deliberate circling, her br**sts beading in response. She squirmed in her seat.
She forced herself to breathe, swallow, breathe again until she could speak. "Your back's going to be fine as long as you take care of yourself. Become best friends with your chiropractor. Listen to your body." She told herself as much as him. "It's no crime to be human, with a mortal body that has needs no matter how much we wish otherwise."
Kathleen hitched a knee up on the leather seat so she could turn toward him, lean closer, make him understand.
"I know you think I don't grasp how important being back on flying status is to you." She searched for the words to accomplish what all her medical training hadn't. "Maybe I understand limitations better than you can imagine. No matter what I do, I will always be thirteen inches shorter than you are. Biology dictates I won't have your upper-body strength. I can pit myself against you doing sit-ups until the end of time and it won't change basic genetics. I have done my damnedest to make the most of what I was born with. Do the best you can with what life dealt you. Control what you can. After that, you've got to let it go."
The muscles in Tanner's jaw worked, although he stayed silent, and Kathleen wondered if she'd just shot herself in the foot. Great way to get him fired up for sex, criticize the guy. Her seduction skills were rustier than she'd thought. Apparently, they were oxidized shut.
Finesse had never been her strong suit. Which left her only one option. A direct approach.
"Hey, hotshot?"
His flying hands stopped as he glanced over at her. "Yeah, Athena?"
"You can jump me anytime now."
Chapter 14
You can jump me anytime now. Kathleen's words winged across the cockpit, dive-bombing the last of Tanner's crumbling defenses.
"Run that by me one more time?"
"My head's fine. We're not stuck in a survival situation." She stuffed her hand in her purse, whipped it back out and slapped it down the dash. "And we have birth control."
Her fingers slid away to reveal two square, plastic packets.
His hands fell from the flight controls. The view outside the window not only blurred, he could swear the windows were already fogging.
Those little packets told him she'd planned ahead, no impulsive act, rather a fully thought-out decision. She'd suggested the hangar with just this in mind.
Kathleen O'Connell wanted to have sex with him. In an airplane. Even dreams didn't play out this well. There had to be a catch. But bump on his nose be damned, he would worry about impulsive mistakes and catches later.
Tanner hooked his hands behind his head and said, "Logistically speaking, it would be more comfortable for both of us if you came over here and jumped me, instead." Her eyes widened, and she went so still he wondered if he'd heard her wrong. Disappointment grounded him faster than antiaircraft fire. A gut-clenching realization followed that having her shouldn't be this important to him. But it was.
Then she smiled. "Sounds like a plan to me."
Shooting out of her seat, she reached to cup his face in her hands. Her mouth met his as she fell into his lap, her legs draped to one side.
This was better than having the best Christmas present of his entire childhood handed to him. This was Kathleen, warm, willing and definitely eager, judging by the way she insinuated herself over his thighs. Tanner wasn't sure he could survive much more of Kathleen's determined assault on his senses.