Hot Point

Chapter 1-4

Vern somehow managed to lounge in the seat anyway.

She became intensely aware that she was in his normal seat. Her toes could barely reach the rudder pedals because they were set for his long legs. She’d need to raise the seat several inches for a clear view over the top of the T-shaped console. The base of the T started on the deck between their two seats. After curving up until it was above their knees, it then branched to either side at the height of a car’s dashboard. His hands would rest right on the controls that—

Denise jerked her hands into her lap milliseconds before she rested her hands over where his would normally be.

“Like we’re at a drive-in movie.” A hint of reflected light showed the joystick was moving. Vern must be nudging the cyclic around with gentle taps of his fingertips. The one rising between her legs brushed the inside of her knee.

She didn’t move, but she did shiver. Curiously, her nerves insisted it was a good shiver, one that warmed rather chilled her skin.

The two controls were linked together so that either pilot could fly the craft at any moment. It was as if he were somehow sitting on her side of the cockpit as well. If she reached out and touched the cyclic, she’d feel his small motions…which was way too personal.

“I’m not your girl.” She’d never been to a drive-in movie. She hadn’t been…wasn’t the sort of girl that boys took to the movies.

“Seem to have noticed you weren’t.” His tone had a definite duh quality to it. “How’s Jasper?”

“Okay,” she guessed. The relationship had fizzled and finally died a quiet death a month ago, but she hadn’t told anyone. She didn’t like failure in any form, including when it was mutual. Subject change. “I’m so sorry. I should never have certified this helo for flight without—”

“What did you find?” With a wave of his hand that she could barely see in the dim light coming through the windshield, he brushed her apology aside as if it hadn’t been her fault.

She reached into her work-vest pocket and offered him the six-inch piece of offending hose line. It was as big around as her thumb. She braced her eyes for the shock of a cabin light, but instead he held it out before him. He was holding it so that the camp lights across the runway would glance along the surface.

“That doesn’t look right.”

“Duh!” She felt pretty good about the casual sound. It came out correctly, not her normal too-awkward-to-live sound when she tried such things. “There’s a split blown right through the sidewall.”

“Not that, this.” He didn’t hand it back to her. He leaned over until their shoulders were almost brushing and she could smell the soap he’d used to shower. He held the hose out in front of her and twisted it back and forth slowly. She had to shift her position to get the distant camp lights to shine along the surface. A millimeter more and they’d be rubbing shoulders. It was so tempting to let herself take any comfort in—

“What’s that nick?” And how had she missed it and a pilot caught it?

“This bird used to be Army before we picked it up used and converted it, right?”

“Sure, though it was the Sikorsky factory that converted it for us.” She winced and clamped her mouth shut to stop herself. She was always correcting people to get things exactly correct, which she’d been told in no uncertain terms was one of her less charming habits.

Denise was torn between studying the hose and considering whether or not to lean against Vern and feel human contact for a moment. She didn’t miss Jasper.

Not at all.

Which was information she’d only processed at this moment—a feeling supported by the fact that she’d thought in the general terms of their relationship ending a month ago, and not counting the twenty-seven days that had actually passed. Or was it twenty-eight? While she might not miss him, she did long for the casual intimacy of being with someone. She’d liked the human contact while it lasted and missed it.

But this was Vern Taylor, the handsomest flyboy in MHA and one of her coworkers—an absolute recipe for disaster. Men like him didn’t notice women like her when they could have any cute girl passing through Hood River, Oregon, to windsurf the Columbia Gorge. What was she thinking? He always hooked up with the tall, loud, flashy ones who laughed brightly and easily. And probably gave the same way.

Personally, she’d never found s*x to be the least bit easy. Occasionally good, but it complicated all matters and everything connected with them.

Like easing right on the cyclic to tip the rotor swash plate, she pulled away from Vern enough to create a small distance between them. But she didn’t shift so far that she couldn’t still see the hose…or sense the warmth of his closeness on her cheek.

“This Black Hawk…” Denise had to swallow to clear the lonely taste her thoughts had left in her throat, as if the emotion was a bad flavor. “It served with the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles. Three tours, I think.”

Jasper had always been on her about how precise she was about everything. Four miles, not three miles to the nearest restaurant—rounded up from three-point-eight-five. Sixty-five degrees outside, not in the sixties.

It’s seven thirty-eight, when asked the time. She wasn’t being fussy; it was simply how she thought about things. She’d slowly been forced to append most of her conversations with I think or about or somewhere around until she stuttered like a mistuned radial engine.

Well, she was done with that.

“Three tours.” She repeated definitively, then added the beginning and ending dates of service because she knew the history of every one of her birds from the moment they flew off the assembly line—and to hell with any man who didn’t like it.

Except for Firehawk Oh-Two. That helicopter had been replaced last winter, but she’d never been able to uncover why. It was identical in every way, except for the frame number. And when she’d pushed, she’d not only been stonewalled. She’d been told flat out that questions were unwelcome and were a job-level didn’t need to know. Finally, when she still didn’t back down, her questions were deemed a security-level risk.

With no explanation, she didn’t trust the craft, even though every one of her own maintenance log records were there. Without telling anyone else why, she’d had her team help strip the bird down and put it back together, but it was as flawless as any aircraft she’d ever seen. Yet it still wasn’t the bird she’d sent to Australia last year to fight bushfires.

She wondered if Vern knew what had happened, but she’d guess not. He hadn’t traveled with the two Firehawks when they’d split off from the rest of the MHA team to fight a different bushfire.

Vern didn’t comment about her elaborate precision and total command of Firehawk Oh-Three’s service record. He was once more inspecting the hose in the distant camp lights. She no longer had any excuse to remain leaning so close, so she sat back in the pilot’s seat. But now she could feel his shape in the shapeless pilot’s seat. How pathetic was she?

“That’s a bullet crease.”

“It’s what?” She rapped his ribs hard with her elbow as she leaned back over to see.

“Easy there, Wrench. You could hurt a fella. See?” He held it out again.

“You’re right. It looks like the bullet cut through the first layer or two of the hose. How did you know?”

“Flying Coast Guard isn’t only about pulling i***t tourists out of riptides.”

Coast Guard? How had she not known that about him? If he’d been one of her helos, she would have.

Denise tried to see Vern more clearly. His dim silhouette looked the same. Mr. Casual and Easygoing being a former US Coast Guard helicopter pilot was hard to reconcile.

Though it did make a certain kind of sense. He’d been steady as a rock while his helo trailed smoke. The sideslip to check his smoke trail and then straightening out without ever breaking formation spoke of lots of practice with emergency situations.

Maybe there was more to Vern Taylor than merely being a charming flyboy with nothing but s*x on his mind.

Vern had to make a joke. Something—no matter how feeble—before Denise’s proximity totally overwhelmed his common sense and any shred of decency a man had to maintain around such a woman. This wasn’t a bar babe. This was Denise-frickin’-Conroy.

“Your precious helicopter had a rough childhood.” Yeah, there was a distraction that had possibilities.

He’d been hyper-consciously aware of her from the moment he’d touched her arm after spooking her. Which was not a good thing. First off, Jasper was an okay guy, mostly. Though Vern had never much liked him. But if he was Denise’s choice, he must be okay.

“You know”—he patted the helo’s main console as if soothing an unruly child—“street thug, gang wars, drive-by shootings. It’s a tough life being an Army helo, but, hey, someone has to do it.”

He let his mouth ramble as he breathed her in. Her scent, a crazy mix of woman and mechanic’s grease, of hot metal and warm female, was making his head spin worse than when the #2 PRI SERVO PRESS warning had blinked on.

“This hose…” She brushed a long, delicate finger across the bullet crease as if to confirm its existence.

He felt the motion through his fingertips where he still held the failed piece of hose. It felt as if he’d been electroshocked where, well, you weren’t supposed to feel for another man’s woman.

“It must have caught a nick. Not bad enough to fail, but enough to create a weak point. It was on the side away from what I could see with a visual inspection.” Denise had a soft voice, all out of keeping with the tough exterior she projected. There was a gentleness to it he’d never noticed before.

“Right.” Vern kicked his brain to keep it running because his own personal Auxiliary Power Unit was thinking thoughts that made him glad it was dark in the helo’s cockpit. “It was lurking until the time was right.”

“Until the time was right? For what?”

“Sure.” He swallowed hard and wished she’d lean back in her seat. He wished he was still in the predictable poker game he could see continuing under the camp lights. If he had stayed there instead of coming over to check on how she was doing, she wouldn’t be mere inches away making every nerve jangle on full alarm. “It, uh, was waiting for a chance to embarrass me on my second day solo.”

“You think this bit of hose was lying in wait for you before failing? You are going to take it personally? It’s a hose.”

“I take everything personally.”

By the shimmer of glistening hair shifting and catching the reflection of distant lights, he could see her tilt her head sideways to inspect him.

“Especially when it tries to kill me,” he added. Which is exactly what she was doing to him. He slipped the bit of hose into his pocket to give his hands something to do.