Explosive Alliance (10 page)

Although it lends credence to the argument for a younger-man and older-woman relationship."

"Basic biology, my butt." She put her mug on her knee. "Are you flirting with me?"

"Yes, ma'am, I sure am. Just good old-fashioned fun that doesn't have to lead to a damn thing."

"Do you talk about sexual peaks with all your friends?"

"Now couldn't you just see my old loadmaster pal's face if I did?"

A snort splattered coffee against the topper on her mug. "I'm going to choke to death if you keep this up."

"I don't think so." He adjusted the altimeter setting. "You have the most incredible laugh, almost like a song, but it's a little hoarse, as if you haven't used it enough lately."

His words stole the laugh right out of her. Hadn't she thought the very same thing about her daughter's lack of smiles and laughter just a couple of days ago? Could Kirstie's sad little eyes be as much her mother's fault as her father's? Had she depressed her daughter with her own morose mood?

"Ah, hell, Paige. What'd I do now?"

"Nothing—" she forced a smile "—nothing at all. I'm just not a morning person."

She shrugged and worked on finishing her java as if it were a monumental task requiring all her attention.

She needed to recoup after this new insight. Thank God, he got the message and stayed quiet for the whopping three minutes more it took to reach Chuck Anderson's family farm.

What was she thinking by bringing it up, anyway? Flirting was all well and good, but sheesh, she needed to keep herself grounded in reality, not pickup fantasies. She was a single mom in jeans and a T-shirt, her only cologne a hefty slathering of Avon's Skin So Soft to keep the mosquitoes away.

He decreased the throttle and lowered the flaps. The ground grew closer, the sprawling spread enlarging by the second, the landing steps familiar to her after so many flights with Seth. Bo pointed the craft toward the dirt strip runway, notched the flaps down again. Leveling the wings, he flared, raising the nose, all accomplished so smoothly she kept watching him—until she startled in surprise when the gear touched down without so much as a jolt.

His feet tipped the tops of the rudder pedals where the brakes were located, then flexed back down to guide the nose wheel as they taxied to the end of the grass strip. He pulled the throttle all the way out and turned the key. The engine shuddered off.

Bo whistled low through his teeth as he unstrapped. "The guy's got quite a spread here. I wonder how many hands it takes to help run this place? If those rows of bunkhouses are any indication, he's got quite a payroll."

Twisting back for her bag, she glanced over her shoulder. "What makes you think a guy owns it?"

"Get your PC knickers unknotted. You told me the guy's name earlier when we loaded up."

"Oh."

"Prickly Paige is in need of a smile again." He waggled his brows.

"Don't say another word." She held up her hand, totally unable to stop the smile.

He tapped the upward tilt of her lips. "I don't need to now."

The heat of his touch lingered far longer than her smile. Vaulting out of the door to the dusty ground, she clutched her black leather bag and started toward the waiting Suburban. She didn't want to depend on any man for her happiness ever again, even for so much as a few short weeks.

Chuck Anderson waited by the hangar with his idling vehicle—a member of the big blond lug club like her brother and Seth. "Thank heavens you're here. Even my stable head is having trouble keeping old Buck still."

"We'll have him patched up soon," she assured, careful to keep her distance from Chuck.

He'd asked her out last Valentine's Day, even included Kirstie in the invitation to make it seem less threatening, less like a date, even though the spark of interest in his eyes told them both it was. She'd said no, just as she'd done when he'd asked during their college days. She'd chosen Kurt over him because Chuck looked like a player.

What a joke in retrospect.

Objectively speaking, he was an attractive guy. Exactly the sort she should be with, given her love of animals and that Kirstie would have a wholesome environment. There just wasn't a spark.

Much less dry lightning.

Damn it, she'd gone for romance the first time and been so very wrong. She needed to be Practical Paige, even if that meant she was prickly, too.

She glanced at Bo threading ropes through the metal eyelets on the wings and tail, completing the tie-down. She kept backing—and just about walked slam into the side of the Suburban. Ah, for Pete's sake. She grabbed for the truck handle.

Her eyes met Chuck's as he slid behind the wheel. He looked from her to Bo and at her again, regret flicking through his hazel eyes before they blanked.

Was her attraction to Bo that obvious, even when she was at her prickly best? What a wake-up call. She refused to be the kind of woman who ran around with her tongue hanging out over some man.

Maybe she needed to get to know more about Bo beyond just the charmer flyboy facade. Then this obnoxious obsession with smelling his leather jacket would go away.

Yanking the seat belt down and around her, Paige set her eyes forward on the overlarge red barn in the distance by the pastures and bunkhouses. She definitely needed to learn more about Bo Rokowsky, discover the man's inner pig—and please, God, let him have one.

She didn't have time for teenage fantasies or even single-woman romances. She had a daughter to raise, a life to rebuild and an ailing horse to patch.

Plopping onto the swing, Kirstie scuffed her red tennis shoe through the sand and wondered if she could get away with telling the school nurse she was sick. Again.

Then maybe she could go home. Uncle Seth would have to come get her since her mama was off with
him.
Bo. Yuck. But Uncle Seth could drive the car instead of the truck—and he would call Mom to come home 'cause he didn't do puke stuff too good.

Might work.

Except the school nurse was getting kinda smart about how much Kirstie showed up. Most of the time now she just got a paper cup of water and a pass back to class.

A pack of shouting kids playing tag ran past. Kirstie tugged the chains and jerked the swing into motion.

It wasn't fair. Her mom got to ride around in the plane all day while she was stuck at school.

She pumped her legs harder and harder, higher and higher until she could just about see over the roof of the school. She was the one who liked airplanes, not her mom. Her mom didn't even really enjoy flying.

Maybe she would hurl on Bo's boots, too, and then he wouldn't want to be their pilot anymore.

Except she really didn't want her mama to feel sick. She just wanted Bo to go away and her daddy to come back.

A hand settled against her back and shoved her higher. Kirstie almost jolted off on her face into the dirt.

Holding tighter to the chains, she looked back over her shoulder.

"Hello, Kirstie Adella." It was the man with the bushy eyebrows from the air show again.

"What are you doing here?" She stopped pumping her legs.

"Just helping out at school, which means I can say hi to you again." He had one of those visitor passes clipped on that people picked up at the office.

Her swish took her closer and she double-checked. Yep, it was shaped like an apple and it said Visitor.

She got a little less scared and started swinging again. It must be okay for him to be around. The man with bushy brows and a visitor pass kept pushing her.

Like her daddy used to do. "What did you and my daddy do around here when you was kids?"

"Well, we went to school together, although we liked the monkey bars more than the swings. And we always went to the county fair and ate lots of candy apples."

"My daddy did like candy apples, lots. Caramel ones, too."

"We would ride the roller coaster over and over again."

"I like roller coasters." And so did her dad, even if she didn't know that before. All this meant he'd been a regular kid. Her father wasn't a big bad monster who deserved to get shots like all the kids at school said. He couldn't be.

'Cause if he was, what did that make her?

Kirstie swallowed hard. If she started crying, the teacher might make her go inside and then she couldn't talk to the guy with bushy eyebrows anymore. She blinked back her tears and kept her face forward so she could pretend her dad was pushing her.

"What's your mother doing today?"

She wanted to talk about her father, not her mother. "Working."

"At the house?"

"Nuh-uh. She's flyin' today."

"So your Uncle Vic's at the house?"

Okay, she could kinda pretend these were questions her dad would ask. "Nope. He's gotta fix a cow or bull or something somewhere else. Uncle Seth's gonna take care of me today."

"You don't seem happy about that."

"He's no fun since he can't play ball or nothing. He just sits in front of the TV with his foot up while he makes me do my homework." Her stomach started hurting again. It wasn't very nice to bad-mouth Uncle Seth. "But he says if I get all my homework done, we'll drive to McDonald's for supper."

"He can drive with his busted foot?"

"Yep. As long as he takes the car and not the truck 'cause the car doesn't have a—" She moved her right hand where that stick thing was in the truck, then grabbed hold of the chain again real quick.

"I get what you mean."

"Yeah."

Push. Swoosh. Push. Swoosh. "You'd better do all your homework so you can go."

"I don't like math much." Even her Uncle Seth said fractions were too hard for first grade, but he almost made it fun the night they'd practiced halves and quarters with a pizza.

"But you like McDonald's."

"Yeah."

"Your daddy liked math," the man rumbled from behind her. "He would be proud if you finished up all your math homework so you could go to McDonald's with your uncle. He would probably be happy to know you're getting out of the house and having fun."

"I guess he would." Maybe fractions would work with a cheeseburger.

The pushing stopped and he stepped around in front of her. "I should go now."

"Do you hafta?" She dragged her feet through the sand to slow the swing.

He knelt in front of her, real nice like. "I'm afraid I do. I have to get the sound system working right in the auditorium for the school board meeting this evening."

"Guess that's important. We won't be there, though."

He stood. "Your mom and uncle aren't going to make it back in time?"

She shrugged, wondering if maybe she should try to play sick after all. "Probably not."

"Hmm. I guess there will be no one to keep all your animals company for supper." He backed away with a real nice nod and wink. "Enjoy your McDonald's."

"Seth took Kirstie to McDonald's," Paige announced, tucking her cell phone into her purse.

Bo tied down the plane after their return trip from treating the horse and wondered how one woman could pack so much musicality into so few words. Apparently his teasing had set her at ease after all. He hadn't realized how really pretty those North Dakota loops in her tones sounded until she'd rolled them out nonstop in the small confines of the Cessna, questioning him about favorite color, foods, movies.

Red.

Chili dogs.

Twelve O'clock High.
But yeah, he liked
Top Gun,
too, which seemed important to her for some reason.

This light-and-easy flirting thing was beginning to backfire on him, because he was starting to like her, which made him want her more. Too much.

He needed to finish up for the day, get back to his room and regroup before he did some dumb-ass thing like flatten her to the plane for a thorough kiss. No woman should smell this good after working with a horse, for God's sake. Still, he kept catching a whiff of her scent—aloe today instead of tropical sunscreen.

Bo bent and snagged the tie-down rope attached to the ground and reached up to loop it through the metal eyelet on top of the left wing strut. "McDonald's, huh? Lucky kid."

"He didn't expect us back so soon." She tapped her new glasses back in place, thin gold frames glinting the same color as her hair in the late-day sun. "So he took her out for a Happy Meal as a reward for finishing up her math homework."

"She'll enjoy that." He fashioned a slipknot and tightened. Wind stirred a fine mist of dirt at foot level.

"There was a message on my voice mail. One from my brother, too." She fidgeted with the strap to her vet bag, strands of blond hair sneaking free from her pony tail after the long day.

Why didn't she just go into the house and prop up her feet? She'd certainly put in a long enough day.

Another thing to like about Paige, along with her steely spine, was her obvious gift in treating animals.

She'd checked out the horse and wrapped his cracked ribs in short order, declaring the animal fit with no punctured organs.

He strode to the right wing and connected another tie-down. "Is your brother back?"

"Not yet." She scraped her hair from her face only to have the wind streak it forward again. "He's still working with the bull out at Tom Walking Eagle's."

Bo's eyes shot straight over to the two-story house—a sprawling place with empty rooms and beds begging to be occupied. No problem. He would just leave. Their flight agreement only covered day calls.

Another vet was picking up nighttime emergencies and one of the weekends. Even if Vic didn't mind him being around Paige, apparently he didn't plan to risk any overnighters.

Smart man.

He had no business starting anything with her. He'd told her that friends could flirt without it going anywhere, and he'd meant it. Yeah, she turned him on, but there were plenty of women he'd been attracted to and never pursued.

Except, he couldn't remember being this tempted.

So go for it, his libido urged. His conscience, however, told him to leave this wounded woman the hell alone. Let her rebuild her life with some steady guy like Anderson rather than settle for sex with a scarred rebel who wasn't even sure what he wanted to do with his life anymore.