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He wondered how long she was going to be staying in Firelight Ridge. He couldn’t imagine why she was going there. What did a stylish, smart woman from New York—he did his research too, or at least he’d glanced at her check-in form—want with a remote outpost like Firelight Ridge?
She was saying something else that he couldn’t quite catch. He fiddled with the comms switch and jumped as her voice came across the headphones loud and clear. And confusing. “…snaggletooth?”
He must have misheard that. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, it was just a joke. I thought you might have a snaggletooth because of the name of your company. Fangtooth.”
He snorted. He’d been right about her being entertaining. “My teeth are fine. I floss a lot.”
“Really? I do too.” She seemed delighted to find they had something in common. “Obsessively.”
“Another obsession.” He checked the weather radar one more time and decided they could just squeak this flight in. He’d already removed the chocks, and now he engaged the propulsion system and headed for the runway.
As they rolled across the tarmac, Molly gripped the grab bar next to the passenger window and went pale. Her sudden lack of color made her hair and eyes—a Merlot red and a warm brown, respectively—stand out even more.
“I’m not obsessed with weight, but I am obsessed with dental hygiene. Also, I should warn you that flying makes me nervous. I never set foot on a plane until the age of twenty-nine, if you can believe it. I’m thirty-four now, and I’m still not used to it.”
He had to give her props—so to speak—for braving a four-seater when she didn’t like flying. This was flying in its purest form, when you were acutely conscious that there was only a thin layer of metal shielding you from the outside wild. “You must have urgent business in Firelight Ridge.”
“I do. Or, I might. I hope I do. I won’t know until I get there.”
He shrugged at her incoherent explanation, since it wasn’t really his business, after all.
The tower controller gave him the go-ahead for the next takeoff. He steered the plane toward the head of the single runway.
“This is happening, isn’t it?” Molly’s knuckles were so white he feared she’d never get the blood back into them. “We’re going up in the air?”
“Maybe you should close your eyes.”
“No, that’ll make it worse. I need to see what’s happening. I don’t like being in the dark. I like knowing exactly what’s going on.”
“Okay. No problem. Right now, our goal is to attain enough speed so that the air pressure above the wings is less than the pressure under the wings. The wings are curved in order to produce that effect. Once the pressure differential is sufficient, we’ll lift into the air.”
“You’re saying we’re going to get sucked into the air?”
“You could put it that way.”
“Oh God.”A quick glance told him she did close her eyes, but only briefly, then jerked them open again. “Then let’s get it over with,” she said grimly.
She definitely had guts. He’d give her that.
He focused on getting the Cessna airborne for the next few minutes. The best thing he could do for her, after all, was making sure they got to Firelight Ridge in one piece.
After a smooth takeoff, he leveled off the plane at ten thousand feet. A sideways glance at Molly told him she was sitting rigidly in her seat, her face still leached of color. He reached behind the pilot’s seat and flicked open a cubby where the airsickness bags lived.
“They’re there if you need them,” he told her. He really hoped it didn’t come to that; he’d just cleaned the cockpit.
She nodded tightly.
He decided it wouldn’t kill him to try distracting her with some conversation. Of course he had to be careful. He had a reputation to maintain in Firelight Ridge. He’d worked hard to create the image of an uncaring ass, so much so that sometimes he thought he’d become that. Remember your inner jerk.
“Is this your first time in Alaska?”
She unclenched her jaw enough to answer in a squeak that he interpreted as “yes.”
“What brings you here? The scenery? The fishing? The skiing? The bears?”
She shot him a scornful look. Better than panicked, he figured. “Are you trying to distract me?
