He shook his head. “Of all the ways I can think of to describe seventeen-year-old me, ‘intimidating’ is the last thing that comes to mind.”
Jannie smiled. “You were taller than everyone and had a monster brain. You ran intellectual circles around all of them, including some teachers, if I recall correctly. That’s quite a combination for students who struggled with basic algebra.”
“Well …”
She didn’t miss the self-satisfied little smile he tried to hide behind a sip of Pellegrino, and for a moment, she glimpsed the shy, quiet teen he’d been.
“They felt like they were trudging along the ground barefoot while you were in the stratosphere, zooming in a jet.”
He flashed those perfect white teeth. “Still am.”
His eyes shone with pride, and in them, she glimpsed the same excitement she always saw in the eyes of her dad and two brothers when anything aviation-related became the topic of discussion.
He has the flying bug.Once bitten, always obsessed. Jannie should know; she came from a family of generational pilots—speaking of which, Adam was always in need of pilots and could use him.
“Do you intend to stay with this company you work for?” she asked.
“The only thing that would get me to move would be something I’ve always wanted to do.”
“And that is?”
“Air ambulance.”
“Oh.” She swallowed back her disappointment. Adam’s airline was strictly passenger transport. “Medevac? You want to fly helicopters?”
“No.”
“My brother says if it doesn’t have wings, he won’t fly it.”
“Your brother is smart.”
“So, air ambulance.” She never would have guessed that one. Most pilots wanted to fly for major airlines.
“Yes. There’s a market for interstate transport. I plan to buy a plane and start a company.”
Wow. “You keep the surprises coming, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, I keep them comin’.” His mouth curved into a sexy half-smile.
His low tone and the way he looked at her with such hunger caused giant butterflies to crash as they burst into flight through her core.
An unbidden vision appeared, of him at the controls in a cockpit, his long fingers maneuvering the yoke. She looked down at his hands. He was rhythmically tapping his middle finger again. And then, for some reason, she imagined that long middle finger pushing inside her.
Jannie shuddered. She wrenched her gaze from his hands, only to view his muscled forearms tensing.
Damn.
If she thought he wouldn’t notice, she was mistaken. She looked at him to see a fiery spark ignite in his gaze, so primal that she felt a pulsebetween her thighs.
“Word has it you fly too,” he said.
She did have a private pilot license but never used it. She kept it current because of family expectations. “Who told you that?”
“I may have heard it through the grapevine.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Who were the grapes?”
He grinned. “They looked a lot like you.”
