She could hardly think. It took every bit of energy to open her eyes on his.
“I’ve found what I was missing,” he whispered.
“Me?”
“You.” He arched up, filled her even more, and she had the terrifying feeling that maybe she’d found what she had been missing, too.
THE DAY AFTER Christmas at any airport tended to be a wild one. It was no different at Wells Aviation. Planes coming and going, office staff trying to deal with end-of-year stuff, people milling everywhere, mechanics running like crazy, half-dazed in their after-Christmas glow, sluggish from overeating and overdrinking and not enough sleep.
Bryan felt half-dazed, too, but it had little to do with overeating and everything to do with not enough sleeping.
He’d been with Katie instead.
Thinking about it now had a foolish and idiotic grin on his face. Actually, the grin had been there for a full day now, and he couldn’t swipe it away.
Nothing could.
Had he actually…fallen in love?
Okay, that took away his grin. Easily.
It couldn’t be true. Yes, he cared about her, greatly, but…love?
God, no. How wrong that would be.
But what if she thought herself in love with him?
No. That would be impossible, too. She couldn’t love him. He was unsuitable for that kind of relationship. He didn’t know how to do love, and not for anything would he hurt her.
But what if she didn’t realize that?
He’d just tell her so. Only she wasn’t in her office. She wasn’t in the lobby, or in anyone else’s office, or on the tarmac.
Damn. By now, he had a plane full of passengers, ready for his chartered flight to San Diego.
“Check the mechanic’s hangar,” Holly suggested, when she came upon him standing forlornly in the lobby.
“How do you know who I’m looking for?”
“Oh, please,” she said with heartfelt disgust. “It’s all over your face.”
He left for the maintenance hangar at a fast clip.
Holly followed.
“Don’t you have work?” he asked, annoyed.
“Uh-huh.”
After another fifty yards he tried again. “It’s pretty chilly out here.”
“I’m fine.”
Exasperated, he turned to her. “Look, I don’t know why you interfered in the first place, but I really think I can take over my life from here.”
“Well, being a man, you would think so.” Holly smiled serenely. “And as much as I’d like to take credit for that stupid grin you’ve been wearing on your face all day, I should tell you, I did it for purely selfish reasons.”
“So why don’t you go away for selfish reasons?”
“What? And miss the fun?”
“How do you know I’m heading for fun?”
“I didn’t say you, big guy, I said me. I’m heading for fun. And you’re it.”
Bryan sighed.
The hangar was opened to the chilly day on both sides. Wind whipped noisily through. No less than four planes were tied down, being worked on by their team of mechanics. Power tools whizzed and whirled, accompanied by the steady drumming beat of a hammer, a compressor and the buzz of men shouting to be heard over all the ruckus.
He saw Katie immediately, and moved toward her. She couldn’t have heard him approaching with all the din, and since she was turned away from him, she couldn’t have seen him enter, either.
And yet, as if she felt him, she looked up. Across noise and clutter their gazes met, and a smile curved her lips.
Bryan went all warm and fuzzy.
Wait a minute! Warm and fuzzy? What was wrong with this picture?
Everything!
Dammit, he was here to tell her not to look at him like that. That if she thought she was in love with him she should just think again. That she should have stuck with Mr. Perfect…
No. God, no. He didn’t want that, either.
Confusion was totally unwelcome, and he made the mistake of looking at her again.
She held a clipboard. There was a pencil in her teeth and another behind her ear. She wore a modest navy-blue business suit that had her looking mightily professional, and so adorable his fingers itched to grab her.
His heart squeezed and his confusion tripled, and of their own accord, his feet took him to her.
Gently he tugged on a lock of her carefully restrained hair. “So put together.” He had to shout to be heard over the roar around them.
Katie blushed, clearly remembering how only the day before she’d been sporting a radically different look. Hair wild, completely naked, she’d straddled his equally naked body as she’d driven them both to ecstasy.
With not a blush in sight.
“I need to talk to you,” he shouted, frustrated at the noise. “Can we…” He gestured outside, but she shook her head.
“I’m stuck here for a while,” she yelled in his ear. “Invoicing.”
And he had a plane full of people waiting on him. “But I-”
Another compressor joined the first. More hammering. And a new whine of a power tool upped the volume to beyond loud.
“Yes?” She smiled at him, an angelic, sexy smile in complete contrast with their annoying, overwhelming surroundings.
Tell her. “I…” Tell her now, that her first instincts were right, he wasn’t Mr. Perfect, and never would be. He wasn’t a man she could bank on, didn’t want to be a man she could bank on.
“Bryan?” she yelled.
Oh, that sweet smile. “I…”
“You…” she shouted encouragingly.
“Katie…I…” Damn. “I love you,” he yelled at the top of his lungs, just as by a twist of fate, maybe his own Christmas curse, the compressors and all the banging abruptly stopped.
So did his heart as those three huge terrifying words rang out in the silent, stunned, amused, filled hangar.
Applause rang out. So did whistles and catcalls.
“Woo-hoo!”
“You go, boy!”
“Bryan and Katie sitting in a tree,” sang a group of mechanics. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”
Bryan stood there, rooted by shock.
He dared a peek at Katie, prepared to face her laughter, as well. But she wasn’t laughing, she was staring at him, agog, as if she’d swallowed a toad.
Given the blockage in his own windpipe, he knew the feeling.
“You…what?” she whispered.
Oh, sure, now they could whisper. “Nothing,” he said quickly. “I didn’t say anything.”
She didn’t believe him, of course. And then she walked away, and with each step she took, his poor overwrought heart constricted.
12
WHEN KATIE TURNED on her heel and walked across the hangar toward the only chair she could see, she wasn’t exactly thinking. She couldn’t. The ringing in her ears and the pounding of her pulse took over.
Driven by a need to sit before she fell, she sank to the seat and closed her eyes.
“Katie.”
He had the most wonderful voice, it should be illegal to have a voice like that. He also had the most wonderful scent, a warm, sexy male sort of scent.
That should be illegal, too.
“Hey! Are there going to be wedding bells?” one of the men called out. “Because I think we could do the wedding right here, right in the hangar.”
“Yeah! We could part the planes to make an aisle,” someone else called out.
“And we could throw O-rings instead of rice!” came yet another brilliant suggestion.
“Touching,” Holly said. “Every girl’s dream, right Katie?”
Bryan groaned, and Katie opened her eyes. Yep, his expression matched the misery in his voice.