“It wasn’t that dangerous.”
“I watched you pull out of that spin with only seconds to spare.” She hadn’t meant to say it, hadn’t meant to sound so worried.
“You watched.”
Oh, yeah, she’d watched. Watched and bitten her nails down to the quick with anxiety she hadn’t wanted to feel. “You fly with wild, reckless abandon.”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t a compliment!”
“I’m careful, and highly skilled.”
He was talented, she’d give him that. “I just don’t know why you have to do it like that, as if each second was going to be your last.”
“Katie, I live like that.”
She backed up until she came up against a shelving unit, which she gripped at her sides with fisted hands. “Exactly. You live like that. Which is the reason…which is why-” Horrified, she broke off.
“Why what? Why you can’t admit it was me you kissed?”
How to explain that she had a precise definition of what she wanted in a man and he was the exact opposite? She wanted the three S’s. Security, safety, stability. She didn’t want to be afraid for his life on a daily basis. She didn’t want someone who made her feel as if she were on a perpetual roller coaster.
She hated roller coasters!
As if he could read her mind, his good humor vanished, replaced by an intensity she didn’t know how to handle, and he once again closed the distance between them. Now she could feel the warmth of his breath on her temple as he quietly studied her. “Was it that bad? The kiss?”
She studied her shoes. The ceiling. The wall. Anything other than his serious and oh-so-gorgeous face.
But he didn’t give up.
“Did I kiss like a Saint Bernard?” he asked. “Did I have breath like a whale? What?”
She couldn’t help it, she laughed. “I’m not admitting anything, mind you, but no, not bad breath. Not too much slobber. It was…”
“Yes?”
“A twenty on a scale of one to ten,” she admitted.
He smiled, not a cocky one, but it still made her roll her eyes and look away. Until he caught her chin in his fingers and turned her back to him.
“Why don’t you like me?” he asked softly, and when she opened her mouth to deny this, he gently slid those fingers against her lips.
At his touch, a bewildering tightness invaded her insides. Her eyes widened on his. She saw his jaw tighten, felt his fingers tense, and wondered if he felt the same confusion.
“Truth,” he whispered. “For months and months now you’ve done your damnedest to avoid me. Changing directions in the hallway, sitting far away in staff meetings, dealing with my pilots when you need something, instead of dealing with me. Why, Katie? At least tell me why.”
One last stroke with his fingers and then he lifted them away from her lips, but he didn’t move, so that when she tipped her head up to look at him, her mouth was only inches from his. It shocked her to realize her body was straining closer to him, and once again she flattened herself against the shelving unit. “It’s not that I don’t like you. But we have nothing in common.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, other than us being day and night? Oil and vinegar-”
“Concrete reasons. No cheating with silly metaphors.”
“Okay, well…I’m plain. And you’re-” Outrageously sexy. “Not plain,” she finished lamely.
“Neither are you.”
“Then you’re too tall.”
He laughed. “Chicken excuse, but I’ll let you have it. What else?”
“I like everything planned out.”
“And I don’t?”
“You’d jump off a cliff on a whim.”
“If I had a good rope, maybe.”
“See? Polar opposites. That’s us.”
“That’s not completely true.” His voice was low, husky, his direct gaze like a caress. “We both love airplanes.”
“How-” How could he have known about her secret passion and love of planes? That she hoarded and devoured every book she could find, every picture, every magazine. That sometimes, late at night, she wandered through the hangars and just looked at the planes that so fascinated and terrified her at the same time?
“I’ve seen you.” He lifted a finger and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. The touch electrified her. “I’ve seen the look of longing and passion on your face as you’ve touched a sleek Lear, seen your yearning. Why don’t you fly, Katie? What keeps you grounded?”
“My father,” she confided before she could stop herself, and this time it was her who covered his mouth. “Don’t. Don’t ask, I don’t want to talk about it.”
His hand came up and circled her wrist. When he spoke, his lips tickled her palm. “We should.”
“No. Look, it’s nothing personal.”
“I think it is.”
“I just…” Lord, it was hard to think. She had her hand on his mouth, his very sexy mouth, and she couldn’t tear her gaze from it, even when it curved with satisfaction. “I’m not much of a risk taker.”
His eyes sparkled at that. “You’re here alone in the warehouse with me, aren’t you? Seems pretty risky to me. Tell me, what drew you to Santa that night? What made you want to kiss him?”
“I’m not going to tell you that!”
“Please?”
“This is silly. It doesn’t matter to you.”
“Tell me.”
“It was Matt.”
“Matt.”
“Yes. He’s dependable. Reliable. He’s-”
“Mr. Perfect.” He shook his head even as a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I’ve heard the women talk about him.”
“Then you already knew what attracted me.”
“Dependability? Reliability?” He made a face. “Sounds like a car. A new one, when we all know it’s the used models, the coveted and experienced and loved ones, that have all the nerve and personality.”
“Bryan-”
His eyes flashed now, still with good humor, but with something more as well. “I was Santa, Katie. And I’m going to prove it to you.”
“No!” Not stopping to think about her sudden, irrational fear, Katie ducked from between the shelving unit and his body, not stopping to look at him until she had the door handle firmly in her hand and opened.
Bryan lifted his hands. “I wasn’t going to prove it that way.”
“Oh.” She felt dense. “I just thought-”
“I know what you thought. That I was going to kiss you again. But if I wasn’t Santa that night, if I wasn’t the one to give you that kiss-which must have been a helluva doozy, by the way, to have made such an impression-you have nothing to worry about, right?”
“Um…yeah. Right.”
He laughed softly then, a terrifyingly sexy sound that made the butterflies go to town on Katie’s stomach again.
“How about I prove to you that it was me, but in another way?” he suggested.
Warily she eyed him. “How?”
“And when I do-” he completely ignored her question “-you’re going to admit you were wrong. Out loud this time. To me.”
She still had one foot out the door. She was safe. Yeah, safe as a name caller in a glass house. “I have no problem admitting my mistakes,” she said so stiffly he laughed again. “But I’m not wrong here.”
“Uh-huh. We’ll see. Dependability. Reliability? Those are the things you need?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
He looked slightly disgusted, but resigned. “Damn. I was afraid you were going to say that.”
A FEW DAYS LATER, Bryan was in the middle of a final check, trying to get out of Wells for the day, when he heard a strange noise coming from the opened cockpit of his plane.
He set down his clipboard and walked around the Cessna, his mind a million miles away.