Daisy happened to glance up and catch her eyes. Was it Kylie’s imagination that her mother flushed guiltily? No, it was not. And it wasn’t the reporters that made her mother do so, her mother loved reporters.
Which left Wade McKinnon.
They were plotting something. The thought was confirmed when Daisy broke eye contact first.
The tall, sexy man who kissed like heaven didn’t so much as glance in Kylie’s direction, but he was still smiling. Conspiratorially.
Oh, yes, they were most definitely up to something.
“Ms. Birmingham? About your mother? Can you tell us about your relationship? Does she require your help to run this airport?”
Ha! “No comment,” she said. “And no pictures,” she told them when one lifted a camera. Looking at her mother, she stalked into the lobby. She strutted right up to them in midlaugh and pointed at the both of them. “Stop it.”
Wade, looking vexingly scrumptious in his pilot’s uniform, just cocked a brow.
“Stop what, dear?” Daisy asked. “Did you sleep well? Because you have black circles beneath your-”
“I’m a big girl, just so you both know. I’ll make my own plans when and where it suits me.”
“Well, of course you will,” Daisy clucked. “How about breakfast? I have an extra bagel-”
Kylie crossed her arms. “I’d like to know what you two were talking about.”
Wade, apparently amused, didn’t comment.
Daisy rolled her eyes and pushed a mug of something hot towards her. “Herbal tea. It’ll help you relax. You could use a gallon.”
“I don’t need to relax-”
“We weren’t talking about you,” Daisy said, lifting the mug to Kylie’s lips.
She drank, but would eat her own tongue before admitting the stuff actually tasted good. Then her mother’s words sank in.
“That’s right,” Wade said when her cheeks went hot. “We weren’t talking about you. Contrary to popular belief, there are other things to talk about.”
“You…weren’t trying to make him go out with me?” Kylie asked her mother.
Daisy laughed. “Oh, right. As if anyone could make this man do something he doesn’t want to do.”
Wade smiled sweetly-sweetly!-when both women looked at him.
Right. No one made Wade do anything. She needed to remember that. He might want to kiss her stupid. He might want to buy her airport. But he didn’t want to go out with her, because really, how ridiculous would that be?
“We were discussing quarterly taxes,” Wade said, still sounding amused. “They’re due tomorrow.”
Ah, hell.
Her stomach sank. “I need to get Lou on the forms,” she said to herself, her mind racing. Did her grandmother even have the forms? Had she gotten all the financial stuff together to fill them out? Had she-
“Relax,” Wade said in her ear. He’d pushed away from the wall and now stood so close she could see the yellow specks dancing in his eyes. She could smell the soap he’d used that morning. She could feel his warm breath on her cheek.
And was vividly, vibrantly, unhappily aware that her body wanted to curl into his, that he looked good enough to gobble up in one bite.
“Lou can handle it,” he said. “Don’t get all worked up so early in the day, it’s not healthy.”
What wasn’t healthy was her body’s response to him.
“Your grandma can handle it,” Daisy confirmed, and pushed the tea on her daughter again. “She always talked about going back to college to finish up her accounting degree.”
Grandma loose on a college campus? Terrifying.
“Now if you’ll excuse me,” Daisy said. “I have a massage appointment this morning.”
“Mom-”
“Just kidding.” Daisy laughed. So did Wade. “But I do have work, so if you kids’ll stop standing around my desk and making me look bad for the boss…”
“No problem.” Wade took Kylie’s arm before she could escape, before she could finish obsessing over the quarterlies. Dad, how did you do it all?
Wade led her outside and toward the maintenance hangar. Halfway there they passed by a beauty of a Learjet. Standing in front of it was one of their more wealthy customers, Jimbo Stanton. Standing in front of Jimbo Stanton was Lou, flirting with the sixty-something-year-old customer.
“Lou!” Kylie refrained from wrapping her fingers around her grandma’s neck, and instead gestured her over. “Can I see you for a moment?”
“Sure.” Lou walked saucily toward them, making sure Jimbo watched her walk away.
He did, with his tongue practically on the ground.
“What are you doing?” Kylie growled when she got closer.
“What does it look like?” Lou patted her hairdo. “I’m trying to get a date. You remember what a date is, don’t you, Kylie?”
Wade laughed and Kylie groaned. “Don’t you have work to do?” she asked. “Accounting work?”
“All caught up.”
“How about the quarterlies?”
“Well, darling, I would, but I just did them last night.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m quite sure.”
“And then there’s the checking account situation-”
“Balanced,” Lou said proudly.
“Are you positive?”
“Of course, I’m positive. I’ve done this before, you know. Now shoo, scat, vamoose, you’re cramping my style.” Without looking back, she sashayed toward Jimbo.
Kylie was overcome with impending doom. She was failing, miserably.
“Hey,” Wade said. “It can’t be that bad.”
“As long as I’m wearing rose-colored glasses.”
He took her hand and pulled her away. They walked alongside the tarmac for about a hundred feet before they walked down the alley between hangars two and three toward maintenance.
She was just numb enough to actually let him lead her.
“Pretty day,” he said.
It was, but it’d be prettier if their hopefully new client called. She glanced at the cell phone. She’d given him this number in case there was a problem with the phones again.
No missed call.
Wade moved closer, and before she realized it, she had the cool hangar wall at her back and the big, bad, sexy pilot at her front. “Your mother is right,” he said, running his hands up her sides. “Tension is spilling right out of you.”
“That’s because you’re standing in my space,” she retorted, both the words and her breath backing up in her lungs when he spun her around and put her hands on the wall. “What-”
The word turned into a moan when he pressed close, pressed his fingers into her shoulders, massaging right where she felt most of the tension, at the base of her neck. “Wade-”
“Do us both a favor and be quiet a moment.”
Oh, man, did he know what he was doing. Those fingers were magic, pure, unadulterated magic, as they dug into the knots in her shoulders, her biceps, her neck. She wore a sleeveless faux-silk blouse, and he wasn’t shy about slipping his hands beneath the material to work more of that magic.
Within two minutes her legs were Jell-O. Her hands slipped from the wall, and he tsked, putting them back up. “Hold still.”
Hold still. If she so much as arched her back, her bottom found a snug home at the vee of his trousers. She knew this because she did it. Then his hands danced all over her and she couldn’t breathe. Hold still? She couldn’t!
“If you’d only admit you liked this,” he whispered into her ear, causing a set of delicious shudders to race down her spine. “I could do it for you whenever you tense up. Which is all the time.”
She spun around, not realizing until that moment just how close they were. Her chest brushed his, so did her hips. His eyes darkened, and his hands slid from her shoulders to cup her face. “Kylie?” His thumb slid over her lower lip, making it tremble open. “Do you like it?”