The copilot, Bronco, grinning like a kid with a secret all day.
Luck, his ass. He'd been set up, and he knew just who to hold responsible for slotting him into thirty hours straight with Lori Rutledge radiating her sweetness all over a plane full of orphans.
A year's worth of frustration, and even some unsuspected anger, upgraded from a simmer to a boil inside Gray with a ready target for once.
Not bothering to circle around to the front hatch steps, Gray lumbered straight up the load ramp, past the small crowd, through the belly of the plane. His flight boots thudded, heavy, echoing the power and invincibility soldiers all needed in combat.
Bronco better have his boots strapped on tight, because there would be hell to pay when Gray got to the cockpit.
Lori watched Gray stride past her like a man on a mission. Of course he was. And she couldn't do anything except stare at his retreating broad shoulders and great butt, all the while praying her knees wouldn't fold.
A few hits off the oxygen bottle dangling from her hand might not be a bad idea, either.
It was just his flight suit turning her into some adolescent drool machine. Who wouldn't look awesome in that woodsy-green, military flight suit? Okay, so Tag didn't send her pulse pumping double time with his baggy uniform. But she and Gray had history, some good, some … really bad.
His coal-black hair glistened in the dim light, tapered up the back in a military cut revealing every inch of that powerful neck.
Her lungs constricted. She eyed the oxygen bottle with longing.
When she'd gone to the military briefing for her team, she'd been prepared for the possibility of seeing Gray again. No problem. They were both adults, after all. The crew members had filed in, faces still familiar from her summer spent with Gray. Bronco, Lancelot, Tag, they hadn't forgotten her, either. Then the flight surgeon had joined them—Kathleen O'Connell.
Relief had squashed the momentary flash of disappointment.
Seeing Gray on the flight line a few minutes ago had blindsided her. Hands hooked on his hips, boot propped on the load ramp, he'd stood—all six feet tall, toned muscle and too handsome, with his best bad-boy grin leaving her vulnerable in a way she hadn't felt since their last fight had stripped her soul bare.
Something she never intended to let happen again.
Grayson and that cute butt could just keep walking. She had her world right where she wanted it with a great job that let her travel yet provided the stability of one place to call home. Forever.
This rescue mission would establish her career and set her life on the right path. The mission definitely promised new lives for seventy-two homeless children.
No way would she let Grayson Clark distract her for one moment of the next thirty hours.
He turned sideways to slip past a portable kitchen locked down on a pallet in the middle of the plane. He whipped off his sunglasses. His jewel-green eyes glinted with determination, the playful major nowhere to be seen.
His strong, square jaw, set and thrust, already carried the black stubble of a five o'clock shadow, although they'd only just reported in. Of course Gray had always looked like he needed a shave ten minutes after he put down his razor.
An image of him leaning over the bathroom sink wearing nothing but a towel as he shaved flashed through her mind, drawing all the air right out of the cavernous aircraft.
Lori's hand clenched on the oxygen tank. "Hey, Tag. How long's this bottle good for?"
"You only need to carry it around in case there's a rapid decompression and you have to get back to your seat." Tag rapped his knuckles against the yellow canister. "So don't worry. This baby carries fifteen minutes worth."
"Fifteen minutes," Lori echoed, watching Gray disappear into the cockpit to prep the plane for their thirty-hour mission. Her lungs already burned.
* * *
Gray angled into the cockpit, frustration firing to life like a C-17's jet engines. Bronco and Lancelot bantered checklist call and responses into their headsets.
"Circuit breakers in," Bronco said into the microphone.
Lancelot ran his hands along the circuit breaker panel. "Checked in pilot."
Bronco mirrored the gesture with his panel. "Checked in co."
Gray grabbed Bronco's headset, snapped the earpieces and barked, "What the hell did you think you were doing?"