"Really? I thought it was something you did unconsciously."
"Sometimes. Other times it's deliberate. Before every flight I sit in a chair, usually at my kitchen table. I spread the chart out in front of me and fly through every step, every radio call. Hands and feet. Stick and rudders. I go through the motions."
"What about lately, when you don't have a flight scheduled?"
"I relive old ones, think through them and analyze for ways I could have tightened the mission." Staring straight ahead, he extended both legs until his feet rested firmly on the rudders.
What did he see in his mind's eye? He continued to fly, almost as if in defiance of the forces that grounded him.
"Where are you flying now?"
Stopped midflight, he pulled his hand from the stick, palm up and studied it as if he'd even caught himself unaware. "Last summer. In Sentavo. The mission to airlift the war orphans out."
"That was one helluva save. Word has it the whole crew's been put in for Distinguished Flying Crosses."
"We were lucky." He dismissed the praise with a typical Tanner shrug. "About halfway through assessing the children and in-processing them, things went to crap outside the hangar. Incoming fire. We had to scramble out. I started the engines while the rest of the crew and rescue team loaded the kids. Mortar rounds tore up the runway. We had to take off on an adjacent field."
"Incredible." And he was—the man even more than the flight.
"Intense. But we airlifted seventy-two children out of Sentavo that day."
As much as she willed thoughts of Andrew away, Kathleen couldn't help but notice the difference in the two men's flyer stories. All aviators had their tales to tell. Some, like An-drew, thrilled listeners with his aerial daring. Why hadn't she realized that others, like Tanner, found their thrill in what the mission accomplished?
Seventy-two orphans saved.
Tanner's hands continued their familiar path along the instruments, each movement executed with a reverent confidence. Like a skilled lover's caress.
His thumb circled over the trim tab button. "Only two weeks on the ground, and I already miss this so damned much."
Kathleen watched that thumb's deliberate circling, her br**sts beading in response. She squirmed in her seat.
She forced herself to breathe, swallow, breathe again until she could speak. "Your back's going to be fine as long as you take care of yourself. Become best friends with your chiropractor. Listen to your body." She told herself as much as him. "It's no crime to be human, with a mortal body that has needs no matter how much we wish otherwise."
Kathleen hitched a knee up on the leather seat so she could turn toward him, lean closer, make him understand.
"I know you think I don't grasp how important being back on flying status is to you." She searched for the words to accomplish what all her medical training hadn't. "Maybe I understand limitations better than you can imagine. No matter what I do, I will always be thirteen inches shorter than you are. Biology dictates I won't have your upper-body strength. I can pit myself against you doing sit-ups until the end of time and it won't change basic genetics. I have done my damnedest to make the most of what I was born with. Do the best you can with what life dealt you. Control what you can. After that, you've got to let it go."
The muscles in Tanner's jaw worked, although he stayed silent, and Kathleen wondered if she'd just shot herself in the foot. Great way to get him fired up for sex, criticize the guy. Her seduction skills were rustier than she'd thought. Apparently, they were oxidized shut.
Finesse had never been her strong suit. Which left her only one option. A direct approach.
"Hey, hotshot?"
His flying hands stopped as he glanced over at her. "Yeah, Athena?"
"You can jump me anytime now."
Chapter 14
You can jump me anytime now. Kathleen's words winged across the cockpit, dive-bombing the last of Tanner's crumbling defenses.
"Run that by me one more time?"
"My head's fine. We're not stuck in a survival situation." She stuffed her hand in her purse, whipped it back out and slapped it down the dash. "And we have birth control."
Her fingers slid away to reveal two square, plastic packets.
His hands fell from the flight controls. The view outside the window not only blurred, he could swear the windows were already fogging.