"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.
Those little packets told him she'd planned ahead, no impulsive act, rather a fully thought-out decision. She'd suggested the hangar with just this in mind.
Kathleen O'Connell wanted to have sex with him. In an airplane. Even dreams didn't play out this well. There had to be a catch. But bump on his nose be damned, he would worry about impulsive mistakes and catches later.
Tanner hooked his hands behind his head and said, "Logistically speaking, it would be more comfortable for both of us if you came over here and jumped me, instead." Her eyes widened, and she went so still he wondered if he'd heard her wrong. Disappointment grounded him faster than antiaircraft fire. A gut-clenching realization followed that having her shouldn't be this important to him. But it was.
Then she smiled. "Sounds like a plan to me."
Shooting out of her seat, she reached to cup his face in her hands. Her mouth met his as she fell into his lap, her legs draped to one side.
This was better than having the best Christmas present of his entire childhood handed to him. This was Kathleen, warm, willing and definitely eager, judging by the way she insinuated herself over his thighs. Tanner wasn't sure he could survive much more of Kathleen's determined assault on his senses.
Slanting his mouth over hers he tasted apples, cider, cinnamon—warm honeyed flavors he would never be able to sample again without thinking of her. And he wanted more than a sample now.
Apparently, so did she.