Darcy hooked her hands on her h*ps before they turned traitor. Her eyes, however, she allowed free rein to rove before he noticed she'd joined him.
A yellow slicker masked most of Max's chest, protecting him from the backspray. She detected a hint of chambray shirt peeking through the unbuttoned coat.
His rebellious hair spiked, calling her hands to bring on the finger comb. Not that she would with a cargo hold full of people watching. But what should she do? Her experience ranked somewhere between nil and nonexistent, unlike her confident older sister.
Maybe that was it.
She would just think like Alicia. Act like Alicia, who'd moved from being president of her senior class to the cockpit of an F-15 in less than a decade.
Being a virgin with next to no experience in the flirting arena didn't mean Darcy hadn't seen others in action. How hard could it be to lift a few of her sister's simpler moves?
Preflighting her plan with a hefty dose of bravado, Darcy braced her shoulders and launched phase two of Operation Dolphin Doc.
"Is it okay for me to be close like this?"
Darcy's husky words punched the air from Max as effectively as a surprise swipe from a powerful dolphin tail. He closed the valve on the hose and looked down into the belly of the cargo plane. "Say again?"
Strolling toward him, she trailed her fingers along the fiberglass tank. "I wouldn't want to upset them by standing too close."
Close to the dolphins. Max swallowed a laugh at himself. Damn, but he was so used to looking for hidden agendas in undercover assignments he'd missed the obvious.
Accepting words and a person at face value.
Max hefted himself over the edge of the transport tank and to the ground, gaining his footing not more than a few inches from her. Darcy Renshaw was a rarity. A good, honest person. He didn't doubt his assessment for a second. He'd seen enough corruption working CIA ops to recognize innocence.
His own thoughts were far from innocent as he wondered what it would be like to drag down the zipper on Darcy's flight suit. To reveal every inch of what waited hidden beneath that bulky green uniform.
He patted the side of the dolphin tank instead to keep his hands occupied. "You're fine standing where you are. Sorry if she startled you."
"I thought you said she would sleep for most of the flight. If so, that's quite a snore she's got going."
"She's just breathing." While he was doing his damnedest not to breathe in the Darcy-scent of baby powder and soap mixed with a hint of hydraulic fluid.
"Well, that's a hefty exhale." Darcy scratched a hand along her collarbone, drawing his attention straight to that zipper and the translucent skin on her neck.
Time to roll out some boring academia to send her sprinting back up to the cockpit. "Dolphins exhale at over a hundred miles per hour."
She stepped closer. Red fluorescent lights lined the ceiling of the aircraft, haloing her in sinful enticement. "It's amazing the force doesn't wake her up."
An air pocket bucked the plane, jostling Darcy closer still. Max yearned for a bigger plane. "Actually, dolphins only sleep with one side of the brain at a time."
"Is it some kind of protection thing? To keep watch for predators? Sharks maybe."
Renshaw wasn't easily daunted. Okay, he needed to dig deeper into class lectures. "Dolphins breathe with voluntary muscles. Not like us where it's involuntary. One side of a dolphin's brain always stays awake to regulate breathing."
"Oh. Kind of like Crusty, huh? Half there sometimes."
He forced himself to grin back at her mistaken perception about the OSI contact currently sitting in the cockpit. Max had never worried overmuch about the lies inherent in his job before. A means to a better end. Why did it bother him now?
Shake it off and get to work. "Did you need something?"
"Not really." Her whiskey-rich voice mingled with the roar of engines. "Just taking a break to stretch my legs."
Legs.
Max kept his famished eyes off those mile-long legs and searched for something safe to study, like her flight suit patches. She shifted from boot to boot, relaying restless nerves at odds with all that gutsy confidence.
A restlessness that inched her so close he could read the stitched lettering on her patches. Her arm declared her squadron's motto of Anything. Anywhere. Anytime.