Jayhawk Down (4 page)

“
George
had fun tonight,” Caitlyn said, echoing his thought—something she did with unsettling regularity. She patted the cowling and grinned like a six-year-old before she climbed a stepladder to reach the windshield. She’d scraped her hair back into a haphazard ponytail. Sexy tendrils of red curls clung to her neck and cheeks. Her butt wiggled enticingly as she applied elbow grease to her scrubbing.

He tried to scowl but couldn’t quite pull it off. Her silly name for his plane, the way she talked to it, like it was a child, made him smile despite the ridiculousness of it all. He rounded the front of the plane as she stepped down, boxing her in between the high wing and strut.

“And you, did you have fun?”

Caitlyn’s eyes grew large but she didn’t retreat. “Yeah, I did,” she said softly. A slow smile took over her mouth.

He stared at those plump lips as he stepped forward. The rise of her breasts as she inhaled distracted him momentarily, but the allure of a kiss he could taste drew him closer. Near enough to breathe in the spicy scent he’d already catalogued as Caitlyn.

She rose up to meet him halfway when he leaned over her, her mouth tentative, as if unsure of its welcome. He might be slow, but never stupid; at least not when it came to women. He made sure she knew just how receptive he was by slipping his arms around her waist, drawing her to his chest.

Despite the can in one hand and the rag in the other, she circled her arms around him to press closer still. Her mouth responded to his urging, opening without hesitation, meeting his assault with equal abandon. Heat, excitement and hunger punched through his brain like a sonic boom.

He traced his palm up her back and down her ribs. Caitlyn made a sound, half moan, half gasp and what little restraint he had detonated. He untucked her T-shirt from her jeans and skimmed impatient fingers over the fullness of a satin-covered breast. God, she felt even better than he’d imagined. He closed his other hand over her bottom and lifted her against his erection while his mouth worked its way down her neck. She stiffened almost immediately.

Ah, shit. He’d pushed too hard, too fast. He moved his hands to her hips and stepped back, giving her room, letting her know he wouldn’t force her. And fought the fading image of taking her against the side of his plane, the workbench, or hell, bent over that damn motorcycle she’d parked on the far side of the hangar.

Caitlyn’s eyes were huge. Heated blue circling velvet black. Her mouth, moist and full, drew in a deep breath then released it on a shaky laugh. “Wow.” She settled the rag and can in the crook of her arm, then hugged herself, but didn’t move away. And, thank God, she didn’t appear pissed, just slightly shaken.

He knew the feeling. “Yeah, ‘wow’ is right.” He massaged her hips with his fingers and felt tension easing from her. Obviously he’d gone way too long without a woman under him. “Guess I’ve reverted back to, what was it you called me, Dr. Butt Head?”

Her laugh sounded more normal. Then her chin swept up and to the side in a maneuver that would have done Nefertiti proud. Heaven help him, the queen was back and taking control.

* * *

Caitlyn held the cleaning supplies out to Stillman, thankful her hands didn’t shake. She also made sure his fingers didn’t touch hers when he accepted the rag and can. God, she’d never been so tempted to hack out her Southern good-girl roots, and after only one kiss.

She took a calming breath as Stillman walked to the workbench, giving her more space. Where did they go from here? She ignored the part of her brain that suggested a bedroom. Or any semi-flat surface for that matter. Casual sex had proved impossible for her, another reason she tended to end relationships before getting physical. Beating a hasty retreat sounded like the better part of valor. At least until she decided what she wanted to do with Dr. Tall Dark And Aerobatic.

Besides getting him naked.

“I think we should call it a night.” She softened her blunt words with a megawatt smile. “I’m off work the next forty-eight hours if you want to take
George
out again.”

Stillman folded his arms across his chest. “Unfortunately, I’m booked. How ’bout I give you a call when I get next week’s roster?”

That was interesting. Playing hard to get, or not interested if she wasn’t going to put out? She turned and headed for her motorcycle. “Sure.”

Busy maneuvering her bike around to face the open hangar door she didn’t notice Stillman until he touched her arm. Startled, she looked up into smoldering eyes and a set mouth.

“Don’t think for one second I’m going to forget what damn near happened.”

Caitlyn tilted her head. “What exactly ‘damn near happened’?” Her heartbeat spiked as carnal images played across her mind’s X-rated theater.

The smile that softened his face could only be described as wicked. “You. Me. Against the plane...” As he spoke he leaned over her, his heat and husky words scattering goose bumps over her skin. Tightening her nipples with anticipation.

She continued with her own take of what could have happened, “...on the workbench, bent over
Black Beauty
...”

Stillman’s mouth quirked, then he gave up and laughed. “
Black Beauty
, huh? Queeny, I can’t wait to hear what you name my—”

She thumbed the Start button and the deep burble of a hundred-eighty horses drowned out his words but not his meaning. She grinned in return and slipped her helmet over her head, avoiding a kiss from his tempting mouth. He stepped back and gave her a smart salute.

Caitlyn had her bike cruising seventy miles an hour in light traffic along I-4 before she realized just how different her date with Stillman had been.

Unlike the usual ego-driven doctors, who went on, and on, and on about themselves, Stillman had spent most the evening answering her incessant questions about flying aerobatics. He’d asked about her family and seemed fascinated by her assorted foster and adopted siblings and growing up poor in South Carolina. But he’d volunteered nothing about his own family or home life.

She leaned low over her bike and felt the vibration of the motor pulse between her legs as she zipped around a slow-moving semi. Unease nibbled at her excitement, reducing it to scattered crumbs.

What did she really know about Dr. Stillman Gray III? And what the hell was she going to do about their combustible chemistry?

Chapter Three

St. Petersburg,
FL,
Monday, 19 September, 1735 hours

Stillman dumped another box of clothes onto the growing mound on his unmade bed. In his haste to leave New York, he’d packed with more fervor than thought. Which explained why he still hadn’t found the flight suit he’d modified for medical duty.

He tossed a handful of exhausted scrubs aside and spotted a flash of army green, at the same time his newly connected phone rang. Only his mother and the hospital had that number. He grabbed the material first, the phone second. And prayed it was the hospital.

His gruff “Hello?” elicited a moment of silence.

“Stillman, sweetie, is that you?”

Shit. Add ex-wife to the list of people with his number.

He glanced down at the coarse Nomex fabric wadded in his fist. “What do you need, Hilary?” Why did it seem he’d spoken to her more in the two years since their divorce than the preceding five years of marriage?

“Stillman, why do you assume I only call when I need something?”

He kept his mouth shut, smart enough to recognize a rhetorical question.

“I saw your mother at the club and she told me you were having a hard time settling in to your apartment, what with all the time you’re devoting to your new job. Why do you insist on putting in ungodly hours when you’re the head of the department? Shouldn’t you learn to delegate?”

He dropped the flight suit and palmed the back of his neck, where tension sank sharp teeth. “It’s a partnership. I share duties, I don’t dictate them.” The other two doctors, friends he’d met during residency at Mount Sinai, worked as many hours as he did. It was the nature of emergency medicine. Something she’d never acknowledged.

“Regardless, your mother’s worried. I told her I’d check on you when I came down with Nicolas. My flight arrives in Tampa at six ten tomorrow evening. Now, don’t pretend you’re working. I spoke to the hospital and know your shift ends at four.”

Obviously, she’d convinced whomever she talked to that she was his wife. Hilary often forgot to mention the “ex” part. It didn’t help that she continued to wield his name like a battle ax, bludgeoning unsuspecting waitstaff, flight attendants and nurses with it. At least that would end soon enough if that idiot she was seeing actually knuckled under and married her. She’d finally have exactly what she had dreamed about when she’d said “I do” to Stillman.

He’d married Hilary thinking they would build the family he’d always wanted. She, however, had wanted everything his mother had—and what Stillman wanted to save any potential children from.

“You should have called earlier. I have other commitments after work.” Sun glinting off waves of red hair came to mind, then the memory of perfect breasts pressed against his chest sucker punched him. Caitlyn. He sat abruptly on the edge of the bed. “I signed up as a flight surgeon with the local Coast Guard. I’ll be spending most of my free time getting acquainted with their procedures.” Sounded plausible—yeah, he needed to schedule training time with his new crew.

“Stillman, how could you? You haven’t recuperated from Afghanistan, and now you volunteer for more military duty?”

She made it sound as if he’d volunteered to have a leg severed. A hollow feeling passed through his gut and rippled across his conscience. He’d completed his last tour with little more than lost sleep and a new appreciation for army medics. Enough kids returned from the war with real injuries—including missing limbs.

“If they wanted me back in Iraq or Afghanistan, I’d go,” he said in a tight voice. “Flying rescue missions in the States is a vacation by comparison.”

“Don’t be flippant. I promised Barbara I would check on you and I won’t leave until I do.”

Hilary and his mother had been close before the divorce; now they were inseparable. He kicked his flight suit across the room before he closed his eyes and counted to ten. “Fine, after I confirm my schedule with the Coast Guard I’ll call you. Where are you staying?”

She hesitated long enough for him to fear she was weighing the risk of asking to stay with him. “The Belleview-Biltmore in Clearwater. Call my cell. The number hasn’t changed.”

After confirming he’d call the next day, Stillman grabbed his keys and headed out the door. Maybe he could bribe flight ops and get a training assignment tomorrow. Spend time with a certain hard-to-reach pilot.

Clearwater, FL,
Tuesday, 20 September, 1900 hours

Caitlyn threw her whole body into the dance, letting the throbbing bass music drown the ugly memories she still hadn’t forgotten. She grinned at Ryan as he gamely tried to keep up with her. But he’d had three Coronas to her two Diet Cokes and was quickly losing ground.

The tempo changed and Ryan’s eyes widened as if he’d lost an engine on takeoff. A sharp jerk of his head followed and he gestured toward the table, where the rest of his birthday revelers sat. She nodded and did a quick shimmy followed by a twirl. It would take a whole lotta shakin’ to erase the images of the dead children they’d pulled from the Gulf yesterday.

She squeezed her eyes closed and twirled again. She needed a whole lotta shakin’—

Strong hands on her hips stopped her before she reversed direction and startled her eyes open. Stillman’s broad smile immediately warmed the chill shrouding her heart.

“Hey, stranger, I’m jealous of my cell phone,” she said. “It’s had more conversations with you than I have.” They hadn’t connected, other than voice mail and text messages, since their one and only date. Without thinking she slipped her arms around his waist and kissed him hard on the mouth. Secrets or not, he was exactly what she needed tonight.

His appreciative once-over made her happy she’d dressed up for the impromptu party. With her heels, she stood over six feet tall and could damn near look him in the eye. He took her hand in his and spun her around as the DJ announced an upcoming break in the music.

“I heard about Ryan’s birthday celebration and thought I’d crash it in hopes you’d be here.” Stillman reeled her back into his arms before spinning her around again.

“I’m glad you did. Now, shake your booty. We’ve got one more dance before the music stops.”

He grinned and did exactly what she told him.

Oh, goody, a man who could follow directions.

* * *

Stillman hardly registered the sleek, sexy redhead as the kick-ass pilot he knew as Queeny before his battle-tuned radar picked up something wrong with the scene before him. Caitlyn’s smile looked fake, her dancing just this side of manic. Something bad must have happened. He glanced over her gyrating shoulders to the table where her crew sat. Everyone was accounted for, but that didn’t mean all was well.

Caitlyn did a bump and grind against him, her eyes half-closed. The desperate feel to her movements sapped the joy right out of them.

The music wound down and Stillman hustled Caitlyn toward a side patio. “Let’s get some fresh air. Then you can tell me what the hell’s going on,” he said against her ear. Her spicy scent and the silk of her hair brushing his face tightened his groin.
Down, boy
. Normally he didn’t have a problem using sex as a distracter, but nothing about what was happening between him and Caitlyn could be classified as “normal.”

“Nothing’s going on. Dammit,” Caitlyn stopped herself, then blinked rapidly as her eyes filled.

Shit, tears. He didn’t deal well with inexplicable female emotions.

She inhaled sharply and looked up at the night sky. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to fall apart on you or anything.”

He let her continue to examine the heavens in silence, while his gaze wandered uncensored over her curves. The stretchy white dress emphasized all the covered bits to perfection. If he hadn’t seen the uniformed version first, he’d never believe her capable of anything more challenging than selecting the right color polish for those lethal-looking fingernails.

“Hey, these don’t look like they’d pass inspection,” he said capturing her hand in his, generating a slightly damp smile. “Sometimes talking about the bad things helps,” he added quietly, his gaze searching hers.

She nodded and wrapped both hands around his before nestling them between her breasts.

He barely repressed a contented sigh. Before Caitlyn, he’d always considered himself a leg man. Now, he couldn’t think of anything but her—

“We were dispatched to intercept a small boat overflowing with Haitians. They were about fifty miles offshore when their craft began breaking up. It was dusk, and the sharks were circling when we arrived on scene.”

It took Stillman a moment to transition his brain. Then the impact of her words hit him like a belly kick. He tugged her against his chest and draped his free arm around her shoulders. But she didn’t bury her head. Instead, she met his gaze with fierce determination.

“We rescued eight survivors, all but two under the age of four. The rest—” She stopped to swallow and he felt a tremor pass through her. “Clay, our rescue swimmer, refused to abandon the dead to the ocean...or the sharks. It was his first body recovery operation, and it was about as nasty as it could get.”

* * *

She took another deep breath and Stillman felt as much as saw her resolve harden. “He did a phenomenal job. Joe, our hoist operator, and I submitted Clay for a commendation. Joe saw him smacking sharks with pieces of the boat to keep them away from the babies.”

Her voice cracked, but she didn’t fold. “We’re all pretty shook up over it, but Clay’s struggling with guilt, and dammit, there’s nothing I can do about it.” She hooked a length of hair behind her ear and glared at him. “Men and their stupid egos.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” He slipped his hand from between her breasts, with only a halfhearted nudge of plump flesh, and pulled her closer.

She smiled at his adolescent slip. “Ryan’s convinced Clay has a crush on me, so I’ve been ‘instructed’ to keep my distance. It sucks. The kid’s hurting, and he’s part of my crew, and—”

Stillman stopped her with a quick kiss. “He’s right. Hell, your whole crew’s probably half in love with you.” And didn’t that just bite the big one?

He studied her troubled expression. “Want me to talk to Clay? I’ve had a lot of experience with what he’s going through.” Dealing with dead and dying children had been especially hard his last tour of duty in the Middle East, but he’d gained some perspective. And a sense of quiet acceptance he could share with the kid.

Her small frown smoothed out and her eyes lit with a tentative, relieved smile. “Yeah, I’d like that. As an ER doctor, I bet you’ve dealt with lots of hopeless situations.”

Now probably wasn’t the time to bring up his army career. But sooner or later he’d have to tell her.

And find out just why she refused to date men in the military.

* * *

Caitlyn slid into the booth beside Ryan as Stillman led the decidedly subdued rescue swimmer away from their table.

“What’s up?” Joe asked craning his head over his shoulder to watch Clay disappear through the doorway to the patio.

“He offered to have a talk with Clay about what happened. Try to give him a different perspective.” Caitlyn picked up a tortilla chip and loaded it with spicy ground beef, salsa, guacamole and a dollop of sour cream. “I thought with his medical experience maybe he could relate better than we could.”

Funny, she hadn’t been hungry when Joe ordered the assorted plates of appetizers, and now she was starving.

“His war experience is probably more relevant,” Ryan said before stuffing a quesadilla in his mouth.

Caitlyn choked on her nacho and he slapped her on the back several times. “You okay? Did you get one of my jalapeños?”

“What war experience?” Joe asked. He looked from Caitlyn to Ryan.

“Yeah, what are you talking about?” Caitlyn half turned on the bench seat.

“He didn’t tell you? He’s an army slug driver. In the Reserves and just back from Afghanistan. But he was full-time during....” He stared at Caitlyn. “Shit, he didn’t tell you.” He looked away and took a long swig of his beer.

Shocked, Caitlyn sat back. That son of a bitch flew Black Hawks? Her stomach rebelled over the nacho she’d just swallowed. She was familiar with the term “slug driver” because that was what her uncle had been in the Iraq War.

How he’d died.

She grabbed Ryan’s beer out of his hand and finished it for him. “No, he didn’t tell me.”

In war situations, helicopter-pilot life expectancy was notoriously short. She slammed the empty bottle on the table. Dammit, why the hell would the army waste a doctor’s skills on flying in the first place?

* * *

Stillman sat across from Ryan when Caitlyn dragged Joe to the dance floor. Clay followed them a second later, quickly forming a laughing, gyrating threesome.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Ryan said, watching his crew members cutting loose. He turned back to Stillman. “What did you say to Clay? He hasn’t cracked a smile since yesterday afternoon.”

Stillman glanced at the dancers and shrugged a shoulder. “Sometimes it helps to have a different take on...an incident.” The kid had clearly done all he could, but guilt, he knew, didn’t pay much attention to logic.

Ryan lifted his empty beer bottle and picked at the label with his thumbnail. “You know, Caitlyn’s different. Not only because she’s the best damn pilot I’ve ever had the privilege to fly beside.” He regarded Stillman with cool green eyes. “Thing is, she doesn’t see it. Despite the royal act, she thinks she’s one of the guys.”

Stillman bit back a snort. Queeny would never be “one of the guys.”

A waitress arrived to collect empty beer bottles and Stillman ordered a Corona. Ryan waved away his offer for a refill.

Ryan fingered the damp coaster left from his drink. “Don’t get me wrong, Caity will take charge of a situation in a heartbeat. She can’t seem to help it.” He blew out his breath on an awkward chuckle. “I guess I’m just saying she’s special. Make sure you treat her that way.”

Stillman saluted Ryan with two fingers. “Message received.” He didn’t see any reason to mention the flight officer had already delivered a more convincing threat.

“Uh, I’m afraid I outed you.”