Temptation Bay (A Windfall Island Novel) (30 page)

D
ex woke up, blinking and stretching in the bright morning sunshine streaming in Maggie’s bedroom windows. He rolled toward her. And shot out of bed when he realized she was gone. He dragged on some clothes and went racing out onto the tarmac, pants unbuttoned, juggling his shirt, jacket and shoes. And there was Maggie, clipboard in hand, brilliant blue eyes focused like lasers into the engine compartment of her Piper.

She pulled back, made a check mark on her checklist, and glanced his way. “What’s with the stupid grin?” she asked, closing the compartment and stepping down from the ladder.

“You. Us.”

“I haven’t agreed to be an
us
yet.”

Dex just kept grinning. Maggie was clear-eyed and annoyed—and blushing, just a little but enough to tell him he’d wormed his way through her defenses. He sidled up to her, whispered in her ear.

She pushed him away. But she was grinning now, too.

“So what’s on the agenda?”

“I have souvenirs to drop off and mail to pick up in
Portland, along with a charter down to New York. Plus a quick stop in Boston; a courier is meeting me at the airport there.”

To pick up her DNA test, Dex knew, squashing the urge to ask her not to go. “Can I brush my teeth before we take off?”

“You’re not going with me.”

“Yeah, I am.”

She stopped what she was doing, set her clipboard on the top step of the ladder, and came over to stand beside him. “It’s too soon for anyone to take a shot at me,” she said, keeping her voice low though there was no one but the two of them around. “Once my DNA hits the lab, then you can worry.”

“Somebody has already taken a shot at you. Those rocks.”

“Were more likely aimed at you.”

“We can’t be sure of that, Maggie. Somebody is paying attention, somebody with bad intentions.”

“I don’t disagree,” Maggie said, retrieving her clipboard and going back to work. “But the quickest way to tip your hand is to stick to me like glue, Dex. Protecting me puts a pretty big target on my back. Besides, I haven’t loaded enough fuel to compensate for your body weight.”

“So load more fuel.”

She gave him a look, part exasperation and all stubbornness.

He could be just as stubborn. “Your only other option is to stay grounded.”

And now he saw anger storm across her face. “You don’t get to dictate what I do or when I do it.”

“If I had my way you’d be in a locked room, wrapped in cotton wool,” he shot back. He took her by the shoulders, shook her enough to get his point across. “I’ll do whatever it takes to see that you’re safe. You’re going to have to deal with that, and me, from now on. You fly, I fly.”

She turned back to the plane, gave herself a minute to fight off tears. Dex had all but crushed her heart and she hadn’t cried, but the man showed her a little concern and she was mush. Which didn’t change reality. “I don’t take chances with my equipment, Dex. My plane is air-worthy or it doesn’t go up.” She held up her clipboard. “That’s what this checklist is about. That’s why Mort slept on a cot in the hangar last night—the locked hangar. I’ll be damned if I let the coward threatening us ground me. I do that and I’ve given up more than my life.”

“Then you’d better load more fuel, Maggie.”

She shrugged. “Fine. I’m leaving in ten minutes.”

He took her clipboard, saw she was only halfway down the list. “We both know you won’t be taking off until you’ve finished this, and we both know I can be ready in less time.”

She snatched the clipboard back from him, ripped the half-completed sheet off and let it go. “Watch me.”

Dex caught the page before it could flutter away, held it out to her.

She looked at it, at him, and crossed her arms.

He held her eyes for a moment, let his lips curve. “You love me that much?”

She tore the page out of his hand, slapped it back on her clipboard. “Who said anything about love?”

“You did. You just didn’t use words.” And at her disgruntled glare, he grinned. “It’s just a matter of time before I convince you to marry me. Until then, I’ll settle for the pleasure of your company.”

Maggie watched Dex walk off. After last night, the way she’d, well, blossomed in his arms, she’d needed some time to herself. She wasn’t going to get it, but she didn’t stew
over it for long. Sure, Dex had boxed her into a corner, but you just had to admire a man who could be as hard-headed, as focused, as much a pain in the ass as you were, she decided.

That didn’t mean it was a good idea for them to shackle themselves to one another permanently.

Still, spotting Dex striding across the tarmac, dark hair wet and sleeked back from what must have been a very quick shower, sent her heart on a long, slow roll in her chest.

As he neared he said, “For a second there I thought you were happy to see me.”

“That’s quite a fantasy world you’re living in,” she replied. The sarcasm felt good, normal—to Dex, too, judging by his grin.

“I’m under no delusions where you’re concerned.”

“Good thing, because I’m not the pipe and slippers-fetching type.”

“I don’t smoke, I prefer my feet bare, and I can fetch for myself.” He stepped up, brushed a hand over her hair. “But if that’s a yes—”

She snorted softly. “You’re lucky I didn’t leave without you.”

He cupped her cheek, ran his thumb over her skin. “Then I guess I’d have had to grow wings.” He grinned. “Can’t have my woman going off without me.”

She looked into his laughing eyes, wanting so desperately to believe what she saw there. “Dex—”

“Maggie—” Mort came around the back of the plane, stopping short when he saw Dex.

Maggie swung around, thought she caught the heat of a glare in the look Mort directed at Dex before his gaze dropped to his feet, the toe of one boot digging into a crack in the pavement. “What’s up?” she asked him.

When he lifted his eyes again, they latched onto Dex. And they were definitely filled with anger.

“Mort,” she began without any idea what she could say to ease whatever hurt she’d caused him.

“Weather’s kicking up down the coast,” he said on a rush.

“I checked the forecast, Mort. It’s just a little squall, nothing I can’t go around.”

“And I’m going with her,” Dex put in.

“Can you control the weather?” Mort sneered.

“Down, Fido.”

Mort snapped his mouth shut, his gaze shifting from Dex’s face to Maggie’s. “You’ll be fine. You’ve got Superman with you.” He turned on his heel and shuffled off.

“Mort,” Maggie called after him.

He never looked back, but she watched him until he disappeared into his little tool shed.

“He has a crush on you,” Dex said.

“No, but I’m about the only friend he has.” Maggie sighed a little, rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. “His mother isn’t doing well; he’s fixating. He’ll get over it.”

“Sure, right after he rips out my heart and feeds it to me.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re a bit of a drama queen, Keegan.”

“I object to the word ‘queen.’ ”

“Sure, that’s the part you should object to. Get in the plane, Elizabeth.”

They popped down to Boston and dropped off the DNA test to a courier Hold had waiting at the airport. After that they picked up the mail and delivered the souvenirs in Portland. They were back in the air in under an hour, Maggie breathing a sigh of relief as she turned the Piper for home.

“What happened to the charter?” Dex said once they’d taken off from Portland, hit altitude and leveled off.

“I called a friend while you were making yourself pretty. He’ll get the executive to his meeting in New York, and he’ll think Solomon Charters took him there.”

Dex skimmed right over the dig. “He? How good a friend?”

She slanted him a look. “Are you going to give me a personal history?”

He smiled, settled back into his seat.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“It’s history, Maggie. For both of us.”

“You’re taking a lot for granted.”

He met her gaze. “I’m trusting you to forgive me.”

She looked away.

“I’m not expecting it to happen overnight.”

She smiled slightly. “We’re almost ho—, uh, back to Windfall.”

She’d almost said “home,” but Dex only grinned over it. He’d pushed her enough for the time being. He looked down, saw the familiar mosaic of islands separated by narrow channels of water. And home was what he felt.

“Was that a sigh I just heard?”

“More like fatalism,” he said.

“Windfall has that effect on people,” she said. “You’re happy to see the place, but you kind of wonder why.”

“I know why,” Dex said. “You’re there.”

She let that sink in as silence fell, or as much silence as possible in a small plane with a turbo-prop. “We’re a couple of idiots. Most people who fall in love are.”

“Put this thing on autopilot.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” He wrapped a hand around the back of
her neck, met her halfway between the two seats for a kiss that went hot and deep, sizzling in her bloodstream and shorting out brain cells so that the world lurched, and then everything went silent and soft and hazy, and it felt like they were falling…

“
Shit!
” She jerked away from Dex, pulling back on the wheel as the engine sputtered and the Piper lurched again, fighting gravity. Maggie consulted the instrument panel, her breath hitching as she watched the needle on the fuel gauge sweep down to empty.

The propeller gave a couple of weak chugs then stopped turning, and quiet descended. “I think we blew a fuel line.”

Dex just sat there in his seat, looking relaxed, all except his eyes, which were glued to her.

“Jesus, Dex, did you hear me? I checked every connection, every wire, every inch of that engine—” Her breath sobbed out, muscles screaming as she fought to pull the Piper’s nose up. Fought and lost. The plane dropped closer and closer to the surface of the Atlantic, nothing she could do. “Parachutes?” Dex said.

“No time.” She unhooked the radio speaker, oddly calm in the face of the inevitable. “Mayday, mayday,” she said into it, giving their coordinates while Dex unhooked his belt and disappeared into the back of the plane.

“There’s this,” he said from behind her.

She looked over her shoulder and had to smile. “You aren’t Indiana Jones.”

“It was worth a shot.”

“You just hang onto that raft,” Maggie said, “And get back in your seat. I’m going to try a belly landing on the water, and we’ll need to be strapped in for the impact. If I pull it off, we won’t have much time to get out of the plane before it sinks.”

“And if you don’t pull it off?”

“I’ll be damned if I let some backstabbing son of a bitch—” But she had to break off, focus all her strength to keep the nose up, keep the Piper in a glide as gravity dragged them toward the unforgiving surface of the Atlantic—deceptively smooth, but like concrete, Maggie knew, if you slammed into it.

Skimming it now, that was the ticket, and skim it she did, the plane bouncing back up with a screech of metal that told her something had torn. Something on the belly, she hoped, fighting to keep them level because if one of the wings caught the surface they’d be pulled into a cartwheeling spin. Belts or no belts, she and Dex would bounce around the inside of the plane like pinballs. They’d be dead before the Piper came to a stop and there was even a ghost of a chance of getting out and into that raft.

Dex was yelling, feet braced on the dashboard and reaching for her. She shoved him off, pissed that she had to take a hand off the wheel for even a second.

“Touch me again, and we’re both going to die,” she shouted, knowing he couldn’t hear her any more than she could hear him.

The belly of the Piper hit for the second time, jerked her against the harness and she felt something tear again, in her this time. She felt a screaming pain along her left side, hoped it was just a cracked rib. As they hit again she bore down on the wheel, ignored the pain and the possibility the strain would turn a cracked rib into a broken one, maybe puncture her lung. The plane skipped off the surface of the ocean, bounced up, then dropped down again, softer this time, followed by a series of increasingly smaller bounces, like a stone skipping over water as the plane lost momentum.

Fire shot along her ribs with each jolt, and then they were down, the Piper nosing in as it finally came to a halt. And began to sink.

“Crack that door,” Maggie ordered Dex, barely waiting for him to climb out of the passenger seat before she was up and making her way into the belly of the plane.

Water began to pour in around her boots, quickly climbing up her calves to her knees.

“Hurry, Maggie, Jesus,” Dex shouted, pulling at her arm.

The Piper was already listing badly, pain and frigid water were stealing her strength, but she hauled the canvas bag up to the cockpit and shoved it at him. “Take this.”