Temptation Bay (A Windfall Island Novel) (33 page)

Or maybe there was something more at work this morning.

Hold slid the stack of papers out from under her unseeing eyes. “Want to share your problem with Uncle Hold?”

“You’re not my uncle.”

He grinned, settled beside her again. “Glad you noticed.”

She shot him a look. “It’s not that big a deal, just something Benji sprang on me this morning that I’d like to make happen.”

“Maybe I can help.”

“It’s something I have to do myself.”

“Why?”

“Because Benji is my responsibility.”

“I get that, but why do you have to do it alone? Maggie would do anything for you, no questions asked—Maggie and Dex,” he said, referring to her best friend and majority owner of Solomon airlines, and her fiancé. “So would I.”

“Then it would be Maggie and Dex doing it. And there’s no way I’m asking you for help.”

“Why?”

“Because I hardly know you.”

“And you don’t want to admit you’re attracted to me?”

“Back off, Abbot.” She shot to her feet, did the backing off herself. “Benji is my son, and if he wants to go—whatever he wants, I’ll damn well make it happen without going begging to my friends. Or complete strangers with egos the size of…” she tossed her hands in the air, “something really big,” she finished, clearly at a loss, but so damn gorgeous he wanted to scoop her up and kiss her until all that glorious temper turned to a different kind of heat.

“What are you grinning at?”

“You,” he said, holding himself back with what could only be called a Herculean effort. “You’re beautiful when you’re mad.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You… I… Stop saying things like that.”

“I’d rather show you anyway, sugar.”

She lifted her hands to her cheeks, not just pink now but hot red. “Hold—”

“Why don’t you tell me what Benji wants?” he said because he’d pushed her too far, and he didn’t want to hear her give him a single reason why they couldn’t be together.

“It’s just so…” She dropped her hands, laughing a little, “ridiculous.”

But it had upset her, and it didn’t take much for him to reason out why. “It can’t be easy to raise a kid by yourself, no child support.”

Jessi sat back, crossed her arms. “Really? Do tell.”

Hold smiled indulgently. “I know you own ten percent of Solomon Charters, but you’re plowing most of the profits back into the business if you want to grow it at all, and especially right now, when you’ve just lost the Piper…” He trailed off at the look on her face—a look that had nothing to do with being reminded of Maggie’s near-death just a few days
before, resulting in the loss of her first airplane. And when the tone of her voice matched the look, he knew. He’d just made an ass of himself, a supercilious, condescending ass.

“Oh, don’t stop now,” Jessi said. “I find it just fascinating how you can tell me all about my life without ever asking a single question.”

“Uh…”

“Let me guess. You’ve been asking questions, just not to me.”

“How do I respond to that observation without putting your back up any more than I’ve already done?”

“Apologizing would be a good start,” she said with a perfect mix of disappointment and reproach.

Hold suppressed the urge to hang his head, dig his toe into the carpet, stuff his hands in his pockets, or otherwise give physical presence to the guilt he felt. “I wouldn’t have to apologize if you’d talk to me once in a while.”

“I talk to you all the time.”

“Not about anything personal.”

“That’s because my personal life is none of your business. Which I keep telling you, and you keep ignoring.”

“Doesn’t that tell you how serious I am about getting to know you?”

Jessi just shook her head, turned back to her desk. “You want to get to know me? Start with my genealogy, Hold. Maybe I’ll turn out to be the long lost Stanhope heir, and all my troubles will be over.”

Money
, Hold thought sourly.

He could have told her it didn’t solve every problem, but that would raise questions he wasn’t ready to answer. Jessi believed him to be a simple researcher; he hadn’t told her, or anyone, that he came from one of the wealthiest families in the country.

Because he’d yet to meet anyone it didn’t matter to on some level.

He could honestly say the women he dated didn’t always go into the relationship because of his money, but once they found out, they changed. Every last one of them.

What he felt for Jessi… He didn’t know what he felt for Jessi, or what she felt for him. But he wanted a chance to find out before his money complicated everything.

Jessi sighed. “It’s a nice dream, inheriting a fortune. Not having to live from paycheck to paycheck would certainly make life easier.”

“Money isn’t everything,” Hold murmured, although he couldn’t brush off the ease it put into his life—the freedom, for instance, to be here on Windfall Island for who knew how long, working a job that didn’t even net him a paycheck.

But he understood there were people who would do anything, say anything, be anything, to get it. He had firsthand proof.

Where Authors Give You the Inside Scoop

From the desk of Jaime Rush

Dear Reader,

DRAGON AWAKENED and the world of the Hidden started very simply, as most story ideas do. I saw this sexy guy with an elaborate dragon tattoo down his back. But much to my surprise, the “tattoo” changed his very cellular structure, turning him into a full-fledged Dragon. I usually get a character in some situation that begs me to open the writer’s “What if?” box. And this man/Dragon was the most intriguing character yet. I had a
lot
of questions, as you can imagine.
Who are you? Why are you? And will you play with me?
This is the really fun part of writing for me: exploring all the possibilities. I got tantalizing bits and pieces. I knew he was commanding, controlling, and a warrior. And his name was Cyntag, Cyn for short.

Then the heroine made an appearance, and she in no way seemed to fit with him. She was, in the early version, a suffer-no-fools server in a rough bar. And very human. I knew her name was Ruby. (I love when their names come easily like that. Normally I have to troll through lists and phone books to find just the right one.) The television show
American Restoration
inspired a new profession for Ruby, who was desperately holding on to the resto yard
she inherited from her mother. I knew Ruby was raised by her uncle after being orphaned, and he’d created a book about a fairy-tale world just for her.

But I was still stumped by how these completely different people fit together. Until I got the scene where Ruby finds her uncle pinned to the wall by a supernatural weapon, and the name he utters on his dying breath: Cyntag.

Ah, that’s how they’re connected. [Hands rubbing together in anticipation.] Then the scene where she confronts him rolled through my mind like a movie. Hot-headed, passionate Ruby and the cool, mysterious Cyn, who reveals that he is part of a Hidden world of Dragons, magick, Elementals, and danger. And so is she. Suddenly, her uncle’s bedtime stories, filled with Dragon princes and evil sorcerers, become very dangerously real. As does the chemistry that sparks between Ruby and Cyn.

I loved creating the Hidden, which exists alongside modern-day Miami. Talk about opening the “What if?” box! I found lots of goodies inside: descendants of gods and fallen angels, demons, politics, dissension, and all the delicious complications that come from having magical humans and other beings trapped within one geographical area. And a ton of questions that needed to be answered. It was quite the undertaking, but all of it a fun challenge.

We all have an imagination. Mine has always contained murder, mayhem, romance, and magic. Feel free to wander through the madness of my mind any time. A good start begins at my website, www.jaimerush.com, or that of my romantic suspense alter-ego, www.tinawainscott.com.

From the desk of Kristen Ashley

Dear Reader,

I often get asked which of my books or characters are my favorites. This is an impossible question to answer and I usually answer with something like, “The ones I’m with.”

See, every time I write a book, I lose myself in the world I’m creating so completely, I usually do nothing but sit at my computer—from morning until night—immersed in the characters and stories. I so love being with them and want to see what happens next, I can’t tear myself away. In fact, I now have to plan my life and make sure everything that needs to get done, gets done; everyone whom I need to connect with, I connect with; because for the coming weeks, I’ll check out and struggle to get the laundry done!

Back in the day, regularly, I often didn’t finish books, mostly because I didn’t want to say good-bye. And this is one reason why my characters cross over in different series, just so I can spend time with them.

Although I absolutely “love the ones I’m with,” I will say that only twice did I end a book and feel such longing and loss that I found it difficult to get over. This happened with
At Peace
and also, and maybe especially, with LAW MAN.

I have contemplated why my emotion after completing these books ran so deep. And the answer I’ve come up with is that I so thoroughly enjoyed spending time with heroes who didn’t simply fall in love with their heroines. They fell in love with and built families with their heroines.

In the case of LAW MAN, Mara’s young cousins, Bud and Billie, badly needed a family. They needed to be protected and loved. They needed to feel safe. They needed role models and an education. As any child does. And further, they deserved it. Loyal and loving, I felt those two kids in my soul.

So when Mitch Lawson entered their lives through Mara, and he led Mara to realizations about herself, at the same time providing all these things to Bud and Billie and building a family, I was so deep in that, stuck in the honey of creating a home and a cocoon of love for two really good (albeit fictional) kids, I didn’t want to surface.

I remember standing at the sink doing dishes after putting the finishing touches on that book and being near tears, because I so desperately wanted to spend the next weeks (months, years?) writing every detail in the lives of Mitch, Mara, Bud, and Billie. Bud making the baseball team. Billie going to prom. Mitch giving Bud “the talk” and giving Billie’s friends the stink-eye. Scraped knees. Broken hearts. Homework. Christmases. Thanksgivings. I wanted to be a fly on the wall for it all, seeing how Mitch and Mara took Bud’s and Billie’s precarious beginnings on this Earth and gave them stability and affection, taught them trust, and showed them what love means.

Even now, when I reread LAW MAN, the beginning of the epilogue makes my heart start to get heavy. Because I know it’s almost done.

And I don’t want it to be.

From the desk of Kristen Callihan

Dear Reader,

In SHADOWDANCE, heroine Mary Chase asks hero Jack Talent what it’s like to fly. After all, Jack, who has the ability to shift into any creature, including a raven in
Moonglow
, has cause to know. He tells her that it is lovely.

I have to agree. When I was fifteen, I read Judith Krantz’s
Till We Meet Again
. The story features a heroine named Frederique who loves to fly more than anything on Earth. Set in the 1940s, Freddy eventually gets to fly for the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron in Britain. I cannot tell you how cool I found this. The idea of women not only risking their lives for their country but being able to do so in a job usually reserved for men was inspiring.

So, of course, I had to learn how to fly. Luckily, my dad had been a navigator in the Air Force, which made him much more sympathetic to my cause. He gave me flying lessons as a sixteenth birthday present.

I still remember the first day I walked out onto that small airfield in rural Maryland. It was a few miles from Andrews Air Force Base, where massive cargo planes rode heavy in the sky while fighter jets zipped past. But my little plane was a Cessna 152, a tiny thing with an overhead wing, two seats, and one propeller to keep us aloft.

The sun was shining, the sky cornflower blue, and the air redolent with the sharp smell of aviation gas and motor oil. I was in heaven. Here I was, sixteen, barely legal to drive a car, and I was going to take a plane up in the sky.

Sitting in the close, warm cockpit with my instructor,
I went through my checklist with single-minded determination and then powered my little plane up. I wasn’t nervous; I was humming with anticipation.

Being in a single-engine prop is a sensory experience. The engine buzzes so loud that you need headphones to hear your instructor. The cockpit vibrates, and you feel each and every bump through the seat of your pants as you taxi right to the runway.

It only takes about sixty miles per hour to achieve liftoff, but the sensation of suddenly going weightless put my heart in my throat. I let out a giddy laugh as the ground dropped away and the sky rushed to meet me. It was one of the best experiences of my life.

And all because I read a book.

Now that I am an author, I think of the power in my hands, to transport readers to another life and perhaps inspire someone to try something new. And while Mary and Jack do not take off in a plane—they live in 1885, after all—there might be a dirigible in their future.