Hot Point (17 page)

At the moment she looked…happy.

He turned back to inspect Rainier. The day was calm and the sky clear, but it was early October and the top of the mountain didn't know that it was a nice day below. A massive lenticular cloud, the shape of two contact lenses back to back, loomed ominously above the peak. He'd grown up able to see the mountain creating its own weather systems out the living room window.

Some part of him suspected that the lenticulars were a special warning. High winds, high danger coming. But what portent were they warning him about?

“Do you think he's calmed down enough?” His mother was now close enough behind him for her voice to carry easily over the low rumble of a rusty, blue container ship rounding the point toward Tacoma.

Denise's voice was softer and he had to strain to hear her. “It's not him I'm worried about. It's me.”

“Don't be.” Mom made that comforting “Oooo!” noise she always did while giving someone an especially fierce hug. “Now go talk. I know my own way home.”

* * *

Denise still hesitated. She could feel Vern waiting. He didn't appear angry, though there was only so much you could read from someone's back. She wasn't feeling brave, but she forced her feet across the packed sand and circled the log to sit beside Vern and watch the passing ship.

The silence stretched. At first she felt uncomfortable with it. It took her a while to figure out that Vern was leaving her the space to talk when she was ready. He melted her heart. She leaned over and kissed him on the shoulder. “She's wonderful.”

He nodded his agreement and kept watching the ship heading south, slowly turning his gaze further and further from her.

“Something she passed on to her son.”

“What did you two talk about?”

Denise tried to remember but couldn't. “I'm not sure, really. We talked about my job, her music, my family, yours, the weather. Nothing, really. But it all felt important despite that. I don't know why, but it did.”

That finally broke his attention from the ship and returned it to her. Now that he was facing her, she could see the question that he was holding so carefully inside. Well, so was she.

“Yes. I did say that.” No need to define “that.”

“And?”

“You don't make it easy, do you?”

He offered the slow smile, the goofy one that tugged on one side of his mouth long before the other, but started in his eyes. “I think it would cost me major demerits to speak first. I have to check my manly club ratings-guide under the ‘macho reticence' heading, but I'm sure it's bad.”

“How about doing it for me anyway?” It was a low move, making the guy speak first, but she didn't know what else to do.

“Do I love you?”

She shivered despite the warm sun and her light jacket.

“I'm thinking that I do. Our bodies love each other. There's no question of that.”

“None,” she agreed.

“Every time you come around or even walk by, my mind goes blank and all I can think of is you.”

“Mine goes quiet.”

“Same thing.”

“No, I don't think it is.” She tried to puzzle out how to describe the feeling. “I've spent my whole life trying to be the perfect child. Take care of Dad. Be a person he could be so proud of because I never made a single misstep or mistake. Trying to make up for Mom's death, I guess.” She'd never put it in quite those words, but it rang true.

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“It is. I never noticed it until you.” She reached out and their hands slid together as naturally as if they'd always been that way. “Because my mind was never quiet until I was with you. No guy ever did that for me.”

“Is it a good thing?” There was worry in his voice. Worry because he cared for her?

She looked around her at the water, the mountain, and a seagull soaring silently above them on the light breeze. The setting was idyllic, yet it had probably looked no different in the last decade, or the one before that. Could there be something this stable between them? Beyond that, could
she
be a part of anything that stable? “It's
not
a good thing, Vern. It's the best. I don't know what it means, what I said, but I think you're the first man who can help me figure it out.”

“What you said? You mean that you love me?”

“Yes, you turkey.”

“Good, that's settled.” He stood and pulled her to her feet by their joined hands.

“What's settled?” She stumbled in the sand as he turned and slowly led her back up the beach.

“That we're in love with each other and it's confusing the hell out of both of us.”

“Oh, that?” She sassed him just as he'd been teasing her.

“Yeah, that.”

It thrilled her that she kept finding jokes around Vern, another previously undiscovered piece of herself brought to light by his presence in her life. Even in the span of this supremely strange conversation, the truth had become clearer—as it did whenever they were together.

“I love you, Vern Taylor.”

That ground him to a halt. He turned slowly without releasing her hand.

“Wow.” She hadn't expected the reaction that coursed through her and made her feel as if her feet weren't quite in contact with the earth. “It's quite something to say that out loud.”

“It's quite something to hear it,” he agreed.

“So?”

He didn't sigh. He didn't evade. He leaned down to brush his lips over hers before shifting his mouth to whisper in her ear. “I love you, Denise Conroy.”

It really was quite something to hear.

“I remember it.” Denise had ducked inside the cool dimness of the hangar as soon as Vern had the door cracked open.

Yuri's Bell 47 helicopter was right where he'd left it, huddled in the back of a hangar at Vashon Municipal Airport. It had a large, transparent-plastic bulbous nose and no doors. The bench could seat three in a pinch. The instrument console sported a bare dozen gauges on a stubby pillar between the two pilot positions. It was such a simple machine that nothing more was needed.

The engine was mounted vertically on the back of the cockpit, its driveshaft attached to the rotor blades through a simple centrifugal clutch. The back was an open frame metalwork truss stretching rearward to a tiny two-bladed tail rotor.

If you painted it dull green instead of shining white and attached a pair of stretchers, it would be right out of the
M*A*S*H
television show.

“What did you do to my poor bird?” Denise walked up to pat it on the nose.

Vern laughed. Those were exactly the words that had begun their relationship. “The few, the proud, the heli-aviation firefighter pilots of MHA. We're all in the crapper with you, Wrench.”

“Leave me alone, Slick.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “Go find me some fuel and oil.”

He really was gone on this woman. By the time he tracked down the fuel truck—thankfully Gary kept the keys behind the passenger-side sun visor for locals, she'd popped the small chopper up off its skids onto a set of wheels and scooted the bird out of the hangar where it had been quietly sitting for the year since Yuri died.

Well, he liked her confidence that she'd get it running.

“At least you drained it before storing it. Fill it up.” She was inspecting the logbook. “Another year until the next airframe inspection is due, but I'll go over it anyway before we take it up.”

“As simple as that?”

“It's a Bell 47 with a Lycoming O-435-D, what's to know?”

“Okay, goddess-incarnate mechanic, let's see you do your stuff.”

And she did. Suddenly he was watching Denise the Machine. She of the massive steel barricades had reappeared. But she didn't scare him anymore.

Now he could see that they weren't barricades meant to ward off any who dared approach. They were formed by a focus so intense that there was no way in from the outside. Nothing to do except to wait until she came out from behind there.

So, Vern filled the gas tanks, added oil, and then sat back to watch the show.

She circled the craft, starting at the pilot's door. Somewhere she'd scared up three simple tools: a hammer, a wrench, and a screwdriver. It took her most of an hour to do a full inspection. Then she circled a second time taking mere minutes to perform the preflight inspection.

It was a ballet of grace and brains. No wasted motion, no wasted thought, and not a single detail missed. A tap with a hammer to test soundness of the metal and the welds. They rang true to his ear; they probably sang a symphony to her. A twist of the wrench, and he'd bet she could tell him the tightness of each bolt down to the closest five foot-pounds of torque.

Denise took his breath away. He was a good pilot. But this mechanic-woman was something other, up at a level that he could only imagine. He knew enough to truly appreciate what she was. Not enough to know how or why, but that didn't matter.

“I love you, Denise.” He had to whisper it so that at least he could hear it. He might have said it when they'd curled up in his old bed last night and again when they woke up in each other's arms. But he had to say it.

“Shut up, Slick. You're distracting me.”

“Yes, ma'am. Wrench, sir.” He saluted.

She didn't turn to look, but her giggle reminded him of a lunatic elf.

Then she clambered into the cockpit, opened the throttle, and cranked the engine.

Nothing except the slow, reluctant whoosh of the two long, wooden blades of the rotor turning around once, twice, and then nothing.

She shut off the ignition.

“Same problem I was having.”

Without a comment, she poked around the engine for a few moments. “Crank it.”

He climbed aboard, set the choke and the throttle, and hit the starter.

Nothing. One end of the rotor lumbered by outside the bubble.

More nothing. The other end put in a reluctant appearance.

Then a rough bang of the engine misfiring. On the next lumbering rotation of the blades it caught, fired, and finally ran. He eased the choke as the engine warmed and the rotor began really working its way around with that slow
whoop-whoop
he remembered so well.

She was still fussing with something while the engine smoothed out, and finally it found that solid rumble he knew from hundreds of hours flying this craft when he was still a teenager.

By the time everything had stabilized and warmed up, Denise had clambered into the copilot's seat. She pulled out the log and began making notes about her inspection.

“What did you do?”

“The timing was off. Way off. There's a new rule for as long as we're in a relationship together.”

“I never thought rules were a good way to go.” His parents always simply worked things out as they came up. It had worked for them, and he didn't want to start burdening down this relationship with—

“This rule is a good one. Trust me when I say our future depends on it. Nonnegotiable.”

He clamped down on his tongue, not wanting to snap at her.

“You are hereby forbidden, under any circumstances, to try to fix a helicopter engine, for as long as we're together. That probably goes for a car engine as well, but we'll have to see. Understood? Or else I'm out of here.”

The laugh burst out of him. He hauled her against him, dragged her across the bench seat, and kissed her for as long as he could until their laughter drove them apart.

They buckled in, though he was tempted to shut down the engine and take her right here and right now. The field was empty except for them. He'd tear her clothes off and throw her down on the long cushion and have his way with her.

As a matter of fact…

* * *

Vern pulled the throttle just moments before the rotors reached takeoff speed and killed the dual magnetos.

“What's wrong?” Denise double-checked the gauges, but it all looked good. Or it had. Now everything was winding back down.

She glanced up at Vern's face, but he wasn't looking worried. He was looking right at her—with a heat rising in his eyes that had become gloriously familiar.

She looked out the front plexiglass bubble of the tiny helicopter. The runway stretched out ahead of them; the sky was bright blue and open above.

He wasn't really thinking about…

“No, Vern. No way in—” She mumbled the last word into his mouth when he kissed her.

This was no gentle kiss. It started hot and lustful and went for full burn faster than her heart could skip a beat.

“No.” She couldn't get the breath to even manage his name as he slid her T-shirt off and unsnapped her bra. As protests went, it was a pretty feeble one, totally belied by her body responding to him.

As he tipped her back on the seat, she could see the field was empty, no traffic in the pattern or on short final.

Words were completely beyond her as he attacked her breasts with a need that drew an answer from deep inside her until she could only wrap her arms behind his head and pull him ever harder against her.

Riding the edge that would have turned pleasure to pain, she missed when her pants and underwear went missing.

Naked.

It was her only coherent thought as she looked out at the airport through the broad windshield and spread wide for him on the bench seat. The Bell 47 did not offer a spacious cockpit. Her head was half out one door, barely supported by the edge of the bench; her feet were out the other.

Denise could feel his greedy grin against her even as she rose to him. When he made to move, she reached down and dug her hands into his hair to encourage him to remain precisely where he was.

One leg hooked up along the back of the seat, while the other foot pressed hard against the windshield.

Vern Taylor knocked propriety right out the nonexistent helicopter door. He drove the lists out of her head. He left her no ability to think, no awareness of the outside world. All that he left her was the ability to feel.

It was not a sensation she was used to.

Ever.

When he finally stripped off his own pants and entered her, it was with the perfect timing of a clean engine at the very peak of performance. It wound her higher and higher until his release slammed into her and the only sensations were beyond the physical. All that remained in her awareness was how much she loved this man.

* * *

“Where should we go?”

Denise couldn't form a cogent thought. All she could think of what was what they'd just done. They'd made love beneath a clear bubble of plexiglass on the edge of the runway at a municipal airport, although thankfully not a busy one.

No, this hadn't been making love. This had been hot, mad, brainless sex. This had been skyrockets at night and tidal waves at high noon. This had been two bodies groping, clinging, and consuming until they each cried out in frustration that they couldn't get more.

It was something she'd never had in her life—pure sex with a man she really, really wanted it from. It had been glorious!

Her bones had turned to liquid. Her breasts were sore from where she'd hauled his mouth so hard against them, and her jaw ached from her need to kiss him as deeply as possible again and again and again.

“Hey, Wrench. Straighten out your clothes. It's time to go.”

Straighten out her clothes? She wasn't wearing any. Except one lone sock.

Vern was already dressed and looking awesome, totally cat-who-ate-the-canary. Men had it so easy: jeans, T-shirt, shove a hand through his short hair, and put on a smile. Done.

While she was still here with her one lone sock, sprawled like a wanton in the impossibly small cockpit. There was no way there'd been room here to make love, yet they had. Sweaty palm prints and a couple of footprints on the inside of the plexiglass bubble stood testament to the fact that, oh man, they'd managed it big-time.

Clothes. Right. She shimmied her pants back on and shoved her feet into her sneakers, once she found her second sock. Her panties had gone missing in action. As Vern was already cranking the engine, she snapped the seat belt around her waist before reaching down to retrieve her bra and shirt from the floor.

Vern had the chopper aloft before she'd arranged either one.

“Vern! I'm still naked over here.”

“Half-naked. Looks great on you. Have I mentioned what amazing breasts you have, Wrench?”

She was half-naked, flying through the midmorning sky over Vashon Island in a giant glass bubble, and he was teasing her. Well, she certainly hadn't signed up for boring or expected to get it with Vern. Instead she felt full of smiles.

Once she was dressed reasonably well, she wondered what state her hair was in and decided it was better not to know. She stuck her head out the open doorway into the edge of the slipstream, letting it flutter her hair into some semblance of order, and then grabbed it at the base of her skull and went for a plain but messy ponytail.

“How about Boeing Field?”

“What about Boeing Field?”

“Your dad works there, doesn't he?”

“Over at the museum. He's the curator.”

“Curator? Wow! Well, I have a question to ask him.” And he got on the radio to Boeing Field tower before she had a chance to protest. It was only a five-minute flight from Vashon Island.

She rubbed at her lips, sure they were swollen. And tried to finger-comb her ponytail, but it was a lost cause. She would look exactly as she was, a woman who had just been immensely satisfied by her lover.

That left her to consider what question he might be asking of her father. She was still trying to wrestle with the concepts of relationship and love.

If Vern hit her dad with the
M
-word question, she'd hit Vern with a wrench for real.

A brief flash of pink caught her eye. She was too slow to grab her panties. They blew out the open doorway and began fluttering down toward the houses below.

* * *

“So, Mr. Conroy.” He, Denise, and her father had met at the glass-door entrance to the museum. The old chopper, now parked out front, would fit right in the collection here.

“Dale.” He was a graying man in his fifties, though he looked older. Still in pretty good shape though.

“Thanks.” Vern tried not to feel daunted by the combination of him being Denise's father and the museum's curator. What a cool job! “So, Dale, I've got a question for you.”

“Fire away.” He guided them in and waved them past the ticket counter.

Vern could see Denise's face flash through an impressive series of colors. First sheet white from terror about what he was going to ask.

“Denise was telling me how she practically grew up here at the museum.”

“After her mother passed, yes. The school bus would drop her off right out front. The museum staff and I sort of raised her together.”

“Well, I think she came out amazingly wonderful.”

Denise's face was now shifting to a shade of red that warned of approaching fury. It wasn't something he'd known she was capable of. He'd rather not find out what that was like. She was so sweet to the core that she might blow a gasket or something if she became truly angry.

“The way I figure it…” He waved his hand at the main exhibit hall of airplanes for the Museum of Flight but kept his eye on Denise. She was sliding back toward sheet white. “I figure…” Vern decided if he dragged it out much more, she probably would do him bodily harm. “There have to be some great stories about a little girl who grew up to be the best mechanic I've ever met. I'd love to hear some of them.”