TheBillionairesPilot (9 page)

Regret, maybe guilt, was what he’d seen
in her eyes. He waited to see if she would say more.

“I left for selfish reasons,” she said
softly.

And he felt selfish for being glad she
had
left. Otherwise, he would never have had the opportunity to meet her, and he
was very much enjoying getting to know her. She was smart and funny, principled
and determined…and she knew how to defend herself. The dull ache in his head
reminded him of that. Absently, he rubbed at the small lump as he watched her
seem to struggle with her next words.

Finally, she continued, “I was shot in
the leg.”

Evan’s chest constricted, and he had to
force himself to keep breathing. “You were shot?” He remembered seeing the scar
on her thigh at the pool, and his gut tightened.

“It wasn’t life threatening,” she quickly
added. “After I healed, I was cleared for active duty, but it changed me. I saw
how easily I could lose my ability to fly, and I couldn’t bear to be
permanently grounded.” She looked up at him, her fragility softening her eyes.
“I was selfish. I left because I couldn’t imagine my life without flying. If I
wasn’t a pilot, I’d be nothing.”

“That doesn’t sound selfish,” he
reassured her. “That sounds like you weren’t ready to give up what you loved.”
The echo of his mother telling him something similar about his racing days
sounded in his mind, but his situation wasn’t nearly the same as Cassie’s.

“I left my buddies in the field,” she
said, her tone suddenly sharp with self-contempt.

“After serving eight years alongside
them,” he pointed out. “You shed blood for your country. Isn’t that enough
sacrifice?” He’d left his parents and his family obligations for
more
than eight years to pursue his hobby, and no sacrifice had been required of
him. If anyone deserved to be self-loathing, it was he, whereas Cassie deserved
praise and gratitude for putting her life on the line for her country.

Cassie diverted her gaze from his and
appeared to stare out the window again, as if to avoid him and put an end to
this painful conversation about her service record.

“I appreciate your willingness to fly
with me to Texas,” she said, changing the topic.

Suddenly, he realized the truth of the
moment. “I’d want to be here for you even if we weren’t pretending to be
engaged.”

She turned swiftly to face him. “Don’t,”
she said curtly.

Puzzled, he asked, “Don’t what?”

“Please don’t make this personal,” she
spoke slowly, enunciating each word.

“Cassie, haven’t we been around this
corner already? There’s obviously a strong mutual attraction between us.” He
didn’t get why she was fighting it. The woman was driving him crazy with her
denials. “Why can’t we enjoy our attraction while we act out this engagement?”
At this point, he didn’t even care if she was submissive or not. He just wanted
to be able to act on this chemistry between them.

“I thought you said you were a good
listener, but you obviously weren’t listening when I said I won’t—I
can’t—get involved with my boss on a personal level.” Her volume rose
with her last few words.

He checked his impulse to look over his
shoulder to see if Dan was eavesdropping. Evan had filled his assistant in on
his fake engagement arrangement with Cassie, explicitly stating the
relationship was platonic. But if Dan heard Cassie now, it would sound like
Evan was pressuring her into doing something she didn’t want to do. He
definitely didn’t want to give Dan that impression. Evan was having a hard
enough time as it was, trying to live up to his father’s image. He didn’t need
to add “harasser of women” to his list of finer attributes.

“I heard you say it,” he said in a calm
voice, “but I don’t understand it. I’m not Trent.”

Her eyes widened as he said the name, as
if he wouldn’t remember the name of the bastard who had obviously treated her
like crap. Again, Evan had the strong urge to slam his fist into the other
man’s jaw. Maybe they’d take a detour through Chicago on their way back to New
York, he mused.

“I’m not looking to add another notch to
my bedpost,” he clarified to Cassie.

“Then what are you looking for?”

“The opportunity to learn more about
you.”

“Why?” she asked suspiciously.

“Because you interest me.” And it was
true. The more he got to know Cassie, the more he genuinely liked her. He wanted
to explore this relationship fully.

Her fresh sensuality was keeping him in a
permanent semi-hard state, but that wasn’t the only thing that drew him to her.
He liked her groundedness; too many women he met on the social circuit were
flighty and only cared about shopping and partying. Cassie obviously had real
world experiences that gave her a much different perspective on the important
things in life, which he’d had to learn the hard way by losing his father.

He didn’t see why he and Cassie couldn’t
use this time together to develop an honest friendship…with benefits. But for
some reason, she kept throwing up barriers between them, and that just made him
more determined to solve the riddle named Cassie.

Chapter Nine

Cassie
slipped the huge diamond off her finger as she sat in the back of the hired
limo taking her and Evan to her dad’s house. She studied the ring in her palm
as she considered a safe place to put it. Maybe Evan would rather hold it for
her; she glanced up at him.

With a raised eyebrow, he asked, “What
are you doing?”

Being so close to him with his clean,
spicy-citrus scent made it hard to concentrate. She forced herself to focus on
the current situation. “I can’t announce our engagement to my dad yet.”

“You’d better plan to do it soon,” he
warned. “The media is going to be all over it when we get back to New York.
Dan’s probably got the press statement already finalized.”

Her heart rate sped up, and her gaze
darted to the closed privacy window between them and the driver. She lowered
her voice. “Mr. Jacobs wouldn’t publicize it without our approval, would he?”

After their plane had landed, Mr. Jacobs
had taken a taxi to a nearby hotel to give Evan and Cassie privacy to meet her
father. She didn’t know what was on the assistant’s agenda. Had Evan given him
instructions to make the announcement?

“No, Dan won’t say anything until I tell
him to do so,” Evan reassured her. “But we have to make it public soon. Xavier
will be waiting for the validation.”

Staring at the sparkling ring in her
palm, she shook her head. “How am I going to explain any of this?” she said
more to herself than Evan.

“What do you mean?”

She looked up at him. “My dad knows I
just started this new job on Thursday. How do I explain how far our
relationship has gone in three days?”

“Love at first sight,” Evan offered with
a cocky grin.

She held back on the unladylike snort
that threatened. “Right. Not going to fly. I also have to explain why my boss
is traveling with me and why I went to San Miguel with him for the weekend.”

Evan shrugged one shoulder. “That last
part is easy, and it’s the truth. I needed a female employee to accompany me on
a business trip.”

She frowned at him. “And you think that’s
going to sound good to my father?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“No.” She glanced out the window at the
familiar scenery passing by.

Her father had been living in this
neighborhood for eight years—his last three years of service, plus the
five years since he’d retired. It was the longest he’d lived anywhere during
Cassie’s lifetime, and it felt like the closest thing she had to a hometown,
even though she’d never lived here with him. Now that his health was poor, it
was an extra bonus to have Aunt Marge living just thirty minutes away with her
husband in Rockport.

At the sight of Cassie’s favorite corner
ice cream shop, her pulse raced. “We’re running out of time.” She turned back
to Evan. “Are you sure we can’t just tell him the truth?”

Adamantly, Evan shook his head.
“Absolutely not. I can’t risk it until I get the contracts finalized with
Xavier.”

Resigned to lying to her father, but
still hating it, she said, “Okay, we’ll have to use the same backstory we came
up with for Xavier.”

“We met through mutual friends at a
concert, right?”

“Uh, yeah. But my dad knows I haven’t made
any new friends since coming to New York.”

“I thought you said you and your dad were
estranged.”

“We’re not as close as we used to be, but
we still talk regularly.”

Evan inclined his head. “Okay, forget the
mutual friend introduction. We’ll keep it simple. You were at the concert. I
was at the concert. We met in line, buying a beer. We’ve been getting to know
each other for a while, but I didn’t tell you I was the owner of the company
you were interviewing for.”

“Leave that last part out,” she instructed.

“Why?”

“Because it borders on deception.
Integrity is important to my father, to any soldier, which is what makes this
whole situation…”

“Painful for you.”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

Evan reached for her hand, entwining
their fingers. “I really appreciate what you’re sacrificing for me and the
company.”

She studied their linked hands. If only
their engagement was real, she would willingly face her father’s disapproval
about the quickness of the timing. She glanced up at Evan’s earnest expression.

Even though she’d acted so badly toward
him last night, he had forgiven her and been extremely supportive since she’d
received the news about her father’s trip to the hospital. Evan had shown her
in many ways that he was, indeed, different from her last boss.

She studied his handsome face. Yeah, she
could see herself wanting to spend every day for the rest of her life with this
man, so maybe love at first sight really did exist.

Evan watched her as she pulled her hand
free from his and slipped the ring back on her finger. The engagement might be
fake, but her budding feelings weren’t, and she knew he desired her too, after
their incendiary kisses last night. Of course, her emotions went beyond desire.
She admired the man inside, in addition to his outer appearance.

She might be repeating the same mistake
by falling for her boss, but Evan was not Trent, as he’d reminded her on the
plane. In fact, she couldn’t imagine two men more dissimilar in terms of values
and character.

She lifted her hand and watched the light
reflect in the diamonds. “It was fast, but we knew right away we’d each found
the one we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with.” She hesitated before
meeting Evan’s gaze. Had she given away too much of the truth?

He regarded her with his dark eyes.
“Yeah, sometimes it happens that way.” With a gentle graze, his finger brushed
a stray hair off of her cheek.

Her skin heated at his touch, and her
gaze dropped to his lips.

He leaned down as she stretched up to
meet him. Their kiss started soft and slow, almost like it was their first
contact, as if they were just getting to know each other. Maybe it was because
this was their first kiss that wasn’t ensnared in the web of lies of their fake
engagement. This was their first kiss that felt honest. Not that the lusty ones
hadn’t been honest, but this one seemed like it was just between the two of
them, no games, no pretenses.

Evan whispered against her lips.
“Cassie?”

“Yeah,” she breathed out.

“Stop thinking and kiss me.”

Her lips curled up in a smile as she
focused her attention on the man before her. She dragged her fingers through
his hair and tugged him closer, giving him deeper access when she parted her
lips to his exploring tongue.

His body was hard and powerful as they
pressed against each other in the limo’s backseat, but he touched her so
gently, so reverently. She felt precious and feminine in his arms, and her
female parts were heating at the idea of exploring more of Evan’s masculinity.
She ran her hand down the front of his shirt, enjoying the feel of his solid
muscles under her fingertips. She was tempted, oh so tempted, to investigate
the lower half of him.

“Mr. Mitchell,” the driver’s voice over
the car speaker snapped Cassie back to reality. “We’re one block from our
destination.”

Cassie dropped her arms from around Evan
and looked out of the window. They were within a minute of seeing her father.
Quickly, she ran her fingers through her hair and grabbed the compact mirror
out of her purse to check her lipstick. It wouldn’t be good to show up at her
father’s house looking like she’d been making out in the backseat of a car,
even if it were true.

Evan chuckled softly at her side.

She spared him a quick glance. “What?”

He grinned. “You are such a girl.”

She didn’t know whether to be offended or
not. “Was there ever a doubt I wasn’t a female?”

Chuckling louder, he shook his head. “You
have so many pieces to your personality I don’t think I’ll ever solve the whole
puzzle.”

She sent him an answering grin. “A woman
likes to be a little mysterious.”

“Definitely a riddle to be figured out,”
he agreed as the car pulled to a stop in front of Cassie’s father’s house.

The white clapboard bungalow appeared a
little worn around the edges. The front porch looked like it hadn’t had its
regular paint job in a few years, and the top step was listing to the left. Her
chest ached at the outward signs of her dad’s declining health because if he
were feeling fit, he’d never allow the house to deteriorate like this.

Her palms grew sweaty at the prospect of
introducing Evan to her dad.

“Can the driver wait here with our bags
for a little while?” she asked Evan. “I don’t want to overwhelm my dad. He
might not feel like having overnight guests, and we might be more comfortable
staying at a hotel,” she rambled out.

Evan laid a warm hand on her knee. “It’s
fine, Cassie. Whatever you think is best.”

“Thanks,” she breathed out her relief.

When the driver opened the back door, she
stepped out and drew in a lungful of the dry, clean air of Texas. She took a
moment to appreciate the setting sun on the distant horizon of the wide-open
sky. Nowhere in the world could compare to the pinks, purples, oranges, and
reds of a Texas sunset.

After another deep breath to settle her
nerves, she turned to Evan. “Ready for this?”

“It’ll be okay, Cassie,” Evan offered his
reassurance.

“We’ll see,” she said then headed up the
porch steps with Evan following her. She knocked on the front door and listened
for sounds of her dad inside the house.

“Coming,” his gravelly voice called out,
filling her with gratitude that she was here. She’d missed him so much.

The deadbolt slid open with a click. Then
she was finally face-to-face with her dad in the open doorway. Tears threatened
as she absorbed the signs of aging in the grey pallor of his skin, the deep
creases around his eyes and mouth, and the stoop of his shoulders. She couldn’t
believe how much he’d aged since her visit at Christmas, just four months ago.

“Hi, Dad.” She took a step forward,
craving the feel of his arms around her.

He held himself rigid. “I told your Aunt
Marge you didn’t need to come. I’m fine.”

She halted her steps, keeping her arms at
her sides. “I know, but I wanted to see you for myself.”

“I’m fine,” he repeated as his eyes
shifted to stare at the man behind her. “Who’s this?”

She half-turned towards Evan. “Dad, this
is my f-fiancé.” She only stumbled a little over the introduction.

“Fiancé?” her dad practically growled.
“How long have you been seeing him? You never told me you were serious about a
man. Hell, you never even mentioned you’d been dating since you got to New
York.”

Cassie bit her lip, working up the
courage to present the falsehoods of her relationship.

Evan stepped forward with his right hand
extended. “Mr. Maynard—”

“That’s Master Chief Maynard,” her dad
interrupted.

Oh God, he was going full Navy mode on
Evan.

“My apologies, Master Chief,” Evan
smoothed over. “I’m Evan Mitchell. It’s an honor to meet you.”

Her dad glared at Evan’s extended hand
for a moment before he reluctantly grasped it and gave it a firm shake. Cassie
was impressed when Evan didn’t grimace at the squeeze she was sure her dad had
given as a message. It was always this way when she brought home a new
boyfriend. She should have warned Evan, but she’d had too much on her mind.

“Well, you’re here,” her dad rasped. “You
might as well come in for a bit.” He turned to lead them into the living room
to the left. Over his shoulder, he asked, “How long are you here for?”

Cassie didn’t need a cipher to decode her
dad’s signals. He didn’t want her and Evan staying with him. “We’re just
stopping by for a quick visit, Dad. We have to get back to New York soon.” She
sat with Evan on the worn plaid sofa, across from her dad’s favorite leather
recliner.

“Mitchell, you said?” Her dad looked at
Evan before turning his gaze on her. “Didn’t you just start a job with Mitchell
Industries?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes, I’m Evan’s
helicopter pilot.” Simple and truthful, she could do this.

“You hired your fiancée?” Dad asked Evan.

Cassie heard the censure in his voice.
Her father hated nepotism.

“Yes, sir. She was the best candidate for
the position,” Evan replied, obviously he was sticking to simple answers as
well.

“So, when the hell did this whole
engagement business happen?” her dad demanded.

“I know it’s sudden, Dad, but it just
felt right,” Cassie said before Evan gave away too many incriminating details.