White Heat (14 page)

B
efore heading to the airport, they picked up Tom so he’d be able to drive the Jeep home, and the three of them rode off into the night in comfortable silence.

At the airstrip, Tom got out, took a long inhale. “Smoke’s down already.” He came around and took Lyndie’s hands. His wizened face creased into an easy smile, his long ponytail of silver hair gleaming in the moonlight. “Thank you.”

“For what? Using up all the gas in your Jeep?”

“For lots of things. For not taking Nina.”

She knew how much Tom still loved this old village as if he’d been born here, knew how he thought everyone loved it as much as he. “I didn’t want her to run away from here because she’s getting antsy,” she said. “I wanted her to work it out with you.”

“She’s going to stay.”

“Tom.” She shook her head, cupped his jaw. “We all know,
you’re
meant to be here. You love the slower, laid-back lifestyle, the isolation, the wilderness…but it’s not for everyone. There’s not much available to Nina. She’s young, she wants to get out, she wants excitement, she wants to spread her wings.”

“I just want her to spread those wings close to me.”

“Yeah, well, she has other ideas, and my not taking her isn’t going to stop her.”

“What could she possibly want that’s not right here?” he asked, baffled, lifting his hand, gesturing around him in the dark night to the mountains, the quaint town they couldn’t see…everything.

Lyndie lifted a shoulder. “She might not know until she finds it. You had to go find it, remember?”

Tom let out a sad smile. “You know, she said the same damn thing. And I’m still not ready to hear it.” Turning away, he reached into the back of the Jeep to help Griffin with his bags.

Lyndie left them there to go see to her plane. She’d paid Julio to fuel her up and watch over her favorite piece of steel on earth. She’d added his favorite bottle of booze to guarantee he’d done just that.

He must have liked the booze, because he’d also washed the plane until the white wings gleamed. “Hey, baby.” She patted the bottom of the wing as she opened the door. She didn’t like that the plane hadn’t been locked up, and would mention it to Julio, but since there wasn’t anyone around who could pilot it out of here anyway, she supposed there wasn’t much to worry about.

She climbed in and looked with pleasure at the clean floor, the shiny windows. At the pilot’s seat…and the small ball of fluff curled up there.

“You take.”

Lyndie turned and found Julio looking at her from beneath his low cap. In his dark, dark bloodshot eyes was an expectant expression. She laughed, at both the expectation and the way he insisted on using broken English simply because he liked the language. “No. No way. Even if I had more booze for you, I’m not taking a damn cat.”

He got the gist of that statement whether he understood every word or not. No was no in both their languages. So was the emphatic shake of her head that she added.

Julio merely lifted a shoulder and walked slowly away, vanishing into the night.

Without taking the kitten.

“Hey!” she called out to him. “Come back here, I can’t just take this flea-ball—”

“Mew.”

She let out a long breath and stared at the thing. It was all white except for a black spot on its nose and one ear. Well, not white exactly, more like the color of a white T-shirt freshly washed with a dark sock.”Shoo.”

The kitten blinked the bluest eyes she’d ever seen—with the exception of one Griffin Moore—and didn’t budge.

“Shoo,” she repeated, and added a little wave of her hand.

The tiny kitten hunched into the farthest corner of the seat, looking terrified even as it hissed at her.

Ah, hell. “Look, I’m not the bad guy here. I just don’t take stowaways.”

Griffin climbed aboard. “What’s this? Yours?”

“Nope.” Hands on her hips, she stared at the kitten, who was beginning to resemble a pain in her ass. “I’ve got to give this thing back to Julio before we go.”

“He just left in the oldest truck on the planet.”

“Then Tom can take it—” Scooping up the kitten, she jumped out of the plane and strode toward the Jeep. Tom was leaning against it, and when he saw her, he straightened.

“Lyndie, have I told you that you were a godsend this weekend?”

“I was. And now you owe me. I need you to take this kitten—”

“Whoa—” Tom lifted both his hands and flattened himself against the Jeep. “Allergic. Deathly allergic.”

“You are kidding me.”

He sneezed dramatically, then three more times in quick succession.

“Okay, okay,” she muttered, pulling the kitten back against her. “Damn it.”

Tom sneezed once more, then slid into his Jeep. “Sorry. See you next week, with that dentist for the kids, right?”

“Right.” She stared down at the kitten.

The kitten with the laser beam eyes stared right back.

Tom roared off into the night, and she sighed. “I don’t like cats.”

The kitten showed her tiny teeth and hissed again. For added measure, the little thing displayed its brand-spanking-new and needlelike claws, right before she dug them into Lyndie’s chest.

“Hey!” She tried to pry the thing loose but the kitten had quite a grip on her tank top and didn’t appear to have any inclination to let go. She pulled harder, and beneath her fingers, she could feel the ribs of the kitten, which went a long way toward squelching her urge to toss it into the air. “You’re starving,” she said, and felt her heart sink.

“You’re not going to leave it here, are you?”

She stared into those light blue feline eyes and then turned to look into another pair of blue eyes, these filled with complicated human emotions she didn’t know what to do with. “But how can I just take it?”

“I don’t know.” Griffin stroked the kitten beneath its chin. “But it’s going to be interesting to watch you decide, either way.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you, Lyndie Anderson, have a little commitment issue.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

He looked amused. “Are you telling me you’re not reserved to an extreme? That you don’t like to pretend you have no one in your life, when in fact you’re close to—and loved—by several people that I know of?”

Rolling her eyes, Lyndie brushed past Griffin and got into the plane. She set the kitten down on a seat, and was hissed at again for her trouble. “Okay, listen up,” she told it. “I’m the boss here. Rip those seats with your claws and you’re Dead Kitty Walking.”

“That’s so adorable,” Griffin said. “You’re bonding already.”

“Shut up.”

With a grin, he brushed against her back as he came closer. For a beat he settled his big hands on her shoulders, his mouth at her ear. “I love it when you sweet talk.”

At his touch, she shivered, but kept staring at the cat. “It’s half starving, you know.”

“Yes.”

“It’s just begging to be eaten by some nosy coyote the moment I take off.”

“If you were going to leave it here, yes.”

“Fine.”
She tossed up her hands. “It can come. But don’t tell Nina, she’ll be even more pissed I said no to her and yes to this fleabag.”

“Ah. Too many strings on your heart.” He nodded. “That’s what you’re worried about. You might have to talk, laugh, have a good time, even…open up.”

“I laugh plenty, not that it’s any of your business. And I don’t know what you’re griping about, I’m taking you, aren’t I?”

“You’re getting paid to take me.”

She stared at him. “You make it sound so…so missionary.”

“No, you do that all on your own.”

His eyes were fathomless now, revealing nothing, and that he could do that at all made her mad, made her want to reach him, want to know what he was thinking. “Yes, this is my job. Some of us don’t have the luxury of not working for an entire year,” she said.

Turning away at that, he scooped up the kitten she’d dumped. “We’d better go.”

Right. She started to pass him but he was holding the silly little kitten against his big body, stroking it until the thing had closed its eyes in ecstasy, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“What?” he asked.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re thinking something.”

Yeah, she was thinking. She was thinking a lot of things, starting with the fact that he did something to her insides.

In fact, he turned her inside out.

Deciding that was a bad thing, she plopped into her seat, slammed on her headphones and sent him a cool glance. “I was thinking this is where I come on and say ‘have a nice flight.’”

“It is going to be nice, isn’t it?”

At the slight unease in his voice, she smiled grimly. “Nervous?”

“When you smile like that, hell yeah. Who taught you to fly?”

“My grandfather. Air Force lifer. He taught me everything I know.”

“Is that why you’re such a softie?”

Her smile widened. “You know it. I’m a living example of what happens when a girl gets raised by a tough officer.”

He didn’t smile back. “What happened to the rest of your family, Lyndie?”

She shrugged. “My parents died when I was four. My grandfather took me on. And flying was how we bonded. Do check your seat belt. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

“Lyndie—”

“Just going over procedure.”

“You’re trying to avoid talking serious.”

“Yep.”

“All right.” He looked at her for a long moment. “How about we forget procedure and I come over there and kiss you stupid?”

She laughed.
“What?”

“Yeah, you’re always really nice to me after I kiss you stupid.”

“You have
never
kissed me stupid.”

He lifted a brow.

“You haven’t.”

“Is that a dare?”

“No.”
God, no.
“Look, Ace, no one…kisses me like that.”

“No one?”

“No one.”

She ignored his knowing expression and began her takeoff. Always she’d been able to clear her mind, but now she found herself thinking about what he’d just said. About how good his mouth was, how he could indeed render her idiotic with just a kiss.

Damn him.

“Lyndie—”

“No. I don’t want to talk about it.” Shifting in her seat a little, the silent sexual current between them making her itchy, she told herself it was all in her imagination.

She told herself that every time she glimpsed at him during the flight; every time he sent her one of those Griffin Moore looks, making her itch all over again.

T
hey landed in San Diego. A lineman helped Lyndie tie the plane down, and he did so with a sweet, eager, pathetic smile that made Griffin want to tell the poor guy not to waste his time.

Lyndie Anderson was immune to such things. Hell, she was barely human.

Only he knew that wasn’t true. He’d seen firsthand how much she did for others, he’d felt her melt in his arms. She
was
human, extremely human…and extremely tough.

Had it been losing her family so young? Being raised by her apparently equally tough grandfather? For all that Griffin had lost last year, he had a solid foundation of love. He knew about friendships and family and trusting people.

Lyndie, apparently, did not.

He could try to give her some of that, could be her friend, let her trust him. It wouldn’t be a hardship, he liked her, very much. Affection would be easy, so would a physical relationship…maybe it could even grown to more, far more.

But he didn’t trust his own emotions at the moment. He didn’t know if his feelings for her were real, or if he was just waking up after a year of emotional shutdown. He knew he wanted her physically. God, he wanted her physically.

But that was lust. Lust wasn’t close to love…And no matter how he spun it, did he really want to coax her out of her shell, coax her into opening her heart to him, into starting something serious until he knew what was in his own heart?

He couldn’t, it was too unfair.

He followed her through customs, the airport too noisy and chaotic to talk, not that Lyndie looked in a mood to talk by the fact that she didn’t look at him and walked so fast he could hardly keep up with her.

When he got outside, Brody was there waiting for him, hands in his pockets, hair blowing in the middle of the night breeze. Griffin sighed as Brody asked, “How was the flight?”

He still had butterflies in his stomach from the landing, which he suspected Lyndie had taken so roughly just to see him turn green. She seemed to like him green.

It was the only time she was nice to him, though nice as it pertained to Lyndie was a relative term. He turned to glance back for a glimpse of her at the exact same moment she came outside with a cat carrier she’d gotten in customs. She brushed past him. “See ya, Ace.”

See ya? He’d waited for her, and she was just going to…walk away?

Since she kept moving, he assumed so.

Curious at the odd light in his brother’s eyes as he stood there on the sidewalk outside the terminal, Brody moved closer. “Hey. You okay?”

Griffin growled some sort of unintelligible answer as he watched a woman—a hot, curvy little thing in a leather bomber jacket and short fiery auburn hair—stalk away.

“Who’s that?” Brody asked with interest.

“My pilot.” Griffin’s voice suggested sheer frustration and bafflement—common emotions when it came to women in Brody’s opinion.

She might have kept walking if Griffin hadn’t surged forward, snagging her arm to hold her still, leaning in to say something Brody couldn’t quite catch.

The woman pulled free, and then stalked off as if Griffin had made her so mad she could hardly contain herself.

Brody understood the sentiment, he’d been there, done that with him himself many times, but still…very interesting.

Silent and brooding, Griffin came back to Brody’s side.

Oh, yes,
very
interesting, Brody decided. Before coming here, he’d snooped around in the small house his brother had rented all year, and had discovered not a single personal tie. Not a phone number of a friend, or any evidence that Griffin had contact with anyone.

And yet something had jolted him back to the land of the living the past few days. Despite the deafening silence, there was a spark of life in his brother’s eyes. Granted, it was temper, but a spark was a spark, and Brody would take what he could get. “Your pilot?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s hot.”

“No. Yes. Damn it,
no.
”

“Do I need to reteach you
everything
?”

Griffin growled, and Brody laughed. Then he reached out for his brother. “God, it’s good to see you.” Knowing full well he risked being strangled, he hugged him.

Griffin endured it for a moment, then pushed away and started walking—in the opposite direction as the hot pilot had gone.

With a grin, Brody followed. “So, you had a good time?”

“Where did you park?”

“I bet she was able to take your mind off getting back on the job, right?”

“Brody, tell me which way to go or I’m going to call a cab.”

“Hey, I’m just making small talk here.”

“Screw small talk. Get me the hell out of here.”

Yep, definitely back amongst the living, which could hurt like hell, he had to admit. “Does she kiss as hot as she looks?”

Fists clenched, Griffin whirled around, and Brody laughed, joy filling him. “You’re really back. Christ, I missed you.”

“I was only gone for two days.”

“I missed you for a year. A whole damn year. Tell me you’re not going to vanish on me again. On us again.”

Griffin started into the night lit by the lights and sounds of traffic, jaw clenched. “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do…” He let out a breath and looked him in the eye. “But I won’t vanish again.”

Brody’s throat went tight with relief, and he nodded. To give them both a moment, they watched the pretty pilot cross the street, heading toward the parking lot. “Don’t you want to thank her?”

“For what? Driving me crazy for two days?”

“For bringing that life to your eyes. What else did she bring life to?”

“Brody?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

Brody laughed. Oh yeah, it was good to have him back.

Riiiiiip.

At the sound, Lyndie woke and sat straight up. “What the hell—”

She blinked the room into view. Small bedroom, plain with white walls, white comforter, pine wood floor. The sound of waves crashing and the scent of salty air came in the open windows.

She was home in Del Mar, in Sam’s guesthouse, which she rented for a song. She’d been back for two full days, so this shouldn’t have surprised her, but sometimes she traveled around so much she forgot where she was when she woke up.

It was barely seven in the morning, but apparently the breeze had made the curtains flutter, which in turn had turned the kitten into a wild thing, as he was currently swinging from them.

Hence the ripping sound as his claws tore into the material.

“Damn it.” Surging to her feet, she tried to liberate him, but was rewarded with a long hiss as the little ears went flat back against his head.

“Feeling’s mutual, tough guy.” She lifted him up, looking him in the eye. “Rule number one, no noise before eight a.m. Rule number two, no swinging from the curtains, they’re not even mine.”

She deposited him on the floor. “Rule three,
stay out of trouble.
”

Made for trouble, the kitten went scampering off. She should have left him in the cat carrier the airport had forced her to purchase to transport the animal. She looked around her. There were piles of clothes here and there that she hadn’t had time to take care of. She tended to run into Target and just buy more underwear rather than actually do laundry. As for other personal effects, she hadn’t collected anything of her own for the place in all the time she’d been here. Because of that, there wasn’t much else for the kitten to destroy, which actually wasn’t a comfort.

When had this place gotten so sterile?

But she already knew the answer to that. Every single place she’d ever lived in had been sterile, starting with the military houses she’d inhabited with her grandfather. She’d gotten real good at keeping only what she could easily pack into a suitcase when it was time to go.

Oh well, all that mattered now was that she had a few days to herself. She could clean out her refrigerator. Scratch that, it was already empty. Hmm…She could call Sam and see if he’d give her an extra shift, but she’d already made a big deal about having a few days off, so that was no good.

She could…hell, she could count ceiling tiles if she wanted, but a better idea came to her. She’d go lie on the beach and watch the waves. That should take up an hour. Maybe she’d even swim, and use up some of this restless energy she couldn’t seem to shake. Tugging off the T-shirt she’d slept in, she pulled on her bathing suit, grabbed a towel, and headed for the door, stopping only when she realized she was being watched.

The kitten from hell lay on the floor, chewing a perfectly good leather flat, watching her from those laser blue eyes.

“Hey,” she said. “Those are mine!”

“Mew.”

“I’ll ‘mew’ you.” Grabbing the ruined shoe from between his paws, she waggled it in his face. “This is a direct violation of the rules.”

Unconcerned, he lifted a paw and began to wash his face.

“Fine.” Giving up, she tossed down her shoe. “But I’m outta here.”

At that, he stopped licking himself and looked at her.

“Don’t even try to give me that look. I’ll be right back. Don’t destroy a thing while I’m gone, you hear me?”

The spawn of Satan merely yawned.

Stepping outside, she slammed her door closed. She turned away from the big house—Sam’s—which had 10,000 square feet of fancy rooms and fancy things that always made her feel like a bull in a china shop—and headed toward the beach. Del Mar was one of those awe-inspiring places where people spent far too much money on their houses in order to have this incredible view of blue, blue ocean and a sky so bright she needed her sunglasses to look at it.

The other night haunted her, she could admit out here in the early day as she walked the pebbly path to the sand, with the fog kissing the beach. She didn’t like the way she and Griffin had parted, but she couldn’t figure out why it mattered. She’d told herself she had her own life to worry about.

And yet today, her own life seemed…empty.

The way she’d lived had been her own choice. She could have made changes along the way, but she hadn’t. Now she was alone on the beach as she’d wanted, and that worked too. No one to care about, no one to lose.

With a restless sigh, she sat and hugged her knees to her chest.

“Wow, look at that, you
can
relax.” Sam’s long legs appeared at her side. “Should take a picture of this,” he said. “No, wait, scratch the picture.” Hunkering at her side, he smiled into her face. “Because you’re the only person I know who can kick back while wearing such a fierce frown.” He sprawled his lanky body on the sand next to her and stretched out. “Oh, yeah, this is good. Should have been a beach bum.”

With his shoulder-length, sun-streaked blond hair and a rangy build suggesting he was ten years younger than his thirty-five, he’d have made a good one. Plus she’d seen him surf after a long day in his office. He looked perfectly at home in the waves. Actually, he always looked at home.

A feat she’d never managed. But then again she hadn’t been born bored, with a silver spoon in her mouth and more family than she knew what to do with.

Sam hadn’t had many bumpy roads in his life, but he was one of those startlingly well adjusted people who just wanted to give back. And he did, in spades. He gave everything to Hope International, and all he asked for in return was the occasional hour to surf when the conditions suited him.

She wished her life could be so simple.

“What is it?” He cocked his head. “What’s making you so sad?”

“I’m not.”

“Well you’re something.” He nudged her shoulder with his. “You’ve been something ever since you came back from Mexico two days ago. What happened down there, anyway?”

“Nothing.”

“Uh huh.” He eyed her. “That was the most defensive nothing I’ve ever heard. Did you have a problem with the volunteer you flew down?”

She stared at the waves. They were good today, four- to six-footers.

“The firefighter…Griffin Moore, right?”

A picture of Griffin crossed Lyndie’s vision: tall, gorgeous, and tortured. “I remember his name.”

Sam cupped his hand to her jaw and made her look at him. “He try something?”

“You know I have no problem punching their lights out if it comes to that.”

“Did it?”

“No.”

Sam relaxed marginally but he was still watching her. “I had you scheduled to take a dentist down to San Puebla, but he canceled until next week. Now I’ve got you scheduled to fly a pediatrician and an optometrist to Baja tomorrow. Then you’ve got another trip back to San Puebla.”

“With supplies?”

“Some. The fire’s still contained, but there’s problems with the weather. They’re expecting trouble tomorrow when the winds are due to kick up.”

She knew this. She’d called Tom every day to check. “Fine.”

“Same guy is going down. He’s called several times checking on the status of the fire. When he found out they needed help with the suppression, he said he’d go back.”

She stared at the waves. So Griffin had offered to go back. Which meant she’d be seeing him again. No big deal, really. Maybe they’d shared a little more of themselves than they’d intended, but that was to be expected given the situation they’d found themselves in. Whenever adrenaline, adventure, and danger got all mixed up together, things got accelerated.

And things
had
gotten accelerated.

But they were adults. They could handle it.

God, she hoped they could handle it.

Sam was still looking at her. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“It’s not in my job description.”

“Screw the job description, Lyndie. I thought we were friends.”

Not having many, she valued the few she had managed, by sheer good luck, to cultivate. “We are.”

“Friends tell.”

Lyndie sighed. “Fine. I kissed him.”

He stared at her with his dark, dark brown eyes. And then he laughed. “You did not.”

“I did.” She winced. “Look, we got caught up in this whole situation, okay? The fire was hot and dangerous and far too close. We were alone, together, afraid…”

“Ah. The danger thing.” He nodded. “I know.”