Up Close and Dangerous (Page 44)

Even in the dimness his sharp eyes didn’t miss much. His expression softened as he touched her hair, smoothing a strand away from her face. “And then you saved mine. I’d have gone into shock and died if you hadn’t stopped the bleeding. I guess we’re even.”

She had a strange but potent urge to turn her face into his hand and kiss his palm. What on earth was wrong with her? First tears, and now this? Maybe the fever was getting worse. Maybe she was suffering from post-traumatic stress. A plane crash was pretty damn stressful; she was entitled to a few ragged nerves.

“Have you had wilderness survival training, or emergency response, anything like that?” he asked curiously.

The change of subject gave her a chance to silently pull herself out of the emotional tailspin she seemed to be in. Still, she had to swallow a couple of times before she could speak again, and her heart was pounding as if she’d just had some sort of close call. “No, why?”

“Because you made a lot of commonsense decisions, and did all the right things with what limited resources were at hand.”

“Commonsense, that’s me,” she said, surprised into a wry laugh. She’d experienced the havoc wrought by decisions made on the spur of the moment because one or both of her parents simply felt like it, or because they wanted something, and God forbid they stop to consider how devastating the fallout would be for their children. She never wanted to be that way. “My common sense is why Jim chose me to oversee—” She stopped, unwilling to talk about her personal life.

“All that money?” Cam finished for her, and smiled when her eyes widened in surprise. “It’s common knowledge. Our secretary told me about it, but she’s a scary woman, in league with the devil, and she knows everything.”

Bailey gave a small hoot of laughter. “Karen? Wait until I tell her you said she’s in league with the devil!”

“Hell! You know Karen?” Shock had him raising up on one elbow to stare down at her in consternation.

“Of course I know Karen. Wingate Group has used J and L for how many years? Before I married Jim, I was the one who called her to make arrangements for flights.”

“I should have known,” he muttered. “Hell. Shit. If you tell her that, she’ll make my life miserable until I either die or crawl over hot coals to apologize.” He eased down onto his back and stared upward. “Promise me you won’t tell her.”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of your secretary.” She snickered, delighted to uncover this facet of Captain Tight-ass Justice. She could see the smile that threatened to break out, and loved that he recognized and privately enjoyed the benefits of an alpha female secretary.

“She owns us,” he said with exaggerated gloom. “She knows where everything is, how everything works, and everything’s that going on. She handles everything. All Bret and I do is show up, sign what she tells us to sign, and fly the planes.”

“You could fire her,” she suggested, just to provoke him.

He snorted. “Get real. We raise ’em smarter than that in Texas. I might have to do more than sign a few papers if she wasn’t there.”

“You’re from Texas?”

“Don’t tell me I’ve lost the accent.” He eased onto his side again, curling his arm under his head.

“No, but I’ve read that pilots sort of naturally adopt a drawl, so you could have been from anywhere.”

“The Yeager syndrome,” he said. “I didn’t have to adopt a drawl. I was born with it, though Yeager was from West Virginia and I’m a born-and-bred, died-in-the-wool Texas boy and the accents are totally different.”

“If you say so.” She let doubt drip from every word.

“Yankee. You have to be born to the music of the tongue to hear the variations.”

She had to laugh, especially when the slightly teasing note in his voice invited her to. She wanted to tell him that “music of the tongue” sounded like something from the Kama Sutra, but bit the comment back just in time. If she didn’t intend to let him venture into sexual territory, then she shouldn’t lead an expedition there herself.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Kansas, originally, but I’ve lived in Ohio, California, Oregon, Maryland, and Iowa.”

“As a kid, or since you’ve been grown?”

“Mostly as a kid. Once I was out of college, I picked a place and stayed there.” Roots were nice. Stability was nice.

“My folks didn’t move around. They still live in Killeen.”

“Where’s that?”

“Didn’t you learn any geography in all those schools you went to? It’s about halfway between Dallas and San Antonio.”

“Sorry,” she said, rolling her eyes. “There wasn’t a lot of emphasis on Texas geography in the schools I went to.”

“The level of ignorance today is shocking. How can a school not teach about Texas?”

“Beats me. So you grew up in Killeen?”

“Yep. My parents still live in the same house I grew up in. I have one brother and two sisters, and we all went to the same school, a lot of the time had the same teachers. I moved around plenty when I was in the air force, though. Seeing new places was fun, but the moving itself was a pain in the ass. Why did you move around so much?”

“Divorce ping-pong,” she said. “Played with kids, instead of balls.”

“That’s a bitch. You have brothers and sisters?”