She forced her eyes open and, from behind the protection of her polarized Persols, looked at his profile. “What?”
The word came out a thin whisper, inaudible over the noise of the plane, but it didn’t matter because he’d been speaking into his headset, rather than to her.
His deep voice and unhurried words seemed too calm for a mayday call. Was he speaking with a tower somewhere? Please God. Perhaps radioing their coordinates so a search party could eventually recover their bodies and give her loved ones the comfort of a proper funeral?
For some reason the thought gave rise to an image of Danny standing at the head of the large conference table at the firm, delivering her eulogy to a packed house of staff, associates and partners. He wore a tuxedo—weird—and held a flute of champagne as he addressed the room with his patented look of dry amusement.
Many of you claim you’d die to make partner, but our lovely, overachieving Isabelle actually did it. That fact might lead you to believe professional ambition guided her life, but Izzy had other goals and other reasons for making the journey to Captivity. She wasn’t just a top-flight lawyer, she was a woman, with a woman’s hopes. A woman’s dreams. A woman’s…needs. Needs that drove her all the way to the frozen north for the most prized and elusive of rewards—rugged, tireless sex with rugged, tireless men. We can only pray that somewhere in heaven she’s finally found the bear daddy of her dreams.
He raised his glass. To bear-daddy dick.
Everyone lifted their glasses.
To bear-daddy dick.
…
As Trace finished giving Captivity Airstrip his who, what, and where, he heard an unexpected noise coming from his cockpit. Laughter? He glanced over at the little lawyer the firm had sent to help him navigate due diligence for the proposed sale. Yep, the Ariana Grande lookalike in the Devil Wears Prada wardrobe giggled, caught him watching, covered her mouth with her hand and giggled again.
He cocked a brow. “Problem?”
She shook her head, then firmed her lips into a serious line and dropped her hand. “Nope. No problem here. Please, don’t let me distract you from…” She gestured to the controls.
Okaaay. She’d held her shit together the whole way through the kind of flight that left free-climbers, big-game hunters, and other wilderness thrill seekers clutching the airsick bag and crying for mommy, but apparently even a city-slick transactional attorney from the esteemed firm of Hecker, Hiltz & Reynolds had her limits.
Still, not a problem. He’d flown in worse than the leading edge of the kind of late-breaking March blizzard Mother Nature occasionally decided to dump on them. They’d be on the ground shortly. That’s when his problems would start. Today’s problems, at any rate.
He snuck another look at his passenger seat, where problem number one currently sat, and thought back to the conversation he’d had last week with Chuck Reynolds—longtime family friend and a founding partner of the law firm. Chuck understood how quickly news traveled in a town the size of Captivity and supported his desire to keep the prospective sale off the local radar until he’d come to a definitive go/no-go decision. Chuck had promised him an associate who would blend in and pass for one of those outdoor adventure enthusiasts Captivity attracted.
The fashionista beside him did not blend in. From his position at the foot of the escalator at the Anchorage Airport, she’d caught his eye. He’d taken her in from the tips of her glossy, black heels that showed off truly spectacular legs, to the mouthwatering curves and hint of cleavage revealed by her sleek, red suit, to her Instagram-perfect makeup and smooth twist of thick, dark hair. And he’d enjoyed every second of the visual feast—more than he’d enjoyed anything for months—until she’d approached close enough for him to pick up her sophisticated, ruthlessly sexy scent, and asked, “Mr. Shanahan?” in a voice just as sophisticated and ruthlessly sexy.
He’d considered asking her to change into something more appropriate, but their window of time for making the run from Anchorage to Captivity was simply too tight, given the coming storm. Besides, after getting a look at her oversized piece of designer luggage and the cashmere coat draped over her arm, he strongly doubted she had anything more appropriate. He doubted she knew the meaning of the word.
So now, in mere minutes, they’d arrive at the airfield where a handful of staff would get a good look at Isabelle Marcano, extreme Alaska adventure seeker, and know something didn’t add up. At no time during their hour-and-thirty-minute flight had any flash of inspiration struck. He didn’t know how he was going to explain her to his team. Half the town already wondered about the purpose of his recent spate of trips to the City of Los Angeles.
According to fellow pilot Maddox “Mad Dog” Douglas, the odds were two-to-one at The Tipsy Goose on Trace having a hot-and-heavy affair with at least one member of the bachelorette party that had spent time in Captivity last summer on a roundabout tour of Glacier Bay National Park. A party of seven twenty-something women—six of them unattached—garnered a legendary amount of interest around these parts. He honestly couldn’t remember a single one of them, probably because they’d known how to blend in, but he’d thought about dropping by the bar and putting a hundred on the hot-and-heavy affair option.
At least Bridget had gotten stuck overnight in Anchorage on account of the storm, so his sister wouldn’t be the first in line calling bullshit on whatever explanation he offered for his guest, but still.
He was screwed.
Trace nudged his worry aside to concentrate on the landing. The plane cut through the lowest layer of clouds like a samurai sword through silk, bringing his hometown into sight. Though still shy of seven p.m. the coming storm brought an early, dense dusk to mute the view. Instead of a deeply blue curve of water ringed by a thin rim of sand the color of the littleneck clamshells that littered the beach, Captivity Cove was a gray, churning soup. Lights from the small boat harbor, the standalone dock for the cruise ship shore boats, and the Captivity Air and Freight dock floated near shore. All those docks and everything else along the fringes of the cove would likely be coated in ice by morning.
Streetlights dotted the perimeter of the cove, following the slightly meandering route of Coveside Drive. Smaller, dimmer lights sprinkled the hills overlooking the cove, where, on a clear day, passengers could see the painted ladies of Captivity. Those brightly colored, historic wooden storefronts in town mixed Old West durability with Victorian flourishes. Larger, equally colorful and historic—or built to look that way—homes nestled amongst the spruce-lined slopes that eventually climbed toward a five-thousand-foot mountain the locals dubbed Kat’s Peak. Their ancient and mighty corner of the Chilkat range backstopped everything.
Normally, he spent this time pointing out the various attractions to his passengers, but visibility wasn’t optimal this evening, and the woman beside him wasn’t a tourist. He looked over to where she sat, staring straight ahead through unnecessary sunglasses, smoothing a hand over her sleek hairdo and licking the vestiges of red gloss from her lips with the tip of her tongue. She probably didn’t give a damn about any destination that didn’t have a Saks Fifth Avenue outpost and a five-star spa, but as he watched her pink tongue slide over those Cupid’s bow lips, he discovered his dick didn’t give a damn that she didn’t give a damn.