Love in Plane Sight

Chapter

1

This is my first time in a single-engine airplane, but I'm almost certain the propeller isn't supposed to stop moving in the middle of the flight.

And the pilot isn't supposed to mutter, "Fucking hell."

"Is something wrong?" My voice sounds far away, fed back to me through the borrowed headset I fit over my ears before we took off.

The pilot's hands are busy on the controls, and he ignores my question.

That's George Bunsen's normal approach to interacting with me, but I would hope an emergency might warrant a brief break from his cold shoulder. And he can't claim not to have heard me. Not only does my microphone transmit my words directly to him, but with the propeller gone still, the world around us is suddenly, jarringly quiet.

"This is a joke, right? You're messing with me." Which, coincidentally, is exactly what I said to my half-brother when he informed me about this outing. Shawn discovered my pilot's license study materials a few weeks ago and took it upon himself to arrange this one-on-one flight. As an early birthday gift, he insisted.

And this would have been a perfectly thoughtful present if the pilot and I didn't hate each other.

Okay . . . "hate" might be a strong word. "Intensely dislike for reasons we have never voiced because his are ridiculous and mine are valid" sounds more accurate.

I wonder what Shawn threatened George with to make him agree to this? I guess a lifetime of friendship gives a man a lot of dirt.

But back to the plane I'm in that is no longer working.

For a brief, blissful moment in time, I convince myself that I was right and the aloof George Bunsen has a secret, dark sense of humor. He'll switch the propeller back on, laugh at the gullible flying-newbie, and go back to pretending I'm as bothersome as a stain on the upholstery.

"We're good, right?" I gasp, still waiting on an answer from the aggravating man. "This is normal?"

Again, George doesn't respond to me as one of his hands tightly grips the yoke and the other moves with determination on the knobs of a radio that looks completely foreign to me. I thought I had a firm grasp of what a Cessna 172 instrument panel would look like. I know enough to see the oil pressure gauge is on zero, as is the engine RPM. But my petrified brain cannot figure out what those readings mean.

When George speaks, it's to the local airport tower, the words tinny but clear in my headset.

"Mayday. Mayday. Engine failure."

"It's failing?" Blood roars in my ears, drowning out the conversation happening between George and people outside this plane. People safe on solid ground where they don't need an engine to work to keep them alive.

My mouth opens again, ready to babble out a string of panicked questions, but I snap my jaw shut when I realize George is still talking, giving them all of our information combined with jargon I half understand.

Don't distract him! He needs to concentrate!

The guy in charge of our safety can't comfort me, so I try to soothe myself, double-checking the clasp of my seat belt is latched before wrapping my arms tight around my body , my normally pale knuckles turning bone white with my grip. I breathe deep and think calming thoughts.

You're not going to die today. You will land safely. You will not spend the last moments of your life with a man who wishes you never existed.

George Bunsen has never been subtle about his disdain toward me. He has a habit of leaving rooms I enter and avoiding my gaze when we're forced to interact, which is why I was shocked he agreed to take me up in his plane at all.

But there's no saying no to Shawn Newton.

Shawn and George have been friends since childhood, their fathers two heads of a luxury transportation company. They formed a bond before I even knew I had a brother. I've always lived with my mother instead of the father Shawn and I share.

The few interactions I've had with George before today gave me the undeniable knowledge that the man finds me to be a waste of space. An annoying gnat that occasionally hovers around his best friend.

Not someone he'd want to spend a couple hours with in the compact quarters of a cockpit. Especially not when he's lost control of said cockpit and everything attached to it.

The lack of plane sounds is eerie. The rumbling roar of the engine quieted at the same time the propeller slowed. The cacophonous noise and vibrations are simply gone. There's a stillness, as if we're suspended, and I mainly know we're moving-that we're descending-from the weightless lift in my stomach.

Shouldn't there be alarms blaring? Lights flashing? Some mechanical indication that this is a big freaking emergency?!

Needing something to distract myself, I watch George work.

The man is tense beside me, but he's not frozen in panic. He holds the controls in a firm grip as he steers what is now basically a glider. His voice is urgent but steady as he continues to communicate with people on the ground. Every muscle in his body appears strung tight and ready for action, his thighs two taut cannons of muscle that I could almost believe capable of launching us to safety.

If I wasn't struggling against sheer panic, I might admire this version of my brother's friend.

Though, probably not. Because I still intensely dislike him and do not want his irritatingly handsome, Jason Statham-looking face to be the last thing I see before I plummet to my death.

"We're too far from the airport," he says. "We're going to land on the highway."

"What?" I yelp, then clap my hand over my mouth as the tower responds.

Why did I ever want to fly an airplane? The silently screamed question forms from my terror and not the logical part of my brain that knows emergencies like this are rare. Moments before everything went wrong, I'd been euphoric. Even with a pilot grumpier than a trucker without coffee, I couldn't stop smiling. This flight teased me with a dream I'd harbored since I was seventeen years old.

Now everything is a nightmare.

I know it's a bad idea, but I glance out the window anyway. I mean the glass is right there. It's kind of hard not to peek at my impending doom.

Before the engine cut off, the cars beneath us were smaller than ants, barely discernible on the tangle of roads. Now they're the size of raisins, slowly approaching almonds. Soon I'm going to run out of trail mix large enough to compare them to. I can make out colors but not the horrified faces of drivers who soon are going to have to share a lane with an airplane.

Landing on a road is good, I try to convince myself. Better than water. We'd have to fight our way out of a sinking plane. I can't swim in jeans!

"Beth."

At the sound of my name, I tear my mind away from thoughts of fighting for my life in wet denim. I meet George's stare, his gray eyes holding mine, unrelenting.

"I'm sorry," he says.

What the hell?

Now I'm not only panicked, I'm pissed.

"Don't apologize," I snap through the headset. "If you kill me, Shawn will kill you." The logic doesn't add up too well because there's not exactly a scenario in which I perish but George walks away from this. But I keep going. "You know how to fly a plane. So fly it. Land us on the highway. Sooner rather than later, please."

Because I'm about to pee my pants in fear, and I really don't want to end my life covered in urine.

George gives me a short nod, refocusing on the space in front of us. The next five minutes are not the worst of my life, but they're definitely the most intense. I sit helpless in the copilot seat of a plane I wish I knew how to fly while relying on a man who doesn't like me to save my life.

And the ground keeps getting closer.

"Here we go," George grits through his teeth. I try not to whimper, but the cars and trucks are unnervingly close.

Do we have to? I have the sudden urge to ask him. Can't we just glide for a little longer?

But without a working engine, the only way is down.

I want to close my eyes, but I keep them open. If this is the end of my life, I should see the finale, right?

Oncoming traffic finally realizes we're not just a low flier, and they veer off to the shoulder. Who knows what's happening with traffic flowing the same direction we are?

Is there a car underneath us?

Hopefully they have a sunroof.

The wings wobble on a stray air current, and I yelp.

Please don't let me die today. I want more time. I haven't done anything yet.

"Come on," George grunts. The aircraft trembles, then straightens. "Hold right there. That's a good girl."

My mind stutters as his words feed to me through the headset.

Is this man talking dirty to his plane?

Or am I getting horny on the verge of death?

Whatever. I don't care if George gets kinky with his aircraft as long as he can land it without smashing us to pieces. My fingers press into my sides, my nails digging through my shirt into my skin.

And just when I think I might tear my own flesh off to relieve the tension of the moment, there's a squeak of wheels on pavement and the plane gives a dramatic bounce.

Once more.

Again.

Then the ride smooths out, and we're rolling down a highway, cars pulled off to the side of the road, drivers gaping at us as we pass.

We . . . landed?

As my brain tries to reorient to the fact that today is not the last day of my life, George manages to use the final bit of momentum to steer us toward the shoulder, where we eventually rumble to a stop.

Everything goes still. All I can hear is the thrumming pulse in my ears and the panting breath dragging in and out of my lungs.

A set of large hands carefully removes my headset, and I feel like I've been underwater for a while and my head just breached the surface. Callused palms cup my cheeks, turning my face until all I can see is George. George with his five-o'clock shadow and closely shaved head. George with his silver eyes that currently have pupils so wide I'm tempted to ask if he's on something. And if he's willing to share because, holy hell, I need a medical-grade substance to ease my lingering panic.

"You're on the ground," he says, his voice solid enough to hold onto. "It's over."

"We're alive?" I have to be, right? The afterlife wouldn't force me into an enclosed space with an arrogant d-bag unless I'd been a terrible person, and I'm pretty sure I've been a semi-decent person for most of my life.

George nods, using his thumbs to push back the sweaty hair sticking to the sides of my face. The crimson strands are so damp they've darkened to a deep burgundy.

"We're alive," he confirms. "And we need to get out of the plane. Now."

"Is it going to explode?" I rasp the question, my throat raw as if I've been screaming.

There's a flicker in his expression, but I'm too off-balance to try to decipher it.

"Unlikely. But if traffic picks up again, they might hit the plane." George drops his touch from my face, one palm landing on my jean-covered thigh, the other going to the buckle of my seat belt. Once the click sounds, he leans over my lap, reaches across me to unlatch the door, and pushes it open.

As George bends in front of me, something shifts in my body. My heart continues to pound, and my nerves all remain on edge, but other parts react in totally inappropriate ways.

My nipples tighten.

A tingle races up and down my spine.

A pleasurable clench squeezes my lower belly . . .

"Holy hell," I whisper, horrified when I realize what's happening. That the dampness in my underwear is not because I pissed myself, which I'm kind of wishing was the case now.

George straightens in his seat and nods toward the exit. "Let's go."

Yes, let's, my body purrs, pulsing with want. With need. All for the man next to me.

Horrified by my reaction, I slap away his hands that still linger by my waist and scramble out of the cockpit. When my sneakers touch the blacktop, my knees buckle and I would've face-planted on asphalt if I didn't grab hold of the door handle. Sucking in a few steadying breaths, I lock my knees and will strength into my legs until I feel steadier on my feet.

Then I run.

Not far, just to the edge of the road and then a short distance into the litter-strewn grass on the side of the highway. There's a stand of trees in front of me, and I wonder if I could disappear into them. Keep on going. Outrun the weird, uncomfortable reactions my body is having to what just happened. Sprint all the way home and forget this disastrous day.

"Beth!" George's deep shout sends my shoulders to my ears. "Don't go far. Emergency responders are on their way."

Reluctantly, I turn back toward the plane. But as odd as the sight of a Cessna 172 parked on the shoulder of the highway is, my eyes immediately seek out the man who just managed an amazing feat of flying.

George stands off to the side enough that he's not in danger of oncoming vehicles. His forehead is wrinkled above a set of aviator sunglasses he slipped on, and he has his phone pressed to his ear, exchanging tense words with whoever is on the other end of the line.

All this he does while facing me. Despite the shades, I can tell his eyes are on me. Paying me more attention than he ever has before this day. Probably working out how the engine failure was my fault.

He's not that much of an asshole.

But even if he is, my libido doesn't care. The endorphins-drenched part of my brain is already crafting scenarios of George storming up to me, growling my name, then taking me in a passionate embrace and kissing me senseless.

What in the ever-loving hell is wrong with me?

I just survived a near-death experience, and I'm thinking about making out? With George Bunsen?!