Sandra Brown - Low Pressure

“In the meantime I’ll go bankrupt.”

“Don’t go jumping off a building yet,” Gall said. “I’ve already talked to a guy.”

Dent was instantly suspicious. “What kind of guy?”

“One with lots of discretionary funds. He called me a while back looking for a private pilot.”

“No way.”

“Hear me out, Ace.”

“I don’t need to. My answer is no.”

“He’s got an incredible plane. Brand-spankin’-new King Air 350i. All the bells and whistles money can buy. Pretty as a picture. You’d fuck it if you could.”

“How come he doesn’t already have a pilot?”

“He did. He didn’t like him.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Bad sign.”

“Or a lucky break for you.”

“You know my golden rule, Gall. Never again will I fly for anybody except me . I for damn sure won’t be a rich guy’s chauffeur. He’d probably want to put me in some dumb cap and uniform.”

“You don’t have to sign on for the rest of your miserable life. Just till your airplane is fixed. And you haven’t even heard the best part.”

“What’s the best part?”

“In the interim, for a reasonable percentage of every charter, he’ll let you use his King Air. What do you think of that?”

Dent gnawed the inside of his cheek. “How reasonable a percentage?”

“I took a stab at twelve. He said okay. Prob’ly could have got him to agree to ten. The money doesn’t matter to him. He wants his plane ‘broken in’ by a good pilot.”

The deal was better than reasonable, especially considering how much Dent could charge per hour to charter an airplane of that caliber. But he resisted the temptation. “I’d be at his beck and call. And at the whim of his wife and bratty kids. I’d probably have to fly a yapping lap dog, too.”

“I didn’t say it’d be perfect,” Gall grumbled. “But you could keep eating.”

Dent loathed the prospect of having a boss, of taking orders, of having his time, his life, governed by somebody else. But Bellamy’s two-point-five grand wouldn’t last long. He could tighten his belt, literally, and skip a few meals, but he had to keep making payments on his loan or he’d lose his airplane to the bank.

“We’ll talk about it when I get back,” he said. “Soon as we set down at Austin-Bergstrom, I’ll come straight out.”

“I’ll be here. Unlike some people I know, I don’t go winging off without telling anybody.”

Dent ignored that, and, at any other time, he would simply have hung up. But he had more to talk to Gall about. “This columnist, Rocky Van Durbin, he’s a snake. He didn’t know who I was this morning, but he will by now, and he’ll be all over that. If he comes nosing around—”

“I’ll kick his Yankee ass.”

Dent actually grinned, not doubting for a moment that Gall would, and that he would enjoy it. But his grin was short-lived because he needed to stress the importance of his next warning. “Listen to me, Gall. Are you listening? This is serious.” He described the pickup truck he’d seen earlier. “I got a bad vibe. Could be nothing. But—”

“But you trust your instincts, and so do I.”

“You haven’t seen a truck like that around your place or near the airfield, have you?”

“No.”

“You swear?”

“Why would I lie?”

“Mule-headedness. Misplaced pride. Sheer meanness. Shall I go on?”

“I haven’t seen a truck like that. Swear.”

“Okay, but keep your eyes peeled. Promise?”

“I’ll promise, if you’ll tell me something.”

“What?”

“What are you doing with her?”

“For crying out loud, Gall, how many times do I have to say it?”

“I heard what you said. But if you’re telling me the truth, and you’re not even getting laid in the bargain, then what’s in it for you?”

“Exoneration.”

After a considerable pause, Gall said, “Fair enough, Ace.”

Responding to the soft knock, Bellamy went to the door connecting her room to Dent’s and pressed her palms as well as her forehead against the cool wood. “What, Dent?”

“I need to ask you something.”

“You can ask me through the door.”

It had been somewhat surprising to her that he hadn’t pestered her for details on her marital split, but, after she’d told him about the dissolution of her marriage, they had both lapsed into a brooding silence, exchanging only desultory conversation for the remainder of their flight.

The busy, noisy restaurant where they’d eaten dinner hadn’t been conducive to intimate conversation, so they’d kept theirs impersonal and as light as possible given the circumstances.

When they’d checked into the chain hotel, he’d remarked on the economic reasonableness of sharing a room, but she’d ignored the remark, and when they reached their neighboring rooms, they’d parted company.

It would be best to leave it that way.

But he knocked again and said, “I have to be looking you in the eye when I ask what I need to ask.”

She counted to ten silently.

“Come on, A.k.a. You can always scream and knee me in the balls if I get out of line. But I won’t.”

She hesitated a moment longer, then, with exasperation, flipped the latch and pulled open the door. “What?”

He took in the haphazard, scraggly topknot of hair and her squeaky-clean face. She wore a shapeless T-shirt and plaid flannel pajama bottoms that pooled over her bare feet, one of which she folded over the other in a parody of modesty.

He snuffled a laugh. “That’s how you go to bed?”

“That’s your question?”

He grinned. “Not that it isn’t sexy.”

“I wasn’t going for sexy. I was going for comfort.”

He’d made himself comfortable, too. He stood in stocking feet, bringing her eye level with his chin rather than his clavicle. Several of the pearl snaps on his shirt had been undone. She tried to keep from looking at his chest in the open wedge.

“Your question?”

Reaching behind him, he pulled a toothbrush from the back pocket of his jeans. “Can I borrow some toothpaste?”

“Why didn’t you buy toothpaste when you bought the brush?”

“Have you got some, or not?”

She turned away, went into the bathroom long enough to get the tube from her toiletry bag, and returned with it, noticing that he’d stepped across the threshold into her room. Staying at arm’s length, she extended the toothpaste to him. He took it from her, but instead of uncapping it, squeezing some paste onto his brush, and leaving, he pocketed both and stayed.

“I do need the toothpaste, but that wasn’t what I was going to ask.”

She folded her arms across her middle and waited for him to continue.

“What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“Oh.” For a moment the simplicity of the question took her aback. She hadn’t expected a practical one. “Maxey’s is a ten-minute drive from here. It opens for lunch at eleven-thirty. I thought we should arrive about then.”

“Giving Steven no time to become too busy to see us or to duck out the back door.”

“Something like that.”

He bobbed his chin. “Good plan. Want to meet for breakfast first?”

“I’ll just have coffee here in my room.”

“You don’t eat breakfast?”

“Sometimes.”

“But not tomorrow.”

“Dent.”

“Okay. Fine. No breakfast for you. So… we’ll meet around, what? Eleven-fifteen?”

“Perfect.”

“Up here or in the lobby?”

“Are you always this detail oriented?”

“Absolutely. Pilots usually don’t get do-overs. The airplane can be on autopilot, but you don’t want the pilot to be, do you?”

She knew he was baiting her, but she went along. “Lobby.”