Jill Shalvis - Aussie Rules

The next morning, Mel braced herself and checked her e-mail, but found nothing odd. When the early North Beach rush faded, she took the leave-it-alone letter and envelope to the post office to see if they could read the return stamp for her. She waited twenty minutes in line only to be told that the return stamp couldn’t be read, too blurred.

But the barcode…another thing entirely. They could trace that. If the right guy was in, that is, which he wasn’t. They told her to come back tomorrow. The joys of rural routing.

Mel got back to North Beach and had a charter to fly to Santa Cruz, which took her until midafternoon. Finally back at her desk, she called her attorney. He was sorry for the delay, he’d been out of town, he’d get back to her regarding the deed first thing tomorrow.

Warning: another sleepless night ahead.

But she still had the rest of the afternoon to face. She changed into her coveralls to put some time in on the Hawker. Char caught her heading to the main hangar and called to her over the sound of Motley Crue on the boom box, rattling the windows. “Come eat before I close up.”

Mel shook her head. “Thanks, but I’ve still got to-”

“Eat,” Char said in that Southern voice of steel. “You probably skipped lunch, didn’t you?” She was fanning her shiny face with an oven mitt, looking flushed. “I’ve been talking to men all day and I need an estrogen fix. Please? I know you’re swamped but just leave it alone and keep me company for a few.”

Mel went still. Leave it alone. The three little innocuous words that had been ringing in her head for days. Coincidence? She took a good look at Char, who was clearly overheated and quite possibly the sweetest woman Mel had ever met. There didn’t seem to be any way that Char could have anything to do with the e-mail. For one thing, she and Al hadn’t come to North Beach until after Sally had left the country. They’d never even met her. “You look hot, Char.”

“Damn hot flashes! I just stripped down in the kitchen and hosed myself off with the handheld faucet in the sink and it didn’t help! Look here, I’ve got five-cheese lasagna. The best in the state.”

Al poked his head out of the kitchen. “In the whole country, babe.”

“Oh, you. You’re just trying to get lucky again. But I’m too DAMN hot, so back off.”

Al lifted his hands and backed off.

Char blew a strand of hair from her head as her gaze swiveled to Mel. “Now I mean it. Get over here and eat.”

“I’d do it,” Al called out. “She’s PMSing.”

“If by PMSing you mean sick of men,” Char yelled back, “then, yeah, I’m PMSing!”

Al ducked back into the kitchen, but not before Char snapped him in the ass with her towel.

“Jesus, woman!” He grabbed himself. “Watch the parts!”

“I was nowhere near the parts. And just because I didn’t want to have sex with you this morning doesn’t mean I’m PMSing.”

Mel covered her ears but sat obediently. She was no idiot, Char’s lasagna was the best in the country.

“What, if you hear sex talk, your ears fall off?” Al asked Mel.

“What’s with the sex talk? There’s no sex talk,” Char said.

“Sure there is,” Al said. “I’m not getting any, we’re going to talk.”

“One morning! I had a headache one morning!”

“I could have solved your headache.” Al accompanied this with a wild wag of a brow.

Char rolled her eyes.

Al winked at Mel.

Mel dug into the huge plate of lasagna Char set in front of her. “I can’t hear you over the roar of my brain matter as it spontaneously combusts.” She swallowed her first bite, then moaned. “God, this is heaven.”

Char beamed with pleasure.

“Ah, look at that.” Al pulled her in and kissed her neck. “You look so pretty when you smile.” He nibbled. “And you taste even better than your lasagna.”

Char shoved him away but, softened now, she smiled, and so sweetly Mel actually had to look away.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” Char murmured. “I’m just tired. These hot flashes are a bitch.”

“I know, baby. I’ll give you a foot massage when we get home, no sex talk, I promise.”

“Oh, no, that’s okay. Maybe we can incorporate something cold, that’s all. Ice cold. Like…ice cubes…”

Al laughed softly. “You’re on.”

Mel kept eating, but her heart sighed. The two of them might fight big, but they loved bigger, loved through thick and PMSy moods, and though she didn’t always understand it, there was no denying the power of such emotion, and sometimes looking at it reminded her of what she didn’t have.

When she finished overloading her arteries, she thanked Char and made her way to the maintenance hangar. Danny was in the air with a customer, diagnosing a problem with a plane. Mel flipped on the back lights, working her way through the huge, yawning open space, back to where she kept her thirty-year-old baby, the Hawker. “Hi, honey, I’m home.” She pulled over her tool cart, and also the large tub of cleaning fluid. Then she got out her three-step ladder and buried herself in the engine compartment.

Over the years, she’d slowly replaced this and that on the aircraft as she got the extra cash, hoping one day to fly the thing again. Now she was working on the spar strap, a task that required poking and prodding and wrenching and hammering, a good thing actually, because she began to feel some of the anxiety and tension that had been gripping her all week finally fade away.

She was tired. And it was no wonder. For nights now she’d done little more than toss and turn on tangled sheets, thinking about Bo; about the episode in her office, about what would have happened if she hadn’t come to her senses, about how sometimes she even wished she hadn’t come to her senses at all, that instead she’d let him strip her and then himself, and work his magic on more than just her mouth.

Or about when he’d beaten her at darts last night, how a small part of her, the secretly lonely and apparently horny part, had waited for him to claim her as the prize.

Lord, she had it bad.

He’d known it, too. He’d known what he did to her so effortlessly, and he liked it. He’d been liking it ever since, and telling her so with his gaze.

Rat fink bastard.

God, she wanted him. But she had enough to worry about without adding stupid, ridiculous irresponsible sex to the mix.

She needed a bigger wrench. Grabbing one off the tool cart behind her, she went back to work. She was close, closer than she’d ever been, to getting the Hawker in flying shape, which was good because she could fetch a pretty penny for it.

Not that she’d be able to sell, given its sentimental value. She’d acquired the Hawker from Sally, who’d actually meant to have the plane tossed into a metal heap and salvaged for scrap.

But Mel could never do it. This plane held a lot of firsts for her. Her first aircraft. Her first real possession that had been worth anything. Her first ‘I love you,’ which had been right in the cockpit, too, though that had come from an amused, touched Sally on the night she’d handed the keys over to Mel.

Mel knew it was silly not to sell, silly and sappy, but at least she’d managed to keep that sappiness from most of the world, all of whom believed her to be one tough cookie.

And she was that, too. Tough to the core, a real fighter. She cranked on the wrench and thought of the fight with Bo yet ahead of her. Yeah, that was going to be her toughest battle yet, and she needed to keep in sharp shape for it.

She heard the heels clicking long before she could actually see anyone, but Dimi was the only one who’d wear heels out here. Then she appeared in a white lacy sundress that played peek-a-boo with her toned, tanned, perfect body, as usual by some miracle completely spotless.