Jessica Hart: The Wedding Challenge

Gritting her teeth, Bea tried to follow her example, but the soles of her shoes kept slipping off the smooth strut and she couldn’t find any purchase to pull herself into the cabin.

She heard Chase sigh behind her, and the next moment found herself set brusquely aside. He stepped easily up into the cabin and reached down a peremptory hand.

‘Here, I’ll pull you up,’ he said.

Bea would have given almost anything she possessed not to accept his help, but it was a question of taking his hand or being left on the tarmac. She was very conscious of the cool strength of his fingers as they closed around hers and he lifted her effortlessly off the ground.

Already scarlet with the heat and humiliation, she flushed a deeper and even more unbecoming shade of red as she scrambled up and collapsed in an inelegant heap beside him. Somewhere along the line, her dress had got rucked up and Chase was subjected to an eyeful of her thighs in all their lack of glory. If he had been hoping for a glimpse of slender golden legs, he must have been sadly disappointed. Bea’s thighs were absolutely not her best feature.

Serve him right, thought Bea, hastily covering them up. She wished she had taken the tarmac option.

Her only comfort was the thought that he probably wished she’d stayed behind, too.

As it was, it looked like they were stuck with each other for the duration.

APART from a faint lifting of his eyebrow, which was somehow worse than an open sneer, Chase gave no sign that he had even noticed her legs. He dropped her hand pretty quickly, though, pulled the door to, and went forward to fold himself easily into the pilot’s seat.

Bea was left to brush herself down and get herself into one of the small passenger seats behind Emily, who grinned knowingly at her. She glared back.

Chase was flicking buttons above his head, ignoring both of them. Bea just hoped that he knew what he was doing. She had never been in a plane this small before, certainly not one with a propeller. It looked pretty flimsy, too. She tapped the side panel dubiously. Oh, for a jumbo jet, four massive engines, and a pilot in a navy-blue uniform with multiple rows of gold braid!

‘Seat belt?’

She started as Chase turned abruptly to fix her with that unnervingly cool blue stare.

‘Oh,…yes…’ She fumbled for her belt, but her fingers were clumsy under his icy gaze and it seemed to take forever to snap it into place.

‘Are you secure?’ he asked with an edge of impatience.

‘I’m a bit neurotic about my weight and I’ve got a massive complex about my hair, but on the whole, yes, I’d say that I was as well-balanced as the next person.’

‘What?’ Chase stared at her as if she had suddenly sprouted tentacles and turned into an alien, which was probably how she seemed to him.

Bea rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, I’ve fastened my seat belt.’

With a final hard look, Chase turned back to the controls, and they were soon speeding down the runway, the propeller a blur on the plane’s nose. The sound of the engine reverberated deafeningly through the cabin. Bea’s stomach dropped alarmingly as they lifted into the air, and she closed her eyes and clutched at her seat. If she survived this trip, she was never, ever, ever going to let Emily talk her into doing anything else.

When she felt the plane level off, she opened her eyes cautiously and risked a glance out of the window, and promptly regretted it. The ground looked very far away, a flat, reddish-brown expanse that stretched out interminably in every direction. Bea could see the tiny shadow of the plane travelling along the ground below them, and wished that she were down with it, instead of suspended in midair.

In the front seat, Emily was chatting away, apparently unperturbed by the fact that she was sitting a thousand feet up in a flimsy tin can powered by little more than a rubber band. She had obviously recovered from her initial disappointment and was doing her best to flirt with Chase, although she wasn’t getting very far, judging by his monosyllabic replies. After the way he had pulled her into the plane, his strength couldn’t be denied, and no one could call him chatty, but Bea didn’t think he was quite what Emily had in mind on the strong, silent front.

She hoped not, anyway. She had a nasty feeling that Chase was not the kind of man to mess with. He certainly didn’t look the type to put up with much nonsense. Still, it was odd that he was so unresponsive. Very few men were immune to Emily’s sparkling blue eyes and spectacular lashes, but Chase seemed impervious to her many charms.

Maybe he just didn’t like women, Bea thought. It would be a shame with that mouth. Or maybe he was married after all. There was no reason why he shouldn’t be. The thought made Bea frown for some reason, and she leant forward casually, as if to get something from her handbag so that she could check out his left hand on the joystick.

No wedding ring. Nice hands, though.

Bea relaxed slightly and sat back, only to realise that the lack of a ring probably didn’t mean much. She couldn’t imagine outback men going in for jewellery in a big way. If Emily’s description was anything to go by, they were all macho in the extreme and would consider wedding rings something only city boys wore.

Not that Chase seemed particularly macho, but there was something spare and uncompromising about him. Definitely a no-frills type, she thought.

So he might be married.

Bea’s eyes rested on him speculatively. She couldn’t see his expression, just the edge of his jaw, his ear and the side of his throat. He had a good, strong neck, she couldn’t help noticing. She’d always had a thing about men’s necks. It didn’t bother Emily, but Bea couldn’t bear thin, scrawny ones. She liked her men strong and solid all over.

How did Chase like his women? Bea found herself wondering. It was pretty obvious that he didn’t have much time for brunettes with a stylish shoe sense! No, he’d probably go for a robust, no-nonsense type, she decided. Blonde, probably, with short sensible hair that didn’t require washing, moussing and blow-drying every day, and a minimal beauty routine.

Oh, well. Each to his own. It wasn’t as if she cared.

Although it did seem a waste of a neck like that.

Bea looked away with a tiny sigh.

If only there was anything else to look at! Looking down at the ground made her feel ill, and the sky was just a blue glare that made her feel dizzy. Bea tried looking at her hands, but that was just boring, and it was impossible not to let her mind drift towards imagining how Chase would be with his wife. Was he always this chilly and forbidding, or did he relax with a woman he liked enough to marry? He might even smile. Imagine what that would be like!

Closing her eyes, Bea was alarmed to find that she could imagine it all too clearly, and the picture of that stern mouth relaxing into a smile left her with such a queer feeling inside that her eyes snapped open again.

Nerves, she told herself.

‘Are you OK?’

Chase’s brusque voice made her jump, and she jerked her head round to find him regarding her with a frown. His eyes were uncomfortably keen, and in spite of herself Bea flushed, remembering the wayward trend of her thoughts.

‘I’m fine,’ she said stiffly.

He had turned right round in his seat to look at her. ‘You seem a bit nervous,’ he commented.

‘I’m not in the least nervous,’ lied Bea in a brittle voice, adding pointedly, ‘I might feel better if you were looking where you were going, though.’

A half-smile quirked the corner of his mouth. ‘This old girl can fly herself. It’s not as if there’s anything to bump into up here, anyway.’