Amber Leigh Williams - Navy Seal Promise

Adrian’s smile wavered by a hair. Only a hair. “She likes being back in the air, and your father’s determined to make sure she stays there this time around.”

“Why wouldn’t she?” When Adrian’s eyes skimmed to his shoulder, he ducked his head to bring her attention back to his face. “B.S. isn’t in some kind of trouble already?” Thus far, none of his father’s ventures had failed. To hear the man tell it, the agricultural market had been ripe for new sprayers. “It’s been barely a year since they cut the ribbon.”

Adrian shook her head. “I couldn’t tell you everything. I don’t think even he’s told me all the nitpicky details, but there’ve been problems. Prospective clients slipping away. Contracts breaking up over mysterious circumstances. And the holes need plugging now to keep the belly of the business off the ground. Until then...” She lifted her brows, eyeing him from underneath them. “This needs to stay quiet. I’m not sure Harmony knows half of what I’m telling you.”

“She’s fifty percent of the business,” Kyle pointed out.

“Yes, but your dad told her from day one that this was a sure thing,” Adrian said. “She put her faith in his word, as well as her money, name and reputation. If B.S. goes under, it won’t be without a fight on your dad’s part. Or mine, for that matter.”

Kyle frowned over the wave of information.

Adrian crossed her arms over her chest. Mavis had looked much the same moments ago. “Did you sail home?”

“Always do.”

“On the Hellraiser.”

“What else?”

“Did you stay close to shore?”

“Mostly,” he claimed.

One of her brows twitched. “Please tell me you didn’t sail like an idiot through that storm.”

He hedged. “Huh.”

“Kyle Zachariah Bracken.”

They both were born Carltons. Adrian had been married to Radley Kennard at the time of Kyle’s birth. However, she’d wanted to give Kyle her name in lieu of her first husband’s. When James came back into their lives, solidifying the family unit, his mother had asked Kyle’s advice over what to do with their name.

He liked the idea of them staying Carltons, sharing what had been theirs together for so long. But he’d also finally gained a real father—one hell of a father—and he’d wanted to take his name. So, to James’s amusement and pride, Kyle and Adrian took up the name Bracken to please themselves as well as him. “In my defense,” Kyle said slowly, “it wasn’t a tropical storm at the time...”

“You sailed through a hurricane and didn’t have the decency to call your mother,” she surmised, unimpressed by her findings.

“Are you surprised?”

“Not in the least. But I still have that BB gun I took from your possession all those years ago.” Her lips pursed. “Don’t think I’m not above poppin’ you with it.”

Kyle finally extended what was in his hand. “Then now’s a good a time as any...”

Adrian took the bundle gingerly. “What’s this?”

“A surprise. Careful,” he added as she unrolled the cotton wrapping. “It’s not the cuddly type.”

Adrian carefully unveiled the offering. She cupped it in her hands with the cotton bunched between her skin and the thorns packed close along the stem. “Kyle,” she breathed, every trace of censure vanishing. “Where did you get this?”

“That’s...classified, Mom.” When she tutted at him, he said, “I did some research. It’s native to Madagascar. They say it migrated to the Middle East in ancient times as well as to small areas of India. They call it the Crown of Thorns.”

Adrian gazed at it in wonder. Kyle’s mother had seen most every flower under the sun. He loved nothing more than bringing home something exotic, something she hadn’t seen before. In his parents’ bedroom at The Farm, she kept a shadowbox full of treasures he’d found through his years of service. Bending her head low over the pink blossoms, she sniffed for fragrance. “It’s different. I like that. Is it dangerous?”

“Poisonous, from flower to stem. And it’d make a fair pincushion.”

It might as well have been a puppy, the way she lifted it to look from another angle. She beamed. “You did good. If you’re right about the poison, it’ll do well to keep your dad in line, too.”

Kyle swallowed. “I missed you, Mom.”

She gazed at him, the light in her flickering as she focused on what was behind the eyes once more. “Something did happen over there. But I missed you, too. And I’m glad you’re home.”

CHAPTER TWO

THE WARPLANE HANDLED like it was the 1940s and the war was on again. Harmony strapped into the cockpit of the old bird with the giddiness of a child and took to the sky, climbing high, the nose reaching for the blue, white-peppered expanse.

“No tricks today, ace,” the voice of her radioman advised. “Just do some nice fly-bys and get the people going.”

“You’re a buzzkill, James,” she called back. “I’m just stretching the lady’s legs.”

What legs! The engine had fire and pizzazz. It was bred for dogfighting and hell-for-leather maneuvers. The idea brought gooseflesh to Harmony’s skin as she banked, coming around.

The trim airfield spread out below her, a jutting green carpet. Two lines of exhibition planes were queued on either side of the runway. Hundreds of faces from the metal bleachers were turned up to the sky, watching the fighter live again. “Hold on to your hats,” Harmony warned, going low.

A curse blew through the headset of her flying helmet as she dipped over the bleachers and climbed again, gaining airspeed. “Well. Hats are in the wind,” James observed. “You nearly ripped the blouse off the congressman’s wife.”

“Then we’re certain to make the papers.” She banked again. “Relax. Are the good people smiling?”

“They’re verklempt. Nobody ever said you don’t put on a good show.”

“Just sit back and enjoy it, why don’t you?” she suggested. “Coming in again...”

Even she whooped as she made the next sweep. This was worth all the hassle they’d gone through to get the summer show off the ground. They’d haggled for weeks with FAA regulations. With well-trained pilots, they’d managed to rustle together all the right paperwork and get the all-clear from the powers that be.

God, it felt great to be in the cockpit. No way she would ever give it up again. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t give to stay airborne.

Well, there was one thing she wouldn’t give. Harmony’s gaze strayed to the three-by-five photograph she’d taped to the control panel for luck. Her daughter smiled back at her over a ruffle-lined shoulder, curly-headed and coquettish. She was the reason Harmony couldn’t try any of her old barnstorming maneuvers, though the temptation sang. She was the reason Harmony heeded James’s warning and performed fly-bys instead of loops.

Gracie Bea, who’d lost one parent before she was born, was the general reason Harmony toed the line. Because no matter how trained she was, no matter how well-maintained the warbird might be, she couldn’t take risks. She took enough on a day-to-day basis. Aerial application wasn’t low-level aerobatics, but it still held its share of dangers.

Harmony liked being the pilot mama who taught her daughter not to slow down but to run and climb, whoop and holler. Yet she knew her limits, and she heeded them as she’d heeded few other limits in life, even gravity, because no child deserved to grow up an orphan.

It hurt enough that Bea would never know her father, Petty Officer Benjamin Zaccoe—Benji.

“Last pass,” Harmony informed James through the radio. “Ready down there?” A frown pulled at her lips when he didn’t answer. “James?” She was already going in for a dive. She pulled off the final fly-by and tapped her headset. “Tower, do you read?”