Judith Leon - Iron Dove

“You okay, hon?” Nova asked, squeezing Robin’s hand, elated and relieved.

“I have never been so scared in all my life.”

“You’re going to have a great story to tell your friends.”

Robin grinned. “Yeah.” The smile faded quickly. “I am so sorry to be such a wimp. My dad’s furious. I can never please him. I try, but I just can’t do this stuff.”

“Here’s a guarantee. Trust Bruce and me and yourself, and when you leave here ten days from now, you’ll be amazed. I know you want to please your dad, but the person you most want to please is you. I promise, you will have learned that you can always do more than you first believe. Just don’t give up.”

“If you’d said that an hour ago, I’d have laughed out loud.”

“Right!”

Robin’s brow wrinkled in a frown. “What’s that sound?”

Nova hesitated, listening, as she, too, heard a thrumming. “Helicopter,” she said.

They searched the sky, and within seconds a gray-green military-type helicopter—a Huey, Nova noted—appeared, moving directly toward them.

“Oh, it’s coming our way,” Robin said, her voice again in a quiver.

“It’s not going to shake us out of these slings. We’re fine.”

The blissful stillness of the jungle, already assaulted by the chopper’s blades, suddenly crackled with the sound of bullhorn being turned on.

Just wonderful, Nova thought. This cannot be good news. Why in the world would anyone come out here in a helicopter?

“I’m from Cosmos Adventure Travel,” rumbled a voice over the loudspeaker. “My name is Joseph Cardone. I need to speak to Nova Blair.”

Joe! My God! If Joe was here for her, whatever was brewing must be serious.

Her tour folks were pointing her way. The helicopter edged overhead. She and Robin swayed.

For a second, Nova was transported to a street in Germany and Joe was kneeling beside her, his face ashen. He’d just saved her from being run over, maybe even killed. She remembered the strength of his hands, the rich chocolate of his brown eyes, that football quarterback body.

She briskly hand-signaled the helicopter to back off, afraid the downdraft might break branches or topple nests. The pilot responded, lifting the craft higher but still keeping it above them. Joe, holding the bullhorn, stood inside the starboard door.

“Hey, Nova!”

She recognized his voice and her heart—which was already pumping from the adrenalin rush of the rescue so hard she could feel it in her throat—sped up still more. The goddamn idiot never called.

She gave him a thumbs-up of recognition.

“CAT needs you to do something. Urgent. No time to get a Jeep out here. You should turn over the tour to Bruce, collect your stuff, and then we’ll pick you up from the hotel’s deck. Say, ten minutes?”

How about, say, never! How dare they assume she’d jump when they called! She couldn’t have made it clearer that she no longer intended to work Company jobs. She gave a thumbs-down.

“Bruce,” she called out. “You can pull Robin across now.”

Robin started moving away toward the far side of the canopy.

From the sky, “We’ll pick you up. Ten minutes. Okay?”

She looked up at him, happy to see him and furious at the same time. She wanted to climb up there and ask him what he’d been doing lately. Again, she gave him the thumbs-down.

“Are you saying you aren’t going to come?”

She nodded and simultaneously gave a thumbs-up.

She began to pull back to where Padgett, Charles and the others waited. The helicopter followed, hovering high over her at first, and then slid swiftly to hover over the hotel. She wondered what havoc the blades were stirring up with anything loose on the deck. A rope ladder dropped down from the starboard door.

No is no, she thought.

By the time she reached her group, Joe was halfway down the ladder. She unhooked her carabiner and stepped out of the sling.

“Sorry, folks. This shouldn’t take long, but I’ve got to deal with it before we can go out today. Clearly CAT has some special problem they think I can solve. Everyone wait here, until I get back. Or you can come back with me to the hotel.”

“I’ll wait here since Robin is already across,” Charles said.

“I’ll wait here, too,” Padgett added.

“Don’t leave us in the lurch,” said a teacher from Ohio.

“I’ll be back in no time,” she assured everyone. No is no!

Her feet felt light, as though her tennis shoes had the power of levitation. Nova closed the space between herself and Joe, who had just dropped a couple of feet from the helicopter’s ladder onto the broad Treetops deck.

The khaki, lightweight military jumpsuit showed off his dark brown wavy hair and deeply tanned skin in a way that triggered a too damn familiar sexual fantasy she had of being swept off her feet by Joe, and more. Lots more. Across the narrowing distance between them, he sent her one of those goddamn fantastic smiles.

Her pulse beat a tattoo at her throat. She didn’t even try to suppress the smile she sent in return. How wonderful to see him again. How amazingly good it felt.

He grabbed her hand for a handshake. She embraced him in a bear hug. He smelled wonderfully like fresh air and Texas sage—soap or shampoo, she thought. She’d never known him to wear cologne. Then she pushed him away. “You are a typical male jerk.”

“You’re pissed.”

“You betcha.”

He tilted his head, gave her a sheepish half grin.

“As I recall you uttered something about keeping in contact, and I haven’t heard word one from you. How many months now? Since I know you’re a man of your word, I decided you must surely be dead.”

They were yelling over the sound of the chopper. Joe waved the pilot to back off farther, noting as he did that Nova had a bit of tan on that extraordinarily fair skin, something she’d not had the last time he’d seen her.

He also wondered whether her greeting was the kind she’d use with a kid brother—or a friend—or one she used with a man she was attracted to. So far, he couldn’t tell.

She’d braided her glossy, long black hair into a twist at the back of her head. He checked her earlobes and found a plain pair of silver studs—not the dangly silver doves that he’d given her as a parting gift. He suddenly realized he’d been hoping she’d be wearing those. She always wore earrings, acted as though she was somehow naked without them, but it certainly made more sense out in the middle of the jungle to be wearing simple studs.

She might not be wearing his earrings, but she clearly had remembered his promise. And she was right that promises should be kept. “My humble apology.” He added a little bow at the waist.

She laughed, and the deep, throaty sound made the small hairs at the back of his neck stand up. He enjoyed looking at the curve of her breasts beneath the tight, gray tank top, and then at the long legs exposed below her gray shorts. He forced his eyes to her lips. He sure wasn’t thinking about business and why he’d been sent here. He was thinking of sex.

Gazing at those moist, luscious lips didn’t solve his thought problem, so he turned sideways and, staring out at the expanse of green foliage, said, “Look, I know you’ve turned down a couple of Company assignments. But this one, I promise you, is critical.”

A man and woman approached from the other end of the deck. Nova said, “Joe Cardone, this is Hans Licht and his wife, Jennie. They pretty much make Treetops happen. Joe works with me at CAT.”

He shook hands with them, and Hans Licht said, “Is there anything wrong? What is happening?”

“It’s okay, Hans,” Nova said. “CAT has hit a snag and they think they need me. I’m quite sure they don’t, but Joe and I need to chat about it.”