Sue Civil-Brown - Hurricane Hannah

“Little game?” He took a slow breath, willing himself not to tell her exactly what he thought of her. “That was no little game. It was a heads-up match to determine the future of this island! Or did you think those people you passed on the way in here were joking?”

“You’re not serious,” she said.

“I’m dead serious, Sticks. That’s how we decide things around here. Only fair way to do it, and a damn sight fairer than U.S. elections lately. And it saves us from being overrun with lawyers.” He let out a huff. “Little game. You know about as much about life as your mechanic knows about jet engines.”

She didn’t even smile. “He’s certainly going to be dead once I get back to Houston.”

He wanted to like her then. He really did. But he decided he didn’t need the headache.

“We’ll take a look at her,” he heard himself volunteering, then wanted to kick his own butt.

“Thanks. My company will pay, of course.”

“Of course.” Then something struck him. “Your company?” She bristled a bit, as if expecting a comment about how it was rare to see a woman who owned an aircraft company. It would never have crossed his mind if she hadn’t bristled. Now he needed to bite back the urge to tick her off.

“I own it.” Her voice was sterner than it needed to be, a sort of tacit offer of a duel at dawn. “Lamont Aircraft. We buy and refurbish private planes.”

“Looks like this one didn’t get refurbished enough.”

“Do tell.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

He unwrapped his cigar and stuck it between his teeth, deciding it was safer to bite tobacco than bite her head off. God should never have invented women. Or if he had to, then maybe he should have made them more like men: uncomplicated.

And now he found himself feeling almost sorry for her mechanic. Damn! “How long you had that mechanic?”

“He’s been with the company fifteen years.”

“You don’t look that old.” He was almost delighted when he saw her grind her teeth.

“I’m old enough. It’s my company. And I want to know what went wrong with that aircraft.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” he promised, which he shouldn’t have done, but when Delilah was in the room, men were known to do stupid, stupid things. “Craig and I are pretty good mechanics.”

Instead of saying something snappy, she merely said, “Thank you.”

Well hell. Now she was going to get nice on him? No thank you!

He rolled his cigar to the other side of his mouth and clamped down on it. “It’ll take a while, of course.”

Her eyes widened. “How long?”

“Well, I don’t exactly carry a parts store for Learjets. In fact, this’ll be one of maybe three or four times I’ve worked on one.”

“Oh, great.”

He grinned, enjoying her discomfiture. “So I’ll have to figure out what’s wrong, then fly out to get parts. And I can’t do that until after the storm passes.”

“Storm?” She looked even more unhappy.

“Don’t you pay attention to the weather reports?” That would be a mortal sin for any pilot.

She snapped. “Of course I do!”

“Then you can’t have missed the fact that we have a tropical storm headed our way. It might even be a hurricane by the time it gets here.”

“I was flying around that,” she said.

“Well, Hannah, get ready to meet Hannah, because you sure as hell flew right into her path.”

“THAT WOMAN IS a piece of work,” Buck told Craig as they stood staring up at the Learjet while waiting for the shop computer to download schematics of the plane.

“Yeah. All women are,” Craig agreed. And he was married and had three kids.

“Why do you suppose that is?”

“I dunno. I just know we can’t live without ’em.”

“I’m working on it.”

Craig snorted. “That woman volcanologist—Edna, isn’t it?—she’s got her snare set for you.”

Buck looked at him, and Craig finally shrugged. “Okay. Have it your way, boss.”

“Believe me, I intend to.”

Craig rolled his eyes. Buck chewed a little harder on his unlit cigar and wondered why it was that men who were married wanted every other man on the planet to be married, as well. It was almost like some kind of brainwashing.

“That Mary Jo must’ve really been something.”

For an instant, Buck froze. He couldn’t believe Craig had mentioned that woman. His former wife in his former life. The woman who had screwed around with all the available navy guys while her husband, Buck, was at sea as a carrier pilot.

“I told you not to mention that name.”

“Sorry, boss.”

That would teach him to have one too many beers. A slip like that and he was hearing about it for the rest of his life. He glared at Craig who held up both his hands.

“Sorry,” Craig said again.

“You better be.” He returned his attention to the jet, thinking he wouldn’t mind sitting in the left hand seat and taking her out for a spin. It had been a while since he’d flown anything that fast, and sometimes he still yearned for his fighter-jock days. The speed, the g-forces…they got into a man’s blood.

He sighed and went over to the computer to see how far along they were on printing out the fuel-line schematics. Sheesh, the thing was as slow as molasses at the North Pole.

“It’s the satellite uplink,” Craig said knowingly.

“Yeah? Then fix it.”

“Damn, boss, you don’t want much!”

“Then tell me why the satellite uplink should be so slow.” He rotated his unlit cigar to the other side of his mouth.

“Do I look like a psychic? Probably because of the approaching storm. Traffic is likely heavier than usual. I dunno. Maybe it’s not the satellite uplink at all. Maybe it’s the printer.”

Buck was acting like an ass and he knew it. Admitting it didn’t make him feel any better. But the truth was, it was getting late in the day, and the probability they would have those schematics in time to work on the plane today was highly unlikely.

And worse, his win against Anstin, his prime opportunity to save the island, had fluttered away in a blast of jet winds.

“Why don’t you just go home?” he suggested. “Unless the storm hits, we’ll start in the morning. And take the woman with you.”

“To that motel? No way. I wouldn’t put my worst enemy in that cockroach pit.”

“Then what am I supposed to do with her?”

Craig shrugged. “She can sleep on her plane.” He jerked his thumb toward it. “It looks posh enough for a sultan.”

“Except a real sultan would be buying a new one.”

“Quibble, quibble, quibble. You need to get laid, man. Then maybe you wouldn’t have all that energy to waste on stupidity.”

With that, Craig stalked out the side door, a man-sized door, that hadn’t been locked up yet. Buck stood alone in his hangar with two large planes and a couple of small ones that belonged to island residents, and wondered why he put up with Craig.

Of course, Craig was a natural-born mechanic. That helped. In front of him, the computer still hummed, a bar showing that the download had progressed eleven percent. Beside it, the big printer was busy drawing schematics. How complicated could it be?

Complicated enough. A plane, any plane, was a complex beast, and the newer they were, the more that complexity had been magnified.

So he had two choices. One of them involved going back to his office and facing the redheaded Valkyrie. The other meant sleeping out here on a battered recliner in the small parts office.

He decided the Valkyrie presented the lesser of two evils. He’d shoo her off to sleep on her plane, then peace would prevail, at least until morning.

He opened the door to the outside, rather than the one farther to the rear that joined with his living quarters behind the front office. Whenever he could, he preferred to walk outdoors.