Kiss Me Katie! & Hug Me Holly! Read online

  And he had a plane full of people waiting on him. “But I—”

  Another compressor joined the first. More hammering. And a new whine of a power tool upped the volume to beyond loud.

  “Yes?” She smiled at him, an angelic, sexy smile in complete contrast with their annoying, overwhelming surroundings.

  Tell her. “I…” Tell her now, that her first instincts were right, he wasn’t Mr. Perfect, and never would be. He wasn’t a man she could bank on, didn’t want to be a man she could bank on.

  “Bryan?” she yelled.

  Oh, that sweet smile. “I…”

  “You…” she shouted encouragingly.

  “Katie…I…” Damn. “I love you,” he yelled at the top of his lungs, just as by a twist of fate, maybe his own Christmas curse, the compressors and all the banging abruptly stopped.

  So did his heart as those three huge terrifying words rang out in the silent, stunned, amused, filled hangar.

  Applause rang out. So did whistles and catcalls.

  “Woo-hoo!”

  “You go, boy!”

  “Bryan and Katie sitting in a tree,” sang a group of mechanics. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

  Bryan stood there, rooted by shock.

  He dared a peek at Katie, prepared to face her laughter, as well. But she wasn’t laughing, she was staring at him, agog, as if she’d swallowed a toad.

  Given the blockage in his own windpipe, he knew the feeling.

  “You…what?” she whispered.

  Oh, sure, now they could whisper. “Nothing,” he said quickly. “I didn’t say anything.”

  She didn’t believe him, of course. And then she walked away, and with each step she took, his poor overwrought heart constricted.

  12

  WHEN KATIE TURNED on her heel and walked across the hangar toward the only chair she could see, she wasn’t exactly thinking. She couldn’t. The ringing in her ears and the pounding of her pulse took over.

  Driven by a need to sit before she fell, she sank to the seat and closed her eyes.

  “Katie.”

  He had the most wonderful voice, it should be illegal to have a voice like that. He also had the most wonderful scent, a warm, sexy male sort of scent.

  That should be illegal, too.

  “Hey! Are there going to be wedding bells?” one of the men called out. “Because I think we could do the wedding right here, right in the hangar.”

  “Yeah! We could part the planes to make an aisle,” someone else called out.

  “And we could throw O-rings instead of rice!” came yet another brilliant suggestion.

  “Touching,” Holly said. “Every girl’s dream, right Katie?”

  Bryan groaned, and Katie opened her eyes. Yep, his expression matched the misery in his voice.

  Because of their audience, she wondered, or because he’d blurted out something he hadn’t meant to?

  Both, most likely.

  The intercom system crackled again, making Katie jump. Mrs. Giddeon’s voice echoed through the hangar, calling for Bryan to come charter his flight.

  Clearly annoyed enough to forget they had clients and passengers listening, the woman threatened to personally hunt Bryan down if he didn’t get his “fine-looking behind” to the front, and pronto.

  “Would you look at that timing,” Holly said with a tsk. “Can’t leave passengers waiting, and you certainly wouldn’t want Mrs. Giddeon hunting you down. No telling what she’d do to that ‘fine-looking behind.”’

  “I’m sorry,” Bryan mouthed to Katie.

  “No biggie,” she said, shrugging, as if men mistakenly told her they loved her all the time.

  Hey, she’d at least have a memory to keep her warm at night.

  “No biggie?” he repeated, looking upset. “I—”

  “Bryan,” droned Mrs. Giddeon. Unhappily. “You have a mutiny brewing here.”

  “You’d better go,” Katie said.

  “But—”

  “Oh, please,” Holly moaned. “It’s just a flight. You’ll be separated for what? Maybe four hours? Cripes, children, hold it together, would you? Some of us would like to keep our breakfast down.”

  Then he was gone, and Katie was still sitting. Had to be sitting, since her watery legs refused to hold her. Around her the staff fell blessedly silent. Out of respect, she figured, grateful.

  That’s when she was hit with a shower of O-rings.

  Arms slung around each other, her so-called friends and staff came forward humming—off-key—the wedding march song.

  “I SUPPOSE you’re going to pretend you don’t want to talk about it,” Julie said sometime later.

  Katie feigned disinterest. “It being…what?”

  “Helllooo…this morning’s declaration? By the wild and hereto uncommitted Bryan Morgan?”

  “Oh, that it.”

  Julie grinned. “How totally romantic was that! He declared his love in front of everyone.”

  “Yeah. Romantic.” She was still pulling O-rings out of her hair. Obviously no one had heard him tell her he’d said nothing.

  “Come on,” Julie encouraged. “Tell me how Mr. Risk came to announce his love for Ms. Security.”

  Was she that easy to read? And anyway, it was no longer a matter of risk versus security. Yes, she’d probably always hesitate before taking a risk, but suddenly—or maybe not so suddenly at all—she didn’t want to settle for status quo, either.

  Bryan had claimed to love her.

  Good Lord, the most wonderful, exciting, thrilling, fascinating man on the planet had thought for that one brief shining moment that he loved her.

  Julie grinned because she’d spoken out loud. “And now back to our regularly scheduled programming, which apparently you’re just tuning into. Do you love him back?”

  Oh, yeah. “No.”

  Julie grinned. “Your dreamy smile answered differently.”

  “It’s lust, not love,” Katie said, frowning down at her clenched hands. She’d seen the horror on Bryan’s face, she knew he wished the words back. “Lust.”

  “Well, either one of them works as a hell of a bed partner on a cold winter night.”

  Maybe. For a while anyway. But lust wasn’t ever going to be enough for Katie, there had to be more.

  Bryan was what he was. She knew and accepted that. Maybe he wasn’t flying stunts at the moment, but he would be soon, and that was scary, but okay. His sense of wonder at life, his love of excitement and adventure, it had all led her to this point. For that alone she loved him.

  And he must never know.

  She’d learned a lot about herself in these past weeks. She’d learned that being grown-up and mature is fine, but there had to be room for fun, too, that fun was okay. She’d certainly learned that maybe risk is part of what makes life so worthwhile.

  Loving Bryan was certainly the mother of all risks. But she’d get over it. Maybe even try again someday.

  And yet…she had the need to prove to herself that she wouldn’t lose her nerve, that she would indeed risk again.

  In light of that, filled with determination, she marched into the mechanic’s hangar. After all, it didn’t have to be her heart she put on the line, right?

  At the sight of her, everything and everyone went momentarily silent. “No show this time, guys,” she announced.

  “Bryan loves Katie, Bryan loves Katie,” came a singsong voice from the back of the hangar, and trying to maintain her calm, she headed toward it, knowing it was Steve, their head mechanic and also part-time flight instructor.

  “Unfortunately,” she said in the face of his wide grin. “It’s you I want to talk to. I want flying lessons.” Behind her, everyone gasped.

  Katie ignored them. This was her risk and she was sticking to it.

  Because, really, Bryan had nailed it. All her life she’d been both fascinated and terrified by planes. Getting a job in an airport, however small, had been a step in the right direction. Learning to let a man like Bryan into her life had bee