Aussie Rules Read online

He only shook his head, moved toe to toe with her, cupped her face, fingers gliding into her hair, and then kissed her.

  Not a hello peck, either, but a long, melting one that had her staggering back. “Man.” She couldn’t recover. “Man.”

  He simply smiled and boarded, and for the entire flight—blissfully uneventful—she felt incredibly aware of him sitting next to her. Everything he did seemed to spark a reaction within her, whether it was sliding on the headphones over his come-as-it-is hair, or covering his eyes with those mirrored sunglasses, stretching out his long legs, talking to air control with that low, effortlessly sexy voice, dealing with her passengers with far more patience than she ever could have managed…

  They were nearly back to Santa Barbara when the conversation turned to the hotel. The Huttons went on and on about the incredible service, then asked about Mel’s room.

  Bo glanced at her. “Yes, did you sleep well?” he asked.

  In fact, she’d hardly slept at all, as he very well knew. “Yes.”

  “Did you enjoy the service?” he pressed.

  It was all she could do to maintain her composure. “The service was…”

  Bo raised a brow, lips quirking. He thought he was so funny. Well, she was funnier.

  “It was okay,” she finally said with a shrug.

  The Huttons expressed their surprise, then after a few minutes of small talk, busied themselves with their laptops, leaving Mel and Bo to their own.

  “Only okay?” Bo murmured.

  Mel stuck her tongue out at him. Immature, but there it was.

  He only laughed softly. “I have a better job for that tongue,” he said.

  “I bet.”

  “Watch your altitude.”

  “Altitude? Or attitude?”

  He laughed. “Both.”

  She glanced down at the instruments and sighed. “Are you always right?”

  He met her gaze again, and suddenly he wasn’t playing. “Usually.”

  Her smile faded. Yeah. He’d been right about a lot of things. Sally, for instance. After meeting his gaze for a long beat, she looked out at the horizon. No visible storm, but that didn’t mean the one brewing inside her heart wasn’t going to be a Category 5. “If the money in those accounts you found was your father’s, then where is it now?” she asked quietly.

  “Maybe she bought an island and is drinking her lazy days away.”

  Mel shook her head. “Then why ask Dimi and me to send her cash over the years, leaving us so strapped all the time?”

  He didn’t answer. The implication being, of course, because Sally could.

  Mel absorbed that for a time, flying in silence.

  He let her, and if she hadn’t been in such a bad place inside her head, she might have admitted that she liked that about him. No rushing, no forcing of his opinions. “I’m going to get a private investigator.”

  “How about we? We get a PI. We start with Mexico, and that last call you received.”

  She paused. “I think I should do this alone,” she said carefully. “And talk to her first.”

  His eyes went dark, inscrutable. “You want to warn her away from me.”

  “I want to make sure she’s okay, and that she wasn’t a victim.”

  “And…”

  “And nothing,” she said. “That’s all.”

  Jaw tight, he shook his head but didn’t say another word. The truce, if there’d ever really been one, was over. Tentative trust shaken if not gone completely.

  The next day, in between charter flights, a broken tow, fuel deliveries, and filing a police report for the e-mails and notes, Mel pulled out the local phone book and picked a private investigator.

  Matt Thomas promised to investigate Sally’s whereabouts, which should have made her feel good but instead left her feeling like she’d betrayed her own mother.

  The next two days moved like a blur. Bo took a flight to test-fly an old Douglas he was looking at in Los Angeles. Mel stopped what she was doing to watch him take off, wondering when things would ever get back to normal.

  Or if he’d ever want her again…

  One afternoon, Char fed her, standing in her small kitchen fanning air with her shirt as she grumbled about the heat.

  “It’s not that hot,” Mel said.

  “Well, you’re not facing early menopause, are you?” Char lifted her top. “Look at me.”

  “Um…” Mel couldn’t help but take in Char’s slightly curved belly and full breasts straining to escape a black cotton bra. Her skin was flushed beet red and dewy. “Maybe you could open the window—”

  “It doesn’t matter. I could take the roof off, I’d still be too hot.”

  “Charlene, Jesus.” Al came around the corner and blocked the view of his wife’s breasts and belly. “What are you doing?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? I’m hot! Hot, hot, hot—”

  “You’re flashing the customers!” He craned his neck to the tables, found them empty, and lost some of his bristle. “Okay, fine, there are no customers.”

  “Hey,” Mel said. “I’m right here.”

  “You don’t count.” Char smiled up at Al. “You don’t want to share my breasts.”

  “Nope. All mine,” Al murmured, and pulled her against him.

  Mel rolled her eyes and hightailed it out of the den of love. The hot den of love.

  She stayed late that night, working on the Hawker. When she was done, she hopped into the shower in her office bathroom, closing her eyes in bliss, letting out a long breath as the tension finally began to drain from her body.

  “That sounded like a loaded sigh.”

  With a startled squeak, she blinked one Bo Black into focus.

  One soon-to-be-dead Bo Black.

  The walls of the shower were glass, clear glass. He could see everything of her. “What are you doing?”

  “Same as you.” Eyes on hers, he kicked off his shoes.

  “Oh, no.” Even though she still had shampoo in her hair, she slammed off the water. “Go away!”

  He pulled off his shirt, and her gaze dropped to his shoulders and chest, gilded from the sun, the sleek flesh delineated with long, sinewy lines of muscle.

  An undeniable surge of anticipation coursed through her.

  He reached for the waistband of his jeans.

  “Don’t you dare!” she said.

  “Now what have I told you about daring me?”

  “We just had sex a few days ago.” She eyed his unmistakable hard-on. “You’re still mad at me. You can’t want it again.”

  “I’ve got a part of me that says otherwise.”

  “Well, you’re not supposed to think with that part.”

  “It’s how us men are made, darlin’. Ridiculously easy.” Pop, pop, pop went the buttons on his Levi’s.

  Boom, boom, boom went Mel’s heart. “Stop.”

  To his credit, he did. Thumbs hooked in his opened jeans, he lifted his head, a specimen so magnificent he took her breath. Her body quivered for more. Just looking, she told herself. That’s all, just looking. “Fine,” she relented, already breathless at the thought of his nude body. “Go ahead and get naked, then. That’ll make us even.”

  “Even is good.”

  “But we’re not doing anything.” She tore her gaze off his body and looked into his eyes, which were lit with humor and heat. Gulp. Lots of heat. “I mean it, Bo.”

  “Remember the other night?” he asked.

  Remember? She could do little else!

  “Yeah, you remember,” he said. “You know it was off-the-charts amazing. You’re off-the-charts amazing.”

  “Are you trying to butter me up?”

  At that, his eyes positively smoldered. “Do you have butter?”

  “Oh, my God, you are so male!”

  “I’d think you’d be grateful for that.” His smile was slow and wicked and did things to her belly, not to mention her nipples and between her thighs.

  “Oh, this is ridiculous.”

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