Aussie Rules Read online

  “Damn hot flashes! I just stripped down in the kitchen and hosed myself off with the handheld faucet in the sink and it didn’t help! Look here, I’ve got five-cheese lasagna. The best in the state.”

  Al poked his head out of the kitchen. “In the whole country, babe.”

  “Oh, you. You’re just trying to get lucky again. But I’m too DAMN hot, so back off.”

  Al lifted his hands and backed off.

  Char blew a strand of hair from her head as her gaze swiveled to Mel. “Now I mean it. Get over here and eat.”

  “I’d do it,” Al called out. “She’s PMSing.”

  “If by PMSing you mean sick of men,” Char yelled back, “then, yeah, I’m PMSing!”

  Al ducked back into the kitchen, but not before Char snapped him in the ass with her towel.

  “Jesus, woman!” He grabbed himself. “Watch the parts!”

  “I was nowhere near the parts. And just because I didn’t want to have sex with you this morning doesn’t mean I’m PMSing.”

  Mel covered her ears but sat obediently. She was no idiot, Char’s lasagna was the best in the country.

  “What, if you hear sex talk, your ears fall off?” Al asked Mel.

  “What’s with the sex talk? There’s no sex talk,” Char said.

  “Sure there is,” Al said. “I’m not getting any, we’re going to talk.”

  “One morning! I had a headache one morning!”

  “I could have solved your headache.” Al accompanied this with a wild wag of a brow.

  Char rolled her eyes.

  Al winked at Mel.

  Mel dug into the huge plate of lasagna Char set in front of her. “I can’t hear you over the roar of my brain matter as it spontaneously combusts.” She swallowed her first bite, then moaned. “God, this is heaven.”

  Char beamed with pleasure.

  “Ah, look at that.” Al pulled her in and kissed her neck. “You look so pretty when you smile.” He nibbled. “And you taste even better than your lasagna.”

  Char shoved him away but, softened now, she smiled, and so sweetly Mel actually had to look away.

  “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” Char murmured. “I’m just tired. These hot flashes are a bitch.”

  “I know, baby. I’ll give you a foot massage when we get home, no sex talk, I promise.”

  “Oh, no, that’s okay. Maybe we can incorporate something cold, that’s all. Ice cold. Like…ice cubes…”

  Al laughed softly. “You’re on.”

  Mel kept eating, but her heart sighed. The two of them might fight big, but they loved bigger, loved through thick and PMSy moods, and though she didn’t always understand it, there was no denying the power of such emotion, and sometimes looking at it reminded her of what she didn’t have.

  When she finished overloading her arteries, she thanked Char and made her way to the maintenance hangar. Danny was in the air with a customer, diagnosing a problem with a plane. Mel flipped on the back lights, working her way through the huge, yawning open space, back to where she kept her thirty-year-old baby, the Hawker. “Hi, honey, I’m home.” She pulled over her tool cart, and also the large tub of cleaning fluid. Then she got out her three-step ladder and buried herself in the engine compartment.

  Over the years, she’d slowly replaced this and that on the aircraft as she got the extra cash, hoping one day to fly the thing again. Now she was working on the spar strap, a task that required poking and prodding and wrenching and hammering, a good thing actually, because she began to feel some of the anxiety and tension that had been gripping her all week finally fade away.

  She was tired. And it was no wonder. For nights now she’d done little more than toss and turn on tangled sheets, thinking about Bo; about the episode in her office, about what would have happened if she hadn’t come to her senses, about how sometimes she even wished she hadn’t come to her senses at all, that instead she’d let him strip her and then himself, and work his magic on more than just her mouth.

  Or about when he’d beaten her at darts last night, how a small part of her, the secretly lonely and apparently horny part, had waited for him to claim her as the prize.

  Lord, she had it bad.

  He’d known it, too. He’d known what he did to her so effortlessly, and he liked it. He’d been liking it ever since, and telling her so with his gaze.

  Rat fink bastard.

  God, she wanted him. But she had enough to worry about without adding stupid, ridiculous irresponsible sex to the mix.

  She needed a bigger wrench. Grabbing one off the tool cart behind her, she went back to work. She was close, closer than she’d ever been, to getting the Hawker in flying shape, which was good because she could fetch a pretty penny for it.

  Not that she’d be able to sell, given its sentimental value. She’d acquired the Hawker from Sally, who’d actually meant to have the plane tossed into a metal heap and salvaged for scrap.

  But Mel could never do it. This plane held a lot of firsts for her. Her first aircraft. Her first real possession that had been worth anything. Her first ‘I love you,’ which had been right in the cockpit, too, though that had come from an amused, touched Sally on the night she’d handed the keys over to Mel.

  Mel knew it was silly not to sell, silly and sappy, but at least she’d managed to keep that sappiness from most of the world, all of whom believed her to be one tough cookie.

  And she was that, too. Tough to the core, a real fighter. She cranked on the wrench and thought of the fight with Bo yet ahead of her. Yeah, that was going to be her toughest battle yet, and she needed to keep in sharp shape for it.

  She heard the heels clicking long before she could actually see anyone, but Dimi was the only one who’d wear heels out here. Then she appeared in a white lacy sundress that played peek-a-boo with her toned, tanned, perfect body, as usual by some miracle completely spotless.

  Dimi took a moment to glance at the mess around her—tools, cleaning fluid, parts, old plane…and wrinkled her nose. “Couple of problems. One, you have a few calls.”

  “Anything I want to take?”

  “Hell, no.” Dimi studied her pretty pink nails. “They’re all on hold.”

  “How many?”

  “Three.”

  They had only three lines. Which meant that with all three lines tied up, no one else could call in. Mel opened her mouth to point that out, then shook her head at the amusement in Dimi’s gaze. “Looking to cut out of here, huh?”

  “Actually, I was looking to get you out of here.” Dimi leaned over the tool bench and blew out a breath. Dust flew. “Disgusting.”

  “You could have radioed me instead of risking yourself.”

  Dimi pulled a new rag from a box, spread it over the bench, and carefully sat. Then she removed a chocolate bar from her pocket.

  As junk food was usually banned from Dimi’s body, this was the same as a scream of frustration and/or stress. “What’s up?”

  “Pretty much our entire future,” Dimi said. “No biggee.” Tearing open the wrapper, she offered half to Mel.

  Mel took a bite and the chocolate burst in her mouth, making her moan.

  “Not quite as good as an orgasm, but close enough, I’d say.” Dimi chewed for a moment. “They’re all bill collectors threatening your hide, by the way. On the phone. And as I’m rather fond of your grumpy-ass hide—” She cocked her head and studied Mel’s filthy coveralls. “I don’t want anything to happen to it.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. Second problem.”

  “Starting to feel like Job here.”

  “Yeah, but at least this one doesn’t have anything to do with Bo trying to talk us into hating Sally.”

  Mel opened her mouth to say that wasn’t what he was doing, but decided it’d sound like she was siding with the enemy so she said nothing.

  “Someone’s here to see you. Bill Watkins.”

  Bill Watkins held the note on Mel’s Cessna. He was a man’s