Airman To The Rescue. Heatherly Bell
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to comfort her, his face broadcasting the same pained expression men all over the world wore when they didn’t know how to comfort a woman but still had to try.
In seconds, Matt made his way out the door and to the middle of the hangar.
“I don’t know what you’re so upset about. Everybody makes mistakes. It was just a little coffee,” Jedd said as he patted Sarah’s shoulder.
“What the hell happened?” Matt barked.
“She spilled some coffee on me and then she...she just started crying. I’m not hurt, I swear!” Jedd held up his hands.
“Sarah. Tell me what’s wrong,” Matt said, his voice sounding clipped and edgy even to his own ears. He tried his best to soften his tone, but she worried him. The passengers were beginning to stare, too, and she’d hate that.
This had nothing to do with the coffee. He’d only known her a few months but everything about Sarah said confident, capable, independent woman. He’d never seen her give way to her emotions like this, even after losing her estranged father and fighting with Stone over the flight school and their inheritance. Every instinct in him said this was much bigger than spilled coffee.
She shook her head, wrapping her arms around her body like she’d cave in at any minute.
Never one to lack initiative, Matt tugged her gently from behind the counter and then led her, hand on the small of her back, toward Magnum’s main office. He opened the door, and when Emily glanced up from the desk where she sat next to their office assistant, Cassie, he waved away the look of concern in her eyes.
“Need a minute.” He led Sarah inside Stone’s smaller inner office and shut the door.
“I’m okay.” She hiccupped and grabbed a tissue from the box on Stone’s desk. “R-really.”
“Yeah, not buying it. Try again.”
“Seriously. This isn’t your concern. Just give me a few minutes in here. I’ll get myself together.” She jerked away from him, but he caught her by the elbow and turned her toward him. The same energy he’d tried to ignore again and again surfaced as it did every time he touched her. A jolt of electricity coursed through him because every time he touched Sarah he got a one-two-punch reminder he was a man. And she was a hot woman. Beautiful. Smart.
But not his.
“Tell me.”
Her green eyes, now red-rimmed, found their fire again. “Why? So you can try to fix this for me? I don’t need your help.”
Good. He had pissed-off, fighting Sarah again. He could deal with her. What he couldn’t handle was falling-apart Sarah because she only made him want to haul her into his arms and kiss her until she forgot her name.
“Something happened out there, and it didn’t have anything to do with coffee.” He leaned back against Stone’s desk and folded his arms across his chest.
She slapped her forehead. “Of course it didn’t have to do with coffee! This has to do with the fact that I’m an idiot. I trusted a man. I paid him good money, and he didn’t deliver!”
At this, he was sure he’d lost a couple of brain cells. He didn’t speak for a moment, clearing his throat as he tried with a Herculean effort not to picture Sarah paying for a gigolo’s services. But that’s exactly what it sounded like even if he knew it couldn’t be true. Still, his imagination was enjoying this little side trip. Maybe a little too much.
“Oh my God! Wipe that look off your face. I hired a contractor. Somebody up there must really hate me because I picked the loser of contractors. I picked the guy who leads the police on a car chase and gets arrested on national TV!”
Crap. “That was your contractor?”
“It’s him.” She slumped into one of the chairs. “We were all watching. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t him, and that it could be someone who looked like him. I don’t know what he did, but the man got himself arrested. He hasn’t returned my calls and now I know why.”
“Great. How much did you pay him?”
“Too much. I gave him a deposit, and there hasn’t been much labor. He could never seem to finish a project. Always had to run to the store to get another nail or another stud or God knows what.”
“Where did you hear about this guy, anyway?”
“Eloise’s List. He had plenty of good reviews so either the people were being blackmailed into leaving them or he’s recently changed his work ethic.”
There had to be something else, though, or she wouldn’t be this upset. “No worries. I’ll find someone else for you. I’ll check him out first.”
“No.”
He cocked his head. “No?”
“You heard me. Unless you know anyone who works for free, I can’t afford them.”
“You run out of money?”
“You could say that. I planned on selling soon and flipping the house.” She groaned and rubbed her temples. “This is so much more complicated than on those home improvement shows.”
Those reality shows were filled with so much...fantasy. Find a fixer-upper for two hundred dollars, pour in some “sweat equity” and sell for a cool million. He didn’t know where these scenarios happened, but so far as he could tell it wasn’t planet Earth. He’d tried, of course, to warn Sarah about buying the house from Stone. To say the house needed a facelift was an understatement. Even Stone had tried to talk her out of the remodeling.
Initially Matt had believed Sarah might stay, but then she’d made it clear she would flip the house and move back to Colorado. So she’d be leaving, and he’d be staying. He only had a few more years left with his son, Hunter, before he turned eighteen. Only a few years to make a difference in his life.
He liked Sarah, but he also didn’t need the drama. Especially when she was only here in Fortune a while longer. But he wasn’t done torturing himself, nor would he stand by while Sarah lost everything. He squatted down in front of her chair, and put one hand on each of her jean-clad legs.
“I work for free.”
* * *
“FREE?” SARAH ASKED, distracted by the way his forearms connected powerfully and gracefully to the big hands on her legs. They were great forearms. Great hands, too. Great everything. Damn him. He was balanced on the balls of his feet in front of her, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the previous comment she’d made. The one he’d misunderstood so completely.
Or more than likely he was only teasing her with the fully sexual look he’d pinned her with a moment ago. She could almost see the moving frames of the porno movie playing in his mind. Why he continued to play with her like this she’d never understand. Oh yeah, that’s right, but she did understand. He was a man.
“I know my way around a hammer. I’ll help.”
She shook her head. “No. I can’t let you do this.”
“Yeah, you can.”
“No, Matt. You have enough going on in your life.”
“And I can handle it.”
If she hadn’t been trained for her work as a forensic artist back in Colorado, she might not have noticed the tells of the eyes. Matt’s were obvious to her, which made everything between them so confusing. His eyes consistently told her one thing and his words another. Right now the breath-stealing eyes said he was tired, tense, frustrated and something else she couldn’t put her finger on. Was it desire? Pity? Oh please, not pity.
Stop it. Stop trying to analyze everyone.
The problem was she knew too much about Matt Conner to believe him right now. When Matt had moved on from the Air Force, Stone offered him a full-time position piloting flights at Mcallister