Caught In A Storm Of Passion. Lucy Ryder
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told herself, struggling to hang on to her composure. It was all just a bad dream. She was supposed to be in London, sitting in a posh hotel, attending the Women and Birth conference. Actually she had been in London—for all of two hours—before catching the first flight out of Heathrow because her sister had left a message saying she’d met someone and was getting married.
Married! To a guy she’d only just met. In the South Pacific, for crying out loud. Had Amelia lost her mind? Had she learned nothing from their dysfunctional childhood?
There would be no marriage, Eve vowed fervently. At least not yet. Because if her sister had lost her mind, as the older twin it was up to Eve to help her find it again. Besides, Eve had a lifetime’s experience of watching over her sweet, trusting sibling and she wasn’t going to stop now. Especially with the kind of men Amelia seemed to attract. Men quick to take advantage of her naive and generous soul. Like the men parading through their mother’s life.
Clearly being on a tropical island was messing with Amelia’s mind just as it had their mother’s, when she’d met and fallen head over heels in lust with their father. Just another man in a long line of users and abusers. All Eve had to do was fly out there, talk some sense into her twin and fly back to London in time for the last three days of the conference...preferably with her sister in tow. It would be just like their childhood. Just the two of them against the world.
Only now she might not make it to the conference. Or to Tukamumu to stop the wedding. Or was it Moratunga?
Oh, what the heck difference did it make, anyway? She wasn’t going to make either of them because she was headed for a watery grave.
Feeling drunk in the violently pitching craft, she lurched upright and staggered to the fire extinguisher mounted behind the pilot’s seat. Not an easy task in three-inch heels.
“Dammit, woman. Move!”
The words were delivered through clenched teeth, and Eve would have liked to tell him to stuff it. But what if he took her at her word and bailed out with the only working parachute? She didn’t even want to consider what would happen then.
She yanked at the cylinder, shrieking as the plane took a nosedive. Lurching backward, she hit the cockpit wall and sent foam spraying everywhere.
Everywhere but the fire.
“What the seven levels of hell are you doing?” he bellowed, reaching back to grab a fistful of her silk blouse and yanking her upright.
She would have liked to tell him that he was manhandling two hundred dollars’ worth of silk, but staying on her feet was more of a priority.
“The fire,” he snarled, looking more scary than comical with foam in his hair and dripping off his nose and chin. “Aim the nozzle at the damn fire.”
“Maybe you should keep the damn floor from moving,” Eve snapped with extreme provocation, and slapped at the hand dangerously close to her breasts. Only it turned out to be a mistake when the floor abruptly tilted again and she tumbled into his lap—a tangle of arms, legs, nozzle and extinguisher.
Eve shrieked and attempted not to conk him on the head with the canister, because an unconscious pilot was something she wanted to avoid. At all costs. She whacked herself instead, instantly seeing stars and wondering if her life really was flashing before her eyes.
Dammit. It figured that she’d die in the arms of a man more interested in shoving her away than wrapping her close.
Yelping, she let the extinguisher go to slap a hand over the injury and thought, Great—another bruise to go with the one I already have thanks to Mr. I’m-your-pilot, Chase. There was a soft grunt, followed by a vicious oath, and the next thing she was being dumped on her ass. Through tearing eyes she saw him aim the nozzle at the controls with one hand while yanking at the yoke with the other. Within seconds the instruments were covered with a thick layer of foam.
The fire gave one last defiant fizzle before dying.
Kind of like her last relationship, she thought dazedly from her position on the floor. Actually, kind of like all her relationships, if she was being perfectly honest, because watching her mother flit from one man to the next had soured her when it came to love. She snorted. As if whatever her mother had had with her countless men had been love.
Relief, however, was short-lived, because no sooner had Chase tossed the canister aside than he wrapped both white-knuckled hands around the yoke, looked at the instruments now oozing white foam and cursed.
Again.
Eve didn’t like the look on his face.
“Now what?”
His expression was taut and grim, his eyes narrowed in fierce concentration. A muscle twitched in his lean, tanned cheek.
“Don’t you dare tell me we’re going down,” she informed him tightly. “Because you’ll have a hysterical female on your hands. And you do not want to see me hysterical.”
He shot her a look that said she’d sailed past hysterical a half hour ago. She ignored him. They were going down. She knew it. He knew it. He was just too darn stubborn and macho to admit that Saint Chris had abandoned them.
She swallowed a sob.
And here she was in the prime of her life, on the verge of a promising career—the realization of all her dreams after years of hard work.
She had every right to be hysterical, darn it.
Grabbing the seat, she hauled herself up. He was back to ignoring her, wrestling with the controls and trying to bring the plane’s nose up through sheer brute force.
And failing.
Oh, God, he was failing, and the nose was pointing down into what she knew would be a very unpleasant end. They might be in a seaplane, and not at the altitude of a commercial jet, but that would mean nothing when they hit the water at a sixty-degree angle. Besides, she’d watched all those seconds-from-disaster documentaries and knew there’d be no floating gently away from this.
Gulping, Eve watched in terrified fascination as the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunched and strained against his soft polo shirt and smooth, tanned flesh until she thought they’d burst right out of his skin.
“Buckle up,” he snarled through clenched teeth. “It’s going to get rough.”
Eve felt her mouth drop open. More than it was already? A whimper bubbled up her throat and threatened to pop, along with her very tenuous hold on control. She was absolutely certain she could not handle rough.
They were going down.
“We’re going to die.”
“We are not going to die. I’m an excellent pilot,” he said tightly, and the engines protested with an almost human scream.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Slick,” Eve yelped, almost as loudly as the engines as she fought with the safety harness that seemed to have taken on an evil life of its own, “this is not a storm for excellent pilots. It isn’t even for creatures meant to fly. It’s Armageddon. And if I die I’m going to kill you. Very. Very. Slowly.”
“I have no intention of dying,” he snapped, as though she’d insulted his manhood as well as his entire family tree. “And what kind of doctor are you to be threatening the man trying to save your delectable ass, anyway?”
He shook his head at her and reached out to snag his Saint Christopher, kissing it before he looped it around his neck.
Eve watched in fascination as the shiny silver disc disappeared into the neckline of his shirt, wondering at her brief flash of envy that Saint Chris got to be nestled close to his heat and strength.
Dammit. She wanted to be held and protected too.
Just this once.
“What you need is a little faith,” he declared, just as the craft bucked and the engines gave an alarming splutter.
She