Hurricane Hannah. Sue Civil-Brown
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actually wasn’t sure she was alive until she realized her hands hurt from gripping the yoke. Prying her right hand free, she reached for the throttles and pulled them back, shutting down the already silent engines.
Then she started shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Adrenaline, which had carried her this far, fled like a rat off a sinking ship, leaving her all too mortal and filled with aftershocks.
It wasn’t that her life had never been on the line before. When you flew smaller aircraft, you often had a lot of near-misses. But this one was different somehow.
Different, she realized suddenly, because it never, ever, should have happened.
Anger sparked in her again, renewing the strength in her limbs. Unclasping her harness, she rose and stomped back behind the pilot’s cabin and hit the button that opened the door and dropped the steps. The hydraulics, working like a charm, hissed as the door opened from the top and descended, turning the steps right-side up.
She was just about to step on the first one when a golf cart carrying two men raced up.
She didn’t like the look of the guy who was standing on one foot and hanging onto the rail. He looked like an afternoon thunderstorm that had sprouted the stub of an unlit cigar. Handsome, yes, but angrier than an alligator that had missed dinner.
“What the hell,” he shouted, “did you think you were doing?”
“Choosing life,” she shouted back. “I suppose you’d have preferred I ditched it?”
“Radio,” he said. “You have heard of the concept?”
By this time he was off the cart and standing at the foot of the stairs, glaring up at her.
“It went out on me. Half an hour ago. Then I started losing fuel.”
“And you were idiotic enough to take this piece of crap into the air?”
That did it. The rats returned to the sinking ship and brought more adrenaline along with them. She stomped down the stairs, stopping on the bottom one so she could look this jerk in the eye.
“It wasn’t a piece of crap when I left. You got a problem, take it up with my mechanic. I sure intend to.”
Then she pushed past him and started striding back up the runway, going she knew not where, just needing to be away from this idiot until she had sorted through the last half-hour and decided just how she was going to kill Len, her mechanic.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the guy demanded. “This is my airport and you can’t leave this garbage on my runway.”
She turned and faced him, hands on her hips. “Just how do you propose I move it? There’s a leak in the fuel line somewhere, and there aren’t enough fumes left to taxi her. Maybe, Mr. I-own-the-airport, you can tow it? I’ll pay.”
Buck watched her storm away, and the funny thing was, all he noticed was the beautiful red hair and the way her rear end swayed. A beautifully shaped rear end, cased snugly in her green flight suit.
“Dammit!” he swore.
“Come on, Buck,” Craig said reasonably. “Let’s get the trash off the runway before someone else tries to land. Then you can argue with her some more, ’cuz she sure as hell ain’t going anywhere.”
Buck was in no mood to listen to reason. He bit down so hard on the end of the unlit cigar that his teeth cut through it. Swearing, he spit the pieces out and glared toward the woman’s retreating back as if she had caused it to happen.
Hell, she had caused it. If he weren’t so damn mad at her…. And who the hell did she think she was anyway? The Queen of England?
“Come on, Buck,” Craig said impatiently. “We gotta get this thing off the runway. It’s a hazard.”
Grunting, Buck hopped up on the golf cart and the two of them zoomed—well, as fast as they could in a golf cart, anyway—back toward the hangar.
She was a woman, he reminded himself sourly. A woman. God had put women on this earth to make life hell for men. They were trouble on two feet. Headache and heartache and every other kind of ache. He should have known there was a female at the yoke of that plane. It should have been obvious from the moment she zoomed over his head.
Craig spoke as they neared the hangar. The woman pilot was approaching one very angry crowd. “Whatever you’re thinking, Buck, just put it aside for now. This is business.”
“Yeah. Like my cards weren’t business?” Business. That’s all it was. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have to deal with idiots on a regular basis. Just because she’d scared the bejesus out of him didn’t make her a worse idiot than the rest.
But she had cost him a critical win. Now he’d have to play another match against Anstin to save the island, and he didn’t like having all of that riding on his shoulders. Another match. He swore savagely.
He felt his breast pocket and realized he didn’t have another cigar on him. Hell’s bells. Glumly he folded his arms and decided he could grind his teeth for a while instead. He wasn’t all that anxious to face that wasp again, and certainly not just for a cigar.
No, he’d rather take the whole thing on the chin at once.
HANNAH THOUGHT she had lost her mind, run over the edge of the cliff and landed in hell. H—E—Double-hockey-sticks, hell.
Because, as she approached the crowd that had been gathered around a small table, cards wafted on the breeze and people started yelling at her and each other.
“You idiot!” one man shouted. “He was gonna win!”
“I saw it,” yelled another. “He had a full house.”
“Yeah, right,” said a woman. “Like I believe your lying mouth.”
Then they all turned and glared at Hannah.
“You,” said a short, stubby man with the face of a bulldog, “may have just cost us our island!”
Well, someone was insane, she thought. Not knowing what else to do, she fled into the office beside the hangar before they could gather a lynch mob.
THE OFFICE was tiny but it was surprisingly neat. Hannah found a coffeemaker with a pot on the hot plate that looked freshly brewed. She sniffed it warily and realized that not only was it fresh, it was Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. Her favorite. She inspected one of the dozen ceramic mugs hanging on hooks from the wall, found it apparently clean, and poured herself a cup.
She sat on one of the plastic chairs before a window that gave her a view of the entire runway. Her blood was still boiling, and she could hardly wait to find a way to phone Len and tell him what she thought of him.
Then her hands started shaking violently. She had to put the mug down on a dusty table as shudders began to run through her. The adrenaline was letting up and reality was sinking in. She had come that close to dying. That close. Those engines had quit at the end of the runway. Too close.
Then the tug drove past the front window, and Mr. I-own-the-airport gave her a mocking salute. Anger flooded her again, saving her from her momentary weakness. It took a lot of effort not to flip him the bird in return.
That shocked her. She didn’t do stuff like that. She didn’t use those words or gestures. Maybe she was a little…crazy right now?
The anger had done her good, though. Her hands were no longer shaking, and she picked up her mug, determined to look as if she made emergency landings on a regular basis. As if not a single one of her feathers had been ruffled. She wouldn’t give that idiot male the satisfaction of knowing that she had, for even a few seconds, been terrified out of her mind.
The coffee was delicious.
CHAPTER TWO
BUCK AND CRAIG