And that violent pull-up at the end—the camera had continued to run while they’d fought to break the controls free from whatever frozen state they’d gotten stuck in—was outrageous. Any director worth his salt would be orgasmic over it. Adrian Turnow was all about being as realistic as possible. He was going to love this stuff.
Feeling a little surly that her near-death had resulted in such spectacular footage, and unreasonably ticked off at Archer for getting footage that she would never have gotten herself, she admitted, “Yeah, I got my film.”
“All right, then. Let’s go home.”
She didn’t like that he was blowing off the fact that they’d nearly died mere moments ago. Shouldn’t he be upset? Freaking out at least a little? But he was acting like it was just another day at the office. Like this kind of stuff happened to him all the time.
Well, it didn’t happen to her all the time. And she didn’t like it one bit. He’d scared the living hell out of her back there. The least he could do was apologize or offer her some explanation of what had just happened. But nope. He just flew along, looking around outside and every now and then glancing over at her like they hadn’t just nearly splattered like bugs on a windshield.
The ride back to the airport was dead quiet. Plenty of time for her to consider how flipping close she had just come to dying. A second or two at most. Had the stick not broken loose and Archer managed to haul the helicopter into that violent turn like he had, they’d have crashed into the side of that mountain for sure. Had she not helped pull, not shaken the stick in panic like she had, she couldn’t bear to think about what would have happened.
By the time Archer set Minerva down gently, Marley’s entire body was shaking. Adrenaline surged through her and she felt as though she could flap her arms and fly all by herself. As scared as she’d been before, this aftermath was weirdly exhilarating. She was alive. Gloriously, vividly so. Now that she wasn’t roadkill on a mountain, she supposed it might be described as exciting in retrospect. But she’d about peed her pants when it was happening.
She didn’t know what the hell had happened back there in that valley, but she knew one thing. She’d never done anything that intense in her entire life.
Never again would she listen to the crew’s war stories about near-misses with disaster the same way. Having experienced near-death up close and personal, now she would hear the harrowing reality behind their tales told laughingly over cold beers. These pilots were crazy!
The door beside her opened. Archer reached for her lap. But she looked up at him and made eye contact for the first time since he’d nearly killed them both. His stare was dark. Turbulent. Suspicious, even. Shouldn’t he be apologizing to her in some way for nearly killing her? Shouldn’t she be the one staring accusingly at him? Perplexed at his wary distrust, she moved restlessly beneath the confining seat belts. Trapped. She felt trapped.
Maybe he wasn’t as unaffected by their almost-disaster as he was letting on. Maybe the suspicion bit was just him covering up his own reaction to nearly dying. It wasn’t like she’d had anything to do with the damned helicopter refusing to turn.
His hand stilled, nestled in the junction of her thighs, as his gaze shifted. Heated with fiery intensity as she stared up at him. His stare scorched parts of her that were not at all used to scorching. And all of a sudden any thought of suspicion flew right out of her head.
“Admit it,” he murmured low and rough, “you liked that a little.”
That was nuts. No sane person enjoyed cheating death. Or was he right? The rush of heat between her legs, the hot pulse throbbing there, said he was. She tingled to the tips of her fingers and ends of her hair. Felt restless. Hungry. Alive.
Shocked, she examined this rush of new feelings more closely. Sought out their source. And reeled mentally when it dawned on her that she was attracted to her death-defying pilot.
So this was lust, huh? She finally saw what all the fuss was about.
Archer couldn’t have lifted his hand away from Marley in that moment if a dozen men tried to drag him away from her. She probably wasn’t aware of it, but her hips were pulsing lightly against his knuckles, and it was so sexy he could barely breathe. His male parts abruptly swelled hard and painful enough that he had trouble standing upright.
Man, that had been a close call back there. What the hell had happened to his aircraft? He’d never seen a complete flight-control failure like that. The collective—the stick that steered the bird—and the throttle were two completely separate pieces of equipment, not related to each other in any way. It was simply not possible that a single mechanical issue had caused both systems to freeze up simultaneously.
Which left only one glaringly obvious possibility. Sabotage.
When Steve had called and asked him to come home on emergency leave, to help figure out what the hell was going on with a string of accidents around the movie set, he’d thought the guy had finally given in to his paranoid tendencies. Apparently not.
Marley shifted restlessly beneath his hand, her body radiating the heat and taut energy of a turned-on woman.
His throbbing erection blessedly distracted him from the alarming directions his thoughts were headed and he was glad to let it. It didn’t help matters that she was staring at him as though he was some kind of conquering hero. Her lips were parted and moist, her pupils dilated so big he could hardly see their bright blue color. Hell, he could smell the lust on her, sweet and needy.
Was she seriously a virgin? The thought riveted him. Not that he was the kind of sleazeball who ran around looking for virgins to debauch. Actually, he liked his women experienced. Worldly. The kind who knew the score and didn’t expect commitment or the whole emotional-involvement thing. The kind who wouldn’t freak out when he loved ’em and left ’em. He’d learned very early in life how bad it hurt to be the one left behind and not the one doing the leaving.
But damn. A virgin. She had to be, what? Midtwenties? Who, in this day and age, hadn’t had sex by that age? He examined her closely. She wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup, but she was still a pretty girl. Really pretty, in fact.
She had that whole old-school, movie-star glamour thing going. Bedroom eyes. Lush lips. Not to mention she had soft, creamy skin and curly blond hair pulled back into a short ponytail. Kinda looked like a poodle tail, but it was cute. Seriously, those big blue eyes of hers made a guy want to dive into them and go for a swim.
Abruptly, she seemed to shake herself out of her sexual trance and batted ineffectually at his hand. Bemused, he stepped back and let her unlatch her seat belt. She stumbled on the skid in her haste to get out of the helicopter, though, and staggered forward. He caught her up against him.
Her belly slammed into his zipper, and she couldn’t fail to feel the gigantic erection straining against the denim. Her eyes went wide and her fair skin blushed bright pink. Yup, she’d noticed his hard-on.
“Easy, there, Grace,” he muttered.
She was as light as a bird in his arms. He’d registered her as being reasonably tall the first time he’d seen her. But in fact, she barely reached his nose. Must be the mile-long legs in tight jeans that had given him the false impression. His heavy leather jacket prevented him from feeling her breasts smashed against him, but the view as he looked down the V-neck of her T-shirt was compensation enough. Marley Stringer was stacked.
“I’m such a klutz,” she mumbled self-consciously.
“I’m pretty sure Minerva tripped you. She’s the jealous type, you know.”
Marley smiled up at him a little and his heart did something strange in his chest.
“Archer! My office. Now.” Steve Prescott’s voice carried clearly across the ramp, low and hard.
“Been