“Maybe you’ll have a chance to show me sometime. I’ve sailed, but I’m more a flier than a sailor.”
That just might be possible, since her brother’s father-in-law had a sailboat docked at his Lake Tahoe condo in Incline Village and Tahoe wasn’t all that far from Tourmaline. That is, if she and David managed to stay friends without going off the deep end—and she didn’t mean the pier. That kiss last night…
“Thermal coming up,” David said. “Here we go.”
She braced herself, but nothing really happened except the sailplane began to climb, rising in wide circles, reminding her of how the red-tailed hawks soared above her brother’s horse ranch in Carson Valley. She could see the peaks of the Sierras, some still snow-capped, in the distance. The lack of any noise did remind her of a sailboat, except on a boat things creaked. The plane itself didn’t make a sound.
Peaceful, and the sky, oh, so beautiful, hardly a cloud in sight. This must be how it feels to be a bird, she thought, admitting that she was actually enjoying herself.
Up and up they soared, she couldn’t believe how effortlessly. When, some time later, she realized the plane was descending, she sighed. “Does this mean we have to land?”
“The thermal’s shifting away from the field. It’s a long walk back if I don’t keep the plane fairly close to the field, so we can glide down pretty much where we went up.”
So she was right—they’d glide down. The thought didn’t bother her now. David knew what to do, just as she knew how to tack a sailboat into port.
After they’d glided back to earth, tied the plane down and were once again in the pickup headed for Tourmaline, Amy said, “Thanks for the experience—it was fun. Awesome, even. I might even go up again if you ask me.”
David glanced over at her and grinned. “Anytime.” She’d been a good sport. His ex-wife had refused to go up with him before they were married, and didn’t change her mind after she was his wife. Maybe that should have told him something. He understood now that Iris’s idea of flying involved riding in privately owned jets. Like Murdock’s.
“You ever been married?” he asked.
She blinked, obviously somewhat surprised at the abrupt change in subject. “No. If you want a reason, it’s because I like being in charge of my life myself.”
“As good a reason as any.”
She opened her mouth as though to speak, glanced at him and closed it.
He shrugged. “I brought it up, so go ahead and ask me why I’m divorced.”
“Gert sort of suggested you may have married the wrong woman.”
He half smiled. “She was blunter than that when she met Iris before the wedding. ‘Run and don’t look back’ was her advice to me.”
“You know, that’s almost exactly what I told my brother before he married his first wife. It was a disaster.”
“Which may be why you and Gert are both shrinks.”
“Your aunt never did marry, did she?”
“My mother told my sister and me Gert was engaged to an Air Force pilot in World War II who got shot down over Germany.”
Amy sighed. “And she never got over him. How romantic.”
He shot her a skeptical look. “I’m not saying my aunt never looked at another man. She just never married one.”
“Makes her human, but it’s still romantic. So you have a sister?”
“Diane. She’s a teacher in Hawaii. Unmarried.”
“Smart gal,” Amy quipped.
“Where does your brother live?”
“Russ? He has a horse ranch near here, in Carson Valley. That’s one of the reasons I answered your aunt’s ad for an associate. I wanted to be closer to him and my nephew and baby niece.”
David frowned. “He didn’t learn the first time, I take it.”
“Not all marriages are bad. Mari’s a great gal. They suit each other like you wouldn’t believe.”
“So you do believe in marriage as an institution.”
She nodded. “For some people. Not for me. I’m happier single.”
“I agree with that philosophy. Totally.”
“Ground rules for friends,” Amy said.
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Maybe we ought to set a few others while we’re at it.”
He grinned at her. “Ones we can keep like the first rule or ones we can’t?”
She shook her head at him. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah—fatal attraction.”
“It’s chemistry,” she sputtered. “Hormones. Pheromones.”
“All of the above. But how does that stop me from wanting to pull over and haul you into my arms right now?”
He watched her start to bristle, then deliberately take a deep breath before speaking. “If we’re able to ignore it, the temptation will eventually fade.” Her tone was cool.
That raised his eyebrows. “If you believe that, I don’t know how you ever got to be a psychologist.”
“I can do anything I make my mind up to do,” she said coolly. “Including ignoring.”
She’d just laid down a challenge. David smiled. He hadn’t felt like taking up any challenges for more than a year, but he sure as hell meant to run with this one.
Chapter Four
A s the week passed, Amy found she was having a hard time controlling her impulse to go outside and talk to David during her lunch break. By noon Friday she broke down and found him in the side yard, washing off with the hose.
“Just wondering how the kittens are doing,” she said, trying not to be affected by all those water droplets glistening on his bare torso. Good grief, did she really feel an urge to lick them off one by one?
“Growing. Even Sheba.”
Putting any crazy thought of temptation firmly aside, she decided to zero in on his conviction the runt was a female. “If you mean the little black one, how do you know it’s a she?”
He shrugged.
“Well,” she said, “I guess Sheba’s no stranger name for a male than Hobo for a female. Actually, if you look you can tell.”
“I did. They all look alike to me back there.”
“Female anatomy in kittens sort of resembles an exclamation point.”
“You could come over tonight and show me.”
Not to his apartment, not at night. Bad idea. “How about tomorrow instead?”
“Whatever. Then we can—explore.” His smile was devilish.
“The countryside, you mean?” she said quickly. “Okay, but not up quite so high this time.”
“That’s what friends are for—to take you to the heights.”
“We’ve been there.” She put a pinch of tartness in her tone.
“So now you expect the depths? How about Sutro’s Tunnel? That’s ground level and a tad below.”
“Never heard of it.”
“How