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But as Jet waited for Jasmine to arrive in front of Baron Energies’ corporate offices, he knew he kidded himself. It wasn’t just the thought of flying, it was the thought of spending time with Jasmine.
Showing off.
Well, yes, there was that, too.
She was as prickly as a pear cactus, but as his father had noted, as pretty as a Texas bluebonnet, and she sure looked as if she needed a little fun. As it happened, fun was his middle name.
“Let’s get this over with.”
He hadn’t seen her approach. When he turned, he admitted she didn’t appear too pleased to be getting away from the office. For half a second he debated whether or not he should let her off the hook. Something stopped him, something that had to do with the exhaustion he saw in her eyes. She struck him as the type who would keep going and going until she dropped, or ended up in the hospital. Twins. That couldn’t be easy.
“No need to sound so enthusiastic.” He smiled to take the sting out of his words. She’d pulled her hair back in a ponytail. She’d changed, too, though he had no idea where she’d gotten the jeans and white button-down shirt. He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t admit he liked the dress better, and her long, sexy legs.
“How long is this going to take?” she asked as he held the door of his truck open for her. He’d parked outside their corporate headquarters situated in downtown Dallas and conveniently located just a few blocks from a DART station. They occupied the uppermost floors, and Jet had the oddest sensation of being watched as he stood there.
Dad?
He glanced up, wondering if both Brock and Lizzie stared down at him. He wouldn’t be surprised. He’d sent her an email about his outing today, and while it was a task he undertook regularly, the inspection wasn’t due for another month. She hadn’t replied. Then again, she’d probably been hijacked by their father the moment Brock had left Jet’s office.
“Not more than an hour or two. Our holdings aren’t that extensive.”
He closed the door before she could form some kind of protest or express her displeasure at being taken away from her work. He had to wait a moment for traffic to pass on the busy street in front of their offices. When he pulled open the driver’s door a moment later she appeared to be checking messages on her phone. Probably their corporate email.
“Do you ever, I don’t know, relax?”
The glare she shot him was like that of an impatient wife, one who’d just been told by her husband to sit down and take a break from chores when she had a million things to do, all of which were being done by her and not her husband. He’d seen that look a time or two before on his own stepmother’s face when dealing with Brock.
“I have two kids and a full-time job in a demanding field. When, exactly, would I find time to relax?”
He drew back at the sharpness of her tone. She must have seen his reaction because she closed her eyes, sank back against the seat and let out a sigh.
“Sorry,” she said softly. “I’m a little sleep deprived. Makes me cranky.”
“Me, too.”
She opened her eyes again, staring out at the high-rise buildings they passed between, some made of concrete, others made of glass, all of them with people walking out in front. He heard her sigh.
Inside the cab, sunlight flickered through the trees that sprouted up from the sidewalk here and there. The streets were wide, some of the sidewalks made of red brick, but he doubted she noticed such details. Honestly, he would bet what she was really thinking about was a nap.
“Do you have any help at home?”
It was the closest he could come to asking if she was seeing anybody without sounding nosy, or like he was trying to pick her up. Contrary to what his dad might think, he had no intention of getting involved with a woman who had twins. No thanks. Not his cup of tea. Still, he felt sorry for her, watched her closely to see if she would bristle, but she didn’t. Instead, she just shook her head, her ponytail shifting over one shoulder and from nowhere came the urge to brush it back, to soothe her brow.
Jet abruptly faced forward.
“I used to have some help.”
Her words surprised him because he figured she’d clam up like she always did.
“The twins’ grandparents are still alive and they’ve been a big support, but engineering jobs don’t grow on trees and so when I was offered the position at Baron Energies, I took it.”
The twins’ grandparents, meaning her girls’ father’s parents. He knew her own dad was dead. Her mother, too. Or so he surmised from the way his dad had made it sound. Did that mean she was all alone? What had happened to the twins’ dad?
“I take it the father isn’t in the picture.”
They were at a stoplight and so he happened to glance at her just in time to see her flinch, almost as if she’d just had a sharp pain, and maybe she had.
“No,” was all she said.
Something in her past caused her pain, and he had a feeling it was grief. Sure, he knew some men were irresponsible jerks and that it was completely plausible that she’d been ditched by the father of her twins, but he didn’t think so. There’d been something in her eyes, her remarkable eyes, that he suddenly realized were tinged by a perpetual sadness.
“So who watches your twins when you’re at work?”
She seemed to snap out of a momentary trance. He noticed how long her lashes were when she blinked.
“I hired someone. A woman in my condominium complex. She was looking to make some extra money and I didn’t want to be shuffling my girls between their home and a day-care center. She comes to my place every morning.”
“I bet you wish she would come in the middle of the night sometimes, too.”
She glanced at him in surprise, but then something remarkable happened, something that left him feeling as if he’d been kicked in the gut.
She smiled.
“You have no idea.”
Chapter Four
She’d revealed too much, Jasmine thought a few minutes later. She should have kept things impersonal. Chatted about Baron Energies’ last quarterly report or something. Instead, she’d treated him like a Catholic priest, someone to confess all her dirty little secrets to, and that was the stupidest thing in the world to do. He was the boss’s son. A man who reported back to the big man himself, not to mention his sister. The last thing she needed was for word to get out that she was stretched too thin, that she couldn’t cope, that she’d made mistakes.
“Ever been up in a helicopter before?”
Her stomach dropped.
“No.”
To be honest, she hadn’t given the coming ride much thought other than how much it would interfere with her day.
“You want the vanilla ride, then? Or the Disneyland version?”
“Explain Disneyland version?”
He smiled, and Jasmine thought he looked like a kid standing in front of an amusement park. This was the second time she’d seen him with mussed hair. He trimmed the black strands shorter on the sides than on the top and it appeared he frequently ran his fingers through it. If it weren’t for the strong jaw and the curve of his masculine lips, she’d think him younger than her, and those green eyes had laugh lines stretching out from the corner. He was tan and well-groomed and so good-looking there was no way he didn’t know the effect he had on women.
Like you?
No, she told herself firmly. Not like me.
“Well, we could fly straight to our destination, or we could take the scenic route.”
“Why do I have the feeling the scenic route entails a lot more ups and downs?”
The lines stretching from the corners of his eyes deepened as he smiled. “Because you’d be right.”
“I see.”
“You don’t get airsick, do you?”
This was beginning to sound more and more ominous. “No.”
“You like scary rides?”
Yes. A long time ago. She’d lived life on the edge. You didn’t date a hellcat without having a wild streak of your own. Alas, motherhood and loss had cured her of that.
His face fell. “I can see by your face that you’d like me to take it easy.”
“No.” The word shot out of her before she could stop it. Something in his eyes had challenged her, and that should scare the crap out of her. Darren had challenged her, too, and look where that had gotten her.
“No?” he asked, as if sensing her doubts.
“I don’t mind a little excitement.”
She shouldn’t have said the words. The way he glanced at her, quickly, that wink back in his eyes.
“Oh, really?”
She blushed. “I meant I’m not as uptight as I look.” This was going from bad to worse, so she did the only thing she could think of. She changed the subject. “What did your dad want?”
As a buzzkill, the words worked perfectly. He frowned, and somehow she knew what he was thinking. “He was checking up on me.”
“You mean, making sure you were at work.”
He glanced at her quickly. “Something like that.”
“You’re not very happy about being forced into a day job, are you?”
“Excuse me?”
Don’t look at him. Easier to focus that way. “Your...lack of interest in Baron Energies is well-known.”
“See, that’s where everyone’s wrong.” He smoothly merged onto I-35. “It’s not that I’m not interested. I love our family business. I just don’t see the point of devoting my entire life to it like my dad, at least not while I’m young. I have my whole life to do that.”
Must be nice to have that kind of attitude. She’d had to work her entire life to get to where she was. As a woman she’d had to do things better, be smarter, work harder. Lizzie Baron had been the first oil executive to take her seriously and yet here she was with her brother, a man who didn’t want what had been handed to him on a silver platter, and she couldn’t help but feel a small burn of resentment. What would it be like to never have to worry? To have such a huge support group that you knew you’d always be taken care of? She’d left behind her only support, Darren’s parents, and they were aging help at that. Even so, she would miss them—did miss them—terribly. They were the only family she had.
“I don’t have my whole life ahead of me,” she heard herself say. “I only have the here and the now.”
Only after she said the words did she wonder why in the name of heaven she’d made the confession. That’s what happened when the only company you kept were twin girls. Girlfriends? What were those? Any fledgling friendships she might have formed once she’d graduated college were toast now that she’d moved. As she sat there thinking about it, she admitted she’d never felt more alone in her life than in that moment sitting there with Dallas magazine’s bachelor of the year next to her.
He stared at her, she realized. Analyzed her. Tried to determine the look on her face.
Unhinged mother.
She wanted to tell him that’s what he saw. Someone living life on the edge...and about to come unglued.
“You okay?”
No. She was most definitely not okay because following on the tail of her loneliness came an unbidden urge to cry. It made her angry, that urge. She’d never been one for stints of self-pity, yet here she was, suddenly looking out the side window of his sixty-thousand-dollar truck and wondering if she had the strength of will to hold on to her tears.
“Fine.” But even to her own ears her voice sounded high, her nose clearly stuffed with the crud that clogged your nostrils and your throat when you tried so hard not to weep.
He flicked on his directional. It took her a moment to recognize the click-click of his blinkers, and then a moment more before she realized what he was about to do.
“No,” she said. “No, no, no. Do not pull over. I’m fine.”
“You need a tissue.”
“I do not.”
But, damn it, she was crying. Crying. In front of Jet Baron.
He pulled over.
When she glanced through her lashes the world was a blurry mess. She had no idea where they were and so she sucked in a breath, hoping it would help to clear her eyes and her airway, which made her sound like an asthmatic yappy dog, and that only made her want to cry even more.
“You’ve had a rough spell, haven’t you?”
It was too much. The long night. The early morning. The mistakes on her report. Meeting Brock Baron. Seeing the surprise in his eyes. No. It went back further than that. Losing Darren. The new job. The move away from everything she loved.
“I really don’t want to talk about it.”
A blurry box formed in front of her eyes. Tissue. She had no idea where he’d pulled it from. Reluctantly, she snatched one and dabbed at her eyes. At least the urge to sob seemed to have faded. Could she be hormonal? Was it close to her time of month? To be honest, she couldn’t recall anything. Time seemed to be an endless blur of get up, take care of the twins, get ready for work, race around the office, go home, cook dinner, bathe the twins, tuck them into bed, fall into her own bed—exhausted—then get up and do it all over again.
“You mind me asking why the father of your twins isn’t doing more?”
Another sucked-in breath, this one hitching in her chest again. “Oh, you know,” she said airily, waving her hand through the air. “He’s a little busy, what with being dead and all.”
Silence.
From the left side of the vehicle came the whoosh of a car passing them. He’d pulled to a stop at the base of an off-ramp—she had no idea where. To their left cars whizzed by on the freeway. Actually, she was kind of glad she’d stunned him into silence. It gave her a moment to catch her breath.
“Wow,” he said at last. “You’ve been handed a rotten deck of cards, haven’t you?”
He had that right.
“When? How?”
She stiffened.
“If you don’t mind me asking.”
He handed her another tissue. This time she took it without hesitating. She’d stained the first one black. Great. She probably looked like a panda bear.
“He was a hellfighter.”
And that said it all. Jet Baron was no fool. He knew what a hellfighter did. Knew the risk involved in trying to put out the flames of a burning oil well. She’d known, too. She’d warned herself away from Darren at least a half a dozen times that first night they’d met, but something about his bright blue eyes and his sparkling smile and the way he’d stared out at the world—as if he’d owned it and so nothing bad would ever happen to him—had drawn her to him like a kitten to catnip. She’d thought him invincible. She’d been dead wrong.
“So I take it he died on the job?”
“Yup. Two months before we were supposed to get married. I found out I was pregnant afterward. Darren never even knew.”
“Damn.” He shook his head. “That’s a tough gig.”
“Eyup.”
She felt better now. At least her lungs didn’t sound like a clogged exhaust pipe. Just a momentary breakdown. No big deal.
Except you broke down in front of the boss’s son.
Who’s staring at you right now.
She had to look away again. What she needed was a swift kick in the rear. That’s what Darren would have done. He’d never let her wallow in self-pity.
“Do you need anything?” Jet asked. “A helping hand? A shoulder to cry on? A shot of whiskey?”
That actually made her smile. “No.” She leaned her head against the smooth leather seat. No faux leather for the prince. “I’m fine.”
He stared at her again, and she wondered what he saw. A woman with raccoon eyes and tear-stained clothing, no doubt. She glanced down and realized she did indeed have a Cheerios in the cup of her bra. She should have known.
“How long has he been gone?”
Damn it, why shouldn’t she feel sorry for herself? It sucked big-time that she had no one to count on, no husband to help ease her burden, no family to share in the raising of her children. And her girls...her poor girls. They would never know their father. That, more than anything, broke her heart.
“Jasmine?”
“Five years ago.”
She wasn’t looking at him, but she could tell her words surprised him.
She inhaled, released her breath, inhaled again. She did that over and over again until her eyes stopped burning and her heart stopped breaking—but the cracks would always remain.
“You’ve been doing this a long time on your own.”
Yup. School. Working whatever job she could find. Raising the girls.
“I’m sorry,” he added. “Nobody should ever have to raise a child on their own, much less two.”
Damn it, she felt her eyes begin to burn again. She didn’t want him to see her like this. Didn’t want him to be nice to her. She wanted to go back to the way things had been this morning when she’d walked into her office and she’d been looking down her nose at him. Jet Baron the dilettante. Instead, he’d fixed her report, invited her to tour his family’s facilities and handed her tissue.
“I am, too,” she said.
She heard him shift. A hand reached for her own. She thought about twisting in her seat, turning away so he couldn’t do what he was about to do—touch her. Instead, she watched as long fingers enveloped her own. Warm fingers. Soft fingers. No. Not soft, she realized. He had calluses on the inside. He worked outdoors a lot, she remembered. Rodeo.
“Let’s see if we can’t put a smile back on that face of yours.”
He released her.
Jasmine couldn’t move. It had been a long time since a man had touched her. A long time since she’d felt soft tingles of desire skate up and down her arm. A long time since she’d experienced the need, the want, the longing to have a man do more than touch her.
Dear God.
She was attracted to Jet Baron.
Chapter Five
They arrived at the community airport less than fifteen minutes later, although Jet kept sneaking glances at his passenger the whole time. She’d spent the first five minutes fixing her makeup, not that she needed any, he thought. She was quiet now, which, he supposed, was better than crying. He hated when women cried—and with three older sisters, he’d seen a lot of crying over the years.
“You know, Baron Energies sponsors the Mid-Texas High School Rodeo Association.”
She shot him a look that clearly asked, “Yeah, so?”
He turned into a side entrance to the airport. Off-white metal buildings were directly ahead, many of them housing airplanes and aviation mechanics. The helicopter they leased was at the end of the block, so to speak, where Jet turned right and followed a road that skirted the main runway. He pulled into a spot marked for Air Dynamics customers.
“Anyway,” he said, putting the car in Park and shutting off the engine. “This weekend is their annual fund-raising rodeo.”
When he glanced at her it was in time to spot the “Where is this going?” look in her eyes.
“It’s fun. You should bring your girls.”
The “where is this going?” faded into “are you out of your mind?”
“A lot of employees take their families. There’s pony rides and games for the kids and lots of fun stuff to do. My brothers and I give a clinic.” At her look of confusion, he added, “We work with some of the high schoolers on their rodeo skills. My sister can give you more information and tickets, too, if you’re interested.”
He knew she was going to say she was too busy. Or that it’d be too difficult to manage her girls on her own. Or that she had work to do...something, but he didn’t give her time to respond.
“Come on.” He opened his door. “Let’s get going.”
He assumed she’d follow, and she did. Hot, humid air instantly clung to the white polo shirt he wore. As he walked toward the leasing office that handled the maintenance and upkeep of the helicopter he flew, he didn’t glance back, just held the glass door open for her when the time came, cool air blasting the both of them.
“Mr. Baron,” said the owner of the company with a wide smile. The man had taught him how to fly, and so Jet smiled back. “I was wondering if you’d changed your mind about flying today.”
“Sorry, Eric. We were a little delayed.”
The man glanced at Jasmine, and Jet spotted the tellstale interest that sprang into his eyes. Who could blame him? Despite the tears she’d shed earlier, those gorgeous blue eyes of hers were as big and as lovely as ever. Her hair might be drawn back in a ponytail, but it flattered a face that didn’t need makeup to look beautiful. As Jet watched a welcoming smile form on Eric’s face, he felt his own smile fade, something that alarmed him slightly. There was no way he’d ever ask a woman like her out. He preferred females that weren’t looking for a commitment and there were plenty on the rodeo circuit. Sure, a few of them might want more, but he’d gotten adept at avoiding the parson’s noose. Women like Jasmine—someone with two kids to complicate things even further—were to be avoided at all costs.
“This is J. C. Marks, our new engineer.”
“Afternoon, Ms. Marks,” Eric said, and if he’d been wearing a hat, Jet was certain he’d have tipped the brim.
“Thought I’d give her a tour of our holdings while I check the lines.”
“Lucky you,” Eric said, but Jet wasn’t certain if he meant lucky for Jasmine to get a helicopter ride, or lucky him for getting to ferry around such a good-looking passenger. He suspected the latter, especially since the man couldn’t keep his eyes off Jasmine as Jet filled out paperwork.
“We’ve already done the preflight.” Eric checked his watch. “We’ll see you back here in two hours.”
Jet motioned for Jasmine to follow.
“Why do I have a feeling this is less about work and more about having fun?” she asked.
“Because it is going to be fun.” He glanced back at her. “Something tells me you need a little of that.”
“Please.” And the way she said it reminded him of yesterday. “You make me sound like a charity case.”
“You were just crying in my truck. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t want to cheer you up a little.” He headed toward the gleaming black helicopter parked in a painted white circle. “All you have to do is hang on and enjoy the view.”
Her steps slowed as they approached the piece of equipment. He tried to see things through her eyes. It was a midsize helicopter. Not huge, but not a crop duster, either. The nose had been fitted with a “sniffer” a special device that would detect HCF emissions. This was a portable version that AirDyn—as they were called for short—could take on and off as needed. Inside the cockpit a laptop would record their findings, although Jet really didn’t expect any blips on the monitor. Baron Energies spent a small fortune ensuring the safety of their wells.
He opened the door. She didn’t move. He turned to her in surprise.
She kept glancing from him to the helicopter and then back again, like a kitten fascinated by a moth. “You mind me asking how long you’ve had your pilot’s license?”
“About a month.”
Her gaze froze.
“Kidding, kidding.” He lifted his palms. “I’ve been flying for years. Been piloting helicopters for just as long. Makes things easier when you’re hitting up a bunch of rodeos and it’s convenient for my dad when he gets the urge to go out and check the wells, which he likes to do pretty frequently. Control freak with a capital C and F.”
She glanced at the helicopter again. He knew what she was thinking.
“Really,” he said. “It’s okay.”
He could tell she didn’t want to admit her fears. To her credit he saw her take a deep breath, square her shoulders and step forward.
Good girl.
“There’s a headset between your seat and mine.” She looked around once she’d settled herself. He could tell she instantly spotted the headset. “Make sure you strap yourself in. It can get a little rough sometimes. Downdrafts and all that. I’m going to walk the exterior.”
She still looked green around the gills, but she would change her mind once they were airborne. It was amazing up there, and she wanted a little excitement. He couldn’t wait to give it to her, although he worried about why he needed to please her. The familiar preflight quickly garnered all his attention, however. As he walked the aircraft, his heart began to pound. Flying was one of the few things aside from riding a bull that gave him an adrenaline rush.