“Your father must have known. As Jacqueline’s husband he would have been Lauren’s legal father despite her biological paternity. He would have had to agree to relinquish.”
Trent raked a hand through hair a shade lighter than his half sister’s dirty blond. “Dad claims he doesn’t remember the ‘incident’ or signing any forms. My guess is he would have done anything to keep my mother funding his gambling addiction. Remember, HAMC was a smaller operation back then, and the majority of Hightower money came from my mother’s family. Consequently, Dad turned a blind eye to all her affairs. My grandfather probably greased the wheels to keep things quiet.”
“All valid points.” But despite her biker gear and attitude, Lauren didn’t give off the greedy bitch vibe. “Lauren doesn’t look like a woman being showered with gifts from a wealthy benefactress. She’s not wearing jewelry, makeup or designer clothes.”
“She drives a twenty-thousand-dollar motorcycle, a sixty-thousand-dollar truck and flies a quarter-million-dollar airplane. What does that tell you?”
That she’d fooled him. But hadn’t he learned the hard way that women often promised one thing and schemed to get something else altogether? Gage’s anger stirred. “She’s damned good at hiding her avaricious nature. But I repeat, what does this have to do with me?”
“Until I can get the cash flow dammed I need you to keep Lauren out of my hair and away from my mother.”
“And from your phone message I gather you believe I can do that by using Hightower Aviation’s services for free.”
Trent nodded. “Flying a private jet rather than a commercial airline will save you time. You’ve canceled our last three dinners because you claimed you needed to be in two places at once due to two of your team members being out on parental leave.”
“Right.” Yet another reason why Gage would never have children. They were a distraction. Recent family additions had turned two of his best consultants—one male, one female—into babbling, sleep-deprived fools. He wasn’t letting anyone get between him and a steady, secure income. And he didn’t want anyone depending on him.
“I can help you, and in turn, you can help me,” Trent added. “If I don’t cut off the money leak, then Mom could be tempted to dip into Hightower Aviation funds the way my father did. For the next two or three months you’ll be out of town more than in. If Lauren is your pilot, she will be, too. That works for me.”
Gage’s collar suddenly felt like a noose. As convenient as having a plane at his beck and call might be, he’d never been comfortable with the freeloader role—a circumstance Trent knew only too well. “Faulkner Consultants can afford HAMC’s services. Draw up a contract.”
“No way. We both know how you feel about large capital expenses. I explained on the message machine before you came in. This one’s on me.”
“You laid out a sketchy plan, but there’s more involved here than you let on.”
“Damn it, Gage, get the chip off your shoulder. How many times do I have to tell you that you don’t owe me or my family anything? Trust me on this. If you can occupy Lauren for a couple of months, I’ll owe you. Keeping the parasite away from my mother is going to save me more money in the long run than you leasing a plane or buying fractional ownership in one is going to generate.”
Gage’s molars ground together. He’d swallowed more humble pie than he could handle in a lifetime. Never again. “Trent—”
“I need your help, man. Don’t make me beg.”
Gage ran a hand over the tense muscles of his neck. “Then we do it my way. Draw up a short-term contract. If it saves me time and money, then I’ll renew when the term ends. If not, I’ll at least know I paid my way.”
Trent’s jaw jacked up. “That’s not necessary.”
“It is for me.”
Trent’s mouth opened, but closed again without further argument. “Fine. If you can manage to find out Lauren’s intentions while you’re at it, that would be even better.”
Gage recoiled. He’d been waiting thirteen years for an opportunity to repay the debt he owed his former college roommate, but there were some boundaries he wouldn’t cross even for his best friend. “I won’t be your snitch.”
“I’m not asking you to sleep with her or marry her to get information. Just find out how long she intends to be a boil on my ass.”
“If Lauren is the mercenary bitch you claim, then I’ll tell you what you need to know to protect yourself and your assets. But that’s it. Nothing more.”
Trent’s brow creased as he considered Gage’s offer. “Deal.”
Two
The rasp of a suit-clad leg brushing her shoulder shattered Lauren’s concentration. She looked up from entering data into the navigation screen as Gage squeezed through the narrow opening between the cockpit and passenger cabin.“Mr. Faulkner, we’re about to take off. Please go back to your seat and buckle in.”
“Call me Gage, and I prefer sitting up front.” He folded into the copilot chair on her right.
“I’d rather you stay in the passenger cabin.”
He reached for the seat belt and clicked it in place. “Are you afraid I’ll see you skip a step in preflight preparations, Lauren?”
Her teeth clicked together. He’d been an aggravation from the moment he’d insisted on carrying his own bags on board. The HAMC rulebook stated that her job as pilot was to greet each passenger and personally carry on and properly stow any weighted objects they brought along. The last thing she needed to do was give her half brother a stupid infraction to use against her.
“I never skip steps.”
“Good. Do you have a spare headset?”
The mercury in her mental thermometer climbed and her ears burned. “We’re flying a Cessna Mustang because you wanted to work on the way to Baton Rouge in the luxury of a spacious cabin. You even requested no flight attendant on board so you wouldn’t have interruptions.”
He kept his gaze leveled on hers, not giving an inch. An odd tension seeped into her midsection.
“I awoke hours before my alarm went off this morning and accomplished what I needed to do before I left for the airport. I’d rather sit up front where I can see.”
Disliking the invasion of her space and the breach in protocol, she grappled for patience and stretched her lips into a smile. “There are six windows in the back. Besides, on an overcast day there’s not a lot to see from thirty thousand feet. I’ll be flying above the cloud deck.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
She counted to three, trying to rein in her temper. “The seats in the cabin are larger, more comfortable and they recline. You could catch up on your missed sleep during the flight.”
“Not necessary.”
Her knuckleheaded half brother had probably asked his spy to annoy her as much as possible, and judging by the gleam in Faulkner’s dark eyes and the stubborn set of his jaw he knew he was getting under her skin like a splinter.
“If you’d mentioned your preference for sitting up front earlier, we could have cleared it with the office and conserved fuel by taking a smaller plane rather than fly five empty seats.”
“That would have cost us speed and time.”
She couldn’t argue with facts. A smaller plane would have flown slower and lower than HAMC’s smallest jet. “Allowing passengers in the cockpit is against HAMC protocol.”
“Call your brother.”
“Half brother. I can’t. As you no doubt know, he’s tied up in a board meeting all morning, and his dragon lady won’t put calls through.”
“Then I guess you’re stuck with me in the copilot seat.”
But she would take this up with Trent when she returned home. Her father’s number one rule echoed in her head. The customer is always right—unless safety is involved. Resigned to Faulkner’s unwanted company, she conceded, “There’s a spare headset beneath your seat.”
Most pilots, including her, brought their own equipment, but Hightower Aviation always provided extras. She hated to admit it, but HAMC went first-class all the way by providing luxuries for its passengers and crew that Falcon Air couldn’t afford.
Gage removed the gear from the bag and plugged the headset into the appropriate jack as if he’d done this before, then sat back in his seat with his long-fingered hands relaxed on his thighs.
Muscular thighs, not desk jockey thighs.
Client.
She diverted her stray thoughts, assumed her strictest flight instructor persona and met his gaze. “If you have sunglasses, put them on. Don’t speak until I tell you I’ve finished with the control tower, and don’t touch anything that doesn’t belong to you. You may not need to concentrate during the flight, but I do if you want me to keep this baby in the air.”
The corners of his lips twitched, and she almost smiled back. “That would be preferable to the alternative.”
Of crashing. Like her father.
The swift stab of pain caught her off guard. She squelched her grief and focused on entering her flight plan data into the computer. It took twenty minutes to finish her preflight check, get clearance and put the plane in the air—twenty minutes during which Gage silently observed her every move like an eagle waiting to strike.
When she was in the cockpit she was all business all the time. Her father had taught her that was the only way young pilots lived to become old pilots. An airplane was the one place she knew she was good—damned good. But Gage made her second-guess her actions instead of doing them instinctively. Before him, no other passenger or pilot had ever disrupted her concentration.
She hated being conscious of each shift of his body in the leather seat, the rise and fall of his chest and the spicy tang of his cologne. And while she couldn’t hear him moving and breathing through her noise-canceling headphones, she could feel his presence in the close quarters of the cockpit.
His steady regard made her very aware of her scraped-back hair, lack of makeup and unpainted, short-clipped nails. He made her feel feminine. And lacking. Not a pleasant combination.
Once she reached cruising altitude, she glanced at him and straight into those dark eyes. Her stomach swooped as if she’d hit an air pocket and the plane had dropped. “You can talk now. If you must. Speak in a regular tone of voice. I’ll hear you loud and clear through the headphones.”
“Why flying?” he fired back without hesitation.
A familiar question. She shrugged. “I grew up around airports and never wanted to do anything else.”
“What did you do before joining Hightower Aviation?”
Her half brother had probably asked Gage to grill her. Careerwise, she had nothing to hide, nothing that she hadn’t put in her résumé. Still, unsure of his agenda, she chose her words carefully. “Fifty percent of the time I’m a flight instructor. The rest of the time I fly charter jets for Falcon Air.”
“What’s Falcon Air?”