“So, what was your actual job description in the Air Force, then?” he asked.
“I was a PJ,” she told him with pride.
She’d loved her job, and had been very good at it.
“A pararescue specialist?” he said, barely disguising his incredulousness. “That’s…impressive.”
At least he hadn’t said, “impossible”, which is what Jett got a lot of the time.
“Thanks. But you were also partially right with your previous assumption. I flew missions, as well, when the powers-that-be didn’t need me as a jumper and could tell me exactly what needed to be accomplished.”
He responded carefully. “And your…penchants for getting distracted didn’t impede your abilities?”
“Nope,” Jett answered with pride. “I’m only an air-head when I’m not given a specific task.”
He cleared his throat, and she sensed an eyeroll, even though he refrained from following through with the expression. Humor actually tinged his voice when he next spoke. “So, am I to assumethat means you’ve forgotten all about whoever, or whatever is moving around in your plane?”
“Oh, crap,” Jett blurted out, turning abruptly. “Langly. Tinker.”
She spun about and jogged to her Cessna, opening the back door to let her two German Shepherd-mix mutts clamber out. They’d been good boys the entire trip, but they must be crossing their legs right about now. “Go. Do your business,” she ordered the excited pair who had a little golden retriever in their mix that made their short fur more colorful.
The duo immediately headed for a snowy strip at the edge of the tarmac, where they sniffed for a few seconds before settling in to relieve themselves.
Jett walked back to Trask, shaking her head.
“Ididforget about them,” she revealed with a sigh, “because I was focused on you.”Yeah.She’d blame him. “You have this…larger-than-life presence that wiped everything else from my brain.”
Was that too much?
She peeked up at him from under her lashes, and… It seemed like he might be enjoying her truthfulness? She was about to stroke his ego a little more, when her canines finished with their business, and made a beeline straight for Trask.
“Crap!” she yelped. “Watch out!”
If Trask had been any normal individual, he would have been knocked on his ass as he was stormed by the two, four-legged projectiles. She’d seen it happen too many times to discount. But as her unruly pups leaped, jumped, and nipped, licking joyously at the mountain of a man, he managed quite nicely to hold his ground.
If she wasn’t mistaken, he even looked a little…pleased?
Her heart beat a smidge harder.
“Tinker. Langly. Down,” she ordered to distract them, but of course they didn’t listen to her.
“Sit.” The single word shot crisply from Trask’s mouth, and…
Two butts hit the pavement.
“Holy crap. How’d you do that?” Jett marveled.
Both of her rambunctious babies were sitting at the man’s feet, tongue’s lolling from their mouths as they stared up at him, adoringly.
Huh.She was beginning to know howthatfelt.
Trask was pretty over-the-top, alpha, and she might also be seconds away from prostrating herself at his boots.
“Dogs like me,” he said, in a non-explanation before sending her a pointed look. “So, ‘crap’ is your favorite word,” he declared, seemingly unruffled by her calamitous canines, and also not knowing where her brain had gone.
“Uh, yeah,” she admitted a little sheepishly, getting herself together—or as together as she could.
Shedidtend to overuse the word he mentioned. “I have a severe potty-mouth from being in the military all my adult life, so I’ve been working to curb it around my Dad. He doesn’t appreciate it, and ‘crap’ seems to have evolved as my go-to.”
