He looked…okay, well, the first word that came to mind was yummy. But she nixed that thought and went with professional. He looked professional.
“I’m a great pilot.” Travis cracked a smile, the charming one that stretched his lips and showed a pop of teeth and probably got most women in his vicinity to drop to their knees and start unbuckling his pressed slacks for him.
Gah, she was not allowed to think things like that. Bad Rachel.
Also…wait.
“You’re not the pilot,” she declared.
Travis was not a pilot. He didn’t even play one on television, as far as she knew. Unless he had some secret life she didn’t know about.
That was totally possible.
“I am a pilot, and I’m today’s pilot,” he said with the confidence of an actual pilot.
Rachel started to step backward but stopped herself, instead turning toward Travis the pilot. “I didn’t agree to this.”
“Rach, it’s fine. I fly this bird all the time.” He gestured to the aircraft.
Oh, hell no. Not Travis. Anyone but Travis. She preferred her pilots to understand the significance of flight in a metal box.
“Why didn’t I know you’re a p-pilot?” she asked…stammered…whatever.
“There’s a lot about me you don’t know,” he said, and his words sounded remorseful.
She wasn’t going to evaluate that remorse further than the basic acknowledgment of its existence.
“I have no doubt,” she said. He could be the bestest best pilot in the world, but it didn’t change the way her lungs seemed to fill with fluid at the thought of being in the air with him at the helm.
There was something about knowing the pilot of the plane you were going up in, several tens of thousands of feet in the air, had stopped attending his college classes because he preferred taking body shots off co-eds at the campus pub.
“Hey.” He stepped forward, studying her face. “If you’d prefer to drive, we can take the boys and the dogs and meet you there.”
Her boys? On this plane? Without her?
Hell. No.
His assurance did nothing to assuage the plummeting feeling in her body about the fact that Travis was piloting this beast of a plane.
“The boys can’t go up without me.” And just like that she got lightheaded again.
“They’ll arrive in one piece,” Travis had the creases between his eyebrows again. This time, though, his gaze was soft. Like a caress. Like he cared.
Ugh. This was Travis. Travis did not get to stroke her with a gaze.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you.” She swallowed. That was mostly the truth. She trusted him to drive her kids to the park or take them to Empower Field at Mile High. “It’s just that I prefer the pilot in command of my children’s futures not be—”
Him.
“Me?” he asked.
She said nothing. Sometimes it was the best choice.
“I decided somethin’,” he said. Well, mostly, he drawled.
“What’s that?”
“You’re going to be my copilot.” Travis nudged her arm with his own.
