So that meant she needed the car. Lucas was rich. He would find another way back to the city. That’s what rich people did. Used their money to get what they wanted. She’d dealt with enough rich customers to know that.
She pushed to her feet, feeling sick to her stomach.
Damn it.
Last night, apart from the storm and the near death by tree, had been one of the best nights of her life and now she was going to ruin it.
They’d agreed it would be one night only and she had steeled herself to honor that even though the thought made her body protest loudly. Not to mention that she’d enjoyed Lucas himself. The funny playful guy he’d been in bed was very different from the serious doctor in the suits.
Which one was the real him?
It didn’t matter, she realized. She wasn’t likely to see either version of him ever again. Not after she did what she was about to do. Not unless he decided to have her arrested or something.
She crept back into the main room, tiptoed around picking up her clothes and donning them as fast and silently as she could. When Lucas turned over, muttering something under his breath, she nearly had a heart attack. But then he stilled again, his breathing slow and steady.
The whole room smelled like him, which made her feel even worse.
Well, she could do one thing to make it right. Her checkbook was in her flight bag. So she carefully wrote out a refund for his charter—though the thought of what that would do to their already shaky bank balance made her cringe—and the amount she guessed he’d paid for the car rental.
And, because it seemed like the honorable thing to do, even when she was abandoning him like this, she wrote, “I’m sorry. I had to go,” on a page from her notebook and left that and the check weighted down by the heavy watch on his bedside table.
She stared down at him, sleeping there, the lines of his face—as much as she could see in the darkened room—still one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen.
Life really was a bitch.
Couldn’t even let her have this one thing without turning it into a disaster, too.
But that was the reality, and she was good at dealing with reality.
So she shoved away the guilt and regret, scooped the car keys up from beside his watch, and let herself out of the room.
Ellen met Sara at the door to the terminal. She looked pale and wet and exhausted, her hair scraped back in a rough bun and her mascara smudged.
“Sara, honey,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
Sara braced herself. All through the ninety-minute drive—she’d had to take a couple of detours around downed trees and power poles to get back—she’d been holding out hope that it wasn’t going to be too bad. That whatever had happened to the A-Star could be fixed. A few days’ downtime and she’d be back in the air. No problem.
But looking at Ellen’s face, she wasn’t so sure. “Show me.”
She followed Ellen through the terminal and out to the airfield. The wind cut through her jacket like it wasn’t there but wasn’t howling as badly as it had last night. The ground squelched under her feet, muddy and slippery, rain still falling steadily. She concentrated on staying on her feet until they reached the place where her helo should have been, sitting patiently and waiting for her, the bright blue-and-silver paintwork shining. She’d tied it down properly. It should have been fine.
But it wasn’t.
Instead, it was on its side. She could see from here that at least one rotor blade had snapped off. About ten feet past it, a small plane was flipped on its back, looking far more mangled than the helo, but still. She looked back at the rotor and had to swallow hard as her throat went hot and tight.
No helo. She had no helo.
No helo. No work. No work. No money. “Oh
God
.”
“Sara—” Ellen put her hand on her arm.
“What happened?”
“Near as we can tell, it was the wind. The Piper came untied and flipped and got blown into the helo. That wind was nearly hurricane-force last night.”
Sara stared at the A-Star, blinking back the sting in her eyes as the rain hit her face. Did her insurance even cover freak wind gusts … what did they call them, acts of God? That was it. Though what she thought about whatever deity had decided to mess with her was firmly unprintable.
As to whether she was covered … she had no idea. Hopefully whoever owned the Piper was.
Regardless of insurance, she did know she was looking at a helicopter that was kind of screwed.
Much like she was.
* * *
I’m sorry. I had to go.
Lucas stared down at the note, still not believing what he was reading though he’d read it at least ten times now. The handwriting was neat and perfectly legible. It was just that it made no goddamned sense.
She’d left. And, he’d deduced from the lack of car keys on his bedside table, she’d taken the car.
When he’d first noticed the lack of keys, he’d stomped over to the window and confirmed it by flicking the blinds up. The Mercedes was gone. And so was Sara Charles.
She of the innocent face and the seaside eyes and the mouth that had made him think he’d gone to heaven. She’d spent the night with him—hell, that was too tame a term for what they’d done, because sex with Sara had been very good and very hot and damn he was getting hard just thinking about it.
Which meant his cock was stupid. Because the woman who had done all those things with him—kissed him, whispered sweet nothings, laughed and teased and let him inside her—had run off with his car and left him stranded.
Fuck.
She had refunded his money but that was hardly the point. She’d run away and left.
I’m sorry. I had to go
was not a suitable good-bye. And it was an even worse explanation.
He had no idea why she might have left. Last night had been good. More than good. They’d both enjoyed it. So why would she just get up and leave? Had she gotten embarrassed about the one-night thing? Decided the walk—or drive—of shame back to Manhattan was going to be too awkward or something?
Double fuck.
He allowed himself a small moment of regret and then locked it down and focused on the bit where he was, quite rightly, pissed off about the whole situation.
First things first. It was past six and he needed to get back to the city. So he would shower, get dressed, and then go see if the powers of cash or unlimited credit could find someone in this motel willing to either give him a ride or let him hire a damned car.
* * *
He was doing it again. Lucas stared down at his fingers. Which held a slightly ragged piece of folded notepaper.
The note Sara had left him two weeks ago.
The one that he’d shoved roughly into his wallet when he’d left the motel and had meant to throw out. Only he hadn’t.
And, every now and then, he kept finding it in his fingers. Fingers that remembered the feel of Sara Charles’s skin precisely.
He was famous for his hands—surgeons had to have good hands—but right now that seemed like a curse, not a blessing.
He didn’t want to remember the exact texture of her skin or the taste of her mouth or the sound of her voice laughing with delight in the darkness.
The woman had snuck out and left him abandoned in the wake of a near hurricane.
He didn’t want to think about her. Normally if he dismissed something from his mind, it stayed dismissed. But Sara Charles was bucking that trend.
Which meant he had to decide what to do about her.
His first trip to the Saints’ spring training camp in Florida was in two days. Which meant the travel schedule from hell started, too. Every second he could save on travel was time he had for his patients. And that meant using choppers to get around where he could.
So he needed to find another pilot he trusted. Sara’s check refunding his fare seemed to be a fairly clear message that she didn’t expect him to patronize her business again. Combined with the hire car boosting and the near-dawn abandonment, that was.
Christ. Near-dawn abandonment? He needed to get a grip. They’d agreed to a one-night thing and she’d taken that to its logical conclusion and left first.
He’d done his share of leaving women’s bedrooms at the end of one-night stands. A few had left his, too. True, he usually tried to be gentlemanly about things and offer breakfast, but that didn’t always work out.
He always made his position clear. Short-term only. One night usually.
He just didn’t have time for anything more complicated. Not now. Relationships were always complicated, in his experience.
His mother had started trying to throw eligible girls in his path when he’d been in college. He’d avoided those—the girls his mother approved of were generally the kind who wanted to have the same sort of life she had, and he’d been doggedly working to avoid the life his parents expected him to have for as long as he could remember.
In medical school and during his internship he’d barely had time for women. But he’d had a few longer-term relationships. With beautiful intelligent women who should have been perfect for him. But either they hadn’t liked playing second fiddle to his crazy schedule—which he couldn’t blame them for—or they revealed themselves to be more interested in the Angelo money than in Lucas himself. Or things just hadn’t worked out.
And then there’d been Elena.
Elena whom he had met at one of his mother’s fund-raisers. Elena who was beyond beautiful and smart and busy with her own career. Elena the biochemist.
He’d thought she was perfect. Until she, too, started talking marriage after only a few months and he’d realized that once again his name was more interesting to her than anything else he might have to offer.
Since then he’d decided that, until his life was more under control, and God knew when that would be, casual was the better option.
He’d broken up with Elena well over a year ago now, and he’d stuck to that plan since then. Which was just as well, given that becoming part owner of the New York Saints hadn’t exactly freed up his schedule.
So sue him, he hadn’t said no to Sara Charles when she’d made a move.
He hadn’t been expecting it—hadn’t pegged her for the type—but he’d been more than happy to oblige.
And now he was wondering exactly why he couldn’t consign her to memory where she belonged.
What was it about her exactly? He had no idea. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman he’d dated. But there’d been something about her.
His hands flexed … remembering. Her skin. Her mouth. The way she’d felt wrapped around him and calling his name.
Maybe he’d lost his mind due to the storm or something.
Maybe there was a scientific explanation for it. Wasn’t a near-death experience meant to draw people together? It was certainly a theory espoused by almost every Hollywood action movie he’d even seen. He didn’t know the science, though. He’d never been terribly interested in psychology. Too much theory. Not enough scalpels.
The close encounter that he and Sara had had with the tree counted, he supposed.
So was that it? The fact that their systems had been flooded with adrenaline, heightening the experience? Maybe that explained her unexpected pass as well.
He swore suddenly and shoved the paper back into the wallet.
What did it matter why he couldn’t forget her?
She obviously hadn’t wanted to see him again or she wouldn’t have snuck out. And if she’d regretted it since, she’d made no attempt to contact him. She knew who he was, and he wasn’t exactly hard to find on the Internet these days. A few seconds with Google and she would have had contact details for him at the hospitals he worked at, at his office, and at Deacon Field.
So no, it was clear enough that he was the only one having inconvenient flashbacks.
Which meant that he was going to have to do what needed to be done. He was going to accept the situation and really put her out of his mind. And the first step in that was finding another helicopter firm.
* * *
Four days later Lucas stood in Alex’s office at Deacon Field, having caught a red-eye back from Orlando to perform emergency surgery on a world-class golfer who’d managed, of all things, to roll his golf cart and smash up his knee pretty good.
He’d endured five hours of flying and twice that in getting through all the airport security bullshit that came with flying these days. All for just over twenty-four hours in Florida. Barely time to be introduced to all the potential players they were trying out or speak to Dan Ellis about the training program.
He was tired and hungry and he very much did not want to turn around and drive back to Manhattan and catch a plane to get back to Vero Beach in the morning. But he definitely didn’t want to get back in a helicopter with the cowboy who’d flown him back from JFK. The guy had decided to show off a little, and it had been only a very iron force of will that had kept Lucas from reacting to the swooping maneuvers he’d put the chopper through or from punching him when they landed. He was the third pilot Lucas had hired so far. And the third who’d come up short in the fly-the-chopper-in-a-manner-that-didn’t-make-him-think-of-imminent-death stakes.
Sara didn’t swoop
.
The thought of Sara Charles and the fact that so far, he hadn’t found another chopper pilot who managed to fly the way she did, didn’t improve his mood.
He scowled down at the field, currently empty with the team in Florida.
“What’s eating him? Girl trouble?” Mal said from behind him. Lucas didn’t turn around. He wasn’t in the mood for Mal’s idea of wit.
“Lucas doesn’t do girl trouble,” Alex replied, his voice somewhat amused.
Lucas gritted his teeth.
“Remember, he has his new tap-’em-and-toss-’em policy,” Alex continued. “No trouble to be had.”
Lucas turned at that one. “I do not,” he said, trying not to give in to the urge to toss Alex somewhere, “toss women. We come to mutually agreeable terms”—he held up a hand before either of his so-called best friends could come up with some stupid joke about that—“and we part ways amicably.”