Joey

After two hours of owning the sky a few miles above our strip of the Atlantic Ocean, Monkey Butt lands us back at the sunny Copper Valley International Airport in the shadow of the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. My muscles are all strung taut, and I’m coming down off the adrenaline high that perpetually hums in my veins beside the intense concentration we keep in the cockpit.

None of us break mission talk until we’re parked.

“Nearly perfect on that sixth run,” Monkey Butt says.

I slap him on the shoulder. “Damn right. Beautiful headwind.” I look at Boomer, who’s grinning like a kid on Christmas morning despite the weathered lines deepening by the day on his forehead. “Any casualties?” I ask. As our flight engineer, he monitors all comms with the back of the plane.

“Two of the moms, Panther, and one of the Berger twins.”

Oh, no.

I barely keep from cringing.

If it was Zeus—no. Nope. Doesn’t matter. I’ve already given the man too much thought. Him getting sick—meaning no date, not that I agreed to his terms in the first place—isn’t just the final nail in the coffin, it’s an extra three tons of dirt dumped on the ground to keep that corpse good and buried.

He probably threw up on purpose so he wouldn’t have to follow through.

Except even I can’t convince myself it’s Zeus’s style to continue to embarrass himself for the sake of a woman.

Which means…

Fuck. I don’t know what it means.

“Anyone else?” I ask.

Boomer glances at the closed cockpit door and double-checks that our comms are off. “Nope. And Nyla says Chase Jett and his girlfriend have been looking you up on their phones and whispering ever since we leveled off on our way back.”

Putting an airplane through the kind of acrobatics it takes to simulate zero-gravity is like taking a brain surgery test while running a marathon at ten miles an hour. Boomer, Monkey Butt, and I have been known to clean out the Weightless snack bar and crash out for two hours after any given flight.

Hope Peach has some time for a phone call.

Expanding Weightless, with an investor I can tolerate—fuck, that would be cool.

“Aw, she’s smiling.” Monkey Butt gives me a friendly punch to the bicep. “Isn’t that cute.”

“Shut up, you big butthead.”

I know, it’s too soon to smile. You don’t grow up dirt floor poor and make the mistake of counting your chickens before the hogs are let loose to trample the chicken coop.

But it was a damn good flight. Shrieks and giggles from the cabin are still coming through the flight deck door, along with deeper chuckles and fast voices. Satisfied customers.

And Jett isn’t stupid. Any man who can make himself a billionaire before he’s thirty—especially a man who started with just as much nothing as I did—will do his homework. Probably already has.

I strap out of my harness and join Boomer and Monkey Butt in leaving the flight deck. I barely step out the door before I’m tackled about the middle.

“Ohmygosh, Joey, this was so flipping fabamazesome. I’m gonna be an astronaut one day, and I’m going to play baseball in space and be a kickaaaa—labama rock star. Can I get a picture? And your autograph again? And one of those cookies with a picture of the plane and one with your picture? I swear I won’t eat your face, but I might eat the plane. If I have a spare.”

How can you not smile at this kid? I pat her back and smile wider at her mother’s what can you do? shrug. “Pictures in the lobby in fifteen,” I tell her. “We’ll have a tablet for ordering cookies too.”

Damn right I pimp my sister’s business.

But not the genital cookies. I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing.

Her mother mouths a thank you, and they depart.

“They didn’t let me have my balloons,” Panther says dryly.

“Maybe skip the haircuts and come back next month,” I reply, and yes, I’m smiling again, because it’s impossible not to smile at a plane full of satisfied customers who’ve just had the experience of their lives.

I fucking love my job.

“Ms. Diamonte, you’ve surpassed my wildest expectations.” Prince Manning bows over my hand and kisses my knuckles as though I’m the royalty on this plane.

“Good. Stay the fuck away from my sister.”

His grin spreads wider when he straightens. “Hope to do it again someday. Might bring my brothers. Did someone say cookies?”

I level my very best you don’t ever get to touch my sister’s cookies glare at him.

His eyes twinkle like he’s fucking Santa Claus. I know without a doubt he didn’t put a finger on my sister. I also know he’s getting his rocks off by fucking with me.

Because I’m a fun target, or because he’s plotting something, I don’t know. And I shouldn’t care.

Except he’s been hanging with the two massive puckers stepping up behind him as he exits the plane.

Zeus stops before me. He gives me a quick once-over, his hooded eyes lingering on my lips and making me flush from my toes to my fingertips and everywhere between.

Never in my life has a man been able to fire my engines with one look.

It has to be the sheer size of him. The muscles, the height, the thick growth of stubble on his cheeks and chin. That grip he had on the treadmill. He’s so inherently male, despite all the cracks I’ve seen in his machismo.

He lifts those blue eyes to meet mine, and he gives me a single nod. “Well played, Ms. Diamonte.”

“Enjoy your flight?”

He doesn’t answer. I honestly don’t expect him to. I’m not making fun—even the passengers who toss their cookies tend to love the experience, because how often do you get to float like you’re in space?—and I hope he realizes it’s an honest question.

His eyes flicker. It’s not annoyance. Or pride—there’s not enough bravado.

No, it’s something else entirely.

Something…vulnerable?

He blinks, and the vulnerability is swallowed into his intense I will devour you in one bite and burp out the air in your lungs hockey-god glower. “I’m done fighting fair. We’re taking this to my turf. You. Me. Hockey sticks. Two o’clock. Mink Arena.”

“Didn’t realize this was a fight.”

He bares his teeth. “This is so much more than a fight.”

My nipples pucker so fast my lungs go lightheaded. My pulse might’ve just pushed the throttle full-force to head into a forty-five-degree climb too.

Before I can tell him where he can shove his stick—yes, fine, I do want to know what his stick could do to me. Shut up.—he follows the prince off the plane.

Behind him, Ares makes eye contact with me, and a subtle grin tugs at his lips. The two of them are physically identical, but the way they carry themselves is so very different. One’s verbally brash, the other lets his size speak for itself. He has his flight suit unzipped, showing off a pink T-shirt stamped with a picture of mountains and the phrase “Nipples Have Lips” scrolled across it.

Boomer and Monkey Butt both shift closer to me, which is as abnormal as a third full moon in a single month. Both because they know I don’t need their protection, and they sure as fuck aren’t the types to cower behind me.

“Have fun up there, big guy?” Boomer asks.

Ares nods. He smirks again, gives me a smart salute, and follows his brother in ducking off the plane.

Chase Jett holds out a hand. “You have lunch plans?”

Lunch plans, nap plans, and then fashionably late plans.

If I meet Zeus at the hockey rink.

Which I will, because how often do I get a chance to learn to play hockey from a pro? Need to add handling a stick to my repertoire.

Fine, fine.

I admire the guy’s pucks, okay?

“Flight debrief,” I tell Jett.

“Hm.”

He doesn’t say anything else. I don’t offer.

But I’m holding my breath when he and Ambrosia leave the plane. She pokes him in the back, and I hear him mutter, “Timing, Ms. Bossypants.”

So there’s to be a power struggle if he’s going to consider propositioning us.

Excellent.

Peach will be so pleased.

We finish seeing off our passengers. As soon as the bus pulls away to take them back to the small private terminal, all of us—Boomer, Monkey Butt, the six crew members cleaning up the plane, me—sag against the walls.

“One for the record books,” Monkey Butt says with a subtle smile.

“What’s going on with you and that Berger brute?” Boomer wants to know.

My lips go rogue and sprout a smile that I can’t stop, which pisses me off because I’ve worked damn fucking hard to not be a smiley-ass kind of woman. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The one who puked took a beating from that Bailey girl,” Nyla tells me. “Kid doesn’t take crap from anybody.”

“Sounds vaguely familiar,” another of my crew murmurs.

“She was nice to him when he tossed his breakfast though.”

Those two. They’re like long-lost cousins.

I’m actually going to miss them both when we go home tomorrow.