“Grayson!”
I’m thoroughly shocked to see him standing in my doorway. And I’m more than fully aware what an absolute train wreck I look like—no makeup, hair piled on top of my head, and definitely no red-soled shoes making me taller.
“Hey.” It’s all he says before he shoves a handful of white daisies at me and lifts his brows. “Miss Sidney, will you go out on a date with me?”
I laugh. I can’t help it. He’s giving me the same hopeful look that Luke had given me. “A date, huh?”
“It worked for Luke,” he says as he steps into the foyer and I shut the door behind him. “I figured it might work for me, too.”
“Oh really?” I murmur, letting him pull me close so he can brush a tender kiss on my lips.
“Yep. Is it working?” His smile is mischievous when he leans back.
“I’m not sure,” I tease, prompting him to lean in for one more kiss. This one is longer, softer, toe-curling. “Yes, now that worked. A date, huh?”
“A date on my terms.”
And there it is. The little reminder that as much as this is, it will never really be.
“Where are we going?”
“That’s for me to know and for you to find out.” Another tempting and tender kiss. “And completely off anyone’s radar.”
“Okay . . .” Excitement bubbles up. “What should I wear?”
“Dressier than what you’re wearing, but not as formal as you normally wear.” He shrugs as I take the daisies and bury my nose in them. Other than Luke, I can’t remember the last time a man brought me flowers. It seems as if the Malones are just a bunch of charmers.
“That isn’t a lot of help.”
“Jeans, but it’s a shame to cover up those legs of yours,” he murmurs as his eyes darken and run the length of my body in pure male appreciation that make this female feel desired. “Shirt, unless you want to walk around without one. I mean, I have absolutely no problem with that one.” He winks.
“Funny.”
“Always. And a jacket.”
“A jacket? It’s hot out tonight.”
“Not where we’re going, it isn’t.”
The past hour has gone by in a blur.
Sneaking out to Grayson’s truck under the cover of night. The unexplained trek across town and out to Miner’s Airfield. The shock that bled to nervousness when he pulled next to an airport hangar and explained to me he was flying me to our date in his friend’s helicopter.
Flying me.
Not a driving me through the country, not a walking me through a park, but a flying me . . . in a helicopter date.
Despite the nerves edging my laugh when he told me, I find myself calming some as Grayson straps my belts and adjusts my headset so I can hear him. Once we’re in the air and he’s maneuvering us through the dark night, I find myself completely at ease as I look out over the small towns with their glimmering lights.
“Off the radar, huh?” I ask as my stomach flops back into place when the landing skids touch down to the ground.
“You caught that?” he says, flashing me a grin before turning back to all of the instruments he’s flipping and switching as the rotors overhead begin to wind down.
“Very clever.”
He removes his headset and then mine before leaning forward and pressing a kiss to my lips. “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” he murmurs.
He’s right. I haven’t. Because when the rotors stop and he helps me from the helicopter and to the place he found, strictly by the light of the moon, my breath catches. We’re standing on a huge plateau on a mountaintop that overlooks the whole of Napa Valley below us.
He leaves me for a moment to enjoy the utterly astonishing view while he collects a few things from the helicopter. And within no time at all, we are relaxing with a blanket beneath us, a bottle of wine breathing next to us, and a comfortable silence between us.
“Napa, huh? You fly away from our own Sunnyville wine country to the one that rivals ours?” I tease as his fingertips draw feather-light lines up and down the length of my spine.
“Well, I’m not a fan of the people who own the majority of our vineyards. Since the Hoskins are that majority, they kind of took its beauty away when everything happened with Claire.”
He falls silent, and I instantly regret my question and the grief it brings him. The unimaginable heartbreak he must have endured raising a baby and losing the woman he loved. Learning that it’s, in fact, money that makes the world go ’round and not love.
“It must have been hard in those early days. Figuring out fatherhood. Dealing with it all.”
“You have no idea. It felt like I was cemented to the bottom of a well that was filling with water. Work saved me, while at the same time, it also terrified me. Every second I was away from Luke, I worried that he thought he’d been abandoned by his other parent, too.”
“He knows you love him and would never leave him.”
“He does, but knowing that never stopped me from worrying.”
“Speaking of worrying, do you ever fear that Claire will realize what a huge mistake she made and change her mind? That she’ll come back and want to see Luke?”
“I fear that every single goddamn day . . . but even if she did, she signed away her rights—forever, without recourse, so she can ask all she wants but there’s not a chance in hell I’d let her see him.”
“So that’s why you’re so quiet about it.”
“I’m quiet about it because it almost broke me in every way imaginable, and I had to make a conscious effort to let it go and move on. If not, it would have slowly killed me.”
“You’re a better person than I am. I would have told everybody in town so they knew her true colors.”
“I wanted to . . . but what good would that do me other than hurt Luke when he’s older? You know this town. You know how people like to talk. He’d find out somehow. Besides, I agreed to sign an NDA—protect their precious reputation—which allowed me to make a clean break and have a new start without any of their strings attached.”
“You know, I still can’t wrap my head around how you’ve managed to work your ass off to provide for Luke—make a life for the two of you—and still seem so positive about everything. It has to be hard, living in the town in which they own at least some part of everything you look at.”
“We’re doing just fine.” I can see pride war across his face. “I could have left town, but that would have meant leaving my family. Having them be a part of Luke’s life is more important than my wounded ego.”
I keep my eyes focused on the valley below but reach over and link my fingers with his in a show of silent support.
“Hey, Sid?”
“Mm-hmm?”
“I appreciate you caring and wanting to know about how this all affected me, but this is our date night. What do you say we stop talking about Claire and what happened? I have Luke. He’s a good kid. We’ll be fine. Besides, men aren’t too keen on talking about their shortcomings.”
“Grayson, you did nothing wrong—”
My words are cut off when he leans over and kisses me. “Stop talking.”
“Only if you’ll keep kissing me.”
“Now that? That I can do.” He extends the kiss a little longer, a little deeper, a lot more satisfying. “Life is good right now. I’m getting my wings back shortly. Luke had a great report card. And I’m up here on a moonlit mountain with a beautiful woman. There are definitely no complaints here,” he murmurs before pressing his lips to mine again.
When he stops, I rest my head on his shoulder, and we fall silent as we stare at the view and wonder what in the hell this is between us.
Or at least, I do.
“We were sidetracked.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” he says through a chuckle. “I can sidetrack you some more if you’d like.”
“Definitely, but first, tell me how you know about this place. And how do you know they’re cool with you landing here?”
He takes our linked hands and presses a kiss to the top of mine as if it were a normal thing. Something about the action steals my breath and makes me take pause. So much so that I miss the first part of what he’s saying.
“The guy is a family friend and this is his family’s land. They use it for corporate functions, weddings, and stuff like that. They own a helicopter company that takes tourists around, and they also shuttle corporate executives between here and San Francisco or Los Angeles.”
“It feels like we’re on top of the world up here.”
“It does. I’m surprised you weren’t scared about me taking you up.”
“I hid it well,” I say with a laugh. “But you seem very competent.”
“Just competent? Not incredible or mind blowing?” He chuckles.
“We are talking about flying, right?” I ask and squirm out of the way when he reaches out to tickle me. Unfortunately, in my scramble to get away from him, I knock over the bottle of wine, which he saves before too much spills. “My hero. Grayson Malone is my hero!” I shout to the hundreds of lights twinkling in the valley below.
“Don’t even start that hero crap again,” he says, but he’s laughing right along with me.
“Oh, Mr. Malone, you are such a hero,” I continue.
“Says the defiant damsel.” He hands me a glass and begins to fill it with the almost spilled wine. “Scratch that—says the queen manipulator.”
“It was all Rissa,” I refute as I take a sip.
“Uh-huh. I’m not buying that for a second.”
“It was, I swear. I told her you were the one who was going to win the contest. She has her sights on another guy. She decided to plant a few stories in the Gazette—against my knowledge, I might add—to make sure it was a ‘fair fight.’”
“She doesn’t think I can win?”
“Not against her man,” I say, realizing I’m spurring on the competitive side of the man next to me.
“Bullshit,” he snorts, and it makes me laugh. “Rissa? It was seriously Rissa who set all this shit up?”
“The article. The hero party. Not my idea.” His eyes find mine through the moonlit darkness. “Now you have no reason to be mad at me, right? Your brothers signed you up, and she egged it on.”
“You’re far from innocent, Thorton.”
“Only in all the right ways.” That earns me a pinch on my side. “For a man who takes risks for a living, though, you should learn to be a little more comfortable being called a hero.”
“Whatever.” He takes a drink of his Coke and leans back on one hand.
“Tell me about the High Sierras.”
“They’re a mountain range in California,” he says drolly.
“No shit.” A part of me loves that he helps without wanting the attention, but I want to hear this story for me, not because I want to use it for votes. “What about the hikers you rescued?”
He looks over to me with an angle to his head and a sudden shyness in his expression. “Who said I rescued any hikers?”
“C’mon. Everyone knows it was you, why are you too shy to talk about it?”
“I don’t rescue people to get accolades.”
“No one said you did.” I can’t figure out why he’s so cagey about responding.
“Anything I tell you is off the record, right? No telling Rissa so she can call the Gazette.”
“This whole date is off the record.”
His smile spreads across his lips and warms so many parts of me. “I don’t talk about it because it was stupid on my part.” His voice lowers, his eyes soften.
“I would hardly say that saving a whole family is stupid.”
“Yeah, but I could have ruined lives, too. I took off, thinking only about Luke. Thinking about how, if that were my son, I’d move heaven and earth to find him and save him. It wasn’t until I was in the air and the chopper pitched and swayed that I realized how goddamn stupid I was. That I was risking my life and could very well end up leaving Luke fatherless. It was a stupid move. Just too risky.”
“And, yet, you did it again, and it got you grounded.”
He falls silent and shifts to meet my eyes. “If someone needs help, I have a hard time turning my back.”
“And that’s why you’re good at your job.”
“Like I said, I take too many risks.”
“Not all risks are bad things.”