The Perfect Fit Page 4

  Nick glanced at her. “So far, you don’t like my scent, my horse’s and a gift of aftershave from a woman I respect. This jacket is my favorite.”

  “The jeans and T-shirt are nice,” Silver offered after studying his body as though assessing a potential lover, her silvery gray eyes lit with humor. “The crease in your jeans is old-fashioned, but very nice. You starched them, too, didn’t you?”

  Nick decided to keep the conversation away from his jeans and ignored Silver’s smirk; she’d gotten to him. He didn’t like his cruising lanes filled with turbulence, or the knowledge that his mouth had dried at the sight of her in the metallic jumpsuit, hair flying around her as she strode toward the plane, wind pasting the jacket to her body—there were more curves than he’d expected, concealed by her loose silky outfit. “That square on the meadow is a parachute landing for the Tallchief women—Talia, Lacy and sometimes Fiona, when she’s testing my brother Joel. That’s Elspeth wrapped in the shawl—the Tallchief tartan—and the rest of the family beside her. They’ve been waiting for you.”

  Silver’s long slender fingers splayed, opened and flattened on the glass as though reaching out to grasp what she wanted. “You didn’t radio our arrival time, did you?”

  “Elspeth always seems to know, and this plane is hard to miss. Amen Flats doesn’t have a public airport—this is a private landing.”

  “Elspeth Tallchief sounds fascinating. She would know more than the rest, her senses coming into play. She took her mother’s place after the shooting—I’m sorry, Nick. I didn’t mean—”

  “My father made a career of ruining lives. I don’t understand why the Tallchiefs aren’t bitter, but they’ve accepted us. It’s a healing time.” Nick fought the bitter taste crawling up from his stomach. He was only six months old when his father had sold him and Rafe, and Mamie had interfered. As a child, Joel had battled for Rafe and Nick, and somehow the three brothers had survived. Then when Uoyd—Nick’s gaze involuntarily shot to a small mirror, reminding him of his likeness to Lloyd—when Lloyd killed the Tallchiefs’ parents, Mamie had collected the three teenage toughs and shoved them into school.

  Nick studied his hands on the controls. They were big like his father’s, and Nick learned early that big hands could hurt; Nick trembled when he held the Tallchief children, fearing his dark inheritance—

  Women. He preferred women who didn’t reach into him, dragging out his fears, making him give too much, and he didn’t like female puzzles. Joel and Rafe had settled their demons, but Nick held his passions, even while making love—nice, clearly defined, surface relationships had suited him well. Cruising through life, traveling where he wanted, which now seemed to be back to Amen Flats when he could—He inhaled Silver’s feminine, understated scents and realized that it had been years since he’d made love, and the last kisses he’d been given were ones from the Tallchief and Palladin children, all innocence and lollipops. After five years with Jacques De LaFleur, Silver’s innocence was doubtful.

  “A healing time,” she repeated softly, looking out to the clouds layering Tallchief Mountain like a cloak. “You’re lucky to have that peace.”

  Nick didn’t want to feel that tug of tenderness for her, for whatever secrets she hid. He skimmed the rugged, snowcapped outline of the Rocky Mountains. The small plane slid through the sky, the mountain winds calm, air pockets and turbulence at a minimum. He liked to cruise through life the same way. Single life suited him—no complications, doing what he wanted, leaving when he wanted... He glanced down at his leather bomber jacket, a favorite one purchased with his first pilot’s paycheck. He didn’t like interference in his life—no turbulence, no air pockets, no sweet-scented women revving his temper.

  He’d been too aware of Silver’s every movement from the moment she slid into the cockpit, those long graceful legs and the restless adjustments of her body. Unused to confinement, Silver wasn’t a woman to sit still, and in constant motion, she’d unzipped her jacket to reveal a tight T-shirt. Beneath the scrawled Fun Girl her breasts were—Nick had fought not to stare. Fun Girl wasn’t wearing a bra; she was all soft, flowing, rippling woman, the cloth tight against her.

  Nick exhaled, pushing the air from his lungs. Silver was not only tall and lithe as her loose clothing made her appear—but she was also the proverbial stacked Venus, a whole lot of woman, curved in all the right places. A physical, dynamic woman who recognized a man’s interested, aware look.

  Eyeing him, Silver arched, arms above her head and stretched.

  Desire slammed into Nick’s lower body, his heart revving up.

  Then she smiled, slowly, seductively, and he knew that the movement was meant to rattle him. “Don’t worry. I’m not in Mamie’s bride and groom, happily-ever-after picture. I make my own life-as-I-want-it pictures and marriage isn’t one of them. However, it could get real boring in Amen Flats, even with mountain climbing and diving in the lake.”

  She’d tossed the sensual ball into his lap, waiting for him to begin the play. At the moment, his lap had an uncomfortable problem. Her finger cruised down his neck. “You’re tense, baby. Does little old me bother you?”

  “Not a bit. Did you learn that from De LaFleur?” Nick took her wrist and eased her hand away. Her scent clung to him and the silky soft stroke of her finger packed enough electricity to flip the plane.

  “Jacques said you were investigating me. He had the impression that you were suspicious. He’s a lovely man. I learned everything I know from him—the unique, small essences that bring out a woman’s sensuality. I could even mix a man’s love potion for you, if I wanted. A little jasmine, a few drops of patchouli and black pepper...a very dark, sensual scent and a nice mix for your natural scents. You need not be lonely, ace.”

  She watched him, waiting for him to respond to her taunt. Nick refused to be drawn into her web, returning to the safe details of the scenery. “Thanks. I’ll pass. Tallchief Lake isn’t for scuba diving, if that’s what you mean. The currents beneath the surface are strong enough to kill. It’s fed by an underground stream, and so far the bottom hasn’t been found.”

  “I see. You said that the Tallchief women skydive.” Silver’s dark brow arched. “Do you fly them?”

  “Sometimes.” Nick smiled briefly, remembering how Calum Tallchief, Talia’s husband, had given him specific instructions and had personally checked Talia’s parachute. Fiona, Joel’s wife, loved to land perfectly in his waiting arms. Birk Tallchief was a sizable pain in the rear, referring to the petite mother of his children, Lacy, as “maddening...this is positively, absolutely the last time she’s playing she’s a snowflake drifting down into my arms.”

  Nick had had a glimpse of that tiny snowflake plummeting down toward the white, terrified face of her tall husband. The parachute that had fallen over them both had been very quiet for a long time. “They dive when they aren’t pregnant and their husbands aren’t brooding and storming about women falling from the sky. The wind currents from the mountains can easily send a parachute off course. The Tallchief women are unusually good athletes, or they wouldn’t be allowed to dive.”

  “I see. Their husbands call the shots. How quaint. And you prefer to stay outside marriage, protecting your adopted family and your brothers. ‘Uncle Nick’ is just fine with you, am I right? A lot of men come into my shop, hoping to make their loves happy, but I can’t see you doing that. You’re a buy-off-the-shelf sort of guy.”

  Nick avoided the subject of marriage and realized that he’d never wanted to share his life with anyone. “Their husbands love them, but I wouldn’t say they are obeyed.”

  “Just how good are the Tallchief women?”

  “The best athletes I’ve seen.”

  Silver peered down at the ground. “Even in wind currents, like today?”

  “They can handle wind currents. But there aren’t any today.”

  “I like my relatives. Families should be like that, even though they’ve been touched by tragedy. They should grow together, not apart
,” Silver said quietly. “I know. You don’t want anything happening to disrupt their lives. I think I’ll just step to the back for a minute and check on my boxes—to see that they are still strapped safely. Would you mind circling slowly? A little bit lower? I’d really like to get the overall feel of the land.”

  Nick lowered the plane’s altitude, cruising slowly. At dusk, the shadows moved down the pine-tree studded mountains, the lake was quiet, almost waiting for a wind to toss its waves.

  For a time, he’d found what he wanted, here amid the Tallchief family, with his brothers, Rafe and Joel. Mamie, uncomfortable too long away from her luxury penthouse in Denver, still seemed to ease when she came to visit. Though Nick preferred working from his home office, the company’s remote Amen Flats office worked well with the Denver one and—

  “Slower,” Silver called from the back. She thrust her head into the cockpit, and a strand of white-gold hair caught on the stubble on Nick’s jaw. She grinned when he brushed it away, disconcerted by her fantastic scents. “Look what slipped out of your briefcase—hmm, not bad.”

  She placed the photograph in front of Nick. A tall, shapely brunette sprawled gracefully in a leopard bikini thong and nothing else. Above Whitney’s glossy smile, she had written: Hungry For You.

  Nick tucked the panoramic photo into the clip near him, with Whitney facing away from him. Whitney wasn’t giving up, though their short affair had been over five years ago. She’d wanted too much, all the tethers of a relationship headed toward the altar. Whitney also wanted a hefty marital portion of Palladin, Inc. “I usually zip my briefcase. Interesting bow this picture could have slipped free.”

  “Yes, it is. Mamie told me you hold on to your single status like it was a lifeboat in shark-infested waters. Poor baby. She tried to make it sound like a challenge to me...it wasn’t. You’ve got ‘traditional male player’ written all over you. You’re the kind to like well-orchestrated courtship periods... a very predictable guy. Here. Watch this,” she ordered as she plopped her formula bag into the empty seat. “Let me know when you want me belted in for landing, okay?” she asked with a grin, and bent to kiss his cheek. “You’re a pretty good pilot, aren’t you? I mean, you can handle unexpected currents, emergencies and all that, right?”

  A soft kiss, a brush of her breast on his shoulder and Nick damned his rising temperature. “I’m experienced—”

  She laughed softly, knowingly. “I’ll just bet you are, ace.”

  Nick jerked from the second impact of that sudden, unexpected, soft playful kiss. He eased back, slowly uncurled his fingers, one by one, from the controls, and stretched in the seat, listening to the drone of the engines as he cut them, cruising and circling for the sight-seeing passenger. With the Tallchiefs around, the bossy woman in the rear of the plane—

  He appreciated predictable women; there was nothing wrong with a natural sequence of steps. Miss Nose was getting to him. One minute he fell into whatever haunted her, the next rattled the cool control he preferred to keep around a manslayer like Silver. That tempting offer in her office had nagged at him and there was no way he was getting involved with—

  The light on his panel flashed—the side loading door had just opened—there was a brief jerk and swerve as wind invaded the plane. Nick adjusted the controls, leveled and glanced down to see the dying sun gleaming on Silver’s body.

  Her helmet matched her jumpsuit, all silver, bulleting toward the shadowy earth—Poised in a free-fall position, her arms and legs splayed apart, Silver suddenly curled into a ball, somersault ing downward before angling her body, turning on her back and waving up at him.

  Just as quickly, she turned into proper position and feed the silver parachute.

  Nick’s short curse shot into the cockpit. He understood now why Silver had insisted on positioning and double-belting her precious crates. When he got his hands on Mamie’s spoiled acquisition, he—

  Nick wasn’t certain what he would do. A controlled man, a predictable one, he’d be prepared for her taunts when he landed. He put the plane on autopilot, secured the opened cargo door and returned to the cockpit. He’d handle Silver coolly, methodically, a temperamental woman who was nothing but a troublesome business associate. He’d be smooth and calm; she wasn’t getting to him. Not a bit.

  Three

  At last standing on Tallchief ground, Silver unharnessed the parachute, ripped off her helmet, shook her hair free and grinned at her relatives. She felt as though they’d waited forever and it was her destiny to come to them. They’d survived, just as she had, and in their childhood play had given themselves special names. They were as beautiful as their story, fighting to stay together as orphaned teenagers. In the light between day and night, Elspeth “the elegant” stood wrapped in her tartan, and a child sitting upon her husband, Alek’s shoulders. Duncan “the defender” holding his wife’s hand with a toddler upon his shoulders and another resting in his arms. Emily, Sybil’s daughter, a leggy twenty-year old, and Birk “the rogue” and Lacy with their babies. Talia and Calum “the cool” with their two and Joel and Fiona “the fiery” with Cody and Ian, and Rafe and Denu—

  All the essences were there, love, tenderness, protection and unity that had lasted for generations and would go on.

  “Perfect,” she heard herself whisper as the plane droned overhead, preparing to approach the thin lighted runway.

  It was Elspeth who first moved from the family, sweeping through the thigh-high sunflower meadow to meet Silver. “I’ve come so far, Jasmine,” Silver whispered quietly and walked to meet the woman whom she instantly loved.

  Elspeth’s sleek black hair shimmered in the dying light, bound into a long, thick braid. The fragrant lavender bouquet in her arms blended with the earth scents. Her smile was more of warmth and inner light than of beauty as she handed the bouquet to Silver. “Just as I pictured you.... We look alike. Almost twins.”

  “No, not twins,” Silver stated more sharply than she wanted. She caught the wary darkening of Elspeth’s gray eyes, and tried for a gentler tone. “But we do look alike. I’m the fully packed model and have you by a few pounds.”

  The friendly jest slid by Elspeth. She looked straight into Silver’s eyes, as if seeing deeper into the shadows of her life. “You’ll find happiness here.”

  “Will I? How do you know?” Silver accepted Elspeth’s hand, sensing the instant bond between them—Silver couldn’t afford one more obstacle that could stop her, and yet meeting Elspeth’s steady gray eyes, she knew that more than blood ran between them.

  The answer came softly, firmly. “I just know you’ll find what you want right here.”

  There would be no running from this woman who saw into hearts and lives; there could only be honesty between them. “I have to.”

  “Yes,” Elspeth whispered solemnly. “I’ll help you.”

  Then the rest of the family circled her, and Silver claimed them, one by one. She would use them and she would keep her heart apart from their tethers. Use them. She uneasily glanced at Elspeth, who was watching her quietly. I’ll help you, she’d promised.

  Silver had everything in her grasp that she needed... sunflowers and earth, sky and dew, and scents, wonderful lavenders and rose, and basil and savory mixed with bread and—soon she would be free. Silver let her emotions enfold her, barely noticing the plane gliding down for a smooth landing.

  Through Elspeth’s introductions, and the juicy kiss of the toddler, Ian, Silver took in the essences of each of them, loved each individual scent—she turned to the tall men standing side by side, with dark brown hair and laughing green eyes, and matching clefts in their chins. “Don’t tell me...Joel and Rafe.”

  Nick’s hard, wary lines weren’t there, the secrets cloaking him. His older brothers looked like happily married men, arms encircling their wives.

  Over the lavender bouquet she clutched close to her, she noticed the third tall man with dark brown hair and a cleft in his chin. His green eyes lashed her. Silver took a step bac
kward as his angry, male scent slammed into her. From the top note to the bottom characteristic, his scent was primitive, ragged, frustrated and volatile. “You’re upset,” she said, angling her chin up at Nick. She’d led an adult life free of restraint and orders, and the nettled man in front of her wasn’t interfering—“I’m very good. There was a challenge. I took it. So what?”

  “Aye,” a Tallchief male murmured, the word a reminder of their Scots heritage. “That’s the one.”

  “No.” Nick glared at the family, who grinned back.

  Silver reached up to pat him on the head. “He’s so easy.”

  “Am I?” That flat male challenge slammed into her before he nodded grimly to the Tallchiefs. He latched a big hand gently on Silver’s nape, his fingers firm as if he were claiming a playful kitten who had gotten too close to the fire. “Miss Silver needs her rest. She’ll see you all tomorrow.”

  “Lunch tomorrow at Tallchief House. It’s the original homestead, but Duncan has added on to it,” Sybil said. “You come too, Nick. Duncan needs help laying that new fence. I’ll feed you for your time and then let you baby-sit.”

  “Right. I’d like that.” Nick dipped just enough to toss Silver over his shoulder. Then he was striding toward the sleek Palladin pickup truck parked near the plane.

  “Are you unhappy for some reason?” Silver managed to ask as she waved to the Tallchief family and held her bouquet away, keeping it from being damaged by Nick’s long stride. She reached out to pluck sunflowers, adding them to the bouquet. “You just made me strip the petals from that lovely sunflower.”

  “Unhappy isn’t the word for it.”

  Silver pressed her hand to his inner thigh as she peered between his legs. The hard muscle hunched immediately, quivered and Nick stopped abruptly as though stunned. A small but detectable shudder ran through his taut body as Silver ordered, “Move a little to the left. There’s a huge, perfect sunflower that I must have. You want me to have the scents I need, don’t you?”