Zoe sighed. “He’s living with me,” she said, and Joe, who’d just taken an unfortunate sip of coffee, choked, and snorted coffee out his nose.
“Goddammit,” he muttered when he could talk.
“Parker’s a friend of Wyatt’s,” Zoe said. “It’s a favor. Apparently I’m just full of favors today,” she added.
Joe was mopping up the coffee he’d spilled with some papers on the counter. “Dottie’s going to kill me.”
Dottie was his office manager, and even though she was married to Devon, their other pilot-for-hire, she terrified Joe.
Not Zoe’s problem. She turned to Parker. “Where are we heading?”
“Rocky Falls,” he said.
“There’s no airport up there.”
“I need to see the layout, no landing required.”
Rocky Falls was the northernmost county in the state. It was mostly open, rugged, isolated, nearly uninhabitable forestland, bordered by a few far-reaching ranches. Just past those, the growth was so thick, seeing anything from the air but a blanket of green sliced with the occasional blue ribbon of rivers and tributaries was all but impossible. “I thought you were here on vacay,” she said.
“Yep. I’m sightseeing.”
Uh-huh. “There’s nothing to sightsee out there except trees.”
“I like trees.”
She laughed. “That’s ridiculous. There are far cheaper ways to see trees.”
“Jeez, don’t tell him that,” Joe said, and looked at Parker. “She’s not much of a saleswoman. Don’t listen to her. I gave you a really good rate for your two hours.”
Zoe kept her gaze on Parker. She had a good bullshit detector and it was going off now. Blaring, in fact. But if he wanted to pay a small fortune to “sightsee,” what did she care? “I’ve got to get the weather, file a flight plan, and perform a flight check.” She eyed her watch. “Wheels up in forty-five.”
With that, she about-faced and exited the glass door opposite the front desk, heading across the tarmac to the Cardinal tied down there. She was already busy running through her preflight in her head: tire pressure, oil and fuel levels, flight controls, cowlings . . .
“Zoe.”
She stilled in the early-morning sun and slowly turned to face Parker, who’d followed her out. He wore his clothes with the same ease he’d worn nothing at all. And dammit, she really needed to stop thinking about that.
“Do we have a problem?” he asked.
Other than she knew that the promise his body made in clothes was kept when he was out of them? “No.”
“Is it about this morning?”
“What about this morning?” she asked, going for an innocent tone but ruining it by flushing.
Because she knew exactly what about this morning.
His eyes revealed his amusement. “If it would make things less awkward, I’ll be happy to walk in on your next shower.”
“I didn’t mean to!”
“Is that why you stood there staring for a full three minutes?” he asked. “Drooling?”
“I . . . it wasn’t three minutes!” She put her hands to her hot cheeks. “And you’re the dishonest one. You said you weren’t hurt that badly, but your ribs—”
“Are healing,” he said. “And that’s not what you were staring at.”
True story.
He smiled. “And you liked what you saw.”
Oh God. She had, she really, really had. She closed her eyes and wished for a big hole to swallow her up. “I hardly even noticed you were naked.”
“So much for honesty.”
“You don’t get honesty privileges,” she said. “Not until it goes both ways.”
“You don’t think I’m being honest with you?”
“Sightseeing?” she repeated dubiously. “Sorry, but you don’t seem like the type to spend thousands of dollars on a sightseeing trip just for the hell of it.”
“Maybe it’s not just for the hell of it.”
She shook her head. “Why do I feel like we’re playing some kind of game here, except I don’t have a copy of the rules?”
His smile went a whole lot more real. “I irritate you.”