“Aw. Need a nap?” Wyatt asked.
Remaining still, not even opening his eyes, Parker flipped him off. He wasn’t going to move, not a single trembling muscle, for a good long time . . .
The scent of coffee roused him and he opened an eye.
A feminine hand waved an iced coffee—God bless her—in front of his face. He opened another eye and met Zoe’s sunglasses-covered gaze. “Marry me,” he said.
“Huh, you’re right,” she said to someone over his head. “That did revive him.”
“Told ya,” Wyatt said. “And I bet vodka would’ve done the same thing.”
Zoe’s eyes were still on Parker, and he watched as the memories of the night before flitted through her mind, making her lips twitch.
“It’s too early for vodka,” Parker muttered. “You,” he said, pointing to Wyatt, “are an asshole.”
“Sticks and stones,” Wyatt said, and walked off. “Dinner tonight,” he called back over his shoulder. “I’ll introduce you and your potty mouth to the woman I’m going to marry.”
“Is she a sadist, too?”
Wyatt flipped him off, and Parker let out a low laugh. “Shit. She is, isn’t she?”
“Ready?” Zoe asked him.
He looked at her, taking in her long, slim-cut black blazer and skirt—blessedly short and revealing her mile-long legs. Was he ready? Ready for what? Because several really great possibilities were running on repeat through his mind, none of which could be done in front of her brother. Not to mention he’d need a shower first. And maybe another nap. “For?”
“A ride.” She narrowed her eyes. “What did you think I was offering?”
He just stared at her.
She flushed and squirmed a little bit. “Do you have to make everything sexual?” she asked.
“As much as possible. What are you doing here?”
“Wyatt called me. Said you needed a ride. Something about you being an idiot and . . . some other things I’m not going to repeat.”
He found a smile. “Aw, come on. Talk dirty to me.”
She snorted. “You want a ride or not? My first flight was cancelled but I have a lesson later that I can’t miss, so . . .”
Parker looked at the building, knowing her car was on the far side of it, both of which seemed like a million miles away. “How about you sit and talk to me for a minute?”
She huffed out a breath but sat right there in the wild grass next to him. Her long legs folded beneath her, she settled without a care for if she got dirty.
And he nearly fell in love with her right then and there.
Nearly.
Ten
“What do you want to talk about?” Zoe asked Parker warily, her eyes covered by her dark sunglasses.
That was Zoe, more afraid of trusting someone than of getting dirty. “Do you like teaching people to fly?” he asked.
“I like flying,” she said. “And in the beginning, lessons were an additional way for me to get hours in the air.”
“You needed so many hours for your license, right?”
“Yes.” She paused, clearly carefully considering her words. “You can’t accept payment for flying with a private license, but you can be paid to teach. In order to fly for a living, I had to get a commercial license, which is mind-bogglingly expensive. It required—at least in my case—loans.”
“How expensive?”
She turned to the sun and tipped her face up to it. “I’ve got about a hundred K in student loans,” she murmured.
He let out a low whistle.
“Yeah. And getting that commercial license required a minimum of two hundred fifty hours in the air. Teaching got me to those hours, and I didn’t have to pay for plane rentals or fuel.” She shrugged. “Win-win.”