Zander stood at the side of the lot, watching Erin hug her mother good-bye. Their movements were still awkward, uncertain, but the glassy look Erin’s eyes had as she approached him actually boded well. He didn’t know what it was going to take to get the woman to cry, but at least she was closer now. She’d buried her emotions so deep that there was going to be a hell of a storm when they finally came out.
He wanted to be there for her when that happened.
Erin didn’t say anything as she approached, clearly still composing herself, so he contented himself with an encouraging nod as he led her out toward the main street. A cab waited for them, and she frowned at it. “A regular cab?” she asked. “You mean James Bond isn’t going to jump out and zap us or anything?”
“Well, the cab is regular,” Zander said. “Where it’s taking us, maybe not so much.”
Erin slid into the back of the cab ahead of him, and Zander pulled out the sheet of paper, reading off the directions to the cabbie. To his surprise, the man wasn’t confused. “Private terminal,” he said, nodding. “Corporate planes fly in and out of there all the time. Very nice!” He eyed Zander happily, and Zander mentally added another ten dollars to the tip. He still couldn’t offer Erin any explanation, though, not even when they turned off from the main airport access road to run alongside the facility, eventually turning into an entirely separate terminal area. The cabbie stopped, and Zander gladly paid him as Erin got out of the car. A plane stood gleaming on the runway, its nose pointed away, the words emblazoned on its tail hidden from his view. Erin’s surprised voice reached him just as he pushed his own door open.
“Who’s Jackson Security?” she asked.
Zander sighed, finally squinting toward the plane. “You have got to be shitting me.”
Erin was too stunned to offer any comment, but she stayed close to Zander’s side as he strode with grim determination toward the plane that apparently had been ordered just for them, which admittedly looked really nice sitting there on its own private runway. A man lounged in the shade of the hangar’s open doorway, munching on a sandwich. He straightened when Zander approached. “Staff Sergeant Zander James?” he asked, and Zander stopped a few feet shy of him. “And Erin Connelly. Miss.” The man nodded to her, and Erin felt like she should salute, except she wasn’t actually military. But the man definitely was, or he had been. And sometime pretty recently, too.
“That’s me,” Zander said, all business. “You mind telling me what we’re here for?”
“Just your ride home, sir, compliments of Jackson Security.” The man grinned as Zander closed his eyes and cursed. “He told me you might say something like that. If you have everything you need, we can be airborne in just a few minutes.”
Zander could say nothing more, just turned and gestured to Erin to precede him up the staircase leading into the plane. When she climbed the dozen or so steps and saw the interior cabin, however, she couldn’t help herself. “We’re flying home in this?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The pilot grinned as he entered the cabin behind her, pulling up the stairs. “I apologize. We have no flight attendant, but Mr. Jackson advised you’d spent some time in flight, sir?”
“Just Zander’s fine,” Zander said, standing aside to let the man into the cockpit area, then following him in. His low whistle at the plane’s controls made Erin smile, while she wandered across the spacious cabin that looked more like a hotel suite than an airplane’s interior. In addition to large, double-wide set of facing overstuffed chairs, there was a conference table with more chairs, a minibar station with a fridge, assorted granola bars in a turbulence-proof case, and a fully functioning bathroom easily three times the size of a typical airplane lavatory. She used her visit to that facility to splash her face with water, frowning at the pink surface of her nose and cheeks. She never sunburned. Then again, she was rarely out in the sunshine anymore, and applying sunscreen hadn’t exactly been a key focus of the last few days.
“Erin? You okay?” Erin jumped a little at the rap on the door, and she quickly hurried back out. Zander stood in the cabin, an open water bottle in his hand, eyeing her with concern.
“Sorry,” she said. “That place is huge. I just kind of zoned out.”
“No problem, but we’re ready to take off and I need you to buckle in.”
“You really are going to play stewardess for me?” she asked, her eyes going a little wider at the unexpected images assaulting her brain. “That could totally work for me, just so you know.”
Zander blinked at her, then he barked a short laugh, and a little of his tension seemed to crack. “Just buckle in, okay? Flight’s only about four hours, according to our captain. Maybe a little more if we don’t have favorable winds.”
She blinked at him. Four hours didn’t seem like a very long time, all of a sudden. “Oh. Well sure, of course.” She turned away before Zander’s keen eyes could see anything on her face she didn’t want him to see, and headed for the seats. The buckling procedure was exactly the same as on a commercial flight, but everything felt more…lush. Lush and protected, like she was in her own private bubble of happiness, far above the cares of the world. At the last second, while Zander was busy doing something at a wall full of blinking lights, she got up again and snagged her own bottle of water and a granola bar from the minibar. She felt like a kid on prom night, riding in her first limo. The thought made her smile, and she sank back into her luxurious chair as the plane roared to life.
Zander eventually ambled over, buckling in beside her. Eyeing her airplane snacks, he gave her a wry grin. “See? I take you to all the best places.”
Erin looked back at him, ready to make a quip, something light, something expected, and yet the moment she met his gaze she felt a rush of emotion sweep over her. Zander was here, like he said he would be. He’d helped her, like he said he would. And he’d risked his life to do so. All while carefully ensuring the safety of not only her, but her mother and Mike as well. Three civilians he’d taken under his wing, and he’d acted boldly, even audaciously—but not recklessly. He’d controlled the situation. He’d controlled himself. He’d truly fulfilled that promise of being a warrior that was already so present in the younger, wild-eyed Zander—and she’d gotten the chance to see it all play out.
More to the point, he’d done all of this for her. That knowledge sat uneasily in her chest, calling up the same feelings that Zander had so rightly challenged her on, just a few days ago in her house. She did have issues of parity. She did like things quid pro quo. But how did you give back to someone who’d just put it all on the line for you?
She had to start somewhere, though. “I really don’t see how I’m going to repay you, Zander,” she said, and her serious tone seemed to take him off guard.
“Erin.” He shook his head. “I’m not about to take your money, if that’s what you’re going to say next.” His smile was crooked, his brows raised. “I worked too hard to get it back.”
“I know.” Erin glanced to the side of the cabin, where both of their backpacks sat leaning up against each other, as if they, too, were exhausted from the day’s events. “I still can’t believe you did that, actually. I didn’t think…I never dreamed you would. I had written all of that money off.”
“And now you don’t have to. Now you can put it back into your home, or do whatever you want with it, really. You’ve got a chance to do whatever you want, however you want.” He shrugged. “Not many people get that opportunity, you know?”
Erin nodded, trying to match his light mood, even though her emotions were a roil of gratitude, confusion, and that lingering sense of doubt, as if all of this was not quite real, not quite hers to keep. “And what would you do, if you had the opportunity?” she asked him. “If you had the chance to do anything other than carry on the James family tradition?”
Even as she said the words, Erin realized that it was somehow the wrong thing. Zander’s face shifted, his jaw going just a little tighter, his eyes a little darker. “Yeah, well,” he said. “I’ve sort of started a new tradition,” he said. “The army I know is a far cry from the one my dad or brothers experienced.”
Guilt knifed through Erin, as fresh and sharp now as it had been four years go. But she kept her eyes on Zander anyway. “Sorry just won’t ever be enough, will it?”
He glanced over at her, as if suddenly realizing that his words hadn’t just played out in his mind, but in the open between them. “Probably not,” he said, his blunt words knocking the wind out of her.
She nodded and looked away, quickly shifting her gaze to stare out the window as the plane began to taxi. But Zander wasn’t finished yet. “Sorry doesn’t cut it for a lot of things, though,” he said. “It doesn’t really work for me not realizing everything you were going through growing up. It doesn’t work for you not unbending enough to let me into your world.” He sighed. “It sure as hell doesn’t work for me not fixing things with my dad, before it was too late.”
Erin winced, looking back. “Zander—”
“Point being, no. Sorry doesn’t cut it,” Zander said. He shifted his dark gray eyes to meet hers. “We can’t take back what happened, we can only deal with where we are now.”
Where we are now? Erin nodded, not knowing what to say next. She didn’t know where they were right now, other than in a time out of time, still far away from the real world. The plane suddenly picked up speed and she glanced again out the window, gripping the armrest of her chair. This wasn’t anything like taking off in a large commercial jet. She felt every inch of the runway, the exact moment when the wheels lifted off the ground and they soared into the open air. She recognized that feeling, too, she realized. It’s how she felt every time she talked to Zander now. Like everything in front of them was wide-open space, and she was racing into it without any idea of what lay ahead of her.
Zander’s voice pulled her attention back to him, and she nodded, her brain taking in what he was saying, something about altitude and distance, and about the time they’d be in flight. To her, that time already seemed to be slipping by too fast. He asked a question and she frowned, refocusing. “What?”
“I’m just saying, it seems a shame to waste this opportunity.” His face creased with a smile as he spoke, and she realized it was the smile she’d always associate with him, now—a little weary, a little too knowing, but still ready for anything. “Wanna see what trouble we can get into?”
Erin jerked her gaze up to meet his. The dare was still evident in his eyes, but there was something more, something warm and intense and a bit too much for her to process. “Are you serious?”
“I could be,” he said, his brows lifting in a familiar challenge. “I mean, come on. How often are we going to find ourselves at ten thousand feet?”
He unbuckled his seatbelt then and leaned over, lifting his hand to angle her face toward his. His kiss was light, warm, and full of promise, and Erin leaned forward only to be caught by her belt, which Zander helpfully reached down and unfastened for her.
“I think you do have a future as a flight attendant,” she murmured, then sucked in a breath as Zander pulled her closer to him, his arm snaking around her as he half-hauled her into his lap. He deepened the kiss, and something shifted inside of Erin, something hard and fundamental, warning her to take this moment—to take it and savor it, because you just never knew when life would come around again to give you something so perfect, so important.
So…right.
Erin let her eyes drift shut and pressed closer to him, as Zander’s arms went even tighter. The plane chose that moment to bank, and she spilled forward, steadying herself against him. She tried to pull her hands away, but Zander caught them both in his steady, sure grip, flattening her palms against his chest as he gazed at her.
“Go ahead and lean into me, sweetheart, that’s what I want,” he said, his gray eyes dark with emotion. “I want to be right there for you.”
“Zander…” Erin blinked hard. She didn’t know how to accept the gift of him, didn’t understand what it meant, if it meant anything more than just these final moments they had together. And she found that, for once, she didn’t want to know. She just wanted to feel. To experience. To pour herself into everything he was and everything they were together, and ride the moment out as long as she could. She smiled as she angled back from him, drawing her hands down his shoulders, skimming them over the planes of his chest. “You’ve already done so much for me,” she said. “I don’t think there’s anything left you need to give me.”
“There’s this,” he murmured. He kissed her softly on the lips, his hands coming around to palm her breasts, setting off a swirl of need within her. She groaned and he cupped his hands more tightly, squeezing her through the thin T-shirt. “There’s this.” Zander slid his hands down and slipped them beneath the soft cotton, chuckling against Erin’s groan as his thumbs dipped inside waistband of her shorts, his mouth dropping to nuzzle the jumping pulse in her neck as he worked the buttons free. “There’s this, too,” he breathed, inching his fingers further south, turning her inside out.
Erin’s body reacted instantly, heat coiling within her, her pulse beginning to race as the now-familiar need sprang to life. “Please tell me you’re not just teasing me.”
“Not even the slightest bit,” Zander assured her, pulling her shorts down roughly as she fumbled for his shirt. He reached up and helped her out, taking off the T-shirt, leaving her with nothing to do but pull off hers as well. Then her brain seemed to register where they were. Belatedly, she held her shirt to her chest. “There aren’t any cameras back here, are there?”
“I asked about that,” Zander said with a flash of teeth. “Apparently, Mr. Jackson isn’t a big fan of spying on his own people, just on everybody else in the world. Pilot assures me that we’re quite private back here. And if he’s watching…,” Zander said, his eyes turning predatory now. “We might as well give him a show.”