Page 17 of Flyboy

“I just did. And if you want to stay on this team, you better be paying attention.”

“You don’t own my free time. And coming from you, the most reckless pilot I’ve ever heard of, this is really rich.” She turned her horse, dug in her heels, and tore off across the pasture, back toward the house.

Omar whistled.

“Shut up, dude.”

“I didn’t say a thing.” He started walking back toward the house. “Not saying anything, but boss, you’ve gotta get a grip on your feelings for that woman.”

Colton’s eyes shot to Omar’s, and then he looked away. “Is it obvious?”

“To her? Obviously not. To everyone else within twenty feet of either of you? Painfully.”

Colton’s shoulders slumped. “It wasn’t even obvious to me until yesterday.”

“I was surprised you picked her for your team.”

“Yeah, she hates me. I was just trying to convince her to see things a little differently.”

“Oh, she feels things, that’s for sure, but she doesn’t hate you.”

“Did you just see that spitfire spewing things at me?”

“Yeah, I saw it.” Omar picked up his pace, and Colton wanted to order him around as well. What did he know? The man was about as emotionally in tune as a slice of steak. He flew off the handle at the slightest provocation.

But he caught up to him. “Are you saying you think Ivy has feelings for me?”

“I’m not saying anything. I’m just hoping I make it through these six months with the two of you.”

Colton grunted.

They rode the rest of the way back to the house in silence.

When they got there, Ivy was washing down her mare with one of the stable hands. Another came and took their horses and shooed them away back into the house. With one last look at Ivy, who was pointedly ignoring them both, Colton turned. “I’m gonna shower off this ride. Let’s go into town.”

“You got it, boss.”

Colton didn’t even bother to correct him that when off duty, he was not the boss, because that would have just made Omar laugh. And Colton was in the mood to punch people who laughed.

Chapter 8

Ivy let Omar and Colton go into town without her. It was time she started behaving like a professional. Colton might have suddenly morphed into a strong, capable, and even charming person, but the few hours she’d spent with him could not erase all the history she knew about him and that she’d seen with her own eyes.

Where did he get off calling her out for riding a horse the way she’d been trained? He didn’t know what he was talking about, and the guy who inverted his plane at the speeds he was reported to have flown had no business talking to her at all about reckless behavior. She shook her head. He was widely known as one of the most reckless, non-rule-following, goof-off pilots that had ever flown a jet. She jerked the clothes off the line in the washing hut behind the house.

“Now, now. At least he’s handsome.” Fatima laughed.

And when Ivy jerked a head in her direction, the woman laughed even harder. “Oh, come now. I love laundry to beat out some nonsense from a man as much as the next woman, but let’s go do something more pleasant, you and I. I pay people to take care of this for me.” Fatima rested a hand on Ivy’s back and led her back up to the house. Ivy tried not to think of her brother, but all this nonsense from Colton was starting to bring back some feelings she thought she’d gotten over years ago, a whole package of emotional stuff she thought she’d dealt with.

When the mencame back from whatever they were doing, Fatima served dinner.

Ivy sat opposite Colton, which was annoying because she couldn’t avoid looking at him. At last, she did what she’d been doing for years in the military, and she switched into her professional we-have-a-job-to-do mode. “Were you able to contact the owners of the facility we are using?” Her voice sounded clipped even to her own ears.

“No, I figured we’d just show up at the door and bribe our way in.” Colton laughed. When Ivy didn’t, he cleared his throat. “We start tomorrow. I suppose we can start talking shop if you like. So, we have a hangar, an airstrip, and two planes. We have a classroom and fifteen pilots. And that’s it. But I brought the best of Top Flight with me, so I know we can turn these fifteen men and women into the best their country has to offer. We have six months to do it.”

Ivy nodded. “So, have you decided the schedule?”

“Yes. Your dockets will be arriving in your email this evening.” Colton cleared his throat. “But if you would like to know now . . .” He pulled out his phone from his back pocket. “I’ve got an opening debriefing meeting with all fifteen. Then we begin classroom experience. Instead of separating out flying time from classroom time, we will pull out two pilots at a time to take their turn in the air. Whoever is not teaching the others will catch the two up on what they missed.” He eyed them both. “I have Omar and Ivy on the ground and me in the air for the first two weeks.”

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