Taking Cover

Taking Cover
Catherine Mann

Dr. Kathleen O'Connell's years in the air force had taught her a thing or two about handling arrogant top-gun pilots. But there was one hotshot flyboy who'd always gotten past her defenses. And now he was her unwelcome partner–on the most dangerous mission of her career.Captain Tanner "Bronco" Bennett had always known how to break through her cool, professional exterior and touch the passionate, sensuous woman beneath. But they had a deadly mystery to solve–and she had to keep things strictly business.She thought she could keep him in line–maybe–but she wasn't so sure about her own traitorous heart….

Tanner twisted in his chair. Looking. Finding. Her.

Kathleen stood silhouetted in the doorway.

His chair thudded to the barroom floor in a teeth-jarring landing. No flight suit for her tonight. She’d changed.

Man, how she’d changed.

Leather pants molded themselves to her every curve. They sealed over her trimly muscled calves, up her thighs, to cup that bottom he’d been trying not to watch all day. Her hair flowed in a fiery curtain around her face, brushing the collar of her satin shirt. Scorching his eyes from across the smoky room.

She leaned over the bar to place her drink order. Her blouse inched up, baring a thin stripe of skin along her back.

Twelve years.

Twelve years hadn’t dimmed the memory of how soft, how warm, that skin had felt beneath his hands….

Taking Cover

Catherine Mann

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CATHERINE MANN

began her career writing romance at twelve and recently uncovered that first effort while cleaning out her grandmother’s garage. After working for a small-town newspaper, teaching on the university level and serving as a theater school director, she has returned to her original dream of writing romance. Now an award-winning author, Catherine is especially pleased to add a nomination for the prestigious Maggie to her contest credits. Following her air force aviator husband around the United States with four children and a beagle in tow gives Catherine a wealth of experience from which to draw her plots. Catherine invites you to learn more about her work by visiting her Web site: http://catherinemann.com.

Endless thanks to my editor, Melissa Jeglinski, and my agent, Barbara Collins Rosenberg.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Captain Tanner “Bronco” Bennett gripped the cargo plane’s stick and flew through hell, the underworld having risen to fire the night sky.

“Anything. Anywhere. Anytime,” he chanted the combat mantra through locked teeth.

His C-17 squadron motto had gone into overtime today.

Neon-green tracer rounds arced over the jet’s nose. Sweat sealed Tanner’s helmet to his head. Adrenaline burned over him with more heat than any missile. He plowed ahead, chanted. Prayed.

Antiaircraft fire exploded into puffs of black smoke that momentarily masked the moon. The haze dispersed, leaving lethal flak glinting in the inky air. Shrapnel sprinkled the plane, tink, tink, tinking like hail on a tin roof.

Still, he flew, making no move for evasion or defense.

“Steady. Steady.” He held his unwavering course, had to until the last paratrooper egressed out of the C-17 into the Eastern European forest below.

Off-loading those troopers into the drop zone was critical. Once they secured the nearby Sentavo airfield, supplies could be flown into the wartorn country by morning. Starving villagers burned out of their homes by renegade rebels needed relief. Now. The scattered uprisings of the prior summer had heated into an all-out civil war as the year’s end approached.

Anything. Anywhere. Anytime. Tanner embraced it as more than a squadron motto. Those villagers might be just a mass of faceless humanity to other pilots, but to him each scared, hungry refugee had the same face—the face of his sister.

A flaming ball whipped past his windscreen.

Reality intruded explosively a few feet away. Near miss. Closer than the last. Time to haul out.

“Tag—” Tanner called over the headset to the loadmaster “—step it up back there. We gotta maneuver out of this crap. In case you haven’t noticed, old man, they’re shooting at us.”

“Got it, Bronco,” the loadmaster growled. “Our guys are piling out of this flying coffin as fast as they can.”