Pursued

He could not allow her to assume the credit—her or her mother. By the time they split all the accolades, there’d be little left to go around. Tough enough to accept defeat if another man assumed the glory, but how unacceptable to be beaten by a woman.

Ego? Sure. But ego was damned important for fliers. The godlike feeling in the air had enabled him to hurtle his body through the clouds in nothing more than a tin can.

And walk away victorious.

It was all about the victory.

He’d been willing to share the fame at one time, until the subtle rejections started from her. Never anything overt, but the back off was clear all the same. The Lockworth bitch barely noticed his existence.

But he’d sure as hell noticed her.

His eyes lasered in on the Mustang convertible, where a feminine shadow moved inside. Images reeled through his mind of womanly flesh. Lithe, soft.

Naked.

He flexed his fingers along the scarred wood table to capture the imagined sensation of sliding his hand through silky brown hair. Tighter he gripped as if to tug her closer, pulling harder while he pounded deeper. The mere fantasy left him shaking. What he wouldn’t give for the reality of having her under him.

Definitely under.

“Birddog, are you with us?”

Hearing his call sign brought him back to the present. Lust still pounded through him, painful, unrelenting and with no hope of relief. Not with the kind he wanted, anyway.

He forced his fingers to relax, his thoughts to clear and flicked away stray pretzels from the table. “Absolutely. How about another round? This one’s on me.”

Cheers lifted, blending with the camaraderie of the bar. Birddog instructed the waitress to keep his tab open while he assessed his drinking partners. Nobody suspected a thing. And they never would, because he had control of every detail.

He would simply keep closer watch now. The opportunity to stall her project would present itself. He only needed to be patient. Then he would bring Josie Lockworth down fast in a ball of flames.

The conversation with her sister was spiraling downward.

Fast.

Josie tucked the cell phone to her ear with one hand and pitched a Beanie Baby puppy up and down in her other while watching car after car pull out of the bar parking lot. She and her sister had covered work, Athena news and exhausted every superficial conversational topic on the planet. Neither sister wanted to be the one to say they really had nothing important to discuss, nothing important to share, sister style.

And if they dared try broaching a deeper topic, they could very well end up arguing about their parents. Diana defensive of their father and disdainful of their mother. Josie protective of their mother and pissed at their father’s emotional abandonment. How ironic that their parents were still together, but the discord between the sisters had never fully healed.

So she continued to pitch the toy basset hound and keep the conversation light, an odd turnabout when she’d never been a quitter or a coward. Why back off in a relationship that should be special?

The whole mortality deal swamped over her again.

Okay. She’d take a shot at communicating with her sister while staying off dangerous territory about their parents.

“How’s life treating you, kid?” She mentally kicked herself for the kid comment. What a way to sabotage reaching out from the get-go.

Diana had prickly down to a fine art when it came to being the younger sister wanting to outdo her older sibling. But sometimes it was hard to imagine Diana as anything other than a dimple-cheeked kid with no front teeth.

“I’m fine. Busy at work, but fine, Josephine.”

Josephine. Josie stifled a wince at her sister’s apparent payback for the kid comment.

What a name to be saddled with for life. God, she’d hated the first day of any new school year when the “official” roll was called. Josephine Lockworth. Those early days at Athena seemed so long ago, the initial days when the Cassandra group had formed under Rainy’s senior leadership. Sam, with her huge chip on her shoulder. Tory, the motor-mouth attention hog. Darcy, the kiss-ass. Serious Kayla, with no sense of humor. Alex the snob. And, of course, Josephine, the Tattletale Queen.

A smile flickered. It was a wonder they hadn’t blown apart the school with their arguments in the early days. But slowly, surely, an unbreakable bond had formed as a group of hardheaded leaders figured out how to combine their strengths into an unbeatable team. Rainy, a senior, had been their group leader. Before she’d graduated, they’d all made a vow. If one called for help, the others would rally. No questions asked. They called it their Cassandra promise—a promise invoked by Rainy’s call just before her fatal accident.

Another car grumbled past the bar’s front window. “I’m glad to hear work’s going well.”

Gotta love those deep and intense answers.

Your turn, kiddo. Josie waited.

And waited.

The thickening air damn near smothered her. Unease prickled with the sense of eyes boring into her forehead. Josie scanned the parking lot, rechecked that her doors were locked. She found nothing. Sheesh. She really was paranoid tonight. But then talking to her sister always left her on edge.

Fine. Diana didn’t want to talk. Better to hang up and try again lat—

“So what are you doing calling me on a Friday night?” Diana asked. “No hot date with some pilot pal of yours?”

Hot pilot? Her mind immediately winged to both Morel and Bridges. Two hot men in so very different ways.

And both a serious pain in her side right now. So, yeah, She was seriously hot under the collar about Diego Morel and Mike Bridges, and the threat this congressional investigation posed to her project. “I just finished up a late business-dinner meeting after a flight. What about you?”

“Only me all alone with my big bowl of macaroni and cheese.”

“Ah. Comfort food.” Some people turned to ice cream or chocolate. She and her sister always dug into a bowl of cheesy starch to fill the emptiness when life got them down. A boxing match between them afterward worked off the calories and steam. “I gotta confess, after my luck with men lately, I wish I had a bowl for myself right about now.”

“Mac and cheese beats the hell out of most guys any day of the month. It lasts longer anyway.”

A laugh trucked up and out so hard Josie missed catching the Beanie Baby. She adored her little sister’s sense of humor, even if occasionally it turned to prickly sarcasm directed at her. She also envied Diana’s ability to find the humor in life.

Josie lifted the Beanie puppy from her lap and tucked him into the drink holder, paws over the edge, basset hound eyes sadly pleading from between two floppy ears. “I guess I’ll have to wait until I get home to make a batch.”

“I wish I could have some of yours.” The clink of a spoon against pottery echoed. “How come when you cook the boxed stuff it tastes good and mine tastes like soupy crap?”

“Secret ingredient.” Just a slice of processed cheese dropped in, not that she intended to share that her single claim to culinary brilliance could be attributed to peeling off a plastic wrapper.

“Remember the time Dad tried to cook us macaroni and cheese like Mom always did?” Diana’s words slipped through the earpiece and past Josie’s defenses.

Her throat closed up like she’d tried to swallow down too much at once. Which was a damn good thing since it choked back the urge to snap at Diana’s transparent bid for their father.

Diana was always trying to make her remember better days with their father before he gave up and shipped them off to boarding school rather than be bothered with parenting. Just as she was always trying to help Diana remember the happier days with their mom before she checked out mentally.

Josie forced a lighthearted answer. “Yeah, the noodles were so hard my loose tooth popped out.”

“He stomped around the kitchen cursing about how the directions must be wrong because somehow he’d overcooked the stuff until it was too tough.”

“I remember.” And it hurt, thinking of that time. Her father’s abandonment afterward hurt even more. At least her mother had illness as an excuse for leaving her kids. “I figured I’d better learn to make mac and cheese or we’d be toothless by Christmas.”