Another Man's Children

“No.”

“That’s it?”

“As far as I’m concerned it is.”

The man looked as solid as a granite pillar standing there, and just about as flexible. His expression was closed, his tone flat with finality. Coupled with the challenge darkening his eyes, his manner had her digging deep for the tact that had so totally failed her earlier.

“I was under the impression,” she said, truly trying for civility, “that you and Sam are equal partners in the company. Isn’t that true?”

A faint frown flashed through his eyes. “We have equal ownership.”

“Then you both have equal say in its operation?”

“Technically.”

“Then, technically,” she repeated, thinking the man would rather choke than give more than he had to, “what gives you the right to tell him what to do?”

Zach didn’t say a thing. He didn’t even move. He just stood studying her carefully guarded expression and wondering at how out of place she looked in the utilitarian surroundings. On all of Harbor Island for that matter.

She had city written all over her and, while he had nothing in particular against metropolitan women, he had a particular burr on his tailwing for any woman who presumed to know him after three minutes of conversation.

Overlooking the fact that what they’d had hardly qualified as a civilized discussion, he pushed aside the flight schedule he was adjusting and walked into the waiting area with its scuffed linoleum floor and green plastic chairs. Planting himself four feet in front of her, he jammed his hands on the hips of his worn jeans and narrowed his eyes on her upturned face.

“I have the right,” he assured her, not bothering to elaborate. As long as she was there, there was something he wanted to know. And he wanted to know it before she said anything else that would make him wish his partner had been an only child. “Do you honestly think I’m more concerned about myself and this business than I am about Sam?”

It was as obvious as the chips of silver in his storm-gray eyes that her accusation had been eating at him ever since he’d left her brother’s house. The fact that it bothered him that much would have given her pause, too, had he not just taken a deliberate step closer.

Lifting her glance from his very solid-looking chest, Lauren felt certain that most sensible people would be looking for a little distance right about now. The female part of her, the part that remembered the heat in his touch, told her that was exactly what she should be doing, too.

“What am I supposed to think?” she returned, ignoring sensibility for the sake of her brother. “You know his circumstances, and you still want to take away one of the only things that’s keeping him going. You’re right,” she conceded, without backing down, “I don’t really know you. But I know you’re a pilot and I’d think that would give you at least some appreciation of what it will mean to Sam to lose his only means of escape right now.”

Something dark flashed in his eyes, something dark and haunted and repressed so quickly that only a fine tension remained.

His voice grew deliberately, deceptively quiet.

“I know exactly what flying can mean to a man. And I know what it can mean to face the prospect of not being able to do it. I also know that Sam is as aware as I am of the FAA regulation that prohibits a pilot from flying when he’s physically or mentally impaired. And right now,” he said tightly, “Sam isn’t a competent pilot.”

“He’s under—”

“He’s under stress,” he snapped, cutting off her protest. “I know that. And that stress is dangerous because it’s interfering with his concentration. The last thing I want is for him to wrap himself around a tree because his thoughts weren’t on his pre-flight check and he missed something critical. Or because his mind started to drift and he found himself in a situation he couldn’t correct in time. Or, God forbid,” he grated, “he had passengers with him when something preventable happened and he took them down with him.

“Yes, it is business.” His voice was hard, his expression harder still as he pounced on her earlier accusation. “If he kills someone, we lose everything we’ve built here. But I’d rather do that than have him jeopardize himself. I’ve already lost one friend. I damn well don’t want to lose another.”

He hated what she was doing, resented the way she was forcing him to acknowledge the fear he felt for his friend.

He hated the very word. There had been a time when he’d nearly believed that fear didn’t even exist for him. He’d learned how to deny it, to bury it under exhilaration and the adrenaline rush of the close call, the near miss. But that had been back when his training had made him believe that admitting to fear robbed a man of his edge, and once he lost his edge he was no longer invincible. Back when utter confidence had often been all that had kept him alive.

He knew fear now, though.

He knew that loss could happen in the blink of an eye.

And he knew that something about the woman so warily watching him now taunted the ruthless control he’d always maintained over himself.

Annoyed with that, too, he lowered his voice as he forced himself to back off, but the tightness remained. “Does that answer your question?”

Lauren had gone utterly still. In the space of seconds, the imposing, quietly irritated man looming in front of her had ripped away the protective anger that had braced her—and seriously shaken her entire perception of him. There was no denying that he was overbearing, arrogant and bolder than any man she knew, but he wasn’t heartless.

He wasn’t even close.

He was just as worried about Sam as she was. Only he’d had more reason to be concerned because he’d known of circumstances she hadn’t even been aware of.

He’d also lost a friend in Tina himself. And she hadn’t even considered that.

Trying to regroup, all she managed was a faint, “Yes.”

“Good.”

“Look. I’m—”

“Do you want to help your brother?”

“Of course I do. But I’m sor—”

“How long are you staying?”

She was trying to apologize, to let him know she regretted her assumptions. Those assumptions might not have been there had he been a little less impossible, but she wouldn’t shirk her part of the blame.

With his glance narrowed on her face, it was clear he wasn’t interested in making amends. He was, however, confusing her.

“How long am I staying?”

“Here. On Harbor.”

There was a measuring look in his eyes, something she didn’t trust at all. The muscle in his jaw was jumping.

“I can only take about a week off.”

He considered her for another nerve-wracking moment. “That’s better than nothing.”

“For what?”

“Your brother needs to get away,” he told her, expressing no interest at all in what she could only take a week off from. “He said he’d give anything to get away from all the memories of Tina for a while. But there’s no one to stay with the kids. If you really want to help, tell him you’ll watch them for him so he can go over to my cabin. It’s over on Gainey,” he said, speaking of one of the other seven hundred islands in the area. “I’ll fly him there myself.”

The discomfort she felt suddenly shifted course. “Why would he need to go to another island?”

“Because it’s isolated there.”

“This place isn’t?” Incredulous, even more confused, she swept her hand toward the door. “His house is the only one on that inlet. The only house for miles,” she felt compelled to point out, since the location was now taking on an entirely new significance. “I’d think that would be about as remote as it gets.”