Primal Calling

The woman cleared her throat. “Here are your gloves back.” She held them out in front of him.

He spun and hunkered down to take a closer look at the broken gear. Dammit, she’d almost sucked him in again. Concentrate, you moron. Landing gear.

“Keep ’em.” He looked up at her, one eye closed against the bright sun. “For now.” He couldn’t really work with them on anyway. And he still had a traditional sealskin pair his grandmother had made him if he needed them. For now it wasn’t that cold.

He returned his attention to the job at hand. The wheel was sitting at an angle, the steel bar connecting it, bent. He could probably bend it back, but there was no guarantee it would hold through takeoff, much less another landing. He needed a new strut, and they probably didn’t even carry landing gear for a C-206 this old. Well, if he could get it good enough for now, he could probably find one at a junk sale online once he made it home to Barrow. If he couldn’t fix this, he’d be forced to radio to Nome for rescue.

“What can I do to help?”

“You mean besides never coming into my life to begin with?” He reached into his toolbox and pulled out a hammer.

“Yes.” From the corner of his eye he saw her cross her arms. “Besides that.”

“Nothing.”

“Fine.” She turned and walked away.

“Careful of the—”

She screamed and went down on her butt.

Max chuckled. “The ice.” His chuckle turned into a full out laugh as she tried to get up and rubbed her behind.

“Very funny.”

“Yeah, it is.” He hadn’t laughed out loud like that in…he didn’t know how long. “Maybe you could cut a hole in the ice with that glare of yours and catch us a fish for dinner.”

“Dinner? Are we going to be here that long?”

“Maybe longer. I don’t know.” He examined the busted gear. Might be able to use the oxyacetylene torch to heat the strut enough to hammer it straight. But he needed a way to keep the wheel elevated.

“Where are we?”

“About forty miles southeast of Nome. If you’re going to bug me asking a million questions, make yourself useful and grab that crate from the plane.”

“You ever heard of please?” But she was already moving.

He concentrated on how he was going to jack up the fuselage. “And you can bring me my sunglasses from the visor when you’re done with that.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” she quipped from inside the plane. He tried not to smile. Didn’t she know killers don’t appreciate sarcasm?

He didn’t have a jack. He could forage for wood, but, what if…

She climbed out and set the crate beside him, then pulled his sunglasses off the top of her head and handed them to him.

“Ahem, your sunglasses, my liege.” She was bent over at the waist, holding his Ray-Bans in her palms with her arms extended. She had guts, he had to give her that. He took the glasses and she straightened and plunked her hands on her hips. “Will that be all, master?”

She had one brow raised and her ski jacket was unzipped, revealing a tight sweater beneath. It was cold enough her nipples were two tight little points through the sweater. Her bra must be thin. Or she wasn’t wearing one. The thought got him all riled up below the belt.

Her lips tightened into a thin line again and she zipped up her coat.

Dammit. His face heated and he brought his gaze to hers. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

For the first time he wondered why she was here. Sneaking into his plane, hiding out. Chasing after a years-old story. She must be desperate. Surely there were hundreds of other more important things happening in the world she could be reporting on.

“So, can you fix it?”

He pulled the oxyacetylene torch kit out of the crate and prayed he had enough propane. Then he unloaded the rest of the stuff, turned the crate upside down and sat on it. At least one of them would have a dry butt.

“How much do you weigh?”

She sputtered. “Excuse me?”

“Enough to unbalance the center of gravity in my plane and stall the engine? Say, one-twenty? One twenty-five?”

“Gee, you sure know how to charm a girl.”

He just raised a brow.

She pursed her lips. “That’s close enough.”

“Here’s what we’re going to do.” He stood and went to retrieve one of the coolers. “I’m going to tip the plane over.”

“What?”

“Just listen.” He set the cooler next to the wing opposite the bent strut and went back for the second cooler. “When I tip the plane, you’re going to climb onto the wing over there with a cooler on either side of you.”

When he turned with the other cooler in his arms she’d narrowed her eyes at him. “And when you yank down the other wing I go flying off, never to be seen again?”

Never to be seen again. Like his friends.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Bad joke.”

He came back to the present, the heavy cooler straining the muscles in his arms. He carried it around to join the other, and the woman followed him.

“Is your name really Serena?”

She nodded. “Serena Sandstone. Named after my paternal grandmother.”

“If this doesn’t work, I’ll have to go into the forest and cut some timber to act as a jack. That could take hours.”

“Well, let’s get started then.” She dusted her hands together.

SERENA BIT her lip and clenched her hands into fists as soon as Max turned away from her. She wasn’t sure how long she could keep up the pretense of undaunted confidence. She had a feeling she wasn’t fooling anyone but herself, anyway.

Max went around, squatted beside the bent wheel and positioned his hands under the fuselage. “Ready?” he shouted.

“Ready,” she shouted back.