The Texan's Twins

“Why do I have a feeling this is less about work and more about having fun?” she asked.

“Because it is going to be fun.” He glanced back at her. “Something tells me you need a little of that.”

“Please.” And the way she said it reminded him of yesterday. “You make me sound like a charity case.”

“You were just crying in my truck. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t want to cheer you up a little.” He headed toward the gleaming black helicopter parked in a painted white circle. “All you have to do is hang on and enjoy the view.”

Her steps slowed as they approached the piece of equipment. He tried to see things through her eyes. It was a midsize helicopter. Not huge, but not a crop duster, either. The nose had been fitted with a “sniffer” a special device that would detect HCF emissions. This was a portable version that AirDyn—as they were called for short—could take on and off as needed. Inside the cockpit a laptop would record their findings, although Jet really didn’t expect any blips on the monitor. Baron Energies spent a small fortune ensuring the safety of their wells.

He opened the door. She didn’t move. He turned to her in surprise.

She kept glancing from him to the helicopter and then back again, like a kitten fascinated by a moth. “You mind me asking how long you’ve had your pilot’s license?”

“About a month.”

Her gaze froze.

“Kidding, kidding.” He lifted his palms. “I’ve been flying for years. Been piloting helicopters for just as long. Makes things easier when you’re hitting up a bunch of rodeos and it’s convenient for my dad when he gets the urge to go out and check the wells, which he likes to do pretty frequently. Control freak with a capital C and F.”

She glanced at the helicopter again. He knew what she was thinking.

“Really,” he said. “It’s okay.”

He could tell she didn’t want to admit her fears. To her credit he saw her take a deep breath, square her shoulders and step forward.

Good girl.

“There’s a headset between your seat and mine.” She looked around once she’d settled herself. He could tell she instantly spotted the headset. “Make sure you strap yourself in. It can get a little rough sometimes. Downdrafts and all that. I’m going to walk the exterior.”

She still looked green around the gills, but she would change her mind once they were airborne. It was amazing up there, and she wanted a little excitement. He couldn’t wait to give it to her, although he worried about why he needed to please her. The familiar preflight quickly garnered all his attention, however. As he walked the aircraft, his heart began to pound. Flying was one of the few things aside from riding a bull that gave him an adrenaline rush.

He climbed inside a moment later, glancing over at Jasmine as he did so. She’d put on her headphones in a way that flattened her hair against her scalp, a big loop of her ponytail stuck inside the earpiece, but it didn’t detract from her pretty face. Quite the contrary. It highlighted the perfect shape of her cheekbones and her large blue eyes.

“Ready?”

“No.”

He bit back a smile. “Relax. Flying is the other thing I do really well.”

He didn’t mean for the words to sound so flirtatious, but she clearly took them the wrong way, judging by the look she shot him. “I’ll try and remember that if we start to crash.”

He donned his headphones. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she answered back, her voice sounding tinny and far away. “But that might not be a good thing when I start screaming.”

“That’s okay. I have a mute button.”

He flipped a switch, and the rotors began to spin, slowly at first and then faster and faster. What started as a minor vibration turned into a major one and then slowly smoothed out until there was nothing but the near-deafening hum of the engines. He touched the comm, checked in with the tower, received clearance to fly in a northwesterly direction. Didn’t matter how many times he flew, there was always the surge of adrenaline just before he set off.

“You ready?”

“No.”

“Here we go.”

* * *

SHE WANTED TO PUKE.

Honestly, when he’d dragged her along, she hadn’t given a thought to Jet actually piloting the craft. Well, maybe she’d thought about it a little bit, but now that moment of truth had arrived.

“Please don’t kill me.” The words just sort of popped out. “I have two little girls who really need their mother.”

They were slowly rising above the earth, the metal building they’d just been inside shrinking like a piece of plastic in the oven.

“Hey, relax.”

“I just don’t think it was very smart of me to trust a man who’s known for never following through on much of anything in life.”

“Excuse me?”

It helped to take her mind off things to keep talking, even if she was pretty sure he might not like what he was about to hear. “There was the race-car thing.”

He turned the nose of the helicopter. They shot forward. She reached for a bar on the door, but there was no bar on the door. This wasn’t a car. This was a helicopter and apparently there was no need for something to hang on to according to the manufacturers.

“The car-racing thing was a dare. Someone claimed he had a faster car than mine. I proved him wrong.”

“By building your own drag car.”

“It was a stock car, way different than the big-ended, fat-tired things you see on TV.”

“And then there was the stint as a writer.”

“Where did you hear about that?”

They were at least a mile above the airport, cars shrinking to the size of pill bugs, highways looking like the veins of a leaf spreading in all directions, and buildings resembling Lego blocks. Off in the periphery, the greens and golds and sometimes the blue of rural Dallas County stretched as far as the eye could see.

“The energy business is a small world. People talk.”

They were picking up speed—Jasmine reminded herself that she’d asked for a little excitement. Still, it was one thing to ask, another to experience his version of excitement firsthand.

“First of all, it was cowboy poetry, which isn’t the same thing as trying to be a writer, and I was actually pretty good at it.”

You haven’t flown since before having Brooke and Gwen.

Was that it? Was she suddenly aware of her own mortality now that she’d given birth?

Keep talking.