LITMIR.BIZ

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of clamshell headphones over her ears. She felt about six years old, the way he was treating her. He even pivoted the microphone down in front of her mouth.

      “All set?” he murmured.

      “I guess so.” It was considerate of him to hook her in like this and make sure she was secure. But it was deeply unsettling having a man’s hands all over her like that. Her brain said it was bad unsettling, but her lady parts declared it definitely good unsettling. She pressed her knees tightly together and tried to ignore the sudden throbbing in said traitorous lady parts.

      He slipped into the left seat and strapped himself in quickly. His hands flew across the dials and switches as he read aloud from the checklist Velcroed to his left thigh. His strong fingers were mesmerizing as they pressed and flicked and twisted the controls.

      There was something almost unbearably intimate about having his voice piped directly into her ears as he announced, “Radio check. One, two, three, four, five. How do you copy?” He looked over at her expectantly.

      “Uh, was that for me?” she mumbled.

      “I hear you five by five. How about me?” he repeated a little impatiently.

      “Well, obviously I hear you because I’m answering you,” she replied testily.

      He grinned and, on cue, her stomach did a picture-perfect, double-twisting layout. He responded drily, “The usual response is ‘Loud and clear,’ or a numerical description of volume and clarity, each rated on a scale from one to five.”

      “Um, okay. You’re five plus five.”

      His grin widened. Swear to God, the guy looked like a male fashion model as he replied, “Roger.”

      “I’m not Roger. My name’s Marley.” She knew what roger meant, but she couldn’t resist making him smile again. He gifted her with a big, beautiful one that made her insides melt a little more.

      “Hi, Marley, I’m Archer.”

      “Archer what?”

      “Just Archer. And you’re not supposed to interrupt the pilot in the middle of a checklist. I might miss something important.”

      “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—I’ll be quiet now.”

      That million-dollar grin flashed again as he reached up to push and hold a fat button. The big rotor overhead started to turn slowly, and the sound of a jet engine revving up grew louder and louder. Her heart pounded as he completed the engine-start checklist and ran something he called a before-takeoff checklist. He radioed for clearance to lift off. A voice answered, clearing them to proceed on their filed flight plan.

      “Sure you want to do this?” he asked grimly.

      What was she missing? He was conveying something significant with that dark tone of voice. Something unspoken. A question, maybe. But she had no idea what it was. Confused, she nodded, and then belatedly remembered he might not be looking at her. “Um, roger wilco.”

      “Wilco means you will comply. I haven’t given you an instruction to comply with.” A pause. “Yet.” He pushed forward on the throttles with one hand and eased back on the stick thing between his knees with the other.

      And just like that, the ground fell away from her feet and they were rising straight up into the air. It was exhilarating. She’d never flown in a nearly all-clear helicopter before. It was like flying inside a bubble. A very thin, fragile bubble. But the visibility was incredible. It was easy to forget she was inside an aircraft at all. She felt as if she was levitating above the earth. Guess she could check that off her bucket list. Not that it had ever been on her bucket list.

      The helicopter’s nose dipped slightly and it eased forward, picking up speed, slanting into a turn that took her breath away.

      “What’s your last name, Marley?” her pilot—Archer—asked.

      “Stringer. Marley Stringer.”

      “Nice to meet you. I’d shake your hand, but mine are full at the moment.”

      She looked down at his hands, so comfortable and capable on the controls. The kind of hands a girl could put herself into and trust him to know what to do...

      Dang, she was getting horny in her spinsterish old age.

      “Is Archer your first or last name?”

      “Both.”

      O-kay. Was he some kind of aviation rock star who only needed one name? “Your parents named you Archer Archer? Did they hate you or something?”

      “Something like that.” His eyes went dark and turbulent, and her photographer’s keen eye detected sadness. Regret. Rough childhood, huh?

      Trees were streaking by below their feet now, fast enough to make her nervous. She blurted, “Did your folks give you some horrible first name like, I don’t know, Eugene?”

      He laughed, a little reluctantly if she wasn’t mistaken. But interestingly enough, he didn’t elaborate on his actual name. Ooh, a mystery. She never could resist those. Somebody in the payroll department for the movie would know his full name. She could stroll over there after they landed...

      He interrupted her scheming with “We’ll reach the shoot site in about fifteen minutes. Pretty quickly after we get there, we’ll make our run down the valley. You’ll get one shot at this. My boss reported before I headed out to Minerva that all the pyrotechnics are ready to go.”

      “Who’s Minerva?” An ugly spike of regret poked her in the side. Of course this cover-model guy had a gorgeous, confident, sexy girlfriend with an exotic name.

      He patted the top of the dashboard. “This is Minerva.”

      “You named your helicopter?” Ahh. He’d named it after his gorgeous, confident, sexy girlfriend, then.

      He shrugged. “Yeah. I call every ’copter I fly after my grandmother.”

      His grandmother? That was so sweet! Although he emphatically struck her as the kind of guy who wouldn’t appreciate being called “sweet.”

      “She took me in and forced me to get my head together when my mom died.”

      “Oh,” Marley said cautiously. But she didn’t have a chance to ask him about it.

      “Five minutes to target,” Archer announced in a businesslike tone. He got busy on the radio talking to the film’s DP—the director of photography—and she turned her attention to her camera.

      She pulled her viewfinder in front of her face once more. Beside her right knee, a small joystick remotely moved her camera on its nose mount outside. She tested it carefully, and it responded like a charm. Tall stands of pines skimmed past as the helicopter raced across the mountainous Northern California landscape toward the site of today’s shoot. The crew had spent all morning wiring the pyrotechnics and explosions, and it had taken most of the afternoon to position all the tanks, personnel carriers and extras dressed as soldiers. Which was why the director, Adrian Turnow, was having to race to get in this shot before they lost their light.

      As it was, she had to adjust the light aperture to capture more of the late-afternoon sun’s lingering rays. The quality of the light out here was extraordinary, though. The sky was a deep cerulean blue, the trees a rich, lush evergreen with gray and blue undertones. And the mountains themselves, the northern end of the Sierras northwest of Lake Tahoe, were dark and forbidding, a few even topped with caps of snow. So stark and majestic. She’d love to photograph them sometime.

      The helicopter slowed, topped a ridge, and hovered at the head of a long, narrow valley. Its granite walls were silvery gray, the valley floor a carpet of green. Cattle had grazed this valley for long enough that the trees were mostly gone. It made for a perfect movie battlefield, level and open with sweeping views.

      “You good to go?” Archer asked her.

      “Yup,”

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