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you know?”
    â€œFlying Coast Guard isn’t only about pulling idiot tourists out of riptides.”
    Coast Guard? How had she not known that about him? If he’d been one of her choppers, she would have.
    Denise tried to see Vern more clearly. His dim silhouette looked the same. Mr. Casual and Easygoing being a former U.S. Coast Guard helicopter pilot was pretty hard to reconcile.
    Though it did make a certain kind of sense. He’d been steady as a rock while his chopper trailed smoke. The sideslip to check his smoke trail and then straightening out without ever breaking formation spoke of lots of practice with emergency situations.
    Maybe there was more to Vern Taylor than just being a charming flyboy with nothing but sex on his mind.
    * * *
    Vern had to make a joke. Something—no matter how feeble—before Denise’s proximity totally overwhelmed his common sense and any shred of decency a man had to maintain around such a woman. This wasn’t some bar babe. This was Denise frickin’ Conroy.
    â€œYour precious helicopter had a rough childhood.”
    Yeah, there was a distraction that had possibilities. He’d been hyperconsciously aware of her from the moment he’d touched her arm after spooking her. Which was not a good thing. First off, Jasper was an okay guy, mostly. Though Vern had never much liked him. But if he was Denise’s choice, he must be okay.
    â€œYou know”—he patted the chopper’s main console as if soothing an unruly child—“street thug, gang wars, drive-by shootings. It’s a tough life being an Army chopper, but, hey, someone has to do it.”
    He let his mouth ramble as he breathed her in. Her scent, a crazy mix of woman and mechanic’s grease, of hot metal and warm female, was making his head spin worse than when the #2 PRI SERVO PRESS warning had blinked on.
    â€œThis hose…” She brushed a long, delicate finger across the bullet crease as if to confirm its existence.
    He felt the motion through his fingertips where he still held the failed piece of hose. It felt as if he’d been electroshocked where, well, you weren’t supposed to feel for another man’s woman.
    â€œIt must have caught a nick, but not bad enough to fail. Just enough to create a weak point. It was on the side away from what I could see with a visual inspection.” Denise had a soft voice, all out of keeping with the tough exterior she projected. There was a gentleness to it he’d never noticed before.
    â€œRight.” Vern kicked his brain to keep it running because his own personal Auxiliary Power Unit was thinking thoughts that made him glad it was dark in the chopper’s cockpit. “It was lurking until the time was right.”
    â€œUntil the time was right? For what?”
    â€œSure.” He swallowed hard and wished she’d lean back in her seat. He wished he was still in the predictable poker game he could see continuing under the camp lights. If he had stayed there rather than coming over to check on how she was doing, she wouldn’t be mere inches away making every nerve jangle on full alarm. “It, uh, was waiting for a chance to really embarrass me on my second day solo.”
    â€œYou think this bit of hose was lying in wait for you before failing? You are going to take it personally? It’s just a hose.”
    â€œI take everything personally.”
    By the shimmer of glistening hair shifting and catching the reflection of distant lights, he could see her tilt her head sideways to inspect him.
    â€œEspecially when it tries to kill me,” he added.
    Which is exactly what she was doing to him. He slipped the bit of hose into his pocket to give his hands something to do.

Chapter 2
    Unable to sleep, Denise drove back from her town house at the foot of the mountain a couple hours before first light and started working on Firehawk Oh-Three. The night was cool but not chilly, one of the