Paris or Bust!: Romancing Roxanne?\Daddy Come Lately\Love Is in the Air (16 page)

LOVE IS IN THE AIR

Jill Shalvis

PROLOGUE

There is nothing more special than a mother/child relationship, which basically makes being a mother the best job in the world. I don’t need an award for that, but I’m applying for the Mother Of The Year award anyway. It’s not because I’m the greatest mother on the planet—although I do think I’ve done a great job—but simply because my daughter is the best daughter out there. I figure that means I’ve done something right. Let me tell you about her.

Kylie Birmingham is kind and giving. She takes care of everyone around her without complaint, including me, her grandmother, and an entire airport, and trust me on this, that’s not an easy job. She’s hardworking, dedicated and yes, okay, she’s also stubborn as all get-out, but that’s because she cares so much.

So please consider me for Mother Of The Year. If I win, I plan to use the trip to take Kylie on vacation, which she desperately needs. In Paris I can spoil her for once. I can ply her with wine and food and culture. I can make sure she laughs and smiles. She really needs that. And a nice French man as a bonus…for me.

You’re probably wondering why Kylie works so hard. She’s running her deceased daddy’s airport, which she loves more than anything, but as with just about everything Kylie is passionate about, she’s developed tunnel vision to the point of ignoring all else, such as
life.

So in conclusion—an essay has to have a conclusion, right?—please award me Mother Of The Year so I can take my wonderful, deserving, overworked and endearingly curmudgeonly daughter to Paris, and give her a life.
Thank you!

CHAPTER ONE

O
NE OF THESE DAYS
Kylie Birmingham figured she’d slow down. But as she ran, gasping for breath, toward the maintenance hangar with a cell phone to her ear, a can of sealant in one hand, a wrench in the other and the radio at her hip squawking, she knew it wouldn’t be soon.

She lived her life running through her airport, or so it seemed. The crux of being her own boss, she supposed, and of being the boss of thirteen-and-a-half others, as well—the half being Patti the custodian because she was pregnant. Kylie didn’t count the baby as one half, she counted Patti that way, since she spent every afternoon sleeping in the storage closet while pretending to check supplies.

The radio squawked again. Dispatch needed her. Kylie’s extremely wealthy and extremely spoiled rotten client in the lobby needed her. Her head mechanic needed her. Her secretary needed her. Her accountant needed her.

Kylie’s head pounded, and she realized what
she
needed—a vacation.

Paris would do. Yes, Paris with its teeming crowds and bustling streets, Paris with the mind-boggling architecture and museums she could lose herself in, with the bakeries she could get happily fat in…oh yes, Paris, wild and romantic Paris, would do perfectly.

She’d never really take a vacation. Too frivolous, too time-consuming…and neither frivolous nor time-consuming were exactly part of her nature.

Her legs pumped the quarter mile distance between the front lobby and the third hangar of the small, private Orange County airport. The late-summer heat didn’t bother her, nor the fact that she hadn’t eaten since six that morning, but then again, stamina had never been a problem for Kylie.

Time, however…time was a problem, a big one. With so much work to do, there was no wild and romantic
anything
in her life, much less fantasizing about a trip to Paris.

“Kylie…are you listening to me?”

The voice came from the cell phone permanently planted to her ear. It was the sweet little voice of the biggest tyrant she’d ever met. “Yes, I’m listening,” Kylie said. “As my accountant, I always listen to you, Lou.”

“That’s
Grandma
Lou to you,” her grandmother said. “And I need your checkbook. I think I forgot to balance the thing last month…and maybe the month before…I don’t know. Anyway, the bank is calling, and…”

Kylie’s stomach fell to her toes. As she’d learned six months ago, it had been an incredibly stupid idea to hire her grandma after Grandpa had died. But the four foot four inch, eighty-going-on-sixteen Lou had blinked those rheumy baby blues, claiming poverty and boredom, and that she’d be dead in a week if someone, anyone, didn’t give her a job. And because Kylie, like her father before her, collected the needy, she’d folded like a cheap accordion on talent night.

The radio at her hip was still crackling with tension as the three people in her dispatch continued to argue over who was going to work the late shift tomorrow night. Their second richest client was coming through at midnight and required some tie-down assistance. Cocking her head, Kylie listened as the tiff upgraded to mutiny, which was nothing new. Bringing the radio to her mouth, she panted for air as she slowed down. “I’ll be there in two minutes. Fix this before I get there and heads won’t roll.” Empty threat, and they all knew it. She couldn’t have found another linesman, dispatch or mechanic in this puny, one-horse hellhole to save her life, but it was
her
hellhole and she’d make it work.

She always did.

“Well.”
Her grandmother huffed a bit in her dainty little voice over Kylie’s cell phone. “No need to get your panties in a twist. Fine, then. I’ll handle this situation myself.”

“Grandma, I was talking to—”

“That’s
Lou
to you.”

Dial tone.

The cell rang again before Kylie could toss it in a ditch. Warily, she glanced at the caller I.D. and sighed.

“We have a situation in the front lobby,” Daisy, her secretary—and mother—reported.

A chip off Lou’s block as another sweet, little, dainty ex-socialite, Daisy had lost all her money dabbling in day trading. She couldn’t file, couldn’t answer a phone without disconnecting someone and couldn’t find the engine compartment of an airplane to save her life.

Yet another pity hire.

Funny though, the only person Kylie pitied at the moment was herself. “What’s the situation?” She pictured two planes coming in at the same time, or a computer failure. Maybe a plane hadn’t been tied down properly and was hurling itself down the slight hill toward the hangar designated as the lobby, because nothing, absolutely nothing, would have surprised her today. “Mom?”

“I’ve been answering the phone all morning and I need aspirin. Do you have any?”

Kylie stopped, leaned against hangar number two and thunked her head back against the metal wall. Eyes closed, head tipped up facing the sun, she decided
she
was the one who needed aspirin. She loved her mom with all her heart, she did, but for once, just once, she wanted her mother to be the mother.

“Maybe I should leave early.”

“But mom, the phones—”

“No problem, I figured that all out weeks ago. I just call line one with line two, then put them both on hold.” Daisy’s bubbly laughter tinkled in Kylie’s ear. “That way the phones are both busy and you don’t miss any calls! Ingenuous, huh?”

Kylie resisted the urge to slit her wrists. “How often do you do this?”

“Why, whenever I need to go home early. Just a couple days a week, I suppose. Oh, and guess what I just did, honey?”

Kylie was afraid to guess, honest to God she was.

“I picked up my favorite magazine this morning, and besides having that hunky Harrison Ford on the cover, it had a contest form for some Mother Of The Year award. You’ll never guess what I’m going to win.”

Kylie choked back a laugh because it would probably be a half-hysterical one.
Mother Of The Year?
Wouldn’t that be
Kylie,
who’d raised everyone around her?

“A trip to Paris!” Daisy laughed. “Isn’t it too perfect?”

Busy streets, lots of wine, no anxieties…no mother or grandmother to drive her off her rocker. “Perfect,” she agreed.

“I know! Everyone deserves their dream, honey, and I know yours is Paris. So when I win Mother Of The Year—which, of course, I will, as I’ve done a fabulous job with you, if I say so myself—I want you to come with me!”

The sun felt good on Kylie’s face. If only she could stand here all day instead of going inside and facing the chaos. “Mom, if I wanted a trip to Paris, I’d go.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Because ever since your father died you’ve taken it upon yourself to run this place just because it was
his
dream.”

It was Kylie’s dream, too, to kept the airport afloat, to see it prosper.

All she needed was a miracle.

Both she and her dad were practical, single-minded, goal-oriented, orderly,
sane
people, who had shared this weakness for the impractical, chaotic, unorderly, bankruptcy-bound airport. Maybe because in the air, they found true freedom, or because there was just something about walking through a hangar full of planes knowing you could hop in one and be anywhere you wanted to be. Whatever the reason, the airport had been her dad’s one passion, and she’d inherited both his love for the place…and the debts.

“You know, if you’d only get married, you’d feel more relaxed. Grandma said a nice boy just moved in across—”

“No,” Kylie said quickly. Relationships didn’t work for her. She only had room in her life for one problem area—the airport. Everything else had to be, well, easily managed, practical.

Men were not easily managed or practical, not for her.

Her mother and grandma shared the opposite approach. Men were like candy, to be gobbled up. They often tried to impose this lifestyle on the reluctant Kylie in the form of blind dates from hell. “I don’t need a date,” she reiterated.

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I—” She broke off, refusing to argue with the one woman no one on the planet could win an argument with. “So there
isn’t
an emergency up there?”

“You work too hard, Kylie. You care too much, you give too much. You need to get something back, and this trip—”

“
Mom.
Is there an emergency up there?”

“Of course there is. I told you, I need aspirin!”

“Okay, fine. I’ll be there as soon as I put out the fire in dispatch, deal with Grandma, and—”

“There’s a fire in dispatch? Why didn’t you say so? I’ll call 9-1-1.”

“No!” Kylie lowered her voice with effort. “Don’t call 9-1-1, I have it covered.”

“Well, if you’re sure, honey.”

“I’m sure. Gotta go, Mom.
Don’t
call 9-1-1. I repeat, don’t call 9-1-1.”

“You don’t have to shout, Kylie Ann.”

She could feel her blood pressure rising. “You know what, Mom? Take the whole afternoon off. On me.”

“Oh, honey, really?”

“Really—” She hadn’t finished the word before her mother disconnected. Picturing her mother racing for the door, and bulldozing over clients in her hurry to get out, Kylie managed not to thunk her head against the wall again.

B
Y LATE THAT NIGHT
Kylie had handled each and every crisis, including dealing with the fire department, who’d come roaring out, sirens and lights flashing, due to her mother’s call.

Because of course she’d called 9-1-1 before heading out.

But for now, everything was good. She was head-deep into the engine compartment of a Cessna, with good old-fashioned rock music cranked up to head-banging volume on the radio, singing to her heart’s delight as she worked. The airport was empty, shut down for the night, and she was in her favorite state.

Alone.

Yes, maybe she’d rather be in Paris, but this wasn’t so bad either. She stood in her airport—
thank you, Dad
—surrounded by her favorite things…airplanes. Airplanes couldn’t talk back, couldn’t screw up the bank account, couldn’t leave early to get their nails done and their hair bleached.

She felt lucky, even with the debt weighing her down. After college she’d worked at other private airports to gain experience, always knowing she’d end up back here. She’d just never imagined she’d be here without her father, the only man to ever really understand her.

Wearing overalls stained with grease, her old clunky work boots and a backwards baseball cap on her short mop of dark hair, she felt perfectly content. Even—get out the record books—relaxed.

“Hey, babe.”

And just like that, with those two simple words uttered in that unbearably familiar, husky and, damn it, sexy voice, she shot from content to tense in a heartbeat.

McKinnon.

Peace shattered, an automatic snarl appeared on her mouth. “What do you want?” she asked without turning around.

“Hmm. That’s quite a question.”

A tall, dark shadow fell over her, but she didn’t need to turn her head to see the long, leanly muscled form of Wade McKinnon, owner of McKinnon Charters, not when that very form was seared on her brain from what she had aptly named The Unfortunate Incident.

The Unfortunate Incident had occurred last New Year’s Eve, at their annual airport bash where all the employees used the holidays as an excuse to party hard and work little. Her mother, ever so helpful, had spiked the punch, which, Kylie told herself, was the one and only reason she’d been caught beneath the mistletoe by Wade in the first place. Technically, he wasn’t even an employee, he merely leased space for his operation. But she’d been caught.

Caught and kissed.

That the kissing had been instigated by her in a vodka-induced giggly haze really burned her butt, but Wade had done his fair share of the kissing that night, too, and he’d been damn good at it.

The jerk.

She’d kissed experienced guys before, and had occasionally followed her hormones. Okay, twice. She’d followed her hormones twice. That’s how she knew they happened to be in perfectly fine working order.

They seemed to be exceptional in this man’s presence.

“What do I want…” Stepping closer into the meager light of her single hanging bulb in the nearly empty hangar, Wade stroked his jaw thoughtfully.

Against her will, the sound of his fingers against the day-old growth of beard made her knees wobble. Damn it, he looked mouthwatering, with his dark hair cut pilot-short, his tanned, rugged face with the laugh lines fanning out from his deep blue eyes.

The face of a fallen angel, her grandmother had said on the day he’d shown up with a signed lease and a crooked, wicked smile.

The “angel” flashed that smile now. “You know what I want, Kylie. Same thing I’ve always wanted.”

Her stomach quivered, which she ignored. He wore black jeans, a black shirt shoved up past his forearms, and was quite possibly the sexiest man on the planet, while she was covered in grease and overalls, had her hair stuffed beneath a hat and didn’t have an ounce of makeup on. His “interest” was laughable, but that was okay. She knew what he meant when he said he wanted her.

He wanted her airport, and in the year that they’d known each other, he’d made her three official offers, two of which she turned down flat. The last one, made the week before, was such a good one she’d nearly passed out. That offer would solve her every problem. It’d fix the debts her father had wracked up before dying while testing an untried, handmade aircraft. It’d solve the problem of feeding and caring for her mother and grandmother, something her father had always told her would fall to her if something happened to him.

And it’d solve the whole Paris fantasy, as she’d be able to go. And maybe never come back.

“You agreed to give me two weeks to think about it.”

“I’ll give you your two weeks.” He cocked his head, his sharp eyes missing nothing. “Working again? Or should I say still?”

“Smith wants his plane first thing in the morning. Since you know damn well I can’t afford Doogie’s double-time pay, here I am.” Her head mechanic was expensive, but good. But she was even better, and far cheaper.