Red (Close Contact Book 3)

T
he unauthorized reproduction
or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to or downloaded from file sharing sites, or distributed in any other way via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 (
http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/
).

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

P
ublished
by MM Publishing LLC

Edited by Delilah Devlin

Proofread by Tina Rucci & Lynn Mullan

Cover Design by ProBook

R
ed

All Rights Are Reserved. Copyright 2016 by Megan Mitcham

First electronic publication: June 2016

Digital ISBN: 978-1-941899-27-4

T
o sweat dreams
.

L
exie zipped past
the other cars on the
expressway like a mugger were hot on her crystal covered Louboutins. Her heart thudded inside her chest as though one was, with fingers outstretched ready to drag her into a dark New York alley. Lexie filled her lungs, and then slowly released the breath through Russian Red lips. The MAC cosmetics color typically perked her disposition. Today, it lacked the desired effect.

She lifted her small hand from the slick wood-grained steering wheel and examined it closely. The money-maker hovered in the air as steady as ever. Not a twitch or tremor to see. She huffed, “Of course.” Her fingers were that of a pianist’s, long and slender. Milk white skin, from zero time in the sun, stretched over them, revealing the barest hint of squiggly veins over the back of her hand and up her small arm.

A horn blared from the left. “Shit!” Both her hands flew to the wheel and her eyes shot up in time to save the beloved 1965 red ragtop Mustang from side swiping a Smart Car. When the open water bottle she’d held noisily glugged
its contents into her lap, she screamed, “Double shit!” She huffed, yet again, righted the plastic pisser and tried to set it in a cup holder that didn’t exist. Lexie held her tongue. She wouldn’t cuss her baby.

After securing the bottle on the passenger seat between her red Chloé tote and the black seat, Lexie looked up with just enough time to see the airport exit fly past her. “Triple shit! Shit! Shit!”

The car jerked to a halt in a reserved parking space on the tarmac a couple hundred yards from the chartered jet. Her regular crew, a pilot, co-pilot, and single flight attendant stood at the end of the fold down steps, surely willing her to hurry the hell up. Trying her best to oblige, Lexie scooped up her satchel, portfolio, laptop case, and the cursed water bottle with deft swoops of her hands. She juggled the armload while blotting up the remainder of the water from the driver’s seat with two napkins she’d swiped from the hospital cafeteria along with her veggie wrap. Her phone burst into song. “What am I up to now,” she asked with the stomp of a pricey stiletto, “quadruple shit?”

Lexie cradled the sopping napkins in her left palm, looped the key ring around her index finger and shoved the bottle under the overburdened limb. She fished the device from the depths of her bag and slapped it to her ear, before David Draiman could complete the chorus of “Down with the Sickness” a second time.

“Don’t even say it,” she barked into the phone.

The no-nonsense voice of her personal assistant, best friend, and conductor of her life carried on as though she hadn’t said a word. “You’re late. Are you close to the airport? It’s twelve forty, now. If you get there fast, you’ll only be ten minutes late and you can reconcile the time in-air.”

“I’m here, Mona, with a wet crotch and frazzled freakin‘ nerves.”

“Oh Honey, you could’ve stopped off to tinkle. Some things are worth being late.”

“I spilled my drink, you goof.”

“You’re in luck. I packed you one extra skirt. Black. Pencil. You’ll love it.”

While Mona blatantly ignored her frazzled nerves comment and moved on to more pressing matters, like the conference she was headed to, Lexie put her ample hip against the car door and bucked it shut. At the car’s rear she sandwiched the cellular between her shoulder and cheek and worked the key ring off her finger. She shoved the key into the slot and turned counter-clockwise. Nothing happened. Clockwise? Nothing. Lexie pulled the key out, reinserted it and tried again. Again, nothing happened.

Her hand went frantic, jostling the thin sliver of metal this way and that. Her voice grew frantic too. “Shit. Shit. Shit! Shit! Shit! Shi—” On the other end of the line, Mona clued into the fact that she wasn’t listening and began a reciprocating rant. However, the harangue didn’t kill the last expletive on her lips. The large hand that stilled hers did.

Distracted by Mona’s pitching voice, her own tardiness and the inner turmoil wrenching her mind and body, Lexie looked up only enough to see four gold bars against the black of the pilot’s uniform sleeve before nodding her appreciation and turning away. Eyes closed, Lexie forced her attention back to her friend. She arrested Mona’s tirade with one sad sentence.

“I killed a man today.”

Finally, there was stillness. On the line, Mona was quiet. Behind her, the pilot didn’t move. They passed a hushed minute together.

Mona broke first, as Lexi had known she would. “Hun, two million three hundred thousand to one are crappy odds for anyone, even a miracle worker like you. I tried so hard to talk you out of it, not because I didn’t believe in you, but because sometimes things aren’t meant to be.”

Lexi swatted the tiny tear from her cheek. “I need to get away, Mona.”

“I know it’s hard. I know you work so hard. I’ll try and schedule something for you around the first of the year. Maybe, February.”

“Four months,” she croaked. “No. Now. I need to get away today. I can’t do this right now. Not any of it.”

“Alexis McCrae, you can’t bail on the American Academy of Neurology.”

“I have to.”

“What?” her friend asked, awe making the word airy. “You’ve never shirked on a job. Not a surgery. Not a conference. Not a bi-annual teeth cleaning. Not that stupid theology paper where we were supposed to choose an ancient civilization's philosophies and defend them as necessary to present day’s society.”

An unexpected chuckle shook Lexie’s shoulders. “Hedonism should have gotten you booted from the class.”

Mona sighed, “The professor was six years older than us, not too hard on the eyes, and after a closed door session he conceded. But all this is beside the point, you’re hosting two dystonia skills workshops, not simply attending the conference. Plus, you’re a keynote speaker.”

“It has been a quintuple shit kind of day, Mona.”

“Geez, you didn’t even cuss when Sharon Lee stole your prom date, the day before the dance.” A loud huff came through the receiver. “Fine. I’ll clean up the mess. You get four days. Make them count.”

Lexie’s breath was ragged, when she said, “Thank you.”

After depressing the power button, she stared in amazement at the black screen and the blank schedule before her. Neither had happened since she’d been marked as “the” neurosurgeon of the northeast. It had been years, eighteen years, she quickly calculated, since she had taken any form of vacation. Literally, half her lifetime ago at age eighteen Lexie had gone on spring break with her college friends. The memory of tequila burned the back of her throat. Bleary visions of bar-top dancing made her hips sway just a little.

Lexie stood at the top of the mountain she’d been climbing all her life. There on the tarmac with three crew members, The American Academy of Neurology and hundreds of colleagues waiting on her, Lexie took a figurative look around. She had money which Mona adored spending for her. She had two homes, both of which she frequented with all her travel between New York Presbyterian University Hospital and Johns Hopkins. She had the respect of her esteemed peer group. Most importantly, she had a job she loved and, on most days, allowed her to help people.

A hop away from forty and Lexie had no regrets. What she did have was a sudden hankering to toss back tequila shots, dance for hours in a sea of gyrating bodies and... Yes, she wanted to fuck until she could only name three, maybe four, parts of the body. A thrill, typically reserved for the most challenging surgeries, shot up her spine.

She turned to thank Silent Pilot Stan for his help with the trunk and tell him about their change of course. Her typical portly, grey, yet sweet pilot had apparently gotten the vacation memo and already taken his. The man who stood before her was Sexy Pilot Stranger. This time, the thrill ran down her spine to her already wet crotch.

This guy towered a foot and, probably, three inches over her. His breadth doubled hers. He wore a thick black coat with all the bars of a pilot captain. It blocked his skin from view. Yet, the strength in his stance and the corded muscles of his neck spoke to the body underneath. Most disconcerting of all, however, was the devious, youthful smirk that played over his luscious mouth and crystalline blue eyes.

“So,” he said, in a conspiratorial whisper, “Mazatlan?”

“Excuse me?”

He smiled and the October day seemed unseasonably hot. “Mazatlan, Mexico. It’s not as pretty as Cabo, but much better for getting lost.”

“Getting lost?”

A chuckle rumbled in his chest.

“Look, I won’t say a word. The way I see it, the guy had it comin’, but we might want to ditch the other two,” he said, hiking a thumb toward the waiting flight attendant and co-pilot. “They gossip like school girls.”

When words failed her, the gorgeous, funny and young pilot hefted her luggage he’d extricated from the Mustang. He also pulled the bags from her shoulder. As he did, the pads of his warm fingers grazed her clavicle, one of the many body parts she’d like to forget the name of... with him. His head inclined toward the jet.

“This way, Dr. McCrae. I’ll fly you anywhere you want to go.”

Alexis McCrae sat legs crossed in a fresh pencil skirt, tequila shot number two in hand, watching the clouds pass under her feet. She’d told the pilot to take her someplace beautiful and fun. Having never given thought to frivolous things like vacation, she hadn’t known exactly where she wanted to go. Now, in the luxurious cabin with smooth leather under her fingers and tequila warming her belly, she knew exactly where she wanted to go.

She wanted to go down on the Sexy Pilot Stranger.

Not sixty seconds after she’d requested his presence, he ducked through the cabin door and closed it behind him. Lexie motioned toward the plush window chair opposite her.

“I hope I’m not keeping you from, well, keeping us all alive.”

He closed the gap between them in three easy strides. Standing in the cross of her calves, he unfastened three buttons of his jacket. All the while, his brilliant blue eyes pinned her to the seat. His large frame lowered with atypical grace and he sprawled before her. The black fabric flapped open. A fitted white button-down underneath revealed bulging contours of his chest. The slender black tie looped around his neck slid down to the area of his navel. It teased Lexie’s dominant side, a side she’d known only to exist in the operating room, until now.

Arms relaxed on the rests and an easy smile on his lips, the man was confident and completely at ease. “The co-pilot is competent and can handle things, until our approach. So, you have me just about as long as you want me.”

“Good,” Lexie said with feigned ease. In truth, she’d never seduced a stranger before and hadn’t the slightest idea how to go about it, but come hell or crash landing she intended to do it, and do it well. “How long until we land,” she asked, flashing him the signature red sole of her Louboutins with each measured bob of her dangling foot.

The leather squeaked as he shifted imperceptibly. “Three hours.”

Lexie put her lips to the rim of the cool glass and arched her neck as she poured the liquor into her mouth. She swallowed, and then licked the rim with a slow swipe of her tongue. Unfurling her legs, Lexie leaned forward and placed the glass in the holder on the window console between them. She remained perched on the edge of the seat, legs mimicking an extended V from knees to the peep toes of her pumps.

“So, where are you taking me?”

“Home with me.”

His bare bones answer sent her heart into V-tach. The tripling heart rhythm and will to live past this racy encounter had her looking for a defibrillator. For cryin‘ out loud. The man was way too hot, way too easy, and way too young. He might begin thinking about forty, in five to ten years.

But what the hell. She had four days and had been ordered to make them count. “Well,” she replied, “if it meets the criteria.”

He smiled that naughty half smile and brushed stray wisps of sand blonde hair from his forehead.

“I grew up in The Florida Keys. Trust me, they’re beautiful and fun. If you’re not running from the law, they’re the perfect place for you to cut loose.”

“I’ve never been to The Keys. The only thing I’ve seen in the last...,” not wanting to mark her age, she hesitated. “...several years, is the inside of a hospital. I’m sure it’ll be wonderful. I’ll call my assistant when we land to get reserva—”

“No,” he said, cutting her off.

“No, what?” she asked, drawing out the words.

“No, you’re not calling anyone. I read your flight itinerary and overheard quite a bit of your conversation. You have four days to get away, to get lost. So, be lost.”

Lexie considered his words for a minute, then another. Resolved, she snatched her phone from the console and held it out to the pilot. “Fine, take it.” When his hand rose to confiscate the device, hers inched back. Quickly, she added, “I want it back when we land in New York.”

He nodded in agreement and held out his hand. Lexie glided her fingers over his open palm before relinquishing her link to the outside world, and with it a bit of power. The power she gained from the slight arch of his brow and increased respiration, was worth the price. The phone disappeared into his coat pocket a moment later.

All nonchalance vanished from the sexy pilot’s features as he sat forward and rested large forearms on his knees. With her sitting straight and him crouched, their gazes met perfectly. Her dark eyes reflected in his light. His brow furrowed.

“Want to talk about it?”

“What?”

“Your surgery.”

Lexie shook her head, trying not to let the images in. Tears didn’t make sexy seductions.

His thumbs grazed her knuckles. “I’ve seen death.”

When her eyes went wide in question, his jaw tightened.

“Afghanistan.”

“Oh,” she replied with a bit of surprise.

He smiled then. “It never gets any easier to see, but there are things you can do to take the edge off.”

“Like?”

“Get lost in a beautiful place with a beautiful stranger.”

“Sounds like you have some experience in the field of trauma recovery.”