Tailspin

“I’m working on two projects.”

“True crime again?” Nicola asked.

“One of them is.” Though her back was turned, she could sense that Nash and his grandmother were approaching. The tingle of awareness moved through every cell in her body. She wasn’t sure how she managed it, but she kept her eyes on Nicola. “But I’m also here at the request of Mrs. Fortune. She’s commissioned me to write the history of the Fortune family.”

“Indeed I have,” Maggie said as she and Nash joined the group. “I’ve just been telling Nash, and I think he’s a bit nervous about pulling all the family skeletons out of the closet.”

Bianca barely had time to turn when Nash took her hands in his and leaned down to touch his lips to her cheek. She felt the imprint of each one of his fingers on hers as if they were a brand. The brush of his mouth on her skin was brief, a simple social contact, but her heart skipped a beat, then raced.

“Bianca, it’s wonderful to see you again,” he said. “You’re even lovelier than I remembered.”

He released her in the time it took her to meet his eyes. All she read in his was the warmth one might expect to see in the eyes of an old and dear friend. Nothing that came close to matching the flash of heat his touch had ignited.

“Good to see you, too,” she managed to say, and wondered that her nose didn’t grow like Pinocchio’s for telling the lie. There was no way that her reaction to seeing Nash Fortune again was good. Even after he’d released her hands, she’d wanted badly to throw her arms around him.

She wasn’t the girl she’d been at seventeen—so willing and eager to toss caution to the winds. She was no longer Juliet to his Romeo. What was wrong with her? She was an adult, for heaven’s sake.

But for a few minutes the conversation around her was just a buzz of noise, and she simply couldn’t pick up the thread.

It’s the Nash Effect, the little voice said.

She couldn’t argue with that assessment. She was so aware of him standing near her. It was as if her entire body remembered him. And recalled his touch. When he laughed at something Gabe said, the sound rippled along her nerve endings.

It wasn’t until he stepped closer to Gabe and Jonah that she felt her brain cells click on. She had a story to research, she reminded herself again.

Two stories. In a few more seconds, she’d even remember what they were. Bubbles of panic erupted and cleared her brain. Now, if she could just stop looking at him.

“Are you all right, dear?”

Father Mike. Gratefully, she turned to face him. “I will be.”

“Yes.” He took her hand in his and patted it. “You will be.”

How often had he said those words to her before? The first time had been when she’d worked on the first newsletter for the St. Francis Center. She’d been so nervous about seeing something she’d written in print for the first time. Father Mike had taken her into the small prayer garden tucked in between the center and a basketball court. A statue of St. Francis sat on a dais in the small space, and he’d told her that saying a prayer to the statue would help.

It had. But so had Father Mike’s calm belief in her, then and over the years. She would be all right this time, too.

When she turned back to the others, she could finally follow what they were saying. And she could look at other people besides Nash. The men were discussing an upcoming basketball tournament at the Boys and Girls Club and settling on a poker night since Jonah was in town. Their easy camaraderie matched perfectly with her memories of the three of them.

“I know that you’re busy,” Nicola said to her. “But I’d love to get together with you for lunch?”

Bianca smiled at her. “I’d love that.”

“I’ll call you,” Nicola said before she turned to respond to something Gabe had said.

When a passing waiter offered a flute of champagne, she took one. On the bright side, she’d discovered the answer to one question. Nash was definitely not going to be a non-issue for her. Because he stood in profile, his attention focused on what Gabe was saying, she was able to study him objectively for the first time. His face was leaner, the laugh lines more pronounced. His body was still tall and lanky, but it looked harder. His hands had certainly seemed harder, too, in the moment they’d clasped hers.

They’ll feel different on your skin when he makes love to you.

Bianca took a sip of her champagne. She was just not going to allow herself to go there. Second thing on the bright side—what she was feeling was one-sided. He hadn’t glanced at her since he’d moved away. The fact that he seemed to be treating her as an old friend was a good thing. She’d find a way to handle her feelings. She was older now. And she could still use his help with both her projects. When she interviewed him as the current heir to the Fortune dynasty, she’d also ask him about Brian. They’d been classmates. At the very least, he could provide deeper insights into the kind of person Brian had been. At best, he could save her a lot of time by putting her in touch with others who’d known Brian personally that year. She just had to keep her focus.

“Having second thoughts?”

Bianca turned to see Maggie stood next to her. She met the older woman’s eyes. “No.”

“Good.” Maggie took her free hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “How did your visit to the Colorado Springs Police Department go?”

Bianca smiled at her. “Very smoothly, thanks to you. Mayor DeBlois sends you his best. The sergeant there had the files on Brian Silko’s disappearance all ready for me to read. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover anything new. The detective who did the investigation has retired. No one seemed to know his current address. My next move will be to locate him. But first, I intend to get started on the book you’re paying me for.”

“Good. But I knew when I convinced you to take on the scandalous Fortunes that you were also here to research your next book. You’re free to juggle your work load any way you see fit. I’ll be out of town for a few days, but I’ve arranged with Grady, my house manager, for you to have access to the library and the family archives whenever you wish. He has instructions to let you in and out—at any hour.”

“I’ll start tomorrow.”

“Good.”

“Maggie, sorry I’m late. Happy birthday.”

“James.” Maggie turned to hug the man who wore a dress uniform that matched Nash’s.

“General.” Nash nodded at the man.

Maggie introduced General James Winslow to the group. When it was her turn, Bianca grasped the hand the general extended. She was a little surprised when the current superintendent of the Air Force Academy showed no sign of recognition. It had been less than a month since he’d refused to meet with her or even speak to her on the phone. After that, she’d received the same refusal from everyone else she’d phoned. No one wanted to talk about Cadet Brian Silko.

There was a story to uncover, all right.

When the string quartet segued from Brahms to a lively rendition of “Happy Birthday,” Maggie laughed. “I think that’s a hint that I should cut my birthday cake.”

As the group was dispersing in the direction of the cake, Bianca drew in a deep breath. She had a plan to complete before Nash drifted away. Taking a step toward him, she said, “I’d like to set up an appointment for an interview.”

When he met her eyes, she could read nothing in them. “Grams told me as much. Are you free tomorrow morning around eleven?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be in my office at the academy. Do you have transportation?”

She nodded. “A rental car.”

“Then I’ll have someone meet you at the main gate and show you the way.”

“See you then.” As Bianca watched him move ahead to fall into step with his grandmother and General Winslow, she thought she’d handled that well.

He could still arouse feelings in her, but she would deal with them. She would just have to keep their relationship on a professional level.

As everyone burst into “Happy Birthday,” she settled her gaze on Nash again. And her heart bounced hard and high. She might just as well have been seventeen again.

Keeping things professional will be a good trick if you can pull it off.

Bianca had no comeback for that.

3

NASH MADE ONE LAST crease in the paper airplane he’d been crafting for the past fifteen minutes. Creating them had been a habit he’d picked up from his dad. They used to sit side by side for hours at the kitchen table in his grandmother’s house completing entire combat squadrons and then waging war. As a result of years of practice, Nash had learned to make an aeronautically superior paper plane. Usually the process helped to clear his mind and even solve problems.

And he definitely had a problem.

Hefting his latest masterpiece between his finger and thumb, he launched it with one practiced flick of his wrist. It soared upward for two seconds before it nose dived onto the floor nearly a foot short of its intended target—his wastebasket.

Glancing over the top of his desk, Nash noted that it was the fifth plane that had crashed before reaching its destination. In the past hour, only one of his masterpieces had survived the trip.

And the failed missions littering his office floor were all due to Bianca Quinn.

Rising, he shoved his hands into his pockets and paced through the debris to the window of his office. In the distance, mountain peaks jutted into a cloudless blue sky. After eleven years, she was back in his life, and he wasn’t at all sure how it would play out. He wasn’t sure how he wanted it to play out.

He felt the same way about her now as he had when he’d first seen her eleven years ago. He’d gotten a glimmer of that feeling when he’d first seen her from his grandmother’s balcony, but taking her hands and kissing her cheek had confirmed it.

Nash found the strength to smile. He’d wanted to throw her over his shoulder and simply leave the party. And it might have been worth it to see the expression on his grandmother’s face.

Because Maggie Fortune was pulling strings in this situation. He had no doubt of that. But his more compelling problem was Bianca. What he’d learned last night was that he wanted her, intensely, urgently, to the exclusion of everything else. Just as he had the first time.

How could that possibly be? Time had intervened. He was older now. So was she. But all he’d had to do was see her, meet her gaze, and she’d sent him into the same tailspin she had the first time.

What had happened between them in their teens, as intense as it had been, should have been over. More than a decade had passed. And it was the “to the exclusion of everything else” part that was the most worrisome. At nineteen, he could understand it.

Now… With a frown, he paced back to his desk and sat down. There was a lot in both their lives that couldn’t be excluded. And there was so much they didn’t know about each other.

He hadn’t even been aware that she’d written a book. He glanced at his computer screen and reread the review he’d pulled up. “Gripping…a first-rate page-turner.”

Unable to resist, he’d downloaded a free chapter, and the voice, the energy in the writing had immediately captivated him. He could hear her, feel her in the words. And the story was a fascinating one.

On the surface, the slaughter of an ordinary middle-class family in a presumably safe neighborhood in Dryden, New York, had all the markings of a random home invasion. The suspects, a woman and her son, had been tracked down when they’d run up charges on credit cards that had been stolen from the victims. The son had been killed by the police, and though the woman had never confessed, she’d been convicted by the fingerprint evidence at the scene of the multiple murders.

Fingerprint evidence that Bianca Quinn had later discovered had been planted by an overzealous member of the state police. Thanks to her diligent investigation of the cold case file and her extensive interviews, another suspect had surfaced and had been arrested.

It didn’t surprise Nash at all that Bianca was coming into her own as a published author. Writing had always been her first love, and it had motivated her decision to cancel their elopement plans and leave Denver.

Though it had hurt like hell at the time, Nash knew what it was to pursue a dream. He’d been equally focused on his future career in the Air Force. At nineteen, he’d been convinced that they could each achieve their goals while they were together. In the end he’d had to accept that Bianca’s love of writing had prevailed over her love of him. She’d made that quite clear in the “Dear John” note she’d left him at the base of the statue of St. Francis.

Anger, bafflement, hurt. He’d experienced all of them the night he’d read her note. His first impulse had been to go after her and convince her that she was wrong. And if that hadn’t worked, he would have simply dragged her back. That had been his battle strategy until Father Mike had walked into the prayer garden. The priest had talked to him in that calm, logical way of his and persuaded him to see everything from Bianca’s point of view.

Father Mike had been honest with him about his grandmother’s involvement, and about the opportunities she’d opened up for Bianca—a college education, a chance to major in writing at a prestigious Ivy League school—opportunities that Nash couldn’t offer at that point in his life. In the end, Father Mike had gotten a promise from him to let some time go by before he did anything rash. Then holding his hand, the priest had encouraged him to say a prayer to the statue. If his memory served him correctly, he’d prayed what was in his heart, that Bianca would change her mind and come back to him. But she hadn’t.

End of story. He’d had a heart-to-heart with his grandmother, but she’d used the same argument as Father Mike had. If he truly loved Bianca, he’d give her this chance. So he hadn’t gone after her. The pain he’d felt all those years ago had eventually faded. The wounds had healed.

Then he’d seen her at his grandmother’s birthday party and felt as if he’d been struck by a thunderbolt, one that had opened up everything he’d believed he’d buried long ago.

He glanced at his watch. In fifteen minutes she was going to walk through the door of his office for an interview. And he wanted her as much as he’d wanted her before, and more than he’d ever wanted any other woman.

And that was enough to give any sane man pause. He was no stranger to going with impulse. He enjoyed taking risks. That part of his nature was what made him a good pilot. But on a mission, he always weighed the consequences of various strategies before hand.

Eleven years ago, he hadn’t done that with Bianca. He’d been too blindsided by her. He’d rushed into a relationship with her with very little thought of the future—his, hers or theirs. And when they’d gotten around to a plan, it hadn’t worked out.

He threaded his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair. Hell, he knew a lot about battle strategies. First you had to have a goal. And he thought he had that. What he was feeling for her was not going to go away. He wanted to taste her again. He wanted her again.

He picked up a piece of paper and began folding it. There was no denying the fact that she was special to him. And it wasn’t just impulse or raging hormones driving him now. He was curious about the woman she’d become. Having read some of her work, he was even more intrigued.

What he needed was an effective strategy for reaching his goal. One that considered her as well as himself. The problem was, he wasn’t quite sure what that strategy was. He’d have to figure it out. He lifted the paper plane and flicked his wrist a few times. He’d weigh the data as it came in and adjust. With a grin, he aimed the airplane at his wastebasket and let it rip. Then he watched it ricochet off the edge and nose dive to the floor.

“I remember when your father used to make paper planes. I swear he’d make twenty or thirty of them before he flew each mission.”

Startled, Nash rose to greet General Winslow. “Come in, sir.”

“I can also remember the days when you called me Uncle Jimmy.”

“A long time ago.” Winslow was medium height with the compact build of a boxer. He’d roomed with Nash’s father when they’d gone through the Air Force Academy together, and they’d served together in the Gulf War. In the first year or two after his father had died, the general had visited his grandmother frequently. But until Nash had come back to the Air Force Academy to teach, he hadn’t seen Winslow in years. And it was the first time since he’d returned that the general had paid him a visit in his office.

“Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?” Nash asked.

Winslow studied him for a moment before he spoke. “I overheard you inviting Bianca Quinn here to your office this morning. How much do you know about her?”

The question surprised Nash, but he managed not to let it show. “She’s a writer and she wants to interview me because my grandmother has hired her to write a book about the Fortune family.”

The general nodded. “I’m sure that Maggie has checked her out and knows that she’s a journalist with a flair for digging up secrets.”

Nash smiled. “I think she’s looking forward to having some of the Fortune family’s secrets made public.”

Winslow smiled in response, but his eyes remained serious. For a moment, the silence stretched between them.

“Is there a problem?” Nash finally asked. There had to be something that had prompted the general’s visit. Was he worried about the book his grandmother had hired Bianca to write? Nash couldn’t imagine James Winslow playing a role in any of the dirty laundry that might be aired. He’d had a stellar career in the Air Force, and his association with Nash’s family stemmed from a close friendship with his father that had ended more than twenty years ago.

“I’m not sure. I didn’t want to say anything to your grandmother last night in the middle of her party. But I recognized Quinn’s name the instant I was introduced to her. Are you sure writing a biography of your family is all this Quinn woman has come here to do?”

“As far as I know. What do you know that I don’t?”

Winslow sighed. “A month ago, she called my office several times and she also bothered other members of the faculty. She wanted to set up interviews for a book she’s writing on the disappearance of Cadet Brian Silko. I had my administrative assistant turn her down and request that she stop calling.”

“Why?”

The general’s brows rose. “As superintendent, I have to look out for the best interests of the school. You must remember the Silko case and what a sensation it made in the press. You knew Brian Silko.”

“Not well. We were on the football team together freshman year. He was a kicker, a good one.”

“And you were an excellent quarterback. I caught one or two of your games when I visited family in the area. I was here in the spring when Silko went missing. I witnessed the press coverage.”

After rising, the general walked to the window and gazed out. “At 7:00 a.m. on February 2, Cadet Brian Silko stole the commandant’s privately owned Cessna from its hangar here on our flight field and disappeared with it. Never to be found. He left no note, no explanation. He’d talked to no one about his plans. There was no evidence that he’d been taken against his will. No ransom note had ever been delivered. He simply vanished. The Air Force and the Colorado Springs police conducted separate investigations, and they reached the same conclusion. He stole a plane and disappeared of his own free will.”

“And when he never surfaced, everyone assumed that he crashed the plane in some remote area,” Nash said. It had all happened during the spring semester when he and Bianca had fallen desperately in love. Of course, they’d read about the case and talked about it some, but they’d been so involved with each other.

“Exactly.” The general turned back to face him.

But neither the plane nor Cadet Silko had ever been found. Gradually, the story had faded from everyone’s memory. Nash hadn’t thought of it in years.

“And you’ve paid me this visit because you suspect that Bianca Quinn’s reason for coming to Denver might be to research Silko’s disappearance as well as my ancestors’ colorful pasts.”

“Exactly,” the general said again. “And the official position of the Air Force Academy is that the case is closed. We have no comment. If she presses you, I’d like your word to restate that position very clearly to Ms. Quinn.”

“You have it,” Nash said without hesitation. And when the general rose, he stood up and remained standing until the general left.

He’d have no trouble giving Bianca the official position of the Air Force Academy. But he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to comply with the subtext of the general’s wishes now that his curiosity had been well and truly stirred up. First of all, the general had used the phrase “digging up secrets” when he’d first talked about Bianca’s job. Were there some secrets surrounding the disappearance of Cadet Silko?

And what were Bianca’s secrets? What exactly was it that had piqued her interest in Silko’s disappearance after all these years? And why had she really come back to Denver?

Sitting back down at his desk, he glanced at his watch. Bianca wasn’t due for another five minutes or so. But he was certain of one thing. If Bianca wanted his help, he was going to give it to her. What better chance to get to know her better and collect data? And if that meant he was playing with fire? So much the better. He grinned. This time when he shot the plane, it accomplished its mission.

He wasn’t so sure where his plan would take him, or how often he’d have to modify his strategy, but as a pilot he’d learned long ago, the challenge was often more than half of the fun.

“CAPTAIN FORTUNE’S OFFICE is on the first floor,” the young cadet said. “Right inside the entrance, take the corridor to your left and follow it around to Room 115.”

“Thanks.” Bianca smiled and waved at the young man as he drove off in his jeep. He’d met her at the front gates, provided her with a map of the entire campus, and explained that since they were in summer sessions, the campus wouldn’t be as crowded as usual. Then she’d followed him to a parking lot at the side of Nash’s building. On their way they’d driven past a parade field and the chapel with its spires reaching into an almost cloudless blue sky. Here and there, she’d spotted tour groups that appeared to be prospective students and their parents touring the campus.

Nash’s building was a two-story structure with tinted glass windows that bounced back the sun’s rays. She’d just locked her car when she saw General James Winslow exit the building through the double glass doors. He walked straight to a jeep that was waiting for him, and drove off.

She felt the same ripple of wariness she’d felt the night before when he’d shaken her hand at Maggie Fortune’s birthday. A quick glance at the map her escort had given her indicated that this building did not house the superintendent’s offices.

Still, he could have a perfectly good reason for visiting here this morning—something that had nothing to do with Nash or with her pending visit. But as she walked through the doors and turned down the corridor, she was confident that she’d made the right decision about at least one thing during the night. She was going to be honest with Nash about her interest in the disappearance of Brian Silko. And she was going to tell him everything about why she’d run away eleven years ago.

She owed him the truth about taking money from his grandmother even if it jeopardized getting his help with her stories.

Other than that, she hadn’t decided how she was going to handle the fact that she was still intensely attracted to him. Thinking about him and what she’d felt when he’d touched her again had interfered with her sleep. And there was a part of her—a part that she couldn’t seem to control—that was looking forward to seeing him again.