Chapter 1

Cole opened the eye that still worked and struggled to figure out how he had ended up on the floor. Pain radiated from his face and shoulder. All he’d wanted was a roll of Mentos to get him through his next flight. What he’d gotten, though, was a fist to the face. His shoulder throbbed from smashing into a display of Washington Redskins souvenirs, and his face pulsated with pain.

That big dude had one hell of a left hook!

He tried to open his other eye—which was swelling shut after being on the receiving end of Big Dude’s meaty fist—and blinked into focus a striking young woman hovering over him. She had long dark hair, porcelain skin, and big brown eyes. Over her shoulder, he took in the crowd of whispering, pointing people that had formed around him. No doubt they recognized him, which meant the press would show up any minute. He also saw two airport police officers arguing with a large man in handcuffs, presumably Big Dude.

Cole hadn’t seen it coming. One minute he’d been standing in line minding his own business behind a guy having a heated discussion on a cell phone. Then he’d watched Big Dude throw a wad of money at the clerk. Cole had tapped him on the shoulder to tell him he was being rude to the girl behind the counter.

“She’s only doing her job,” Cole had said.

The next thing he knew, he was looking up at an angel.

“Are you all right?” she asked, hands coasting lightly over his face.

Cole was appalled by his predictably male response to her touch. Before his little problem became noticeable and before the media could show up and turn his life into a circus—again—he quickly tried to sit up. Too quickly, he discovered when he was hit by a wave of nausea that caught him off guard and snuffed out the situation in his lap.

He lay back on the sweatshirt someone had rolled into a pillow for him, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath to ward off the nausea. “How long was I out?” he asked the woman.

“About two minutes or so. It felt like longer, though.”

“Shit,” he groaned, imagining how the press would blow the incident out of proportion. “I need to get word to my airline that I can’t fly today, and I gotta get out of here.”

“The airport police called someone from your company. They’re on their way, along with the paramedics.”

“I don’t need paramedics,” he protested, making a second attempt to sit up.

Her hands on his shoulders stopped him. “Stay still. You might have a concussion.”

A veteran of high school hockey, Cole had no doubt about the concussion. Great. That’s just great. After months on the ground doing “the hero circuit” on behalf of the airline, he didn’t need a concussion to knock him out of the air for two weeks just when the whole uproar had finally started to die down.

“What’s your name?” he asked, his eyes still closed as he did battle with pain and nausea.

“My name?”

“It’s not a trick question.”

She laughed softly. “Olivia.”

Sticking up for a woman named Olivia had gotten him knocked out and knocked down to earth for at least two weeks. Damn it!

“Thank you for what you did,” she said.

“No problem.”

“Yes, I think it was.”

Cole raised his good shoulder in a half shrug. “He was being a jerk.”

“Here,” a male voice said from above him. “Put this on your eye.”

Cole cracked open his working eye to find the store manager holding out an icepack. He reached for it. “Thanks.”

The paramedics arrived a minute later, along with a representative from the airline, an older woman Cole had never seen before. She announced she would be accompanying him to the hospital.

“That’s not necessary,” he said.

“Boss’s orders,” she replied, full of her own importance. “I’m to stay with you until you’re released and handle any media requests.”

“Great.”

As the paramedics prepared to roll him away, Cole looked around for Olivia and found her in a group of airport employees and customers who were watching the proceedings. Their eyes met, and she stepped forward. He found it refreshing, to say the least, that she didn’t seem to recognize him.

“I hope you’ll be okay,” she said.

“I’ll be fine. I’ve got a hard head.”

“I’m sorry this happened.”

“It’s certainly not your fault.”

She tucked a roll of Mentos into his hand. “Take care of yourself.”

Amused by the gesture, he said, “Don’t put up with any crap from your customers.”

Her dazzling smile once again caught the attention of his lower anatomy. “I’ll try not to.”

“See ya.”

Olivia stood back and watched him go. Cole Langston, First Officer, his name tag had read. Why was that name so familiar? She kept her eyes trained on the stretcher until his thick, dark hair was out of sight. Only then did she take a deep breath to calm her emotions.

The whole thing had happened so fast. The obnoxious customer had thrown his money at her while arguing on a cell phone. He had turned around so quickly that she hadn’t been able to warn the handsome pilot who intervened on her behalf.

The blow had knocked the pilot backward into the Redskins display, and while he’d lain there unconscious for what felt like an hour, Olivia had willed him to wake up. What she hadn’t expected was the jolt of electricity she’d experienced when she placed her hands on his smooth, clean-shaven face. Bringing her hands up to cover her own burning face, Olivia caught the scent of his cologne clinging to her skin.

“Do you know who that was?” the manager asked in an excited whisper.

Olivia turned to him. “His name tag said Cole Langston.”

“He’s the one who landed the plane in a blizzard last winter after the captain keeled over with a heart attack.”

“Oh! That’s it!” The story came rushing back to Olivia. “Then he saved the captain by performing CPR while the plane sat on the runway.”

“You got it. He’s been all over the place since then. He was even on the cover of People and Time.”

“No wonder he was so anxious to get out of here before the media showed up.”

“He has to be getting sick of all the attention. Anyone would by now.”

As she surveyed the mess in the store, Olivia pondered the jolt. Most likely it had been the result of shock and the emotion of the moment. What else could it be?

“The police want to take a statement from you,” the manager said. “Do you feel up to it?”

“Of course.”

***

By the time she finished with the police and helped to clean up the store, Olivia’s eventful shift had ended. She gathered up her belongings, said good night to the manager, and walked through the concourse to the Metro station. She loved looking up at the night sky through the glass domes atop Reagan National Airport, and she appreciated the elaborate tile mosaics that decorated the marble floors. Every time she studied them, she found something she hadn’t noticed before.

She rode the Metro’s Yellow Line to Alexandria. The train rattled along on the track as she relived the crazy day that began with a ten o’clock class at American University in the District and ended with her statement to the police.

As the train came to a stop at the King Street station, she wondered how Cole was doing and if the hospital had kept him overnight. Tomorrow, she would check with his airline to see what she could find out about his trip to the hospital. That was the least she could do after what he had done for her. Maybe the airline would give her his address so she could drop him a thank-you note.

She walked home through the crispy fallen leaves that littered the sidewalk. Her plan to get in touch with Cole filled her with enthusiasm as she went up the stairs to the house she shared with her parents on Commonwealth Avenue. Digging her key from the depths of her tote, she let herself in.

“Mom?”

“Back here,” her mother called from the kitchen.

Olivia hooked her tote over the banister and hung her coat in the front closet. She made her way to the back of the cluttered house to find her mother unloading a box at the kitchen table. Packing peanuts were sprinkled on the floor around her.

Olivia made an effort to hide her annoyance. “What’ve you got there?”

“Oh, just the cutest crystal mice for my collection.” Mary Robison held up one of the tiny mice. “I saw them on QVC the other night and just had to have them.”

Olivia cast her eyes around the disaster-area kitchen full of stuff her mother “just had to have,” a lot of it sitting unused in its original packaging. For reasons she refused to discuss or acknowledge, Mary hadn’t left her home since Olivia’s high school graduation nine years earlier. But thanks to the Internet and TV shopping networks, Mary managed to keep up an active—and expensive—relationship with the outside world.

“How was your day?”

“Interesting.” Olivia filled her mother in on what had happened at work.

Mary gasped. “He just hit him? Right in the face?”

“Knocked him out cold.”

“I hope he was arrested.”

Olivia reached for a bottle of water in the fridge. “He sure was. I had to give a statement to the police. It was wild.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t work there anymore.” Mary nibbled on her thumbnail and cast a wary glance at her daughter. “It doesn’t seem safe.”

“It’s fine. Nothing like that has ever happened before. Don’t worry about it.” She took a long drink of water. “So guess who the pilot was. Remember the one who landed the plane in the blizzard and then saved the captain who’d had a heart attack?”

“That was in the paper. Earlier this year?”

“Yep. It was all over the place.” Now that she knew who he was, Olivia couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognized him and his name right away. Chalk it up to the stress of the incident in the store.

“He was a handsome devil, as I recall.”

Olivia couldn’t have said it better herself, but she wouldn’t dare let her mother know that she’d been oddly attracted to him. She’d never hear the end of it.

“Uh-huh. Is Dad home?”

“Not yet. He volunteered to stay late hoping to make a sale.”

Olivia’s father was a car salesman and had been successful at it until his dealership switched from Cadillacs to an import he despised. His sales numbers had plummeted, causing the dealer to threaten him with termination if he didn’t swallow his opinions and sell some cars.

“You should let up on the shopping, Mom. We can’t afford it right now.”

“Oh, these little guys didn’t cost anything at all.” Mary held the glass mice up to the light. “Can you see the prism reflecting off them? I love that.”

Olivia knew that disagreeing was pointless. “It’s pretty. I’m going up to bed. It’s been a long day.”

“Good night, honey.”

From the doorway, Olivia watched her mother unpack a second box of the crystal mice. Sometimes it was all Olivia could do not scream at her mother to get her head out of the clouds.

Chapter 2

Olivia retrieved her tote and trudged up the stairs to her room, which was marked by its lack of clutter.

A white eyelet duvet she had found on the clearance rack at Macy’s covered her double bed. The crystal jewelry box her parents had given her for her sixteenth birthday sat on the dresser next to three framed photos—her older brothers, who hadn’t lived at home in years, her high school friends, and Olivia with her cousin and best friend, Jenny, before Jenny’s wedding. Her cousin’s blonde hair and hazel eyes were in stark contrast to Olivia’s darker coloring, but there was a hint of family resemblance between them nonetheless.

Framed posters of places Olivia dreamed of visiting decorated the walls—Paris, London, New York, and San Francisco. Her easel was set up by the window in the corner. A TV and boom box occupied the other corner.

The room was the one place in the messy house where Olivia could relax, study, draw, and paint in peace. She had resisted her mother’s many attempts to “jazz up” the space. Mary’s obsessive need to surround herself with “stuff” had made a less-is-more neat freak out of her daughter. Olivia dreamed of the day when she would finally finish school, get a better job, and move into a place of her own. That day seemed light-years away, though, as she chipped away at school a class or two at a time.

Since her parents couldn’t afford to help with tuition, Olivia was muddling through with a small scholarship and what she made pulling long shifts at the airport. She could probably make more money in a different job, but she loved the atmosphere at the airport, the excitement of travelers on their way to exotic places Olivia could only dream of visiting, and the opportunities to sketch a wide variety of people.

Her cell phone rang to the tune of “Ode to Joy,” and Olivia dug it out of her tote bag. She wasn’t surprised to see Jenny’s number on the caller ID, since they talked most nights at ten o’clock. “Hey.” Olivia flopped on her bed to settle in for a chat. “What’s up?”

“Ugh,” Jenny sighed. “Billy’s cutting teeth, and he’s miserable. Of course that means we are, too. Will just went out with orders to bring back the biggest bottle of wine he can find. I’ve earned it today.”

“Poor Billy,” Olivia said. “I hate that he’s hurting.”

“So do I. The drool is irritating his skin, and he’s chewing on his fingers. He’s a mess.”

“It’s a good thing we can’t remember getting teeth, huh?”

“No kidding. I hope Will gets back with that wine—and soon.”

Olivia laughed. “Motherhood is turning you into a lush.”

“A lush and a loony. Tell me something from the outside world. Any tidbit will do.”

Olivia relayed the story of the famous pilot who had come to her rescue.

“Oh,” Jenny sighed. “That’s so romantic. Your very own knight in shining armor—and he’s already a national hero.”

“Puleeze,” Olivia said. “Only you could find romance in a punch to the face.”

“Wouldn’t that be something? If you could say you met your husband after he took a punch to the face for you?”

“Husband? You’re a freak—you know that? A total freak.”

“Don’t tell me it can’t happen. Your cousin on your mother’s side, Juliana—didn’t she meet her husband in an airport?”

“That was different. They sat together on a flight.”

“Let’s talk about the important stuff. Is he as sexy as he looked in all the pictures?”

Afraid to encourage her cousin, Olivia hesitated. “I guess.”

“Either he was sexy or he wasn’t. Which is it?”

“He was sexy enough.” To-die-for gorgeous was more like it, but there was no way she was telling Jenny that—not when she already had Olivia married to the guy. “It was hard to tell with one side of his face swelling up and turning purple.”

Olivia wished she could tell Jenny about the jolt she had experienced when she touched him. Bringing her hand to her face, she was sad to realize the scent of his cologne had faded. She wanted to ask if Jenny had ever felt a jolt with Will, but she didn’t want to add fuel to Jenny’s romantic fire.

“Tell me everything, as if I’ve never seen a picture of him.”

“He had dark hair.”

“Dark brown or closer to black?”

“Black, I guess. It was thick and kind of wavy, but not curly.”

“But you didn’t notice or anything.”

“Shut up.”

Jenny laughed. “What color eyes?”

That Olivia could answer without hesitation. “Blue.” Bright, vivid blue.

“Mmm, I love that combination. Jet-black hair, blue eyes, a pilot, and a hero—two times over now.

I’m conjuring up Tom Cruise in Top Gun over here.”

“Is Will back with that wine yet?”

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily. Are you going to see him again?”

“Why would I? He came into the store, got punched in the face, and left on a stretcher. I’m sure he’d like to forget he was ever there.”

“He’ll be back,” Jenny said.

“I don’t think so. Anyway, I’m going in early tomorrow to see if I can find out if he’s okay. I thought that was the least I could do.”

“Oh, yes,” Jenny agreed a little too enthusiastically. “The very least. It’ll probably make the news. Check online in the morning.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Let me know what you find out.”

“Good night, Jenny. Enjoy that wine.”

“I plan to!”

Olivia closed her phone and shifted her eyes to the poster of San Francisco. The image of the Golden Gate Bridge with Alcatraz off in the distance was one of her favorites. If she could visit one place in the world, that’s where she would go.

She allowed herself a few minutes to daydream before she sat up and got back to reality. Her life had no room for daydreams or romantic fantasies about pilots on white horses. Olivia had no patience for such foolishness.

The next morning, she waited twenty minutes to speak to a supervisor at Capital Airlines. An early-morning scan of the news had yielded a brief mention of the incident but no information about his condition.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said in a clipped tone, “but company policy prohibits us from giving out personal information about our employees, especially First Officer Langston.”

Anticipating that possibility, Olivia handed the woman the note she had written to thank Cole for what he had done. “Can you get this to him?”

The harried woman took the envelope from Olivia. “I’ll do my best.”

Olivia watched her walk away, wondering if the note would ever find its way to him. “Oh well,” she whispered. “I tried.”

***

As long as Cole didn’t move—or breathe—he could stand the steady thrum of pain. Stretched out in a recliner, he’d discovered that even shifting to use the remote set off bongo drums in his skull that seemed to have a direct pipeline to his stomach. So he kept the TV turned off. With one eye swollen shut, he couldn’t see well enough to watch anyway.

“Damn, man, this lasagna is amazing,” Tucker, Cole’s friend and neighbor, said as he plopped down on the sofa, his plate filled to overflowing with food that had flooded in from friends who’d heard about Cole’s “accident.” Cole didn’t have the heart to tell Tuck that the smell made him nauseous.

“Where’d it come from?”

“I think Debby made it.” Their friend Jeff’s wife was known for her Italian wizardry.

“I should’ve known,” Tuck said between huge bites.

When he’d left the Navy after ten years of living and working in squadrons and wardrooms, Cole had worried about making friends in his new home city of Chicago. Through sheer luck, he had bought the place next door to Tucker’s, launching a friendship that had led to a whole crowd of friends. Jeff, Tucker’s best friend from high school, Jeff’s wife, Debby, her sister, Denise, Denise’s husband, Paul, and so on. In short order, Cole had found himself on basketball and softball teams, but he had resisted the bowling league, much to Tucker’s dismay.

So when “the gang” heard that Cole was down for the count, they’d responded with enough food and drink to feed an army. Thankfully, Tucker and his endless appetite were around to put a dent in it, because Cole wasn’t the slightest bit interested.

“I’m surprised you haven’t been inundated with offers of sponge baths,” Tucker said with a sly grin. Cole’s success with the ladies, especially since “the incident” earlier in the year, was the stuff of legend with Tucker and the other guys.

“There’ve been a few.”

“Like who?” Tucker pounced. At five feet, ten inches and 220 pounds, Tucker liked to say he lived vicariously through Cole.

“Brenda called from Miami and offered to come up.”

“Mmm, Brenda,” Tucker said with a sigh. “I like Brenda.”

If his head hadn’t felt so explosive, Cole would’ve thrown something at Tucker. “What I want to know is how she even heard about it.”

“Debby probably sent an email and copied her.”

“Further proof that I need to keep my ladies away from you people.”

“For the love of all that’s holy, please don’t do that. You know I have my needs. In fact, what I need right now is a slice of that chocolate cake.”

“Have at it.” Cole choked back a wave of nausea at the thought of cake. He shifted carefully and sucked in a sharp, deep breath to absorb the waves of pain in his head, face, and shoulder. He’d had concussions before but never one this bad.

“Jeez, you really look like crap,” Tucker said when he returned with the cake. “Probably just as well that Brenda won’t see you like this. It would break her heart.”

“Very funny.”

“So she really offered to come up?”

“Yeah.”

“And you said no? Did you tell her I’d be happy to have her?”

“Your name was never mentioned.”

“I bet you were lousy at sharing in the sandbox, too.” Tucker stuffed a big chunk of cake into his face. “You must’ve taken a hell of a hit if you don’t want any of your ladies around. I bet Heather would come running.”

“She’s dating Chuck. They’re happy.” At least Cole hoped so. He’d flown Heather to cancer treatments at Sloan-Kettering in New York for a year before she went into remission and immediately professed her undying love for him. Realizing she was hearing wedding bells, Cole—who was deathly afraid of the sound of ringing bells—had quickly extricated himself by fixing her up with his friend.

“That may be so, but she still goes all moony when you’re around.” Tucker batted his eyelashes at Cole.

“You’re just jealous.”

“You’re goddamned right I am. I don’t know how you do it, man. Even before your Superman act, your picture should’ve been next to the words ‘chick magnet’ in the dictionary. But now we mere mortals can only look on with envy.”

In his right mind, Cole would’ve had a witty retort ready to shut Tucker up, but Cole with a headache the size of the Grand Canyon chose not to engage. “Is it time for more pain pills yet?” Tucker consulted his watch. “Another hour.”

Cole moaned.

“This is why I suggested a sponge bath to get your mind off your troubles.”

“Are you offering?”

Tucker almost spit chocolate cake all over Cole’s new leather sofa.

“Hell no! But if you’re truly feeling desperate, I bet I could get Nutty Natasha over here in less than five minutes.”

Cole didn’t care about the pain when he sat right up and looked Tucker in the eye. “Don’t you even think about it!” A surge of nausea took his breath away, and for a brief, heart-stopping moment, Cole thought he might throw up.

Tucker howled with laughter. “Relax, man. I’m just joshing ya.”

“That is so not funny. I really hope Debby didn’t copy her on the email.”

“If she had, Nutty Natasha would’ve been here by now.”

“No doubt.” Cole grimaced at the thought of it. “I still haven’t forgiven you guys for fixing me up with that whack job.”

“You can’t blame us. We had no idea she was certifiable.”

“I can so blame you.” Cole didn’t even like to think about what he’d been through with that woman. It’d been almost enough to swear him off women forever.

Almost.

“So you’re not going to let any of them come nurse you back to health? What about Diana in Phoenix? I bet she gives good sponge.”

Cole couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Don’t make me laugh,” he said wincing.

“Don’t make me beg. I’ve been having naughty-nurse fantasies ever since you got smacked around.”

“I did not get ‘smacked around,’ and p.s., you need to get your own girlfriend.”

“Hello? You think I’m not trying? I mean, I ask you… what woman wouldn’t want a piece of this?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“If you aren’t having naughty-nurse fantasies of your own, I’m worried that you suffered permanent brain damage.”

“No permanent damage. Don’t worry. I’m just not in the mood.”

Tucker stared at Cole as if he’d lost his mind. “You? Not in the mood for women? Since when?”

Since he’d met a woman named Olivia—and all the others had faded into the background in an instant. Cole couldn’t stop thinking about her waterfall of silky dark hair, her dark, searching brown eyes, her lovely smile, and the odd sensation that had coursed through him when she touched him.

“Earth to Cole.” Tucker waved his hand back and forth in front of Cole’s face. “What has you a million miles away?”

Unlike in the past, Cole had no desire to tell his friend about the woman he’d met. Tucker would assume she was just a flavor of the month and make a joke that would irritate Cole.

All he knew about Olivia was her first name and where she worked, but he wanted to know more. He wanted to rush back to Reagan and find out everything he could about her. That alone was so far out of character it should’ve scared him half to death. Instead, it filled him with excitement and anticipation.

“I’m dreaming of pain pills. Are you sure it’s another hour?”

“You’re down to fifty-two minutes.”

“Fabulous,” Cole groaned.