Christmas Secrets Collection. Laura Iding

big, expensive toys. “We’ll be in Nuevo Laredo in no time.”

      And they were. They checked in with customs and were cleared for takeoff again an hour later. Because the Cessna 400 had a ginormous gas tank, they could now go all the way to their destination airport at Tuxtla Gutiérrez. That would take another five or six hours.

      “I can’t wait,” Zoe said drily. But she would have to. She’d been careful not to go overboard on the morning coffee and to visit the ladies room at Nuevo Laredo. But even with that, she had a feeling she was going to be very grateful to touch down and race for the nearest el baño.

      For a while, Zoe watched the land flow away from them below and snapped a few random pictures of the starkly beautiful desert rock formations with her lightweight Nikon D90, which she considered the best possible all-around camera there was.

      Yes, she had more expensive cameras. She had a nice trust fund and could afford to indulge herself. But for most situations, the D90 and a couple of good lenses were all she ever needed.

      Dax seemed happy as a kid in a big candy store. He extolled yet more of the virtues of the Cessna 400.

      “Safety is a top priority with Cessna. Every exterior surface—fuselage and wings and the flight controls—is embedded with lightning mesh. You never have to worry about a lightning strike. Also, they install static wicks on the back edge of the wings and elevator, which means static buildup is discharged safely without affecting function or disrupting other electrical systems.”

      “That really puts my mind at rest,” she told him drily.

      “I knew it would. I love to fly. My uncle Devon, the family ne’er-do-well, taught me. He had a ranch near Amarillo.”

      “Being a rancher makes a guy a ne’er-do-well?”

      “To my father, it did. He and my uncle were the last of the Girard line. My father expected my uncle Devon to do what all Girards have done. Because a Girard comes from money—and is fully expected to do his part making more money. My uncle refused to follow the plan.”

      She knew that Great Escapes was not a huge moneymaker. “So you’re kind of like your uncle, huh?”

      The dig didn’t even faze him. “Yeah, guess I am. But I do understand money and I know whom to hire to make me more of it, so I can afford to indulge myself in my passion for travel and in my magazine.”

      “And in your airplanes and expensive cars and designer motorcycles.”

      “Yes, exactly. And still my fortune just keeps on growing.”

      “Not that you’re bragging about that or anything.”

      He slanted her a glance. “You really should be more impressed with me, you know.”

      “Sorry, I’ll work on that.”

      “And where was I?”

      “Your ne’er-do-well rancher uncle who taught you to fly.”

      “That’s it. Now and then, I got to go visit Uncle Devon. He started teaching me to fly when I was eight.”

      She rested her camera in her lap. “Eight, yikes! That shouldn’t be legal.”

      “But it is. You can start to learn at any age. You just have to be tall enough to reach the controls.”

      “But you grew up on the East Coast, right?”

      “We had homes all over the world. But we lived in an apartment on Park Avenue. And we had a house upstate—not that we ever visited there after my mother died. The house had been hers. My dad couldn’t bear to part with it, but he couldn’t stand to be there either. He never admitted it, but I knew it brought back too many memories of her.”

      “You have brothers and sisters?”

      He shook his head. “I was an only child.”

      It seemed strange, thinking of Dax as a child—with a mom and a dad and a ne’er-do-well uncle. She chuckled. “You know, Dax, I can’t picture you with a mom—or a dad, for that matter. Then again, everybody has one of each, right?”

      He shrugged. “I hardly remember my mom. I was five when she died.”

      She thought of her own mom, of Aleta’s innate goodness, her fierce love for each and every one of her nine children. “How sad for you,” she told him softly.

      He sent her another glance and a faint smile in response, then turned his gaze back to the wide sky ahead.

      The weather was perfect. Zoe put her camera away and settled back in the comfy leather seat. Through the windscreen, the sky was endless, not a cloud in sight, a gorgeous expanse of baby blue. The steady drone of the engine lulled her and the Dramamine made her sleepy. She let her eyes drift shut.

      For a long time, she drifted, dreaming in snatches, coming slightly awake to the smooth, steady drone of the Cessna’s engine, to awareness that she was on her way to the jungles of Mexico with her hot-guy boss, Dax Girard, that she was going to meet Ramón Esquevar, taste some of the best coffee in the world, visit the ancient Mayan villages of San Juan Chamula and Zinacantán. She would tell herself she really ought to wake up, act like a decent assistant, make a little conversation, at least.

      But Dax didn’t seem to mind if she slept. He flew the plane and left her alone and she felt so peaceful. Inevitably, after a few moments of wakefulness, she would fade back into her own pleasant oblivion again.

      What woke her, finally, was the turbulence. All of a sudden, they were dipping and dropping, literally lurching through the sky.

      Her eyes popped open as a volley of hail beat at the windscreen.

      It was dark. When had that happened?

      She glanced over at Dax. “Is it nighttime?”

      He shook his head. “Just a squall. But a wild one. I’ve been trying to get above it, but it’s not working. And we seem to be in a dead space. I’m getting no response on the radio. Check your restraint. In a minute, I’m going to see if I can get below this.”

      Check your restraint? She was not reassured. Still, she tugged on the belt to make sure it was fastened securely.

      More hail pelted the plane and the wind screamed like the end of the world. They kept rising and dropping—hard—as if they’d actually hit some physical object, though she knew they hadn’t, that it was only the racing wind currents.

      They would bottom out, the small plane shaking as if grabbed and pummeled by the hand of an angry god. And then they would rise again, only to fall once more.

      Rain came—buckets of it. Beyond the cabin, she saw nothing but darkness and horizontal walls of water coming at them, racing by. The wind wailed and they lurched and bounced. The restraint held her in the seat, but in back, she could hear the strapped-in equipment. Even tied down with a cargo net, it was banging around, hitting the fuselage, battering the backs of the rear seats.

      And the stomach-churning drops continued. The plane bounced like a ball, a toy tossed between the cruel hands of a madman.

      Still, she refused to believe that they wouldn’t get through this. She was twenty-five years old. She had a wonderful family, a father who drove her nuts but who she knew adored her. A mother who had never wavered in her devotion, her loving support.

      She’d finally found work she could do for years and only get better at it, never get bored. She didn’t have to be the slacker of the family anymore. Her whole life lay ahead of her, beckoning. It was all coming together, and it was going to be so good.

      Surely, it couldn’t be snatched away now.

      Dax kept trying to raise a response on the radio. Nothing. He spoke to her once. “Next time, I swear, we’ll fly commercial.”

      He mouthed their coordinates into the unresponsive radio and yet again gave the distress signal.

      The