Play with Me. Leslie Kelly

Mrs. Rush called to cancel, she told me a local businessman needed a last-minute ride to Chicago. She put him in touch with us, hoping you could help him. I told him you were there and would have no problem bringing him back with you.”

      Perfect. A paying gig, and she could make it home in time to attend her best friend Jazz’s annual Halloween party.

      Then she reconsidered. Honestly, it was far more likely she would end up staying home, devouring a bag of Dots and Tootsie Rolls while watching old horror films on AMC. Because Jazz—Jocelyn Wilkes, their lead mechanic at Clear-Blue and the closest friend Amanda had ever had—was a wild one whose parties always got crashed and sometimes got raided. Amanda just wasn’t in the mood for a big, wild house party with a ton of strangers.

      Being honest, she’d much prefer a small, wild bedroom one—with only two guests. It was just too bad for her that, lately, the only guest in her bedroom had come with batteries and a scarily illustrated instruction manual written in Korean.

      “Manda? Everything okay?”

      “Absolutely,” she said, shaking the crazy thoughts out of her head. “Glad I get to earn my keep today.”

      Ginny laughed softly into the phone. “You earn your keep every day, kiddo. I don’t know what Frank would do without you.”

      “The feeling is most definitely mutual.”

      She meant that. Amanda hated to even think of what her life might be like if she hadn’t escaped the small, closed-in, claustrophobic world she’d lived in with the family who had so disapproved of her and tried so hard to change her.

      She had about as much in common with her cold, repressed parents and her completely subservient sister as she did with … well, with the swinging 1970s flower-power stewardess who’d probably once worn this uniform. When she’d stood in line to get doused in the gene pool, she’d gotten far more of her uncle Frank’s reckless, free-wheeling, never-can-stand-to-be-tied-down genes than her parents’ staid, conservative ones.

      She had several exes who would testify to that. One still drunk-dialed her occasionally just to remind her she’d broken his heart. Yeah. Thanks. Good to know.

      Even that, though, was better than thinking about the last guy she’d gotten involved with. He’d fallen in love. She’d fallen in “this is better than sleeping alone.” Upon figuring that out, he’d tried to make her feel something more by staging a bogus overdose. She’d been terrified, stricken with guilt—and then, when he’d admitted what he’d done and why, absolutely furious rather than sympathetic.

      Making things worse, he’d had the nerve to paint her as the bad guy. Her ears still rang with his accusations about just what a cold, heartless bitch she was.

      Better cold and heartless than a lying, manipulative psycho. But it was also better to stay alone than to risk getting tangled up with another one.

      So her Korean vibrator it was.

      Some people were meant for commitment, family, all that stuff. Some, like her uncle Frank, weren’t. Amanda was just like him; everybody said so. Including Uncle Frank.

      “You’d better go. Your passenger should be there soon.”

      “Yeah. I definitely need to change my clothes before some groovy, foxy guy asks me if I want to go get high and make love not war at the peace rally,” Amanda replied.

      “Please don’t on my account.”

      That hadn’t come from Ginny.

      Amanda froze, the phone against her face. It took a second to process, but her brain finally caught up with her ears and she realized she had indeed heard a strange voice.

      It had been male. Deep, husky. And close.

      “I gotta go,” she muttered into the phone, sliding it closed before Ginny could respond.

      Then she shifted her eyes, spying a pair of men’s shoes not two feet from where she stood in the shadow of the Lear. Inside those shoes was a man wearing dark gray pants. Wearing them nicely, she had to acknowledge when she lifted her gaze and saw the long legs, the lean hips, the flat stomach.

      Damn, he was well-made. Her throat tightened, her mouth going dry. She forced herself to swallow and kept on looking.

      White dress shirt, unbuttoned at the strong throat. Thick arms flexing against the fabric that confined them. Broad shoulders, one of which was draped with a slung-over suit jacket that hung loosely from his masculine fingers.

      Then the face. Oh, what a face. Square-jawed, hollow-cheeked. His brow was high, his golden-brown hair blown back by the light autumn breeze tunneling beneath the plane. And he had an unbelievably great mouth curved into a smile. A wide one that hinted at unspilled laughter lurking behind those sensual lips. She suspected that behind his dark sunglasses, his eyes were laughing, too.

      Laughing at her.

      Wonderful. One of the most handsome men she had ever seen in her entire life had just heard her muttering about groovy dudes and free love. All while she looked like Marcia Brady before a big cheerleading tryout.

      “Guess I should have worn my bell-bottoms and tie-dyed, peace-sign shirt,” he said.

      She feigned a disapproving frown. “Your hair’s much too short, and not nearly stringy enough.” Tsking, she added, “And no mustache?”

      The sexy smile was companion to a sexy laugh. Double trouble, either way you sliced it. “I hate to admit it, but I’m not a Bob Dylan fan, either. I guess I really can’t turn on, tune in and drop out.”

      “What a drag! If you say you can’t play ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ on the guitar, I’m afraid I’m going to have to shove you into the engines of that 747 over there.”

      He held both hands up, palms out. “Peace! I really do dig the threads, sister,” he said. “They’re pretty groovalicious.”

      “Ooh, how very Austin Powers of you.”

      Wincing as if she’d hit him, he muttered, “Do chicks really go for dudes with bear pelts on their chests?”

      “Not this one,” she admitted with a laugh, liking this stranger already, despite her initial embarrassment. “Obviously, if you own a calendar, you know today’s Halloween.”

      “Yeah, I heard that somewhere. That could explain why I passed a group of Hannah Montanas and Sponge-Bobs walking down the street on my way here.”

      “I don’t know whether to be more sad that kids have to trick-or-treat in the daytime, or that you know who Hannah Montana and SpongeBob are.”

      “Nieces and nephews,” he explained.

      The affectionate way he said the words made her suspect he liked kids, which usually indicated a good nature. One point for the hot guy.

      Correction, one more point for the hot guy. He’d already scored about a million for being so damned hot.

      She also noted that he’d said nieces and nephews … not kids of his own. Single?

      He glanced around at the other small planes nearby, and the few airport employees scurrying around doing the luggage-shuffle waltz. “So, nobody else got the invite to the costume party?”

      Just her. Wasn’t she the lucky one? “I was supposed to be picking up a regular passenger and she made me promise to dress up. This is definitely not my usual workplace attire.”

      “Rats. Here I was thinking I’d suddenly been let in the super-secret club. The true reason charter flights are so popular. You’re saying it really is just to miss the long lines at security, and have some travel flexibility? It’s not the hot pants and go-go boots?”

      She shook her head. “‘Fraid not. But don’t forget, you also get to drink more than a half-cup of warm Coke and eat more than four pretzels.”

      “Well,