Match Made In Paradise by Barbara Dunlop (black female authors TXT) 📕

with a simple gold necklace and flat gold stud earrings. She’d even put her hair in a high ponytail, informal but crisp in case she ended up out in the wind. It was low-key casual, and she thought she’d nailed it.

She arranged her burgundy plaid roller-bags, her garment bag and her carry-on in a corner of the lounge and checked out the seat beside them. It looked gritty, so she crossed to the snack bar and pulled a couple of napkins from the dispenser. Then she returned to wipe the seat and dropped the soiled napkins into a trash.

When she turned to sit down, all five of the men were staring at her.

Also staring was a man in an olive-green flight suit with wings on his chest and stripes on his arm. He was standing in the glass doorway that led to the runway.

Magnificent was the first word that came to her mind. If she was casting a model for a rugged, outdoors spread to attract women from far and wide, inspiring them to buy something for their own man from a new Lafayette wilderness clothing line, this would be her guy. There was a hint of irony in his half-smile, a hint of mischief in his blue eyes. He was fit and tall and confident enough to take on the wild. They’d make a fortune.

He looked her over from head to toe. Then he moved his attention to her luggage.

The five men rolled to their feet.

“Hey, Silas,” one of them said.

“Ricardo,” the man, obviously a pilot, and apparently named Silas, said in return.

“How’s it going?” another of the men asked Silas.

“Welcome back to the grind,” Silas said.

The other man grinned and nodded.

They all hoisted their backpacks and lifted their compact duffle bags to head for the door.

Silas, the pilot, stepped to one side, out of their way, while Mia sat down to wait.

“I take it you’re Mia,” Silas said.

She looked up, met his bright blue eyes and felt her chest tighten and her toes tingle in recognition of his sex appeal.

Yeah, she was a woman and she was alive, and he was a perfect specimen of a man.

Then it hit her. He knew her name.

“You’re here for me?” she asked. She’d thought he was here for those men.

“I’m from Paradise.”

“But?” She looked through the glass to where the five men trooped to a small airplane parked on the tarmac.

He waited.

“What about them?” she asked.

“We’re dropping them off.” He moved toward her, nodding at her luggage. “Raven didn’t tell you to pack light?”

Mia looked at her things. “This is light.”

“Lady, we’re getting into a Navajo PA-31 with five other passengers who, as you can see, are heavier than the average weight.” He picked her bags up one at a time, seeming to test them for weight. “They’re my paying cargo. You’re a ride-along.”

“I’m going with them?” Mia was still getting past that information.

Silas pulled her biggest roller-bag to one side. “You have to leave this behind.”

“What?” Was he insane?

“Becky?” he called over his shoulder. “Can you store this bag?”

“Sure,” the woman named Becky said.

“No!” Mia cried out.

Silas gave her a glare of impatience. “Okay, then these two.” He pointed to her garment bag and her carry-on.

“No way.” She shook her head. She could not leave her carry-on behind. “I’ll put this one on my lap.”

“It’s a weight issue, not space.”

“But . . .”

“Those two?” He pointed to her smaller roller-bag and the garment bag.

That was a bit better but still not doable.

Becky joined them, obviously waiting to see which bags she’d be storing in the FBO.

“There must be some other way?” Mia tried her ice-princess look, the one that usually got her what she expected. When that didn’t seem to move Silas, she changed her expression, hoping to appeal to his compassion. “Maybe one of those guys could . . .”

“Those guys are heading to a drilling camp for three weeks. They took exactly what they needed.”

Mia didn’t have an answer for that.

Silas folded his arms over his chest, his expression implacable. “I am not crashing the airplane so you can bring your makeup and evening gowns.”

“My . . .” She started to be affronted but then dialed it back. Okay, she had brought one dress that could be considered an evening gown. It was a gown, and she could wear it in the evening, not to a super-formal event, but surely to anything that happened in Alaska.

“You coming or not?” He looked fully prepared to leave her behind.

“Fine. But I have to rearrange a few things.”

Silas muttered something under her breath.

Before he could tell her no, Mia quickly crouched and unzipped her smaller roller-bag. She pulled out the essentials: panties, bras and nighties. It figured he’d have to get a look at her underwear. But that was the kind of day she was having.

She stuffed them into an outer pocket of her large roller-bag. To hell with wrinkles. She’d steam them later.

She zipped up the bag, stood and righted it. “Those two can stay.” She pointed to the small roller-bag and the garment bag. “Thanks,” she said to Becky.

“No problem.” Becky looked a whole lot more cheerful than Silas.

Silas grabbed the handle of her big roller-bag, lifted her carry-on and headed for the door.

Stuffing her purse under her arm and glancing frantically back at the chair to make sure she hadn’t left anything behind, Mia followed.

There was a tiny door into the Navajo.

Silas stowed her bags on top of the others, then secured a net to hold them in. He pointed her up the narrow aisle, and she turned sideways, knocking into the men’s shoulders along the way to get to the single vacant seat.

As she sat down, a thought occurred to her. “Uhhh . . . Silas?”

He paused where he was backing out the little aft door. “What?” The exasperation was clear in both his tone and expression.

“Where’s the restroom?”

Five sets of eyes from the other passengers swung her way. One of the men grinned. Another shook his head in apparent despair.

Silas muttered under his breath again and then spoke