Here Comes Trouble

PILOTING A TWIN-ENGINE Cessna Citation CJ2+ out of Long Beach Airport in California, Max Taylor was prepared for a lot of things. Bad weather, low visibility, turbulence. He'd dealt with the wind shear off a low-flying commercial airliner. Equipment failure. Hell, even the odd seagull going splat on the windshield or getting sucked up into an engine.

But not this. Not a scene straight out of a bad porn movie. Nothing in his wildest dreams "or darkest night-mares" could have prepared him for a seventy-year-old passenger bursting into his cockpit. Naked. Completely, shockingly naked. "Wha-- "

"Mr. Taylor, induct me into the mile-high club!" the gray-haired woman exclaimed, her arms wide, emphasizing the, uh, length of her bustline.

Max's first thought was to dive back below five thousand feet so they wouldn't be a mile up. His second was to think that all her millions hadn't managed to make Mrs. Rudolph Coltrane look as young from the neck down as it had managed to deal with her tightly Botoxed face. And his third was to realize that he was being attacked in his own plane. By a woman old enough to be his grandmother.

"Mrs. Coltrane, what do you think you're doing?" he asked, somehow managing to keep his voice steady, his hands on the controls and his gaze straight ahead. Not that it was going to do much good he'd already gotten an eyeful.

Still in shock, Max suspected he was going to have nightmares tonight. Nightmares about the unattractiveness of breast implants going south, and sags that couldn't be lifted by a crane, much less the best plastic surgeon in L.A.

"I was going to wait until we were higher up, but I can't," the woman said. "I've waited too long as it is. I know you're used to a slightly younger woman..."

Decades. "...but we're alone now and I'm willing and a man with your...appetites probably can't go for long without giving in to his carnal urges."

Currently, Max's only urge was to jump out of the plane.

"I've paid good money for this trip, and I fully expect you to be my in-flight entertainment."

"That's what the DVD player is for," he whispered, shaking his head in bewilderment.

This couldn't be happening. Not along with all the other weird crap he'd been experiencing lately. A constant stream of women had been driving him nuts for weeks, almost sending him into hiding. He seemed to be the latest fad among the "ladies who lunch" of southern California.

Max had always enjoyed relationships with his fair share of females. Probably the next guy's fair share, too. He certainly wasn't going to apologize for liking women.

And he did. Oh, he really did. He liked how they smelled and how they looked. Liked the tender bit of skin at the nape of a lovely neck and the feel of soft hair against his bare chest. Liked tangled sheets, steamy nights and slow, deep kisses.