Ian wasn’t sure if it was the rough flight—or the difficult conversation they were having—that was the reason for the quick rise and fall of her chest as she answered his question. All he knew was that what she’d just said had pissed him off.

“Damn it, Tatiana, don’t try to act like having sex with me is the same as sitting in on a business meeting. I might be an asshole, but even I wouldn’t stoop so low that I’d ask you to sign an NDA before we slept together.”

“You’re not an asshole.”

“I swore to you that I wasn’t going to treat you badly. I promised myself I would stay away. I blew both of those promises, big time.”

As if the tension between them was directly connected to the weather patterns, just then the plane banked sharply to one side, and then a few seconds later, to the other even more sharply. Tatiana screamed and every thought flew from his head but protecting her as he put his arms around her and pulled her close. She was ice-cold and trembling as he held her.

“Ian, Tatiana,” David’s voice came to them over the on-board speakers, “it looks like we’re going to have to make an unexpected landing on Vancouver Island. Please make sure you’re buckled in. We’ll be safely on the ground soon.”

When he looked down at Tatiana, her eyes had dilated with full-on panic.

“Tatiana, we’re going to be fine.” When it was clear that his words hadn’t registered, he tucked his hand beneath her chin so that she had to focus on him. “David and Linda are the best in the business. I wouldn’t trust anyone else more to get us down safely.”

But when the plane hit more turbulence, Ian knew he needed to do something more to get her mind off the rough flight.

“When we were kids, our parents gave all of us really heavy-duty umbrellas. But we didn’t really use them much, because it wasn’t cool to be seen walking to school carrying one. Looking back, I don’t know how we sat through class every day soaking wet, but I guess when you’re a kid, stuff like that doesn’t bother you much.”

He could see that she was a little surprised by the way he’d just up and started talking about his childhood, and was glad that he’d managed to capture her attention, given the way the plane was wildly rocking back and forth.

“One day, I suppose my mother got sick of dealing with our soggy clothes and made us bring the umbrellas to school. The other kids snickered at us behind our backs, but Adam, Rafe, and I decided we’d make all of them wish they had brought their umbrellas to school, too.”

“How’d you do that?”

He smiled at her, running the back of his hand down her cheek. “We holstered our umbrellas through our belts and climbed up the rain spouts to the roof of the school. Our mom was a big Mary Poppins fan, so we’d all seen the character fly through the air holding her umbrella plenty of times.”

“You guys didn’t actually jump off the roof, did you? Someone stopped you before you could, right?”

“Nope.” He grinned at Tatiana’s wide-eyed expression. “We were quicker than any of the adults. Besides, they already called us the Wild Sullivans, so I’m pretty sure they knew no threats or punishments were going to reform us. Odds are they were less surprised that we were planning to jump off the roof with our umbrella parachutes than they were that we hadn’t thought of it sooner.”

“So what happened?”

She had, it seemed, forgotten entirely about the lurching plane, and he’d never been so thankful for his childhood idiocy as he was now. If he’d played it straight when he was kid, he wouldn’t have had this story to tell her now.

“Half the school was out on the blacktop waiting for us to make our move.” He shook his head, laughing at the memory. “On the count of three, we opened our umbrellas, walked to the edge of the roof, and jumped.”

She gasped. “Were you all okay?”

“Sure.” He said the word easily, throwing in a shrug as he added, “Rafe knocked his arm up pretty good and Adam lost a tooth, but the real damage didn’t come until the principal expelled us and Mom had to come pick us up.”

“How mad was she?”

He grinned again. “Mad. But later, when I caught her holding the open umbrella on the driveway, looking up at the sky, I knew why we’d only been grounded for a month as opposed to forever.” He could tell that they were getting close to making their landing, so he pressed a kiss to Tatiana’s hands to make sure she didn’t lose focus on him. “Part of the reason she loved watching Mary Poppins so much was because she always wished she could fly like that, too.”

A moment later, they made as smooth a landing as he could have hoped for. Ian wrapped his arms around Tatiana and held her tightly against him, giving silent thanks that everything was okay. If anything had happened to her, he would have been destroyed. Completely destroyed.

And as the plane finally came to a shuddering—and safe—stop, she whispered, “Thank you for making me forget how scary this was.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Ian was still holding Tatiana when David and Linda came out of the cockpit. “Are you both okay?”

“We’re fine,” Ian told them as he continued to stroke Tatiana’s back. “And in one piece. Thanks to both of you.”

Despite how shaky Tatiana was, she immediately asked Linda, “Are you feeling all right?”

Linda looked confused for a moment before she realized what Tatiana was asking. Putting one hand over her stomach, Linda reassured her, “I’m perfect. Junior here is already quite the flier, just like his parents.”

“We can’t apologize enough for this,” David said. “We had an eye on the incoming storm, but never would have taken off if we’d thought it would blow in that fast. Or that hard.”

Ian had flown more than a million miles with his pilots, and he’d meant it when he told Tatiana he trusted them. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.” But he needed to know something. “How long does it look like it will be until the storm clears?”

“Honestly, we’re not completely sure at this point, but I’d plan on at least a day, maybe two. We’ll do our best to stay on top of it and get you out as soon as it’s safe. Fortunately, we were able to get a message out on the radio,” David told them, “though we seem to be in a cell reception dead zone.”

They were all surprised by the sound of someone yelling outside the plane. The door nearly blew off when David opened it to find a man in a dripping yellow slicker standing on the tarmac. David lowered the stairs, then wrestled the door closed once the man was inside.

“Thank God you all got down safely. Welcome to Port McHardy. I’m Tim. As soon as we got word on the radio that you were making the emergency landing, I headed here. You were on your way to Alaska?”

“We were,” Ian confirmed, before introducing everyone and letting Tim know how much they appreciated his coming out to the plane so quickly. “Since we’ll be here until the storm ends, if you could take us to a hotel, we’d greatly appreciate it.”

“Be happy to. We don’t have any hotels here, but my sister runs a B&B. It’ll be a little tight in my car, especially with your bags and my pup, but I think we should all be able to cram in all right for the few miles through town.”

David and Linda left to gather up their things, and Ian turned his attention back to Tatiana. “How about we get off this plane?”

The breath she inhaled shuddered in her chest, but she smiled at him. “Getting off this plane is one of the best ideas I’ve heard in a long time.” He kept her hand in his as she stood up, making sure her legs were steady before he let her go to grab her canvas bag and his own.

“Pretty wet out there, eh?” Tim said, a massive understatement if ever there was one. “I’d offer you an umbrella if it would help, but it would just blow away in this wind.”