WRECKER by Sasha Gold Page A

loudspeaker. His deep baritone always soothed her frazzled nerves at the end of a flight. There was something about the timbre of his voice. It both comforted and aroused her. She shouldn’t think about the captain like that, but couldn’t help it.
    Her response to him was almost as bad as her anxiety about landing. When she’d asked the personnel department to switch her itinerary so she wouldn’t have to fly with him, the woman had acted like she was crazy. “ Honey, usually we have girls trying to get on his schedule.”
    “Welcome to Jackson Hole, ladies and gentlemen,” Captain Marshall said. “We’ll be at the terminal in two minutes.”
    He always sounded so reasonable and kind-hearted when he spoke to the passengers. With her, though, he was gruff and unfriendly. When she said hello to him, he always growled. His gaze would drift over her body and have her thinking of filthy things in no time. She wondered how his big hands would feel cupping her breasts, how his lips would feel pressed against hers, how his powerful shoulders would feel under the palms of her hands.
    She’d only been working for the Mountain Resort Airlines for a few months and she couldn’t afford to upset any of the big shots. Jack Marshall owned something like ninety-five percent of the stock, so she tried to avoid him at all costs. He could make trouble for her. Big trouble. In so many ways. Jack Marshall had pulled strings to get her a job on the airline and both of them knew she needed to show gratitude.
    Jack didn’t need to work. He had plenty of money. Stock, real estate, oil. He’d been out of the service for six years and in that time he’d taken a small inheritance from his grandfather and turned it into fortune. But he still flew for the airline he started because he loved being a pilot.
    “It’s going to be brutal out there,” said Heidi, one of the other flight attendants. “Usually we don’t have to deal with blizzards this early in November. Makes me appreciate our Texas winters.”
    As if on cue, a gust of wind buffeted the plane and a low murmur of worry moved through the passengers. Savannah waited for the plane door to be opened by the forward team. She went to the two small children sitting at the back of the plane, a brother and a sister coming to Jackson to visit their grandparents.
    She didn’t always have kid-duty, taking care of the younger passengers who flew alone, but she enjoyed the kids when she did. Last time she’d flown, she’d had trouble with a couple of drunk male passengers. One of them tried to run his hand up her leg. She was grateful Heidi had been there to handle him. The seasoned flight attendant moved right in, cut off his liquor consumption and his attempts to grope Savannah.
    Children were so much easier. Pretzels, sprite and a blanket and they were happy.
    “Come on kiddos, we get to get off first,” Savannah said. “You two get special treatment since you were so well-behaved.”
    When she got to the front of the plane, Captain Marshall waited by the door to see off the two children. At six foot four, his head almost touched the ceiling of the plane. He was broad chested and athletic. She’d seen him shirtless countless times and knew first hand there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. He’d kept up his Marine Corps exercise regimen even though he’d been out of the service for five years. If any man was made to wear a pilot’s uniform, it was her step-brother, Jack.
    His mother and her father had been married for almost two years. From the beginning it had been tough. She and Jack had verbally sparred many, many times. He thought she was sassy and opinionated. She thought he was arrogant and opinionated. But when they were working together a tentative peace existed between them. The tacit understanding when they flew together was they didn’t know each other. No one would ever guess they had any sort of connection. He called her Miss Michaels. She called him Captain