Love Under Two Flyboys [The Lusty, Texas Collection] Cara Covington (short story to read txt) 📖

Kendall head for the Piper. She took off after him, her temper flaring hot and fast. He was moving in, taking over, damn it. She needed to exert her authority. Her plane, her responsibility.

Man, these brothers are hot.

Tamara pushed that thought clear to the next county. Talk about bad timing. She could count on the fingers of no hand the number of times she’d been hit with a case of instant lust the way she had while bumping groins with Morgan Kendall a few moments ago. I honest to God didn’t know cocks could get that big. From what she’d seen of his brother Henry, who’d also sprouted a woody, he had nothing to be ashamed of in that department, either.

Despite the not-so-veiled hints from both men, there was no way in hell she was going to do the mattress rumba with either one of them. Come between two brothers, no pun intended? I don’t think so.

“I thought I saw a tiny wisp of smoke as we drove up,” Morgan said.

He was so damn big, he took up nearly all the space under the port engine cover. Before she could think to do so, Henry had gone around to the starboard one.

Don’t let your pride kick you in the ass. As long as these two flyboys were willing to lend a hand, she should just let them.

“I thought I smelled something just as I was setting down. Didn’t pay it much mind at the time.”

“No, you were too busy crash-landing on our property at the time,” Henry Kendall said.

“Hey, hello? No splat equals landing without the crash in my book.” Tamara’s response came almost without thinking, and without missing a beat.

“Hello right back at ya. Plane comes down without benefit of engine, with fried wires, and can’t get up again equals crashed plane.” Henry looked over at her and grinned.

He’s as much of a smart-ass as I am. This can’t be good. Then the words he’d said fully registered. “Hell, fried wires?”

“That would be my guess from the residual odor over here.”

“You have a clogged fuel line, too.” Morgan’s gaze landed on hers, and she immediately knew this Kendall was a lot more serious than his brother. “What the hell kind of a maintenance check did you run before lifting off, anyway?”

Tamara could see no reason to lie. “Practically none. I had to hitch a ride to Abilene to pick up this plane today. I was lucky to be given enough time to fuel up and run a cursory check. That fuel line wasn’t clogged before I took off, because that was the one thing I did check. Everything else seemed fine at the time.”

“Those could have been your last words,” Morgan’s harsh comment grated.

She opened her mouth to deliver a scathing retort then snapped her mouth closed again. Truth of the matter was he had a point. The plane had failed, and she had been forced to make an emergency landing.

She didn’t want to agree with him, so she just shrugged. When he continued to glare at her she battled her own temper and offered a grudging, “I guess.”

Morgan shook his head and returned to poking around at the Piper’s guts.

“I’d want to have a qualified mechanic have a look at this,” Henry said. “I don’t mind admitting, once we get into the electrical, it’s more broke than I can manage to fix.”

“Well, damn it.” She could handle a lot of mechanical repairs herself. But when it came to anything electrical, she was way out of her element, too. “I guess I’d better call Uncle Goodwin and let him know what’s happened, since it is his plane.” She pulled her cell phone out of her jeans pocket. “By the way, where the hell are we? He’ll want to know.”

“Just on the outskirts of Lusty, Texas,” Morgan said.

He closed the engine cover and then looked up and met her gaze. “What?” he asked.

He must have read the disbelief in her eyes. “Really? Lusty, Texas?” She knew Texans enough to know that for some, no opportunity for teasing or leg-pulling—or bragging for that matter—could be passed up.

“Since the late 1880s,” he affirmed. “We have a town charter and everything.”

Tamara shrugged. It didn’t really matter what they called the place, she guessed. “Hell of a name for a town,” she said as she dialed her uncle’s number.

“We’ve proven worthy of it, time and time again,” Henry said.

“I’ll just bet you have, flyboy.”

Both men eyed her like she was a piece of prime steak and they were starving to death. She didn’t want them to guess how thoroughly they got to her. Honestly, she hadn’t ever felt her hormones doing the cha-cha like they had been since that six-foot too-much-macho Texas man scooped her up and laid her down.

Oh, Tamara, that was entirely the wrong imagery to use there.

She gave the men a huge smile, then moved several paces away so she could talk to her uncle in private.

“Hello?”

“Hey, San Marcos, we have a problem.”

Uncle Goodwin stayed silent for all of ten seconds. “Well, hell’s bells. What happened? Are you all right, girl?”

“I’m fine, and I’m not one hundred percent sure what happened. The good news is I managed a dead stick landing on a private airfield. The bad news is it looks like a whole mess of misery under the engine cover, starting with clogged fuel lines and ending with fried wires.”

“Son of a biscuit eater. Whereabouts are you at?”

“Get this. They call the place Lusty, Texas. At least that’s what the flyboys here are telling me.”

“No kidding? You’re in Lusty? I know a Kate Benedict who lives in Lusty. Think her family runs the place. Good folks, those Benedicts. The whole town is made up of kin of a sort—not sure what all the names are there.”

Tamara lowered her voice. “Would some of them be Kendalls?”

“Yessiree, bob, that was the name of the other big family in those parts. Matter of fact, I had a Miz Kendall as a teacher, way