She watched him walk, shirtless and dangerously gorgeous, back across the tilted plane to the cockpit. She pulled a clean shirt from her bag and slipped into it. With everything in her carry-on, she was perfectly prepared to be stuck somewhere for a night, with water and snacks and a change of clothes. She changed her underwear and pants quickly, too, now that Zadir was occupied. She might as well feel fresh.

There was almost no chance they'd be rescued tonight. If a control tower was tracking their flight path and saw that they'd crashed, rescuers would have arrived there by now.

She checked her phone, but there were still no bars so she turned it off to

conserve what was left of the battery life. How odd to be in the twenty-first century, in the middle of a continent ringed by cities, and be as completely cut off from civilization as if they were stranded on a desert island.

The grim thought propelled her from her chair and into the cockpit with Zadir. Usually she liked to be alone, but right now she needed human contact, maybe just to reassure herself that she wouldn't spend her last hours in this plane.

"Any luck?"

He was crouched on the floor, the pilot's headphones over his ears, broad back bent over something. "I'm trying to see if the pilot cut some wires that I can patch back together. A lot of this technology looks advanced from the outside but is pretty primitive once you peek under the dash. I've found one loose end, and if I can figure out where to connect it, we might be in business."

"What can I do to help?" She hated feeling useless.

He pushed the headset aside so one ear was exposed. "Talk to me. Your voice soothes me."

"You don't seem like you need soothing. You strike me as very calm."

He looked up, a wry smile on his face. "I'm doing my best to stay cool."

"It's working. What does get you rattled?"

"Losing out on a great deal." Then he frowned. "And any interaction with my father used to get me wound up. That's why I learned to avoid him. He shoved us off to boarding school abroad, then wanted us to pretend he was the greatest dad in the world on the rare occasions we saw him."

"I know that scenario." The confession surprised her, but it felt right.

"Your dad was like that, too?"

She swallowed. "Very much so. My parents got divorced when I was three and I saw him once a year at the most after that. He'd invite us over, then we'd be at a loose end while he played tennis or something. He felt that sending money to support us was enough to make him the father of the century."




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