Kiss Me Katie! & Hug Me Holly! Read Free Page A

cloud in sight and…
    One. Just a flash second before hurtling both him and a very expensive plane into the ground, he pulled out of the spin and shook his head slightly to clear it.
    â€œGot it?” he asked into his headset.
    â€œHoly cow!” Ritchie yelled into Bryan’s ear. “ Holy, ace, that was absolutely amazing!”
    â€œGee, guess you got it.”
    â€œYou’re wasting your talents taxiing the rich and famous in expensive airplanes, you should be doing stunts all the time.”
    Ritchie Owens was a Hollywood producer. That’s what he told women, anyway. Mostly he did beer commercials. The stunt Bryan had just pulled off would be shown in an adventurous, exciting, quick-paced, filled with loud music ad spot designed to raise a man’s thirst.
    Or so he supposed.
    Bryan didn’t really care; it gave him an excuse to fly, and to fly with abandon, and that was all that mattered to him. “I don’t taxi people. I run a charter company.”
    â€œYeah, yeah, whatever. Still a waste.”
    Bryan didn’t bother to correct Ritchie. He didn’t feel any particular need to defend himself, not when he truly did love his work. In his opinion, he had everything he would ever need, and Ritchie, all four and a half feet of him, driven by the materialistic meter of success of the film industry, would never understand.
    â€œGod, that was fantastic.” Ritchie was clearly ecstatic. “The best I’ve ever seen! We’re gonnaget tons of feedback from this one, ace. Tons. I feel it in my bones.”
    Bryan remained silent as he easily circled and came in for his landing. The sun was at his back, the wind was with him. On top of the world, he took a deep breath, as always awed by the glory of being in the air.
    No problems, no stress. Life was everything he wanted, everything he made out of it.
    But inexplicably, that wasn’t the case today. And if he was being honest, something he always was to a fault—just ask any of his past girlfriends—he had to admit it had everything to do with last night.
    The Christmas party.
    And the surprise Christmas kiss.
    It’d been a helluva great gift. Admittedly, the gift giver hadn’t meant to give him the kiss, but he’d tried to tell her he wasn’t who she thought he was, hadn’t he?
    Well…maybe he hadn’t tried very hard.
    Maybe he hadn’t managed to say anything except her name, but he was only human. And yeah, maybe a better man might have told her the truth right then and there, but he wasn’t out for any hero awards.
    He just wanted the girl.
    He’d been momentarily stunned into meathead status when Katie had touched her warm lips to his, not to mention dizzy as hell from those stupid Santa glasses he’d been wearing.
    He still had a headache from them.
    And anyway, what was a woman doing even thinking of kissing a guy as boring and predictable as Matt Osborne? It was a crime, in his humble opinion, a total crime.
    Bryan completed his landing without incident, tied the plane down on his own even though there was a staff of linemen waiting to assist as there always was, and also a film crew who’d paid to use the tarmac for the morning. He tipped his head to stare at the sky.
    â€œAlready yearning to be back up there?”
    He recognized the female voice and braced himself.
    â€œWe have a great staff, you know.” Holly, who’d come up behind him, managed to casually brush her long, lithe, very toned body against his. “Why do you always insist on doing everything yourself?”
    Seemed silly to tell her the truth, when she didn’t care about the truth. What she cared about, what she’d cared about for the entire two weekssince she’d come to this place as the new office manager, was getting action.
    Man action.
    Apparently he was the man.
    â€œDo you do all your own handling because you like to sweat?” Holly wondered, circling