Somebody Like You (Starlight Hill Series Book 2) Read Free Page B

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    “I’m betting you won’t at the last minute, Einstein.” Frat Boy Number Two said.
    The two were practically indistinguishable to Brooke — same vacant party-look in their eyes, same Converse shoes. She’d bet a year of the salary she no longer had that they were the Stanford elite. Money to burn.
    “What about you, babe? How many jumps under your belt? ’Cause you look like a pro.” Frat Boy Number One asked Brooke.
    “Don’t call me ‘babe’, asswipe.” Twenty-four jumps to be exact and Joe the pilot knew it. But he was busy doing his job.
    “Oooooh, you stepped in it.” Frat Boy Number Two said.
    “How much longer, Joe?” Any time now would be good. Today she would jump harder than she’d ever jumped before. She would jump so hard today that the middle of the earth would hear it when she landed.
    “I was just about to tell y’all to line up,” Joe said from the cockpit.
    Now why couldn’t she fall for a guy like Joe? Beautiful blue eyes, sexy southern drawl. Retired Army, even. Served God and country. Willing to serve her, more than once if she recalled.
    But since graduating from college, she’d had a definite type.  Short-cropped hair, clean cut, not a stich of facial hair. Italian silk suited CEO. George.
    Maybe it was high time to re-think her type.   
    “Brooke, we’ll have the rookies go first. What do you say?” Joe winked.
    Damn he was good looking. “Sure.”
    Frat Boy Number Two stood up first. “Let’s do this thing, dude.”
    She had to sit through all the last minute instructions as Joe’s tandem jumpers went through them one by one. She’d heard it all more than a dozen times.
    Let’s go, let’s go. Time to get this show on the road.
    Frat Boy Number Two and his tandem partner hurled out of the plane, but not before the stupid kid shouted, “Ha-ooh!”
    Joe rolled his eyes. “Next.”
    “That would be you.” Brooke slapped Frat Boy Number One’s back. His tandem partner hooked them together.
    “Dude, I don’t know about this. That’s a freakin’ long way down.” He stared at the ground beneath him as if he’d only now noticed it was there.
    “What’s your name?” Brooke asked from behind him.
    “Er, Terry. Why?”
    “I’ve jumped about twenty-four times, Terry. And I’m still here to tell it. So go ahead and find your balls in there, and do this thing.”
    Terry didn’t move. Joe talked to him, and so did the tandem partner. About how it would be okay to change his mind at this point. No harm, no foul. Nothing to be ashamed of. The usual.
    “Don’t listen to them. If you don’t do this you’re going to feel like crap. Your buddy did it and he won’t let you live it down.” Brooke patted his back.
    “Dude, good point. Ah, hell.” Still, he didn’t move.
    “We’re going to need you to move if you’re not jumping,” Joe said. “We’re losing our window.”
    In other words, she was losing her window. And she would jump today, one way or another. No one would take that from her, certainly not a spoiled rich kid.
    “I just wish— ” Terry began.
    He didn’t finish the sentence because Brooke gave him a good shove. He pushed into his tandem partner who must have assumed that meant a go, and out they both went. “That someone would push you out?” She called out after him.
    “Du….de!” he yelled as he plunged into the air.
    “Shit, Brooke.” Joe said. He was nothing if not a stickler about rules. And it wasn’t cool to push someone out, even with a partner.
    “Sorry,” Brooke said as she jumped.
    Finally, the air rushed past her and she could fly. She stuck her arms out and welcomed the fall, so that she could at once be a part of the sky and a part of nothing at all. Drifting. Free.
    The thrill of the ground as it rose to greet her. Closer and closer, but unable to touch her from this high up. Seconds passed, always feeling much more like years. Falling like this, sometimes, was better than sex. Better because she didn’t