“What do you think?”
“Over my dead body.”
Mantis smiled. “That’s my girl.” Only she wasn’t, was she? She was Dutch’s girl now.
He couldn’t see her face, so he didn’t know if she’d caught his gaff and ignored it, or if she simply hadn’t heard him.
Their estimated time enroute, or ETE, was one hour and fifty minutes. There were no storms on the horizon, and Manon “Alegria” Mondreau was seated in the plane, next to him. There was a time he would’ve taken it all for granted, other than the jet they were flying. Now, it was a situation he might never find himself in again.
“I can help,” he ventured.
“What’s that?”
“I can help you get medical clearance.”
“Is bribery involved?”
Mantis laughed. “No, but hard work might be.”
“What are you proposing?”
“The Cirque d’Alegria.”
“A circus?”
“Yeah, that didn’t work, did it? Um, how about the Flygirl Olympics?” It’s what they’d called it back when he’d had his own surgery and had been unable to fly—the Praying Mantis Olympics. She’d pushed him damn hard back then, and it had paid off.
“Are you joking or are you serious?”
He wanted to reach over and soothe the hurt he saw in her brow. “I’m serious. You need to get your wings back.”
“What if there’s a mission?”
Her question stung, but he understood why she asked it.
“Until you’re cleared to get back in the air, I won’t sign with K19.?
??
“Why?”
“You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?”
Alegria gave him a sideways glance. “Now I know you’re kidding.”
They’d always been fiercely competitive—textbook type A’s—starting before they even knew they’d both been tagged for pilot training.
“In a moment of weakness maybe,” he said.
Alegria laughed. God, he loved that sound.
“You helped me all those years ago.”
“Things were different then,” she said, the smile leaving her face.
“Not so different.” Mantis couldn’t stop himself. He reached over and squeezed her hand with his. “Let me help you.”
She didn’t pull her hand away, so he rubbed the back of it with his thumb. The too-intimate caress jarred her, and she moved her hand to her lap.