Luca's Bad Girl - By Amy Andrews Page 0,46

and the chopper seemed to be being buffeted by some decent wind. She could see lightning in the distance and guessed that was the storm they were skirting around. At the best of times Mia wasn’t the greatest flyer in the world and she knew that Brian wouldn’t be flying if he didn’t think it was safe but the sooner they were back at The Harbour in one piece, the better. And then there was Luca, sitting opposite her, watching her with brooding eyes and causing another kind of storm. Inside her. She’d never met a man she couldn’t handle and she hated it that she couldn’t shake him. From her thoughts. Her dreams.

Her daydreams!

‘Think I might get a bit of shut-eye,’ she said into her mike. It was, after all, nearly three in the morning and she’d long ago learned the value of power-napping.

She didn’t wait for anyone’s permission, just closed her eyes. And dreamed of Luca.

A loud bang woke her with a start fifteen minutes later. The chopper spun wildly and her head was filled with Brian swearing and putting out a mayday call. Her eyes flew to the man opposite her. ‘Luca?’

Luca saw alarm and fear in her eyes and felt his own pulse leap as the helicopter seemed to be losing altitude as it spun. ‘Brian?’ He spoke into his headphones. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Lightning took out the tail rotor,’ Brian said calmly, while desperately trying to regain control of the spiralling chopper.

‘I thought you said you were skirting around the storm?’ Mia said above the noise of her pistoning heart and the whine of the labouring engine. She braced one hand against the stretcher beside her and the other against the aircraft shell to steady herself in the midst of the crazy spinning.

‘I am. Mother nature can be a bitch like that sometimes.’

How was it possible that Brian could even sound upbeat during a mid-air emergency?

‘Are we going to crash?’ she asked.

‘Hell, yeah,’ Brian said matter-of-factly. ‘Brace yourselves, guys, we’re over national park and there’re a lot of trees down there.’

Mia tamped down on the rather alien urge to become hysterical. It wasn’t what she usually did in a crisis but, hell, they were going to crash. She was twenty-nine and she was going to die. She hadn’t witnessed the northern lights. She hadn’t bought herself that cute little retro convertible. She hadn’t been to the ballet.

She hadn’t been in love.

Except she had, of course.

And the man she loved was going to die with her.

Her gaze locked with Luca’s. What a really, really horrible time for such a profound revelation. No time to hug it to herself like a delicious little secret.

‘Oh, God,’ Mia whispered, her throat suddenly as dry as ash, her eyes trying to take in every detail of Luca’s face.

‘It’s going to be okay, Mia,’ Luca said.

He reached out his hand, hoping his grandmother was out there somewhere watching over them. He was damned if he was going to die before telling Mia how he felt about her.

Whatever the hell that was.

If he’d learned anything this past week it was that life was short and you couldn’t live in the past.

Mia slipped her hand into his and gripped tight. It was cold and she was trembling and he’d have given anything to erase the glimpse of mortality he could see in her eyes.

‘Just because we crash it doesn’t mean we’re going to die. Does it, Brian?’ Luca queried.

He was calm, so bloody calm. How could Luca be this calm as the helicopter spiralled out of control in a death plunge? Her brain was spinning just as wildly. Desperately trying to remember helicopter crash statistics while grappling with regret that she wasn’t closer to her parents and sorrow that her fledgling love for Luca was going to be snuffed out before she’d even had the chance to explore it.

‘Not on my watch,’ Brian chirped. ‘Okay, guys, hold tight. Prepare for impact.’

Mia squeezed Luca’s hand hard. ‘I’ve never seen Swan Lake.’

Luca smiled at her. ‘When this is over, we’ll go and see it together.’

There was no time for her to smile back. The crippled chopper hit trees with a violent jolt, halting the rapid downward spiral most effectively. Mia squeezed her eyes shut as the impact raced through her body like a giant shock wave. She vaguely heard cracking glass, a loud expletive followed by a guttural cry from Brian and then nothing other than the screech and grind of the rotors could be heard as