to help justify her statement, then quickly dropped it to her lap. What on earth had possessed her to say that?
Moments later, the flirty attendant came back and leaned across the man to grab the empty glass on Megan’s tray. Still bent over, the blond turned to face him, her face less than a foot from his. “Don’t you worry, Mr. McMillan.” She patted his arm again. “I’ll come take care of you just as soon as I can.”
His mouth parted slightly before he grunted, “Thanks.”
Megan had to wonder what the attendant’s definition of taking care of him included.
The flight crew started the safety demonstration, and Megan leaned her head against the seat, her fingers digging into the armrest. When this flight landed, she would finally have to do what she’d been avoiding for over a month . . . but how? How was she going to face her mother?
“Afraid of flying?” the man next to her asked, sounding displeased by the prospect.
“No, just crashing and burning.” Which was exactly what was going to happen to her after they landed.
Chapter Two
It was his turn to ask, “What?”
“Not the plane.” The brunette’s brown eyes fluttered open, glistening with tears. “My life.”
Josh nearly panicked. He could deal with paranoid people worried about plane crashes, but he hoped to God this woman wasn’t going to cry. He didn’t think he could take it right now.
He wasn’t supposed to be here—on this plane, with this woman, at this point in his life.
Josh McMillan wasn’t the kind of man to take leaps. Every step he took was carefully plotted beforehand. Except for this one.
Ever since Josh was eight years old, he’d wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an engineer. Josh was sixteen when his father died, but the loss only cemented his resolve. His older brother, already an engineer, took over the family business, and Josh joined him when he graduated from college.
The firm had struggled since their father’s death, and the bad turn in the economy hadn’t helped. But then Josh had created a revolutionary part that could be used on wind turbines to help produce more electricity with the same amount of wind power. The part had the potential to make millions. So they’d hired a patent attorney and spent a fortune they didn’t have to get the patent process started, hinging the future of their business on it. And it had worked. They’d acquired interest from a serious investor who could help take their engineering firm to a whole new level.
Until last Friday, when their patent had been denied.
A firm in Kansas City, Missouri, had received approval for an identical plan, but how could a firm in Kansas City have so exactly duplicated the esoteric part? Josh had literally stumbled upon the design by accident.
Josh’s company would have to pay thousands more to an attorney to fight the ruling. Thousands they couldn’t afford to lose. Worse yet, the investor had caught wind and threatened to pull out of their agreement if the matter wasn’t resolved within a week. The brothers went out for drinks to strategize about the ruling, which is when, after a couple of rounds, Noah confessed to having shown the plans to a friend of a friend at a conference three years before.
“Who was the friend of a friend?”
Noah looked slightly embarrassed. “She was a woman I picked up in the hotel bar. I took her to my room, and the next morning she was gone and so was my bag. A copy of the plans was inside.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” Josh asked, his temper rising.
Noah slouched over the bar, cradling a glass tumbler in his hand. He lifted his shoulder into a half-shrug. “They were a copy, Josh. I didn’t think anything of it.”
“We have to fight this.” Josh only realized he was shouting when he took in the startled looks of the other bar patrons. “We didn’t work so hard to file the patent and get this investor just to let it all be flushed down the drain.”
Noah sat up and drained his drink. “Maybe there’s nothing left to fight for.”
Only, Josh wasn’t so willing to give up the fight. He’d spent the last seven years pouring his everything into making his father’s company a success. He’d sacrificed his personal life, not to mention his checkbook. No, he couldn’t come this close to making the company financially solvent just to lose it all. There had to be a way to fight