Free Lavender Beach by Vickie McKeehan Page A

you throw together some greens? Fixins are already sitting on the counter. By the time you’re done we should be ready to eat.”
    She wandered into the kitchen, found all the veggies she needed and took out the chopping block. She washed and drained the spinach, sliced red and yellow bell peppers, cut an avocado into two halves, spooned out the pit. She dumped the chunks on top, and finished it off by tossing plump cherry tomatoes into the mix.
    Perusing the fridge, she grabbed the bottle of store-bought dressing from the shelf and carried it all over to the table. That’s when her eyes homed in on the book about Black Hawk helicopters she hadn’t noticed before.
    Cooper came back in at that moment to get a plate for the steaks. His attention turned to Eastlyn, flipping through the pages of the hardcover. A little embarrassed that he hadn’t thought to put the book away out of sight, he said, “I decided to see what the fuss was all about.”
    She gave him a dour look. “Hmm, the fuss. There are things you’ll definitely never get from a book. Let me see if I can sum it up for you. The night missions were the toughest—those that occurred around midnight when you’re flying with night-vision goggles.”
    “Really? I’d think they would help see.”
    “That’s the general opinion. However it isn’t the whole story. During bad weather they’ve been known to hamper depth perception, cause blurry eyesight and prevent a pilot from picking up cloud formations, or blowing dust and sand. They make already tough flying conditions even tougher.”
    “I had no idea.”
    “Most people don’t.”
    “So go on.”
    “Well, like I said, it’s nighttime, you’re sitting at the flight controls in the lead chopper. You suddenly start taking enemy fire from multiple sources. Door gunners yell, six o’clock, six o’clock, because the fire is coming from directly below our position. You cut left, then right, hoping to evade because your mission is to pick up several wounded GIs in a particular hot zone. So you continue on to get them out of a dangerous situation. You focus on doing your job because there are soldiers out there having a worse day than you are.  The job is to get them to a doctor quick. So you keep trying to dodge the fire and work your way to the pick up point.”
    His admiration for her doubled. “Good flying on your part,” Coop pointed out.
    She grinned. “Yeah, that too. And then after it’s all over and you’ve dropped off your cargo, you celebrate because your team made it out of there and back to base in one piece.”
    He could only picture that swagger multiplied whenever she crawled out of a cockpit. He’d seen it before, even while she was delivering and unloading flowers to Drea’s place. He took her hand, touched her cheek. “You have so many layers in there. It makes me want to strip off each one to get to know them all.”
    The room got warmer fast when he leaned in, touched his lips to hers. This time it wasn’t urgent take like before, but rather a slow build of greedy need and lusty want. Her arms went around his shoulders. His hands wandered to her back bringing her up against his chest.
    Inside, she felt like steam bursting from a hidden volcano she didn’t know existed. She sank into the heat until the kiss played out and they broke apart.
    “We should eat outside,” she announced, just to slam the brakes on the moment. “It’s too pretty a night to stay inside.”
    “I like making you nervous. It gives me a certain thrill.”
    “Who’s nervous? I’m just starving.”
    He cracked a grin. “Working up an appetite with you is certainly one of my priorities.”
    He sailed over to the cabinet, got down a plate for the meat and snagged the bottle of wine, took both to the patio.
    With darkness descending and for ambiance, Coop lit several candles sitting out on the patio table. Over juicy steaks and healthy greens, they ate in companionable silence until Eastlyn leaned back