"I'd better help Chuck with the mix."
Dusty pursed his lips, barely noticing when Belinda rolled over on his lap. He tickled her belly absently until Julie climbed back into the cockpit and taxied out to the grass strip for her third run of the morning. Then he used his good arm to push out of the chair.
Julie was too experienced a pilot to risk her life and her aircraft to bone-aching weariness. She could feel it pulling at her, though, as she swooped over a just-planted field to lay a wide stream of fertilizer. Although the sun was still well up in the sky, she wouldn't make another run today. Six had maxed her out. Her and the Pawnee both. The plane was putting out almost as much oil as fertilizer.
She checked her gas to make sure she had enough to make it back to base after dumping the last of her load. She did, barely, and came skimming in with the gauge nudging close to empty. Tail bumping on the grass strip, she was taxiing to the hangar when her radio cackled and a voice pierced the static.
"Agro-Air, this is Delta Indigo six-six-niner. I have your strip in sight."
Delta Indigo?
DI!
Julie made the connection at the same moment Dusty acknowledged the transmission.
"Roger six-six-nine. You're cleared to land."
Swinging the Pawnee's tail around, she killed the engine and searched the horizon. A moment later she spotted a bright yellow speck winging through the blue sky. Speechless, she watched the Lane 602 put down in a smooth glide.
She was out of the Pawnee when the 602 rolled up. Still stunned, she waited while Alex shut down, folded back the canopy and climbed out.
Her first wild thought was that he looked as good as she did bad! No oil patches on his jeans. No sweat ringing the armpits of his shirt. Then all she could see was the cool determination in his eyes when they met hers.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded.
"Dusty called and told me to get my butt in gear. He seems to think we have some personal issues to settle."
She threw a fulminating glance at her partner. Dusty returned it with bland innocence.
"He's right," she admitted reluctantly, scowling as she tried to articulate the doubts that had gnawed at her. "I've had time to think since I got back from Oklahoma City, Alex. Not a lot of time, admittedly, but enough to know I don't fit into your world."
"What world is that?"
"C'mon, Dalton! Don't make this harder than it already is. You have a corporation to run and a child to raise. I have two partners and a business that requires my total concentration for the foreseeable future."
"Wrong."
She blinked at the hard, flat response. "'Scuze me?"
"You have three partners. Make that five, including Blake and Delilah. According to the terms of our contract they … "
"Agro-Air hasn't agreed to the contract yet!"
"Yeah, it has. Your senior partners faxed their concurrence this morning. You're outvoted, Julie."
"What!"
She spun around, eyes blazing, but Alex's next comment preempted her hurt, angry protest.
"They also faxed a blunt recommendation to get my head out of my ass."
He gripped her elbow, brought her back to face him.
"Dusty reminded me-very correctly-that DI's acquiring a helluva a pilot in this merger."
"You got that right," she spit. "And I … "
"Which is why we negotiated an additional clause to the contract."
Her brows snapped together.
"Agro-Air needs another pilot while Dusty's laid up," he continued, his eyes holding hers. "I need a better understanding of what you do. The ins and outs of the business, the tricks of the trade, the risks. So I fly as your back-up for the next few weeks. Learn from you. Trust your instincts. In the process, I hope you'll come to trust mine."
He held out a hand, palm up.
"What do you say? Do we have a deal?"
He was meeting her halfway. More than halfway. Could he actually rein in his take-charge personality? Listen and learn without butting heads?
Could she?
Maybe not completely. But she knew in that instant she'd be a dead fool not to try. An offer like this-a man like this!-didn't come around twice in a girl's life.
With a tremulous smile, she laid her hand in his. "We've got a deal."
"Whooeee!" The gleeful cackle erupted from the lawn chair. "When's the wedding?"
"You mean merger?" Julie corrected.
"Hell, Missy, I ain't blind. When's the wedding?"
"I … Uh, we … "
She threw Alex a helpless look. Grinning wickedly, he yanked her into his arms.
"As soon as possible."
The kiss bent her over his arm. When he tilted her upright again, she had to fight for breath.
"Now that we've got that settled," he said, still grinning, "you want to check out the new nozzles we welded on to the 602's dispersal system?"
She nodded, her legs as quivery as her heart, but couldn't get as jazzed about the nozzles as she had just a week ago. Delilah's caution still stuck like a burr in her head.
If she married Alex … Correction, when she married Alex, she would have to seriously limit her exposure to fungicides and pesticides. One, she couldn't risk bringing residue home on her clothing that might irritate Molly's tender skin. Two, she didn't need to be breathing even safe levels of toxins if she decided to get pregnant. That would come someday in the future. A year or so down the road. When Dusty was back in the cockpit and Agro-Air was turning a healthy profit.
She hadn't factored in Delilah's single-minded determination to see her sons settled. Within twenty minutes of being apprised of the pending mergers, the matriarch took charge. With a decisive snort she steamrolled any notion of a long engagement. Molly, she declared emphatically, needed a father and a mother.
A little more than three weeks later, she pulled off what every newspaper in the state would later gush was Oklahoma's version of a royal wedding.
Thirteen
The wedding of Julie Marie Bartlett and Alexander Dalton made the evening news on every local station. As the reporter for Channel 9 News informed her viewers, Delilah Dalton crowned her many social and philanthropical triumphs with a glittering affair attended by five hundred of her friends, business associates and any Dalton International employee with a yen to wish the bride and groom well.
Cameras panned the scene outside St. Stephen's, showing limos lined up for a full block, and zoomed in on the bride and groom as they emerged from the church. The bride wore a gown by a hot new designer sold exclusively by Oklahoma City boutique owner Helen Jasper, the reporter informed her audience. The square-cut neckline had supposedly been fashioned to showcase the bride's unusual engagement gift-an intricately worked gold medallion representing an Incan god. She carried a bouquet of white gardenias accented with gold lace and was given in marriage by her friend and business partner, Josiah "Dusty" Jones. Ms. Grace Templeton was the bride's maid of honor. Blake Dalton served as his brother's best man.
The scene then cut to the front facade of the Dalton mansion in Nichols Hills, where it was rumored the reception flowed through the first floor and spilled out onto the terraced gardens.
It was no rumor. Blake could verify that. More than four hours after the ceremony several hundred guests still thronged the house and gardens. The dozens of champagne fountains Delilah had ordered set up no doubt contributed to their staying power, as did the constant stream of servers who emerged from the kitchen with loaded silver trays.
Blake leaned against a pillar, taking a short breather while the indefatigable general moved among her troops. Delilah had held Molly all through the ceremony, slipping upstairs just moments before the guests began arriving to put the baby down for a nap. Now the baby was riding her hip again, decked out in a lacy dress the exact melon shade as her grandmother's.
Blake's chest twisted at the sight. He knew it would hit his mother hard when Alex and Julie got back from their honeymoon and set up housekeeping. It would hit him even harder. Although the odds pointed overwhelmingly to Alex as Molly's father, there'd been that niggling doubt, that small chance …
"One down," his brother's amused voice drawled from just behind his shoulder, "one to go."
Shaking off the ache at knowing he would be relegated to the role of uncle, Blake faced his twin.
"She's going to double the pressure on you now," Alex said with something less than sympathy.
"Tell me about it. Sure you didn't propose to Julie just to get Mother off your back?"
His brother's gaze went to a group one terrace below, where his bride made a family tableau with Grace, Delilah and Molly.
"I'm sure."
Another pang hit Blake. This one was too close to envy for comfort. Ashamed, he countered it by stating the obvious.
"Julie's the best thing that ever happened to you, you know."
"Yeah," Alex said softly, "I know."