Read Online Come Fly With Me by Addison Fox - Free Book Online

with me. He’s one lucky man.”
    “I’m not dating Mick.”
    “Sure you are.”
    “No, really, I’m not.”
    The smile fell from his face as her protests finally registered. “Well, why the hell not?”
    The outburst wasn’t what she’d expected—especially not after their bonding moment over personal grooming. “I’m sorry, Tasty, but I’m only here for a bit and then I’m headed home. Once I get things figured out with my father’s estate.”
    “That’s not right. You’re one of us, now. You need to settle down right here just like your daddy always wanted.”
    “If that’s what he wanted, he had an awfully funny way of showing it.”
    “I won’t argue with you there. I told Jonas more than once he needed to get off his ass and call you. And then the cancer spread on ’em and he didn’t do what was right.” Tasty leaned forward. “Please don’t hold it against him.”
    Something hard settled in the pit of her stomach andshe was caught off guard. Grier wanted to offer some mild-mannered, lovely retort—more than thirty years of having manners drilled into her almost had her offering up some nice platitude—but something held her back at the last minute.
    She would have liked to have known her father. Would have liked to have known that she had a home somewhere in the world where someone wanted her.
    But Jonas Winston hadn’t been able to give that to her.
    “Even if you do have a right to be madder than a rattler at him.”
    Tasty’s words penetrated the dour moment and she smiled in spite of the roiling emotions she couldn’t quite get under control. “They have rattlesnakes in Alaska?”
    “Nah, it’s too cold here for reptiles to survive. But I haven’t spent my whole life in Alaska. I’m originally from Arizona.”
    “How’d you end up here?”
    He shrugged. “Pipeline, same as so many others. Place sort of grew on me, so I stayed.”
    “I see.”
    He eyed the winter hat she’d rolled up into a tight ball in her hands. “You sure you want that?”
    “What? Oh—” Grier looked down at her hands. “Of course I do.”
    Tasty’s expression was a mixture of relief and dawning horror. “I just gotta figure out how to put that freebie into my accounting of my inventory.”
    “It’s not too hard. Just count it as an expense against the business.”
    “That’s usually where I get messed up.” He pointed at an old computer sitting on a small desk behind him. “I’m not great with the numbers.”
    “Would you like some help?”
    Whatever tense moments the two might have shared over her lack of commitment to Mick or Jonas’s lackluster parenting skills evaporated as he extended a hand to unlock the small half-wall that separated his area from the customers. “Would you?”
    “Sure. I haven’t quite gone rusty on my accounting skills in the last six weeks.”
    “I’m sure glad you stopped in.”
    As Grier pulled up an old Quicken program on Tasty’s computer—one that had matching floppy disks he proudly produced a few minutes later—she let out an inward sigh.
    At least she wouldn’t be bored this afternoon.
    “Oxygen. Stat.”
    Grier came to a halt next to Avery where she shoveled off the front parking area of the hotel.
    Avery’s smile was broad as she stopped and looked up. “Tasty?”
    “How’d you guess?”
    “Word travels faster than the speed of sound in this town. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
    Grier reached for another shovel sitting against the wall and took a patch a few feet away. “Yes, but how could anyone know? No one came into his store the whole time I was there.”
    Avery’s eyebrows rose as she went back to herfreshly dug path. “Didn’t you see all the people passing by outside the windows, checking out what you were doing in there?”
    “I guess I missed them. I spent the afternoon helping him with his accounting. It took every ounce of focus I possess.”
    Avery let out a long, low laugh. “You sure your hair’s not on