“But I know him,” Grayson said.
I shook my head. “Alec would not go out with me.” He might never have seen my trailer, but he knew. Everybody at the airport knew.
“Yes, he will,” Grayson said. “I’ve seen you in action. That oh, you’re a big strong man thing you do. Do that.”
I was tired of Grayson basically calling me a slut. “Why do you keep telling me I have to sleep with people to get a job? It’s a fourteen-year-old boy’s wet dream about how the business world functions. Grow up.”
Even though I couldn’t see his eyes, I could tell my words had finally affected him. He shifted backward in his chair like I’d slapped him.
Then I realized where I’d gotten that “grow up” line. From Mr. Hall himself. It was his favorite thing to yell at Grayson when he forgot to lock the hangar door or left a banner out in the rain. Mr. Hall didn’t mind yelling it across the tarmac for the Admiral and the other pilots and me to hear. Grow up, son.
“I said I want you to date him, not sleep with him,” Grayson said sharply. “If you assume you’re going to do everybody you date, that’s your problem.”
The palm tree above us swayed violently in the breeze, and my feet ached, two things that should not have gone together. I had been flexing my feet in my flip-flops as if pressing the foot pedals in a plane, stabilizing it against the buffeting wind.
“And”—his voice was soft now—“you’re a beautiful girl. If you show the slightest interest in Alec, he’ll want to go out with you. I know I would.”
My skin prickled with goose bumps, a chill in the hot April evening. My brain knew Grayson didn’t have the crush on me that I’d imagined when he got mad at me at the airport that afternoon. He wouldn’t have asked me to date his brother if he’d been interested in me. But my body didn’t know this, or didn’t care.
“Tell me why you want me to do this,” I said, quietly this time.
“It’s for his own good.”
I laughed, because that was a ridiculous thing for Grayson to say. Grayson and Alec were twins, exactly the same age, yet Grayson sounded like their father.
Grayson didn’t laugh. And as I watched him, he bit his lip nervously, gripped and relaxed his fist, kept himself barely under control. Convincing me to date Alec mattered to Grayson. A lot. Almost as if he were trying to do something for Alec’s own good, for once. As if someone needed to fill those shoes now that their father and their older brother were gone.
I understood why Grayson had recruited me for this job rather than sending the smoother Alec, and why irresponsible Grayson seemed to be the one in charge. For some reason having to do with the business and their dad’s death, Grayson was manipulating Alec.
If I could figure out why, I could blackmail Grayson right back.
I swallowed. “So you’re saying I’m for Alec’s own good.”
Grayson looked me up and down. He moved his head enough that I wouldn’t miss the tilt of his hat, and the provocative meaning behind it. “Ridiculous as that sounds, yes. Trust me, I have an excellent reason. You trust me, don’t you, Leah?”
“I thought I had made it very clear that no.”
“And Alec can’t know I told you to do this. If he finds out, I will make your life as difficult as I possibly can.”
Not if I made his life difficult first. I let out a frustrated huff. “Is this all because I didn’t say yes to your job in the first place?”
“No. I was always going to ask you to do this too. But when you didn’t say yes in the first place, you made me mad, and I went and found something to hold over your head. Now I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.” He took off his straw cowboy hat. I saw his hair so seldom that it always surprised me: how blond it was, almost as light as Alec’s, and how curly, whereas Alec’s was board straight. Grayson’s hair reminded me how young he was, even though he was acting like a boss, a manipulator, a god.
He passed the back of his wrist across his sweating brow, then put his hat back on. “You kicked Mark out, right?”
I frowned at Grayson. “What? Why?”
“Because you’re out here drinking beer. Let me guess. You asked Mark about the crop-dusting job. You found out he made it up, like I said. So you broke up with him. Is that what happened?”
I ground my teeth together, squeezed my eyes shut behind my shades, anything to keep from sobbing in front of Grayson.
“Hey, Leah, seriously.” His voice was soft and sweet like the spring wind. “He didn’t threaten to hurt you or anything, did he?”
I put one hand up to my temple, which had begun to ache. “No, but thanks for asking.”
Grayson nodded. “We talked about you for a while this morning. I thought he was lying to you about that job, but I don’t think he could fake the way he feels about you.”
I took the bait. “How does he feel about me?”
“Very strongly.”
I flared my nostrils in distaste. “I think he could fake that,” I muttered. “He was cheating on me anyway.”
“Doesn’t matter with Mark,” Grayson said. “My mother warned me about girls like you.”
I sighed the longest sigh. “Girls like what, Grayson?”
“Girls with crazy boyfriends. She says girls like you are bad news. I need to know whether you really are. I want my brother to fall for you, but I don’t want to get him killed.”
The back of my neck prickled with danger, something the pit bull did not sense for once, because he was silent. This was the second time today someone had warned me about Mark. I didn’t know him that well, honestly. He hadn’t gotten violent when he left. But I knew he’d repeated his final semester in high school because he’d been suspended so many times for fighting.
“Last year we played a pickup basketball game at the hangar,” Grayson said, “and I beat him. Later that afternoon when we were both trying to land, he cut me off.”
“In the air?” I asked.
“Yeah. He didn’t announce himself. He came in right underneath me. It could have been bad. Of course, nobody was outside watching. I should have told my dad, but he would have blamed it on me and told me to grow up.” He balled his fist and tapped it on his knee. “I wanted you to work for me, Leah, but I also didn’t want you to take a job where you’ll be around that guy.”
“You said there was no job.”