Born to Be Wild by Donna Kauffman

North Carolina?”
    “Yes. Retired life seems to suit them. Mom is heavily involved in community projects, and Stan seems content to putter around the house and garage.” Yes, her mother was truly content. And who wouldn’t be with a man like Stan? Dependable, always around when you needed him. The riskiest thing he did was to climb onto the roof once a year to put up Christmas lights.
    “Another dream come true,” Zach commented.
    Dara stared out the window, past the fields to the blue-purple shadow of the mountains on the horizon. “Yeah,” she said after a moment. “I guess you could say that.” Her thoughts skipped past the endless heartbreaking cases she dealt with on a regular basis and returned again to that hospital ward. And all those dreams she’d watched die, day after day, including hers and Daniel’s.
    The bump of the tires over gravel brought her head up and thankfully gave her something else to think about. They had pulled off into the parking lot of an old boarded-up gas station. “Why are we stopping?”
    “We’re here.” Before she could question him, he’d switched off the ignition and hopped out of the truck. Seconds later her door swung wide and Zach held out his arms to her. She reached for his hands. He reached for her hips, and he lifted her down.
    He captured her mouth for a quick, hard kiss just as her feet touched the ground. He was gone, moving to the back of the truck before she could call him on it.
    She knew she should put a stop to that sort of hit-and-run behavior right from the start. But she let it go for now as she followed him. What the hell, it was just a kiss.
    Zach chose that moment to wink at her.
Bad to the bone
.
    And what bones they were. She stifled a sigh. Just a simple kiss, huh?
    He lifted a huge cooler from the back, his muscles rippling and bunching with the effort.
    “Call me crazy,” she said a moment later, resisting the urge to fan her skin, “but I don’t think camping in aparking lot under the shade of the ol’ diesel pump is exactly what the kids had in mind.”
    Zach started across the lot, the cooler bouncing against his thighs.
    “Oh, ye of little faith,” he said.
    Dara followed him as he neared the side of the dilapidated building. She stumbled to a dead halt after rounding the corner. In an overgrown field was a large rainbow-colored hot-air balloon.
    As if sensing she was no longer behind him, Zach turned back to her. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” When she didn’t answer, he closed the remaining distance between them. “You don’t have a thing about heights, do you?”
    She finally pulled her gaze away and looked at him. “Heights? Me?” She looked at the balloon again, then back at him. “Nah.” Her attention returned to the balloon. “Ferris wheels, roller coasters, tall ladders, piece of cake.”
Flying, on the other hand, scares me silly
.
    “Great. Come on, I want to introduce you to a few of my crew. They’ll be part of the trip.”
    That managed to get her attention. Visions of making herself actually climb into that tiny basket were put mercifully aside for a moment. “Which trip? Today, you mean?”
    “No, today they’re just doing the setup, the tracking and the takedown at the end. I mean, the camping trip. These are the guys I’ll use.” At her frown, he smiled. “If you approve of the trip, Ms. Colbourne, ma’am,” he added.
    She couldn’t stifle the smile at his obeisant tone and slight bow. Zach was a man who bowed only to the direction of the wind and the ebb and flow of the tide.
    And, she thought with a private thrill, for the next week or so anyway, to her.
    “Shall we?” He nodded in the direction of the hot-air balloon.
    Her smug feeling vanished. She needed to tell him she couldn’t go up in that thing, and she needed to do it now, when she’d only humiliate herself in front of him and not half his crew as well. “I’m right behind you,” she heard herself say instead.
    She waded through the