It’s not as if he suddenly wanted this woman in his life.

He’d had absolutely no choice.

“Mr. Cochran?”

Maguire glanced up at the pilot’s voice. “Problem?”

“A little turbulence coming. I’d prefer you strap in.”

Right. Maguire had flown too often with Henry to believe “turbulence” was the issue. Henry was worried about their passenger, and even more worried about what his employer was up to this time.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” he said, yet still he lingered by Carolina.

He’d covered Carolina earlier with a silk sheet and lightweight blanket. She hadn’t stirred in the hours since he’d lifted her from the stretcher on the tarmac and carried her aboard.

He hadn’t been the one to sedate her, was totally against drugging her at all, and he’d had a rousing argument with the hospital doctor about…well, just about everything. Her medicines. Her treatment. What she needed. That Maguire had no business taking her off someplace without medical permission or involvement. All that blah blah blah.

But that was water over the dam at this point. He checked the straps, making sure she couldn’t fall or be thrown, and then redraped the blanket up to her chin. She kept kicking off the cover. He didn’t want her exposed to drafts.

That simplest, basic contact-his knuckles to her bare throat, nothing intimate about it in any way-sent a sharp streak of desire straight to his groin. The darned woman. There was absolutely nothing to explain that scissor stab of sexual awareness.

She was as ordinary as peaches and cream. Her features were more fun than attractive-a miniature ski jump for a nose, bitsy cheekbones, a mouth almost too small to kiss. Her hair was butter yellow, mixed with a little pale wheat, might be shoulder length-it was hard to tell; it was such a curly mess. He doubted the whole package could weigh a hundred and ten pounds, and he should know, since he’d carried her up the plane’s steps. No butt or boobs that he’d noticed.