Chapter Two. Everyone has boarded the plane but me
Everyone has boarded the plane but me. I am alone in the gate area
aside from a few airline personnel, and I feel vulnerable and exposed with
no crowd to hide me. I’m already thinking through my options for the
evening if I don’t make this flight, when my new name is called. “Your lucky
day, Ms. Bensen,” the attendant says as I approach the counter. “You’ve
been bumped to first class.”
I blink in surprise, and not just at the oddity of being called Ms.
Bensen. “Are you sure?
First class?”
“That’s right.”
“How much extra?” I ask, unsure of how much money I have on the
card I’ve been given, unable to use my personal savings for fear of being
tracked. I’m not even sure the little bit my extra holiday jobs allowed me
would cover it.
“No cost to you,” she assures me, smiling and motioning to my ticket.
“Let me fix your paperwork so you can hurry along before they seal the
doors and you still miss your flight.”
“Yes,” I say quickly. “Thank you.”
I rush down the walkway to my flight, and despite my relief at scoring
a seat, the realness of leaving New York punches me in the gut. Everything
I’ve come to know as my world is here and I haven’t felt this helpless
since…a long time ago. I can’t think about what happened. I don’t think
about it. That’s when the nightmares start, and so does the fear. This isn’t
the time to let the terror control me. I have no idea what I will face in the
next few hours and days.
“Welcome aboard,” a flight attendant says cheerfully as I reach the
plane, and somehow I muster a half-smile before making my way to row
seven, where there are only two seats. My aisle assignment is empty as
expected, and—impossibly, after they’ve told me the airline was
overbooked—the one by the window also appears empty. Hope that I
might be alone is dashed when I note the bag stored beneath the seat,
which tells me my companion is nearby. I sigh. It would suit me just fine to
slip into my leather seat and shut my eyes before whoever it is returns, but
alas, that’s simply not an option. I have luggage to store and a file to study.
With a shrug, I let the oversized bag hanging from my shoulder fall
into my intended seat, then push the handle down on my new roller
suitcase. Grimacing, I discover the bin above me is full. Apparently nothing
is going to be easy tonight. Pushing to my toes, I try to adjust some bags to
make room for mine, and it’s as much a struggle as breathing is right now.
“Let me help you.”
The deep, slightly husky male voice has me turning to my left to find
myself captured in a familiar stare. My heart sputters. It can’t be. But it is.
I’ve made a fool of myself by gaping at a gorgeous man and he’s here to
make me pay in buckets of embarrassment. The man from the terminal is
standing beside me, towering over my five feet three inches by close to a
foot, and standing so close that I no longer have to guess the color of his
eyes. They are blue, a piercing aqua blue that is almost green, and they are
once again focused one hundred percent on me.
“I…ah…thank you.”
“My pleasure,” he says, a quirk to his mouth that I am once again
looking at, along with the dark stubble shadowing his strong jaw along with
his barely there goatee, which makes me think pirate. The kind that steals a
girl’s senses and ravishes her body, leaving her incapable of anything but a
whimper as she watches him walk out the door. Mr. Tall, Dark and
Potentially Dangerous reaches over me to adjust the compartment, his
t-shirt stretching over a perfectly sculpted broad chest. I don’t move—me,
a person who believes wholeheartedly in personal space. I know I should
and I mean to, but I don’t seem to have control over my legs, let alone
anything else tonight.
He glances down at me, still shifting my luggage. “Just this bag?” he
asks, and there is heat in his eyes. Or maybe amusement. And conquest,
definitely conquest, which must get old for a man like him.
The thought is enough to make me step back, probably a bit too
obviously. “Yes. Thank you.” Arms still stretched over his head, he adjusts
my bag, muscles flexing, long torso stretching deliciously, and I don’t try to
look away. Admiring this man keeps me from thinking about the hundreds
of other people on this flight that could be trouble.
“We’re all set,” he says, motioning to the seat. “You want the
window?”
“Window?” My belly tightens and I feel breathless. “We’re seated
together?”
“Appears that way.” Humor lights his eyes, and his mouth that I am
somehow looking at, quirks as he adds, “Small world.”
My cheeks heat at the reference to our little encounter in the
terminal. “Too small,” I say, and an announcement over the intercom urges
us to sit, saving me from some witty comment I don’t have.
“Last chance,” he says. “Window?”
I open myself to decline and snap my mouth shut. An aisle seat
exposes me to the other passengers, many at my back. The only person
who will ravish me while I’m trapped between this man and the wall is this
man. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all.”
“Thank you,” I say, before I grab my bag and move to the seat he’s
just given up, only to remember that he’d been settled here before I
arrived. “Do you want your things from under the seat?”
He slides in beside me and he is big, and broad and too good looking
for the safety of womankind. “Why don’t I just put yours under my seat?”
he suggests.
He smells spicy and masculine, and the scent stirs a distant memory
in the back of my mind. I shove it away, frustrated that I’m back to every
little thing triggering flashbacks. Today has undone the strength I’d spent
years creating in myself, made me weak as I once was. “Yes,” I agree. “Just
let me grab a few things for the flight.” I quickly remove my file and my
purse and hand over my carry-on, and in the process my hand brushes his.
A jolt of electricity darts up my arm and I quickly turn away, buckling myself
in. Maybe being locked in a corner with a man I am powerless to control my
reactions to isn’t so smart.
“Champagne?”
I glance up to find a pretty twenty-something flight attendant holding
a tray and gobbling up my seating partner with unabashed approval that
makes me think of the bold way Chloe lives her life, and suddenly it’s hard
to breathe. I will never see Chloe again.
“Why yes, we will,” my travel partner says, accepting two glasses,
and turning to me, successfully dismissing the flight attendant.
I hold up a hand. “No. Thank you.”
“We have a designated driver.”
“I’m afraid it will make me sleepy,” I object, though I am certain the
visit from my guardian angel, or handler, has ensured I won’t rest well again
for a very long time.
“It’s a four-hour flight,” he points out. “Sleepy isn’t a bad thing.”
Sleepy. This gorgeous, incredibly masculine man has just said
“sleepy” and it seems so out of the realm of what I expect from him, that
he has managed the impossible considering my life right now. I smile an
honest smile and accept the glass. “I suppose it’s not.” I sip the sweet,
bubbly beverage.
A glint of satisfaction flickers in his eyes, as if he’s pleased I’ve done
as he wishes, before he takes my glass from me and sets both our drinks in
the cup holders between us. The easy way he assumes control of my tiniest
actions, and seems to enjoy doing so, should bother me. For reasons I don’t
have time to analyze, it only makes him more tantalizingly male.
He extends his hand. “Liam Stone.”
My pulse jumps at both his ridiculously alluring name and the idea of
touching him. I start to lift my hand and hesitate with the oddest sense of
this moment changing my life in some way. Pushing past the crazy thought,
I press my palm to his. “Nice to meet you, Liam. I’m Amy.”
His fingers close around mine and a slow, warm, tingling sensation
slides up my arm.
“Tell me what I did to make you smile so I can do it again.” His voice
is low, gravelly. As sexy as the man who owns it. I expect him to let go of
me, but his fingers seem to flex around my hand, tightening as if he doesn’t
want to let go. I am shocked at how much I, someone who avoids people I
do not know well, do not want him to.
“Sleepy,” I manage, and my voice sounds as affected as I suddenly, or
maybe not so suddenly, feel.
His brows furrow. “Sleepy?”
“That’s what you said that made me smile. You don’t seem like a man
who’d say ‘sleepy’.”
He arches a brow and he’s still holding my hand. I should object. I
should pull away.
Because he has the experience and depth I’ve long avoided and
craved in a man. All I succeed in doing is melting into my chair, like I know I
could easily melt for him. “Is that so?” he challenges.
“Yes. That’s so.”
He looks amused, and—reluctantly, it seems—he releases my hand.
Or maybe not reluctantly. Maybe he wasn’t holding it as long as it felt like
he was holding it. I fear I have no real concept of what is real or not
anymore.
Liam leans closer, so close it’s like he plans to share a secret, and still
I want him closer.
“Just what kind of man do you think I am, Amy?”
The kind that flirts with lost little girls who don’t even know their
own names and then darts off to see the world with a supermodel, I think,
but I say, “Not the kind who says ‘sleepy’.”
Laughter rumbles from his chest, a deep, masculine sound that
spreads warmth through my body. Impossibly, it is both fire in my veins and
balm for my nerves, calming me in an unexplainable way, when I know he is
too good looking, too inquisitive, and absolutely too controlling to play
with. Not that I would even know how to play with a man like this, or really,
any man for that matter. Men, like friends, have been risky propositions.
“Why are you headed to Denver, Amy?” he asks, and the soothing
balm becomes shards of glass splintering through me.
“Excuse me,” the flight attendant thankfully interrupts, saving me an
answer that is still in a file I haven’t read. “Can I take your dinner orders?”
“Chicken,” I say.
Liam glances at me. “How do you know they have chicken?”
“It’s the go-to food for hotels, parties, and airlines.” And there was a
time in my youth when all those things had been in my life. I glance at the
flight attendant for confirmation, and she nods. “Chicken it is.”
“Make that two orders of chicken,” Liam says with another rumbling
of that deeply addictive laughter of his, and while I like his easygoing
nature, I can almost feel the band of control he pulls around him. A muffled
ringing sound fills the air.
“Whoever is ringing,” the flight attendant warns, “you have about
one minute until electronic devices are off.”
She rushes away, and since the sound is obviously coming from
Liam’s bag, I cautiously adjust my skirt and bend over to grab it, dislodging
my folder in the process. My heart lurches as it tumbles to the ground and
spills open, the contents flying everywhere. I grab for the contents, shoving
papers inside the folder again as quickly as I can.
“Your résumé, I believe,” Liam says, and I freeze at his obvious nosy
inspection of the document I have yet to read. The idea that he knows
more about me than me is unnerving.
Slowly, I lift my gaze to find only a few inches separating us, and his
eyes, those piercing blue eyes, see too much. He makes me feel too much. I
don’t know him. I can’t trust him. Is there anyone I can really trust left in
this world?
“Thanks,” I say, taking the resume from him with more obvious snap
than I intend. I tug his bag out from underneath my seat. He unzips the side
pocket to remove his phone, and I am self-conscious of how high my skirt
rides up my thigh as he helps me shove the bag back where it had been. But
he isn’t looking at my legs. I can feel the burn of him watching me in my
cheeks. I know he knows how uncomfortable I am. I know he knows I’m not
okay right now. I feel trapped. Trapped with this man, and I am trapped in a
life that isn’t mine.
Tugging at my skirt, I sit up and he does the same, shifting his
attention to his phone as he does. Taking advantage of his distraction, I
twist toward the window, offering him my back.
Maybe he will think I’m allowing him privacy for his call. Maybe he
will think I’m rude. I don’t care. I open the folder and quickly find the
résumé he’s already seen and start reading. Amy Bensen is, or was, a
private secretary to some executive, whose name I quickly press to
memory.
She’s had that job since graduating college three years before, but
he’s retired and she’s been laid off.
I flip to a summary page behind the résumé that tells me my
backstory, and read on, hearing Liam talking on his phone about some
meeting. An announcement is made about electronic items and I read
faster. Amy Bensen has scored a three-month position handling the
personal affairs of a private businessman who is both a friend of her
ex-boss and overseas for that time period. Her new boss will be providing
an apartment near his personal home that is empty and will need to be
monitored. There is a comment typed in bold and underlined. You arenot