21

Our flight home wasn’t overbooked, so we both got to sit in first class together. I refused the complimentary champagne this go-around, because I was already sleepy from my schedule being thrown off. It was hard to shift from bartender days to normal days.

When we’d been up in the air for about fifteen minutes, I asked him a few questions about his mysterious ginger-haired friend, but he wouldn’t say much. Only that he would make some calls and let me know something later that night if he could manage it. After more drinks and snacks were served, I gave up on trying to pry information out of him.

The sun had set, so the pilot turned off the cabin lights. A few reading lamps switched on above the seats around us. I closed my eyes and turned toward the window, hoping that if I fell asleep, I wouldn’t snore.

“Did it at least work?”

“Huh?” I lifted my head to look at Lon. He was flipping though the in-flight magazine without looking at the pages; it was too dim to see anything.

“If you regret what we did, I understand, but did it at least work?”

Now I was wide awake. I pushed myself up in my seat.

“Not so far, no. But why would you think I regretted it? You’re the one acting all weird. Can’t you just”—I lowered my voice—“read me?”

“I’m not acting weird. I’ve been trying to read you all day. I can’t. You’re chaotic.”

“Umm, you are too acting weird. You’ve gone back to being all clammy and Neanderthal. I mean, I didn’t expect for you to start calling me ‘baby,’ but I thought you’d at least be cool about it. I’m not going to latch onto you like some love-sick brat, or cry and beg you for a date or anything, sheesh. I didn’t regret it, but I’m starting to now.”

I crossed my legs and arms at the same time, settling back and staring at the seat in front of me. Until I got riled up again.

“P.S.,” I added angrily, trying to keep my voice down, “When you first told me about your ability, I thought that trying to keep my feelings hidden was going to be the worst part about being around you. Guess what, it’s not.” I turned in my seat to look at him, pointing my finger into the center of his chest. “I couldn’t give a good goddamn if you know what I’m feeling anymore. The worst part is not being able to read you back. Being around you is so damn frustrating sometimes. The only way anyone could ever figure out your intentions is if they had some kind of special ability like you’ve got.”

For several long moments, we were actors in an old Western, standing alone in the middle of a dirt road. We stared each other down until he finally dropped his eyes. I won. Yippee.

“I thought I was being plain,” he said after a few seconds. His voice was low and even.

“What are you talking about now?” I griped.

“I paid you compliments.”

What in the world was he referring to? Compliments? “You mean when you told me that I had a nice ass?” I asked, sarcastic.

“You do. I also told you your hair looked pretty.”

“No you didn’t. You said it was cute.”

“Same difference. I invited you to my house that first time—”

“You insisted that I come over because the books couldn’t leave your library.”

“—and made you dinner, which you could have refused. Introduced you to my son.”

“He actually introduced himself,” I mumbled.

“And trusted you to take care of him, even though you’re a magnet for trouble right now. What else? I told you personal things about my life that I don’t normally share with other people.” I started to protest, but he bulldozed me over. “I’ve tried to make sure you’re safe, even though you’ll probably just say that you didn’t need my help—and you probably don’t, because you’re a better magician than me. On top of all that, I told you that I was available.”

“What? You certainly did not.”

“Keep your voice down,” he said, looking behind him toward the couple across the aisle.

“Don’t shush me,” I whispered.

“And, yes, I did. I told you I wasn’t dating anyone.”

“You were drinking wine with some dishy woman when you—”

He narrowed his eyes. “I’m not even answering that again. It was work, and I couldn’t possibly be less interested in Sarah.”

I huffed and looked away. Then I thought about what he was saying, and what he really meant by it. I normally considered myself pretty sharp, but it took me several moments to get it. When I did, a strange tightness filled my chest, and I immediately tried to stomp it out.

“Garbled, chaotic,” he complained, covering his eyes with his hand in frustration. “Can’t you just stop all that and be decisive one way or another?”

I bit the inside of my lip and silenced a random song that was repeating in my head. After a little while, everything began sliding into place in my mind, and I tried to stand outside myself and look at it objectively.

He was attracted to me? Well, hell. I guess I could admit to myself that I was attracted to him too. That’s what this boiled down to, right? Attraction? A simple thing, really. A thing that happens every day to random people everywhere. It was just poor timing on our part, because of what was going on in my life. And because of our age difference. Well, as much as we joked about it, maybe that didn’t really matter so much after all.

It was still too fresh to know what it would amount to down the road, and I sure as hell didn’t know what or where my life was going to be in a few days, but … there it was. Huh. I picked at the fabric of the armrest between us. I didn’t guard what I was thinking, and I didn’t try to confuse it.

“That’s better,” he whispered. “Thank you.” I looked up to find him smiling at me. His strange halo looked more gold than green. He lifted the armrest between us and pushed it up into the seats. “Now then, will you please kiss me again? You might not be willing to beg, but that doesn’t mean I’m above it.”

He gave me the most beautiful grin, and I replied with a short, happy laugh. Then I scooted closer, tentatively, and complied with his request.

Our second attempt at kissing was even better than the first. No nervousness, no pretense that it was for any other reason than the fact that we both wanted it. It was slow and deliberate and lingering, and it created a heat within me that spread like wildfire, lighting up every cell in my body.

It ended as slowly as it started, and I couldn’t bring myself to pull too far away. He must have felt the same way, because he rested his forehead against mine as my body continued to hum for him. The scent of his skin was intoxicating; he smelled safe and dangerous, comforting and alien, all at the same time. I breathed him in greedily. Then we slunk down sideways in our seats facing each other, hunched over together. He picked up my hands in his and held them as if they were made of the antique paper in one of his books— like they might crumble in his fingers.

I leaned forward and whispered in his ear, a little giddy, “What the hell are we doing?”

“I don’t have any fucking idea,” he answered. “But I wish we weren’t on an airplane full of people because I’d really, really like to stick my hand down your pants again.”

I muffled a giggle into his shoulder, which quaked a couple times with silent laughter in reply. Then I pushed his hair away from his ear. “Honestly, I’d really, really like to do the same to you,” I whispered, lips grazing his earlobe, “for starters.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he whispered back. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m very close to dragging you off to that tiny restroom over there like the Neanderthal I apparently am, and you’re only making it worse.”

“Those restrooms aren’t big enough for one person, much less two. Unless the first-class restrooms are bigger?”

“They’re not.”

Still, I considered it. We gave each other loopy grins just as the cabin lights came back on, blinding me, and the pilot began making the announcement for the final descent.

“Ugh,” I complained, squinting. “This is so not fair.”

Sitting back up, we reluctantly faced forward again. For the remaining minutes of the flight we sat close, knees touching. After we landed and began a short taxi to the gate, as I leaned forward to fish out my purse from underneath the seat in front of me, Lon’s cell buzzed.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked down at the screen. “Not even at the gate and the little bastard’s already bugging me,” he murmured before answering the phone with an impatient “What?”

I chuckled to myself, then felt him stiffen next to me.

“Slow down. Where are you exactly?”

My heart began racing in alarm.

“You’re not going to run out of air. Calm down.” He stopped to listen to whatever Jupe was saying. “We won’t call the police, I promise. I’m getting off the plane now. We’ll be there in half an hour. Don’t open the door, you hear me? Jupe? Jupe?”

He pulled the phone away and looked at the screen in shock, then shoved it in his pocket and stood up.

“Sir, please sit down. It will be a couple of minutes before the Jetway is in place.”

Yanking me up out of my seat, he pushed forward and got in the flight attendant’s face. “My son has been kidnapped. Let me off this damn plane right now.”

Her eyes widened as a low rumble rippled through the passengers around us, then she turned and ran to the phone on the wall next to the pilot’s door.

“Lon?” I yelled, shaking his arm.

His eyes were blank as he turned to face me. “It’s Riley Cooper,” he said. “She’s got Jupe cornered in a closet at school.”