She crossed her legs Indian style, sighing into the distance. “He’s my divorce lawyer.”
Jack’s eyes flew to her.
“Anthony has made this entire process hell on Earth. It’s been three years, back and forth, with this guy.”
“Anthony. Your husband?”
“Ex-husband.”
“Not until the divorce is finalized. At best, you’re separated.”
“Can you stop being a lawyer for two minutes and allow me to live in my fantasy world? Am I still married to Anthony on paper? Yes. But he stopped being my husband a long time ago.”
Jack clasped his hands and brought them to his face, leaning his chin into them.
“The trial is in three weeks, and I just want it over with. I just want my money,” she said. “I had to call my lawyer, the only person who cares that I’m alive, to make sure Anthony doesn’t see this plane crash as an opportunity to push up the trial, knowing that I’ll miss it—”
“And the judge rules in his favor by default.”
Nina nodded, cutting a look at him. “I have to get back to New York.”
“No judge would rule against you when Mother Nature has taken hold like this.”
“You don’t know my judge.”
“Once we get back to New York, if he gives you shit—”
“She.”
Jack clicked his tongue. “What’s her name?”
“The Honorable Eleanor Perkins.”
He whistled.
“Sounds like you know her,” she said.
“Unfortunately.”
Nina laughed. “I was five minutes late to the preliminary hearing—totally not my fault, by the way. She’s hated my guts ever since.”
“Regardless. If she gives you a problem, call me.”
“Who are you?” Cutting a look at him, she pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “Well, you’re not warm.”
“Come on. Just one traumatized Delta Airlines Passenger giving advice to another.” He moved closer. “Look. I spent my first five years in the industry at the largest firm in Manhattan. Straight from Harvard Law and into the shark tank. There isn’t a single judge in the city that I can’t reach, not even Perkins. She’s tough, but it’s all smoke and mirrors. As a woman in her field, she has to be tough. I know how to wear her down.”
“Why would you do that?”
Jack went to answer, clapped his mouth shut, and then met her eyes. “Neither of us are shouldering the strongest numbers are we? Maybe we could turn your zero into a one.” He shrugged. “And my four into a five.”
Nina forced her eyes away, and when she finally looked back, it was clear she’d fought back tears. “Thank you, Jack.”
“Wow. Jack, huh? Not Aries? Or Aries Lawyer? Or Fucking Aries Lawyer? Or Unimaginable Aries Lawyer?”
“For now.”
They shared a smile, but just as quickly as the sweet moment was there; it was sliced in half, dissipating into the passing air when the train slowed significantly, making them both teeter and lose their balance.
Jack took hold of her arm, and she did the same to him, drinking in the smile that spread on his lips.
“It’s just a turn,” he whispered, his eyes falling to her own smiling mouth before licking his lips. “You had to climb to the roof of the train, right?”
“You acted like you didn’t want me sitting next to you.”
“I told you. I’m aware that I have a problem.”
“A problem you have no plans to address.” She laughed. “Whatever. The view’s better up here anyway so…”
Jack’s breathing deepened. He searched her eyes before letting his gaze fall to her lips.
Their hands didn’t leave each other’s arms, and Nina tightened her fingers around his biceps, swallowing. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
Jack’s eyes, which hadn’t yet left her lips, grew hooded.
Nina gasped when he leaned in close, parting his plush lips and letting his eyes flutter closed. She pushed out of his hold, with a little more force than necessary, just as the train cleared the turn and began to speed up.
Jack’s eyes popped open at her retreat, just in time to find her scooting backward, away from him, her eyes wide with alarm.
He leaned forward when she kept scooting away, hoping she could see how close she was to the edge. “Be careful!”
But it was too late. If he thought he’d scared her a moment before, it was only because he’d yet to see the horror flashing across her eyes when she reached a hand behind her and realized it had nowhere to go.
“Shit!” Jack screamed, lunging for her when she tumbled over the edge of the train, flying onto his belly in his haste to catch her before she fell.
He did catch her, getting her around the wrist just as her body disappeared over the edge, but with nowhere to plant his feet, he couldn’t use his weight to his advantage, and she wasn’t exactly svelte, so her weight overwhelmed him and pulled him over the edge, too.
This is it, Jack thought, as they went careening into the dirt and tall grass below, this is how I’m going to die.
It wasn’t how he’d imagined it happening, being pulled off the roof of a moving train by a woman who he’d, quite appropriately, named after a natural disaster. As they went screaming to the ground, he was thankful that, at the very least, his sudden death would not be by his own hand.
***
Nina hit the ground first, the hard impact stealing a horrified scream from her lungs just as Jack landed next to her. The toe of his dress shoe connected with her eye as he crash-landed a few feet away from her. Her head flew to the side at the impact, and the pain was so sudden and severe she couldn’t even scream. She covered her eye with her hand and rolled onto her side, her mouth hanging open in shock.
Unaware that he’d just kicked her square in the face, Jack moaned as he rolled back and forth next to her, clutching the small of his back.
For a moment, there was silence. Shock. Disbelief. When they finally rolled toward each other, and their gazes met, realization hit, and their eyes widened.
“Stop!” they screamed, stumbling to their feet in unison before turning toward the train, which was rapidly moving away from them, horn tooting in the afternoon air.
“Fuck!” Nina was the first to break into a run. Her head fell as she gave every inch of energy she had to the act of moving her legs, which still trembled from the fall. She hadn’t realized how fast that train had actually been moving until she found herself chasing after it; arm outstretched, and fingers clawed. “Wait!” she cried, voice hoarse from exertion. It wasn’t until she saw Jack’s long legs jetting passed her, flexed arms pumping, that she realized the hoarse gasps were actually coming from him. It hadn’t taken long for him to outrun her.
“Stop!” he begged, waving a frantic hand in the air, his own fingers outstretched as he moved.
Nina was the first to give up, sure if she ran for another second her lungs would crawl up out of her throat and kill her instantly. She bent over, clutching her knees before exploding into a fit of coughs, positive that, if her lungs didn’t leave her body, another of her vital organs seemed well on their way. “Holy balls,” she wheezed, the wind blowing her curls into her eyes when she looked up. In the distance, Jack had thrown in the towel too, one hand in his hair and the other braced at the small of his back, watching as the moving train disappeared over a hill.
Nina shook her head. How could something that appeared to be moving so slowly, be going so damn fast?
Her eyes ran down the back of Jack’s body. It heaved with his own fervent effort to catch his breath. Nina couldn’t help it as her gaze lingered on the tight globes of his ass, sitting high in those unforgiving gray slacks, taunting her. If she wasn’t so stunned at what had just happened, she was sure she could sit there and watch that beautiful ass of his in action all day. She imagined the hard work that tight ass must put in when he was pumping a woman, working out his perpetual frustration in the most
beautiful way. The strength he surely put into every thrust, every stroke, had to be one of a kind. Her parched lips fell open at the thought.
Unfortunately, he turned to face her before she could truly appreciate where her mind was taking her, and there was nothing beautiful about the look in his eyes.
Nina pushed herself to a standing position when he pointed a finger at her, and she stumbled back when he began to stomp forward, eyes manic and teeth bared.
“You,” he breathed through those clenched teeth, jamming his finger at her. His voice rose. “You!”
“Me?” Nina pointed a finger at her chest, looking around the wide expanse of grass and trees. “You’re blaming this on me? Oh no, Aries. This is not my fault.” She finally stopped stumbling back when she realized the audacity of this bastard to blame her for what had just happened, and when he came within a few feet of her, breathing heavily through his nostrils and nearly bumping his chest to hers, she raised her chin and matched his body language.
“Of course this is your fault,” he breathed. “This entire nightmare has been your fault, from the moment that goddamn gate agent cleared your standby-ass and printed you a first class ticket!”
“Oh, I see. So I produced the lightning storm that flashed across the entire East Coast? I sent the biggest hurricane New York’s ever seen spiraling right into the heart of the city? I forgot the turn off the ovens in the back of that plane? I sent the plane careening to the ground? That was all me, Jack?”
“Jesus Christ, you’re crazy.” He turned his back to her and began away. Two seconds of taking in the massive grassland, which seemed to stretch on for miles, he seemed to realize he had nowhere to go because he turned back and zeroed in on her again. “I swear to God, you make me wish I had gone down with that plane.”
She smirked at his melodrama. “You did go down with that plane, Jack, and so did the other hundred people who were on it with you, or have you already forgotten that you aren’t the only person alive in this world? Fucked up shit happens all the time. Of course, a Greenwich pretty boy is the only one constantly freaking out over the smallest things.”
“We just fell off the edge of a moving train.”
“It’s the Amtrak’s smallest train. Not even ten feet tall. I’ve taken longer falls off a jungle gym.”
“A moving train, Nina.”
She crossed her arms tight. “You caught me off guard,” she said, her voice going lower.
Jack’s face relaxed at her words; his shoulders did too. He stood taller and looked off into the distance, away from her, before licking his lips.
“In fact, call me crazy… but I’m pretty sure this is your fault.” She took a step closer to him, jamming her finger into his chest.
He kept his head turned but cut his eyes at her, watching her from the corners before licking his shining lips.
She smiled, noticing the way that cold gaze of his fell right to her lips, taking in the sight. “You tried to kiss me.”
Jack turned his back to her and began walking away. This time, he didn’t look back.
She followed, laughing. “You tried to kiss me and, naturally, I scooted away, because the sight of an Aries lawyer who is so morose he’s practically postmortem leaning in to show even the tiniest sliver of affection freaked me the fuck out.”
Jack froze and turned back to her in the next instant. He waited for her to approach him again until he could feel her breath, still strangled, on his lips, until he could see his own breath catching her curls, helping them dance against the wind. He clenched his fists. “I did not try to kiss you.”
“You tried to kiss me.”
He turned away again, moving slower.
“Why are you stomping away like you have any idea where the hell you’re going?”
“Because I need to get the hell away from you.”
“Looks like you’re on your way straight into a densely wooded area.”
“Terrific. Maybe a grizzly will do me a solid and give me a paw straight to the face. If I’m lucky enough, it’ll kill me instantly, and I’ll never have to see you again.”
“Come on.”
He gasped when she took his arm from behind, turning to her halfway and catching her smiling face.
“You are so dramatic. God.” Her smile grew. “You don’t want a grizzly to claw your eyes out, and we both know it. Stop it.”
“It’s become astoundingly clear that if I spend another second in your presence, you’re going to get me killed regardless. Might as well cut out the middleman and let the grizzly finish me off now.”
She tugged at his arm. “Come on. I used to be a Girl Scout, and you’re going the wrong way.”
It was Jack’s turn to smile, an ironic smile, and he held an arm out, motioning to the area around them. “Okay, Chuck Norris, which way is the right way, huh? Which way is the right way in this never-ending expanse of grass and trees that all look the same, not a hint of human life in sight?”
She released his arm and pointed in the opposite direction. “If you hadn’t been so busy trying to kiss me on that train, you would’ve seen the tiny town we passed a couple of miles that way.”
Jack tore his eyes away from her and took one, two three seconds, before he looked back, his lips tight. “I did not try to kiss you.”
She began moving away, holding his eyes for as long as she could before she turned away from him completely, making her way toward the tattered train tracks.
It wasn’t until she set her foot on the first wooden slat of the tracks that she looked down.
Her smile bloomed when she saw a large shadow growing next to hers, telling her that, albeit with great hesitance, he was right behind her.
***
The girl scout in Nina had done them proud, and right on time. As she cleared the knee-breaking grassy hill and found herself greeted by a sprawling, lonely truck stop diner in the distance, she and Jack were on their last legs.
She framed the diner with her hands. “I never thought I’d be this happy to see a shitty diner that they should’ve left in the eighties.” She turned with a grin. “See. I was right, wasn’t I?”
Jack lifted an eyebrow high on his face, his chest heaving from their long walk and the hill they’d just been forced to climb. He came up next to her and stopped, crouching down.
She watched him catch his breath, nodding her head toward the stop. “Let’s hit that restaurant.”
“I’m hitting the road. There must be a train station nearby.”
“How in the world do you think you’re going to get yourself a seat on another train, a spot on another aircraft, or a bed in another hotel room? All your vouchers have dried up—”
“Only because I’ve had the great misfortune of traveling next to you, a hurricane in the flesh.”
“If being with me is so terrible, then why are you still here, Aries?”
“I’ve told you a hundred times that I want to be left alone, but you won’t allow me to be. I just want to be alone, Nina.”
“You say ‘leave me alone,’ but yet here you are. Still right next to me, when you’ve had every opportunity not to be. If I’ve learned anything in my short time on this Earth, it’s that people are never, ever who they tell you they are. The words you say out loud will never mean half as much as the ones you don’t.”
“And what words aren’t I saying? What am I not saying, Nina? Since you know so goddamned much?” Jack made a face at her and then turned away, hiding his eyes.
She smiled at the back of his head. “Face it, Aries. You need me. Go ahead and let yourself need me. I promise it won’t hurt as badly as you think it will.”
He pressed his hands to his hips, glaring at the diner. “I’ll hitch a ride with one of these truckers.”
“And from the cozy hotel room I’ll be in tonight, I’ll see the news report talking about the dead body they found in a ditch because some jackoff was stupid enough to hitchhike. No. You’re coming with me.” She took his arm and began toward
the diner.
“Just…” He reclaimed his arm, wobbling, eyes jamming shut as he stumbled from one foot to the next. “Just get out of my life, Nina.”
She held her arms out. “How long has it been since you ate something? You can hardly stand on your own two feet. And, I gotta be honest, you’re a far cry from the fox I sat next to on that plane yesterday afternoon. You’re beginning to look… dare I say it… normal.”
“Should I be worried that I look normal?”
“I think so. ‘Cos, Aries?” She shook her head with a smile. “There ain’t nothing normal about you.” She took his sleeve again, and this time, he didn’t fight. “Let’s get some food and water in that belly before you drop dead right here. Come on… the real measure of a man is knowing when to give in and let the woman take over.”
Jack covered his forehead with his hand. “Fine… fine… just… please stop talking.” He allowed her to pull him. “Stop talking now.”
6
The middle aged waitress with a salt and pepper ballerina bun on the top of her head and a lime green apron tied too tightly around her healthy waist dropped another plate of pancakes and sausage onto Jack and Nina’s overflowing table. It joined a mountain of waffles, an assortment of omelets, a pile of bacon, and two steaming cups of coffee.
“Thank you so much.” Nina smiled up at her.
“I don’t know where you’re going to put it all, sugar.” The waitress beamed, her baby blue eye shining.
In mid-bite, Nina motioned across the wobbly diner table, where Jack had forgotten there was still a world spinning around him as he gave all his attention to the food he was shoveling in his mouth.
“Never underestimate a man who hasn’t eaten in 72 hours.” Nina laughed.
“72 hours?” The waitress cast a horrified look at Jack. “I was wondering when he was going to come up for air. Now I understand why he can’t.” She chuckled, setting a hand on Jack’s shoulder, one he didn’t acknowledge. “Let me get you some more orange juice, sweetness.”
Again, Jack didn’t respond, moving between plates and bowls like he was following a playbook in his head, every once in a while pausing just long enough to take a few hearty chugs of orange juice before he was diving in again.
Lightning Strikes (The Almeida Brothers Trilogy #3) Page 7
