The Wedding Fling

by Meg Maguire

  Another smile, one that gave him a dimple. “I do.”

  Jackie broke in. “He’s your pilot, dear.”

  “Oooh.” Leigh offered a dopey grin. “Sorry. I thought you were a passenger.”

  “Only if you feel like doing the flying. In which case I’ll happily take a nap.”

  She laughed. “No, no, you do the flying.”

  “Okay then.” He gave Jackie a salute and headed for the rear door, Leigh following him into the sunshine.

  “You’re American,” she said.

  “Guilty.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “In some former life I recall living in New York City.” If he’d ever had a jarring city accent it was gone now, and his voice matched his looks. He was easy on both the eyes and ears.

  “Wow. You’ve made quite a lifestyle change.”

  He stopped short a few paces from the building and turned, crossing his arms over his chest, seeming suddenly taller. “Before I let you board, we have a little issue to clear up.”

  Apprehension tightened her middle. “Oh?”

  “You’ve put me in a tricky spot.”

  “Did I? I’m paying for both tickets.”

  He shook his head, his smile more mischievous than warm, shifting all the flattering assumptions she’d too hastily made about him. “Your mother left about ten messages demanding I don’t take you off this island.”

  Leigh frowned, feeling a touch of panic.

  He leaned closer. “Bit of an awkward position for me. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”

  Her attention jumped everywhere, from his face to the plane to the water. “Can I bribe you?”

  He straightened, expression brightening. “Sure. Knock yourself out.”

  She rifled through her purse, hiding her irritation. “A hundred?”

  He accepted the colorful Barbadian bill and pocketed it.

  Leigh released a breath, as relieved as she was annoyed. Her shopping trip had taught her that prices here were highly negotiable, a bit of island culture she might need to get savvier at, lest the locals fleece her at every opportunity. This latest swindle set her back about fifty American dollars, but no price was too high, not in exchange for getting her where she needed to be.

  “So we can go?”

  “We can.” He led her down the long aluminum dock. The plane was small, its bottom half painted a cheerful aqua, top half gleaming white and emblazoned with the name The Passport.

  Leigh’s unscrupulous pilot looked over his shoulder. “The rumor mill at the resort said this is your honeymoon.”

  “It is.”

  “Think you may have forgotten to pack your husband. Or did he get misplaced in transit?”

  She smiled to cover the pang she felt. “Change of plans.”

  * * *

  WHEN THEY REACHED the plane, Will took Leigh’s bag and stowed it in the cabin. She traveled light, for a celebrity. He pictured her faceless fiancé back in L.A., sitting on a bed beside a pile of clothes and swimsuits that also hadn’t made the cut. Poor bastard.

  Will hopped back down to the dock. “Just you and me, so you have a choice—sit back here or play copilot.”

  “Which is better?”

  “Tough to beat the view in the cockpit.”

  Tough to beat a chance to have her as his captive audience, as well. He might not get many chances like this again, and he was secretly pleased when she said, “Okay. Sure.”

  He secured the cabin and she followed him to the front, fumbling her way up the short ladder that connected the float to the cockpit. She settled into the far seat, taking in the console and instruments. When Will buckled himself in and donned sunglasses, she followed suit. She squinted at his license, displayed in a plastic frame mounted above the windshield.

  “William Burgess.”

  “Captain William Burgess,” he corrected officiously. “But Will is fine.”

  “Leigh Bailey.”

  He offered his finest pilot’s handshake, decisive and confident, qualities a person ought to value in a man charged with transporting her across sea and sky.

  As Will prepped for takeoff, Leigh reached out to touch the panel of a gauge on the console. Scowling, he snatched her hand away and set it firmly on her knee.

  “Don’t get handsy,” he said, pulling a cloth from a compartment and buffing away whatever fingerprints Leigh may have left on the glass. He might not dress like a captain, but this plane was more than his meal ticket—it was his baby. And he didn’t let strangers poke and prod and leave smudges on his baby.

  Leigh frowned, looking annoyed. “Sorry.”

  After a brief safety spiel, Will started The Passport, and soon enough the beaches of Barbados were slipping by from several hundred feet up. He wondered what she was thinking, given her intent gaze. Maybe the same things he always did—all that sand, all that water. All this, all to herself.

  He spoke over the drone of the engine. “You didn’t need to bribe me, you know.”

  She frowned again.

  “It’s your name on the ticket. Doesn’t bother me if your old lady’s got her panties in a twist about what you’re up to.” He flashed her a grin, one that made her cheeks flush from discomfort, he guessed. “Want your money back?”

  “Nah. You earned it.” Her casual tone was a put-on, Will could tell.

  “Must be nice to be able to take or leave a hundred bucks.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Nice to be able to take or leave a husband.” It was a mean jab, he knew, but bound to earn him a response, a bit of information about his passenger. Maybe a sound slap, had he not been operating a plane. “So which did you do?” Will prompted. “Take him or leave him?”

  “I left him,” she said coolly.

  “Good for you. Hope you’ve got a lovely settlement coming to you.” An even lower blow, but Will had accepted a generous offer to collect information on this woman, and he didn’t like the thought of tweezing it out with some sympathetic, smooth-talker act. He’d goad it out of her. At least that way he wouldn’t be exploiting some false confidence.

  Her face burned and she turned to glare at him. “That’s a really rude thing to say.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes, it’s really rude.”

  “Good thing I don’t fly for tips.”

  She blinked, clearly incredulous, and shook her head. All that friendliness she’d showed him in the terminal fell away, surely sinking deep beneath the waves below.

  “Not too late to swim, if you’re offended by the service.”

  “No, thank you. Though I suspect I’ll be sitting in the cabin on the way back.”

  “Probably wise. My old man was a cabbie in New York. My gifts of customer service are purely genetic.”

  “A very rare and malicious disorder, I’m sure. Thank goodness you’re not contagious.”

  He grinned, rather enjoying the dig.

  “And since you’re so nosy, you may as well know there’s no settlement, because I didn’t get married.”

  Will swallowed. “Duly noted.” He’d expected to feel some kind of triumph at such an informational coup, but he didn’t. It actually felt bad, a nauseous little twist in his gut.

  “I was just teasing, you know.” Will met her eyes as much as was possible through two pairs of shades. “Taking the edge off?”

  “More like sharpening it.”

  “Not my intention.”

  “I hope your landing approaches are smoother than your social ones.”

  “Sorry.” He didn’t make an effort to sound especially sorry. Nausea notwithstanding, the tactless approach was working. “I’ve never had a runaway Hollywood bride in that seat before.”

  She pursed her lip
s. “Do you know who I am?”

  Enough to know some sleazebag back in L.A. will pay good money to hear what you’re up to. “There’s only a few types who vacation at this place, and when they’re women coming from Los Angeles, I can usually narrow it to actress or model or Hollywood wife. And we’ve ruled out wife.”

  Leigh held her tongue.

  “Not that I need to know,” Will said with a theatrical sigh of disinterest. “I’m just the chauffeur.”

  Leigh countered with a haughtiness that struck him as unpracticed. “I have a chauffeur, sometimes, and he’s far better at diplomacy than you.”

  “I have no doubt.” Will gave her another searching look. She wasn’t the woman he’d been expecting, and fruitful though it was, she didn’t deserve the antagonism...but he couldn’t deny he liked the way his teasing made her cheeks go pink. Still, he softened his tone. “Don’t take this personally if you can help it, but I didn’t have you pegged as a woman scorned.”

  “No?”

  He shook his head. “More like an escapee. Thought maybe I was your getaway driver.”

  Her lips parted, but no reply followed. Her look said he was right, that she had escaped. From what, Will couldn’t guess, but one thing seemed clear—her flight was no publicity stunt.

  He felt another pang in his middle.

  Will had designed his life as free from obligations and guilt as humanly possible, expressly to avoid the ugly emotions he felt now. He didn’t want to report on this woman anymore, but at the end of the day, she was nothing to him. He needed the money for things that mattered. Things that mattered far more than a few innocuous tidbits leaked to some slimeball editor thousands of miles away in Hollywood.

  Leigh’s hackles seemed to lower. “You are,” she finally said. “You’re my getaway driver.”

  She relaxed back into her seat and they were quiet for ten minutes or more.

  Will pointed into the distance. “See that?”

  Leigh squinted at a dot in the turquoise ocean. “Is that it?”

  “Yup. That’s your hideout.”

  “Wow. That is private.”

  “Eleven square miles of paradise. Nothing but white sand and swaying palms and room service.”

  “Sounds heavenly. Though it’s probably nothing exotic to you.”

  Will laughed. “Are you kidding? I’ve lived on that tiny speck for seven years now, and I still wake up every day pinching myself.” The second he abandoned the prying, the sourness in his stomach eased.

  “You live there?”

  He nodded. “Fly people back and forth twice a day for a passable stipend.”

  “Wow.”

  “You say that a lot, you know.”

  “Oh. Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “You’re very easy to impress,” Will said as the plane began its descent. “I like that in a woman.”

  “Yes. That would be a requisite for a man of your charms.”

  He laughed again, then realized he might be in danger of actually liking Leigh Bailey, celebrity runaway bride or not. That didn’t bode well for his gig.

  The island grew closer, and Will could make out two of the villas from this angle, two tiny blue swimming pools, two docks poking out into the waves.

  “So you are famous, right?” he asked, banking the plane left.

  “Not crazy-famous. B-list, I guess. Maybe B plus.”

  “What are you famous for?” She’d been in some films he’d never heard of, but that was all he knew about her.

  “When I was in high school, outside San Francisco, I was really into dance. And one summer I was fed up over not getting called back for theater auditions, so my mom drove me to L.A. to try out for a movie. And I got it.”

  “What kind of movie?”

  “About a shy, bookworm girl who goes away for a summer to Miami and meets all these hot-blooded ballroom dancers, and falls in love with this boy. Just another star-crossed teen romance with a dance-off at the end. That’s what I’m most known for. And I did a few romantic comedies and a couple indie films, and got talked into a cosmetics campaign. But nothing hugely amazing.”

  “Looking to be the next big thing?”

  “Quite the opposite.”

  Will’s brow furrowed in surprise, and he hoped she didn’t notice.

  “I’d happily wake up tomorrow as a complete nobody.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but running away from your wedding’s not gonna do much to keep you out of the spotlight.”

  “No kidding.”

  “But if you’re looking to be a nobody, you’ve picked the best place on earth to do it.”

  “Actually... You let me bribe you into taking me this far. Any chance I can bribe you into keeping your mouth shut to any other passengers or resort staff?”

  “Discretion comes standard. In fact, I’ve already forgotten your name, Miss...?”

  She smiled grimly, and Will tried to ignore the fresh stab of guilt his lie triggered.

  * * *

  AFTER A SHAKY LANDING, Will climbed out and secured the craft to a long aluminum dock, then offered Leigh a hand as she disembarked.

  “Thanks.”

  He fetched her suitcase and made a beeline for a huge stucco building with terra-cotta roof tiles and a grand arched entryway. She followed, breathing in the sea-scented island air as the plane’s diesel smell faded. She took in the white sand, blue sky, her pilot’s backside...the latter merely to spite Dan. Not because she still had any lingering curiosity about kissing this galling man. Certainly not. Though Will did retain some appeal. She’d gotten so used to everyone telling her what they thought she wanted to hear, Will’s tactlessness had a strange allure.

  He held the door as they reached the reception building, the lobby equal parts posh and primitive with its huge windows and fountain and exotic plants.

  He set her suitcase before the unmanned reception counter and tapped a silver bell.

  “Thank you,” Leigh said.

  Will didn’t leave, and she bit her lip. His proximity made her feel funny. Naked. “Sorry. Am I supposed to tip you?”

  He smiled. “I’m driving you to your villa, once you’ve checked in.”

  “You do that, too?”

  “I do for that unit. It’s not far from my place.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you may tip me for that, incidentally.”

  Leigh’s retort was cut off as a harried young Caribbean woman appeared.

  “So sorry to keep you waitin’. Mrs. Cosenza?” Ah, another dagger in the breast.

  “Miss Bailey,” Will corrected, tucking his hands in his pockets.

  The woman looked to Leigh. “Oh?”

  “Yes, just me. It’s under Cosenza, but I... Well, anyhow. Change of plans.” She ought to have that printed on a T-shirt.

  The woman got busy typing. “So only one key, then. No problem at all. You’re in the Shearwater Villa.” She procured a plastic card and swiped it across a device before handing it to Leigh. “Let me jus’ get a driver ’round for you.”

  “I’m on it,” Will said.

  The woman frowned first at him, then Leigh. “You really want this bum escortin’ you?”

  Leigh looked from one to the other.

  The woman laughed. “Just kiddin’—you’re in good hands. Terrible vehicle, but very good hands. Now anything you need, you’ll find the phone numbers in the binder waitin’ on your coffee table. You have a lovely visit, miss.”

  Leigh followed Will outside to a small parking lot.

  He held up her suitcase. “Anything delicate in here?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good.”

  They walked past several shiny white SUVs to a rusty old pickup. Will put her bag in the
bed. He opened the passenger side and once again Leigh buckled herself in as copilot.

  Will slid behind the wheel. Just to test him, she tapped the dashboard provocatively.

  “Go nuts. It’s only the plane I’m a fascist about.” The truck started with a mournful noise. He drove them onto a smooth gravel road, heading inland. Leigh unrolled her window to hear the birds and welcome the sun on her arm.

  “Final leg of your great escape,” Will said.

  She nodded.

  “How long do you get to play fugitive, before you turn yourself in?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Very nice.”

  Already this place had her pain fading to a dull throb. Reality could shove it, as long as she was in paradise. She smiled at the decadence of the idea and shut her eyes, angling her face to catch the sunshine.

  “Two weeks of surf and sand and rum,” Will said, giving voice to her thoughts.

  “And silence.”

  “My mistake.”

  “We have plenty of surf and sand and rum in Los Angeles, anyway. I picked this place for the seclusion.” She turned to smirk at him. “How did you end up down here, anyhow?”

  He made a face as though he’d never considered it before. “Got my pilot’s license when I was nineteen, moved to Cancún. Moved to Nassau. San Juan. Woke up here seven years ago.”

  Sounded a bit like Leigh’s life, waking up somewhere unexpected...only this man had flown himself to his destination, whereas she’d merely let herself be shuttled. She was done being swept. She might not know where she ultimately wanted to end up, but she’d brought herself this far, and against everyone’s wishes. Felt awfully good. She eyed Will’s hands on the wheel, wishing she was driving.

  The truck trundled out of a small palm forest and past a tiny settlement of colorful houses on stilts, all of the milling residents unmistakably island people. Will raised his hand at everyone who greeted him, and engaged in a playful fake argument with one of the men, laughing as he turned his attention back to the road. How weird it must be to live someplace where friends were the vast majority of the people one encountered, strangers the oddities. Weird and comforting.