“Here you go Ms. Adams.” The agent handed back her card, passport and then shortly after handed over her ticket. “Your flight leaves out of terminal six, gate sixty-five. We hope you enjoy your flight.”
With the first part of her mission accomplished, Joey flashed the man a bright smile. “Thanks. I’m sure I will.”
In the next minute, she cursed the ticket agent for failing to mention that terminal six was located in the next state. Racing to her plane was like the Olympic tryouts. When the gate came into view, she spotted an attendant closing the door.
“Wait! I’m coming! I’m coming!” She flailed out her arms and made a spectacle of herself, but she did manage to stop them.
“You just made it,” the gate attendant joked and took her ticket.
“Yeah, lucky me,” Joey panted.
The woman’s smile widened. “Enjoy your flight.”
Joey rushed through the door and waited to breathe a sigh of relief until she boarded the plane.
She headed down the aisle while the pilot rattled off about their expected arrival time in Italy.
“Sixteen hours?” Joey’s head snapped up when she realized what the captain said.
“We’re getting ready for takeoff,” a stewardess stated from behind. “Ma’am, can I help you find your seat?”
Joey turned toward the platinum blond with brunette roots. “I got it.” She smiled and then returned to reading the numbers above the seats. When she located 8A, she was pleased to see it was a window seat, and then groaned surprised when she recognized the man seating in 8B.
“Oh, dear God.”
The famous director pulled his eyes from his cluttered papers and met her gaze. “Joey?” He blinked in surprise.
She huffed and rolled her eyes. “So far this trip is getting off to a bad start.”
“Ma’am?” the stewardess nudged.
“Oh, let me help you.” Ryan unfastened his seatbelt and helped Joey place her carry-on luggage in the overhead compartment.
“What’s the price of helping me this time--or are you gong to shove your tongue down my throat again?”
“Is that a question or a request?” He winked. “Aisle or window?”
She waved her ticket stub. “Window.”
Ryan swept out his arm. “After you.”
She shook her head and took her seat.
“I know that fragrance,” he said, thoughtfully. "Pleasures, right?”
“Yeah. Estee Lauder.” Joey eyed him as she strapped on her seatbelt. “Should I be worried or concerned you know so much about female perfumes?”
“A little bit of both, I think.” He settled back into his seat. “So this is what you look like in regular clothes.” He gestured to her simple jeans and T-shirt attire. “I like it.”
“I’m glad it meets your approval,” she said cheekily, and then realized she was flirting, and composed herself. She took a deep breath as the plane pulled away from the gate.
Flying had never been on Joey’s list of favorite things. She endured it for business or pleasure from time to time, but it usually involved her sweating a lot of bullets and downing several mini-bottles of liquor.
“Are you all right?” Ryan questioned.
“Huh? Oh, yeah.” She released the death grip on her chair and forced a smile. “I’m fine.”
The plane taxied toward the runway, and Joey’s farcical smile collapsed in on itself and she began to singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Now, if only she could carry a tune.
Amusement colored Ryan’s face as he folded his arms. “I take it you don’t like flying?”
“Uh, I don’t mind it,” she lied.
The plane jerked, and Joey unsuccessfully stifled a scream.
Ryan’s head rocked back as laughter burst from his chest. “You are a lousy liar.”
“Fine. I lied. I hate flying.” She shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”
The engines revved and Joey’s entire body tensed and the death grip on the chair returned. “Somewhere over the rainbow...”
Ryan studied her, while the plane raced down the runway.
“Oh, why am I doing this?” she whined, and slammed her eyes shut.
“You know what always helps me at times like these?” he asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
Joey peeled open one eye. “What?”
“I imagine making love to a beautiful woman.” A crooked grin sloped his face. “Say for instance…right now, I’m picturing you draped in something soft and lacy. Oh, let’s not forget those sexy stilettos.” He jiggled his groomed eyebrows.
“You’re what?” Joey thundered. Embarrassment and shock fused and scorched her neck, cheeks and ears.
“Oh, c’mon. It’s easy.” He leaned closer. “You give it a try. Just picture you and me lying naked on the beach.”
The plane lifted off the ground.
“I will do no such thing!” She pushed him back toward his seat. “I don’t know you.” How could she have been so wrong about him?
“I don’t know you either. What does that have to do with anything?” He grinned.
The plane steadily climbed higher.
“It has everything to do with everything,” she argued. “Don’t think that just because you’re some big-shot director I should be flattered by indecent proposals.”
“I didn’t propose anything.” He shrugged but held onto his smile. “I just suggested that you use your imagination.”
He leaned over once again and this time she leaned back to avoid his touch.
“Ah, what a beautiful view. Don’t you think?”
Joey turned and glanced out of the window, stunned to see they now glided smoothly through the cerulean-blue sky.
A soft bell dinged overhead.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have turned off the seat belt light. You are free to move about the plane.”
“That’s my cue to visit the little boy’s room. Excuse me, won’t you?” He winked, unfastened his seatbelt and bolted out of his chair.
Joey pulled her stunned and confused look from the window to watch him as he made a beeline to the restroom. Did he purposely distract her with that garbage about imagining her naked?
Her gaze shifted back to the window. It’s possible. Joey relaxed and felt silly. The other night Mr. Donovan had started off being a gentleman. The stunt he just pulled did help get her mind off take off and it was funny--not unlike something one of her sisters would have done.
Besides that, Mr. Donovan was a serious Hollywood player. Sitting next to him for sixteen hours should be like a dream come true. If only she had a few of her scripts on hand to pitch to him. Then again, he probably hated people constantly pitching movie ideas to him at inopportune times.
When Ryan finally returned to his seat, Joey met him with a bright smile.
“Looks like someone’s mood has improved.” He withdrew the stack of papers he’d stashed in the aisle seat. “Does this mean you gave my little exercise a try?”
“No.” Her lips widened. “But I do want to ask you something.”
“Shoot.” He removed a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket and slipped them on.
Joey paused and admired how distinguished the glasses made him. Why hasn’t this man made People’s Most Beautiful list? “That stuff you said back there--” she cleared her throat “--did you mean it?”
“Back where?” He asked nonchalantly, and kept his gaze focused on his paperwork.
“Back at take off,” she persisted. “Were you making all that stuff up about--” she glanced around and lowered her voice “--picturing me naked?”
He chuckled. “What’s the big deal? I’m sure I’m not the first man to do so.”
She blinked, dumbfounded.
Ryan glanced out the side of his frames, and another rumble of laughter tumbled from him. “My. My. My. You’re certainly a different woman from the one I met climbing through the men’s bathroom window the other night. Don’t tell me you’re a prude when it comes to nudity and dare I
say, sex?”
“I most certainly am not. I love sex,” she thundered, and then reddened when she drew curious looks from surrounding passengers. She flashed everyone a nervous smile and wished that she could shrivel up and disappear.
“Well, I don’t know about the rest of the passengers,” he whispered. “But I’m happy to hear you love sex. Then again, you know what they say about people who brag too much?”
Joey frowned.
“That they are the ones who aren’t getting any,” he said.
“You really are an asshole.”
“You keep saying that.” He winked and returned to his paperwork.
“It’s because it’s true.” Joey rolled her eyes. She had to endure sixteen hours of this? She would rather become a contestant on Fear Factor. How dare he even suggest that she was a prude! She was considered the footloose and fancy-free sister in the family.
She shifted in her seat and continued the argument in her head. Now lately, she hadn’t been her normal club-hopping self, but that was because Laurence was more of a homebody. A night on the town for him was attending the charity of the month with a bunch of doctors who all hinted at the famous faces they worked on.
She frowned. If that was true, why was Laurence at The Blue Diamond with Carlina Leoni--his fiancée? Joey shook her head and continued to mope. Carlina, a woman born into money and prestige, leapfrogged to fame when a sex tape of her and some heavy-metal star was stolen and sold over a gazillion copies over the Internet. Joey wasn’t that footloose and fancy-free.
“Okay. So I might not be the most experienced woman in the world,” she mumbled aloud. “But I am still going to win my man back.”
Ryan lowered his papers and studied her. “Are you talking about the same man you bitch-slapped in front of thousands of people last night?”
She shifted in her seat again. “I was upset.”
“So I gathered.” He folded his arms and warred whether to confessed that he’d also stuck up for her honor and decked the guy when she’d left. “Tell me. Do you and this Larry character do this often?”
“Do what?”
“Break up, get back together, break up, and get back together? Is this a game you two play so one day you can be on one of those crazy talk shows?”
“No, of course not. We’re very much in love.” Joey drew a deep breath. “I just need to remind him of that. That’s all.” Ryan’s chuckling crept under her skin. “What is so funny?”
“If you don’t know, I’m not about to tell you.” He shook his head. Was this the woman he’d considered calling when he returned to California? She was not the brightest bulb on the marquee, or the sharpest tool in the toolbox, or¾
“I know what your problem is,” Joey’s snide voice interrupted his assessment.
“And what is my problem?”
“You’ve never been in love.”
He responded with more laughter.
“Whatever. I know I’m right.” Joey turned and stared out at the clouds. How could she have thought this man was a gentleman?
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Joey crossed her arms and refused to look at him.
“But you are wrong. I have been in love. Many, many times, in fact.”
That declaration caught her attention, but she remained dubious. “I’m not talking about lust, Mr. Donovan.”
“Okay. So that takes about fifty people off the list. But it still leaves me with quite a list.”
“Fifty people?” Joey inched away as if he was contagious. “Just how many people have you been with?”
He smiled and his dimples winked at her. “I didn’t sleep with all of them or even half of them. I was just in love with them--sometimes in silence.”
“Okay. I’ll bite. Name one.”
“Adenika Towns.” Ryan rested his head back on his seat while his eyes turned dreamy. “She was a beautiful goddess with smooth, coal-black skin and with eyes so dark they looked like polished onyx. She always wore the finest dresses, and she had the thickest, longest pigtails in the schoolyard.”
It was Joey’s turn to laugh. “All right. You had me going for a minute.”
“Love is love. And I loved me some Adenika.”
She drew a deep breath, but could feel the corners of her mouth twitch upward.
“Is that a smile I see?”
Her lips ballooned wide. In that instant, she allowed her gaze to take in his deep-pitted dimples, his thousand-watt smile and his glossy black eyes. Damn, he was good-looking.
“And for the record--yes. I made it up.” He winked.
Joey blinked in confusion.
“At take off,” he reminded her. “I don’t know much about you, but I do know that you can’t sing.”
She laughed and relaxed, but when her gaze lowered to his hands, his fingers were crossed. She laughed. “You’re funny.”
He grinned and adjusted his spectacles. “Don’t tell anybody.”
Charmed, Joey laughed and stole another glance at the handsome man sitting beside her. Maybe the flight wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Ryan cleared his throat. “Now back to you loving sex.”
Then again...
Chapter 11
Ten hours into their sixteen-hour flight, most of the passengers in first-class had reclined the seats and rested their heads on small, borrowed pillows. There were a few light snorers and a couple of full-throttled bulldozers who sounded like they were slicing the plane in half.
Only Ryan and Joey’s overhead light remained on while they huddled together and exchanged stories.
“So it was love at first sight with you and Larry?” Ryan inquired, not bothering to veil his sarcasm.
“Not exactly,” Joey plunged ahead, either ignoring or not picking up on his tone. “The stars were just lined up correctly. I’m the right age, he meets all my qualifications—”
“What?”
Joey blinked. “What, what?”
“What ever happened to flowery prose or poetry? Things like ‘I knew we were meant for each other the moment his hand touched mine’ or ‘the first time we kissed a bolt of lightning shattered my world and I knew I could never live without him?’ Isn’t that the kind of crap women eat up?”
“Sure. In books and movies, which I love. But in real life, you need a little more science and a check list.”
His frustration mounted as he struggled to keep up with the conversation. “What’s so scientific about the stars being lined?”
“I don’t know. My psychic can explain things a little better than I can.”
Oh, yeah. She fits into Hollyweird quite nicely.
“I know what you’re thinking.” Joey smiled. “I’m not crazy. Well, maybe crazy in love.” She giggled.
Ryan rolled his eyes.
Look, love is worth fighting for and that’s all I’m doing.”
He could end this conversation, but his amusement grew with every word she uttered. She thought that she was a soldier for love. He believed she was crazy--in a cute amusing sort of way.
“So what’s your plan?” he asked, injecting a fake nonchalance into his voice. Again her big, beautiful brown eyes blinked at him.
“Plan?”
Ryan braided his fingers in his lap and then twirled his thumbs. It was hard not to be enchanted by her innocent, slash naïve, slash ditzy personality. “You do have a plan to win to win Dr. Benson back.” He smiled. “Your last one didn’t work out so well.”
Joey’s shoulders dipped as her confidence evaporated from her face. “Granted I wasn’t prepared for the fiancée bombshell and--wait. Did I tell you he was a doctor?”
“No...but it turns out I’m pretty good friend’s with his brother.”
“Ah, Cool Freddie.” She nods. “I met him once. Don’t think he cared for me.”
“I find that hard to believe,” he said without thought.
She frowned. “Why?”
“Well...” Ryan took the question as permission for his gaze t
o openly caress her face and figure. “You’re a very attractive woman. Any man would be proud to take you home.”
Her brows furrowed. “That’s pouring it on a little thick.”
Was she for real or was she fishing for another compliment? He needed to shift the conversation back to the subject at hand. “I’m still waiting to hear what your plan is?”
Again Joey drew a deep breath. “I’m going to talk to him,” she announced.
Ryan waited for her to elaborate, but she turned her attention to the window. He couldn’t help but ask, “Is that it? You’re just going to talk to him?”
“Yes,” she said calmly and braided her fingers together. “He told me yesterday morning that he loved me.”
Ryan’s brows shot up as he crossed his arms. “Did he now?”
“Yes. Well...at least he said so on his answering machine.”
“Uh-huh. And you believed him?”
Joey gasped as she shifted toward him. “Of course I believed him. Why wouldn’t I?”
“There is the issue of him running off to a foreign country with another woman. And not just any woman--an actress.”
“Carlina Leoni can’t act her way out of a paper bag.” Joey slapped a hand across her mouth.
“Finally, we agree on something.”
“Didn’t you just do...seems I remember reading--”
“Yes, Ms. Leoni and I have a working relationship. I still full-heartedly agree with your assessment.”
She smiled. “Like I was saying. After I listened to Laurence’s voicemail--”
“You mean Larry?”
“Laurence. He doesn’t like being called Larry.”
“Sort of how you don’t like being called Jo-Jo?”
“I don’t mind...too much.” She shrugged through the obvious lie. “We’re getting off the subject.” Joey cleared her throat. “After I listened to Laurence’s voicemail and he said that he loved me, I knew his breaking up with me, the sudden engagement and the impulsive vacation to Italy all equals one thing,” she concluded smiling.
“Midlife crisis,” he guessed.
Joey’s eyes widened. “You think so, too?” Hope returned to shimmer in her eyes.
“So, let me get this straight.” Ryan chuckled, edging closer to her. “You’re just going to show up in Italy like this--” He quickly gestured to her plain attire “--with your arms open wide and say ‘I love you, Larry. Please choose me over Hollywood’s hottest actress.’”
When You Were Mine (Adams Sisters) Page 7
