by Abby Gaines
Jared made violin-playing gestures with his hands. “Why I do what I do is none of your business. Yeah, maybe I thought that because my family—” he glared at his parents “—didn’t do anything to stop Transom way back then, it was partly our fault that he’s still out there playing his dirty tricks. Maybe I thought I owed you.”
Holly pushed her chair back and jumped to her feet. “You don’t owe me anything but the money you’re paying me to work for you and the honesty you promised me when I took the job. So far I’ve seen precious little of either. You can forget about going after Dave with me. I don’t want your help. I’m going on my own.” She stormed from the room.
“The hell you are.” Jared was on his feet, striding after her. “I’m paying her airfare and what I say goes.”
Beth and Edward were left sitting in sudden blissful silence. Beth smiled tentatively. “That went well,” she said.
And then the two of them were guffawing in helpless laughter amid the remains of the blueberry pie.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HE’D MADE A BIG MISTAKE. In his insistence on accompanying Holly—who still wasn’t speaking to him after their argument yesterday—and in his determination to get the better of Transom, Jared had overlooked one major issue.
He hated to fly. Seriously hated it.
It wasn’t fear. It was the same reason he avoided taxis and flatly refused to get on a boat. Motion sickness.
It was the most ridiculous, feeble ailment for a grown man to suffer. And it was utterly disabling. He took pills, drank ginger ale, wore acupressure wrist bands, did everything any quack had ever recommended to handle his condition. And failed.
“What’s wrong?” Holly asked when his pace slowed as they approached the terminal at Sea-Tac Airport. Her first words to him since last night.
Should he tell her? Or should he let her figure it out when she saw him barfing into the paper bag?
“Nothing.” Oh, yeah, macho to the last.
By the time they were in their first-class seats, Jared next to the aisle so he could make a dash for the lavatory, a fine sheen of sweat had broken out on his forehead.
Holly ordered champagne for her pre-takeoff drink. Jared ordered ginger ale. “Here’s to a successful trip,” she said, suddenly convivial.
He raised his glass. Here’s to surviving it.
Holly busied herself fastening her seat belt. When she was done, she looked expectantly at Jared.
“What?” he asked.
She nodded toward his lap. “You need to buckle up.”
He always delayed putting his belt on. Being strapped in somehow brought the nausea on quicker. “Who says?” he demanded. “The Control Freak of the Year?”
She clucked. “That sign right above your head. FAA regulations. Fifty years of airline best practice. And I’m sure I can get the flight crew to confirm—”
“All right, all right.” He buckled the seat belt and scowled at her. “Happy now?” He shut his eyes.
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
If she continued to badger him, he wouldn’t last five minutes. He had to scare her back into her corner. Though it required a massive effort, he leaned over and favored her with his most intimate smile. The one with the bedroom eyes.
“Yes, something’s wrong,” he murmured, as he leaned closer still. “I can’t stop thinking about how much I want you in my bed.”
Damn! He’d been lying, but somehow a jolt of excitement coursed through him, alerting all his senses. Down, boy. He shifted in his seat as he waited for his words to have the desired effect on Holly—to turn the concern in her gaze to discomfort, then panic.
For a moment he thought it had worked. She jerked back as if she’d had an electric shock. Then she leaned into him, so close he could see the blue flecks in her gray eyes. The slow blink of her long lashes was, bizarrely, the most erotic thing he’d ever seen, even more erotic than the glide of her tongue over her bottom lip before she spoke.
“I say we join the mile-high club,” she whispered, not as quietly as she should have.
Jared almost groaned. While he would never, ever join the mile-high club—his motion sickness guaranteed that—the suggestion resonated in the most disturbing way. Then Holly added, “As soon as the seat belt sign is switched off, of course.”
He didn’t know what she was playing at, but she hadn’t meant what she said. Which wasn’t the relief it should have been.
“I’m tired,” he stated. “I’m going to sleep.” He downed his ginger ale and leaned back.
A few minutes later, he heard the flight attendant removing their glasses and instructing Holly to tighten her seat belt.
“It’s as tight as it will go,” Holly said crossly.
Jared couldn’t resist. He sat up and addressed the attendant. “I’ve been trying to get her to tighten that thing ever since we got on board,” he confided. “But she thinks there’s one law for her and one for everyone else. I’ll bet people like that make your job harder.”
The woman gave him an appreciative smile. “Thank you for your help, sir.” Holly made a gagging sound, and Jared fought the urge to laugh, a welcome change from the urge to throw up.
The plane began its taxi down the runway and Jared tightened his grip on the armrest as he tried to sleep. The takeoff was relatively smooth, and he exhaled deeply.
He felt two cool, feminine hands lift his left hand from the armrest. He opened his eyes. “What are you doing?”
Holly had twisted to face him in her seat. “I understand, baby,” she whispered, her tone half-flirty, half-tender.
“I don’t,” he whispered back.
“You’re afraid of flying.”
“I am not.” He tried to disentangle his hand, but she held it fast.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Around twenty percent of the population experiences a phobia to a significant extent. My mom is afraid of speed. Yours is just a more severe case than most.”
“I am not afraid of flying.”
“Denying it won’t help. You can’t overcome your fears until you confront them. There are courses you can take—”
To Jared’s relief, the seat belt sign turned off. He scrambled out of his seat and headed for the lavatory.
“—and hypnosis works for some people…”
When he got back, feeling marginally better, Holly started in again. “Stop thinking about the fact that we’re thirty thousand feet up in the air with nowhere to go but down.”
If he really was scared of flying she’d have him paralyzed with fear.
“Holly,” he said, “I am not afraid of flying, and that’s the truth.”
“Then what’s wrong, baby?”
She wasn’t going to let him rest until he’d told her, and he had to put an end to this “baby” business. “I suffer from motion sickness,” he said, wishing there was a more impressive name for it. Something Greek or Latin.
For a bare moment Holly looked sympathetic. Then she laughed. “Does this mean you’ll leave me alone? I don’t have to pretend I’m hot for you?”
“You are hot for me,” he said. Then he realized what she’d said. “What do you mean, pretend?”
She blew out an impatient breath. “I’ve been acting like I want you so you’ll back off.”
Jared’s nausea receded under a tidal wave of outrage. “I’m the one who’s been pretending I want you. You can’t keep your hands off me.”
She waggled her hands in front of his face. “Look, no hands. Face it, Jared, nothing scares you more than a woman who wants you too much. It was a brilliant strategy on my part.”
“That strategy was mine.”
“If I’d known all it took to cut your libido down to size was to put you on a plane,” she said, “I’d have done it ages ago.”
He grinned reluctantly.
“Is it the same in a car?” she asked.
“Cars, buses, trains, planes, you name it. Any time I’m not driving.” He waved away the
stewardess who wanted to take his lunch order. Holly, in contrast, appeared intent on working her way right through the menu.
“You don’t mind if I eat in front of you, do you?” She’d caught his pained look.
He shook his head. “I’ll be asleep.” He shut his eyes to prove it.
But Holly had other plans. “I’ve had a great idea about the Greerson family.”
Jared was about to tell her he didn’t want to hear another word about her sympathy for Wireless World’s owners when the plane hit a patch of turbulence. As the aircraft lurched and shook, it was all he could do to keep from throwing up. But Holly, the heartless witch, used his agony as a chance to expound her social-worker accounting theories.
And Jared, afraid that if he opened his mouth he’d see his breakfast again, had to sit and listen in silence.
THEY CHANGED PLANES in L.A., boarding an Air New Zealand flight for Auckland. Jared went straight to sleep. It was two hours before a pocket of turbulence woke him. Holly was eating her dinner. Watching her butter a bread roll with meticulous precision, he was struck again by the contrast between her usual careful restraint and the abandon that, whatever she might claim about it being a pretence, overtook her when she was in his arms.
Which one was the real Holly?
“What are you going to do when this is over?” he asked. Silence. “Don’t tell me Ms. Control Freak hasn’t thought about it. I wouldn’t believe you.”
“Things have changed,” she muttered evasively.
“Distract me from my suffering.”
She gave him a sharp look but then appeared to reconsider. “I guess it might help to tell someone like you.”
He grinned and, blessedly, the nausea receded. “Remind me what ‘someone like me’ means?”
“Someone who’s succeeded without an overarching goal to drive what he does. If you can wing it and survive, why can’t I?”
“You don’t think I have an overarching goal?”
Momentarily, he’d dumbfounded her. “Do you?” she demanded.
“Everyone has an overarching goal, even if it’s only to retire in comfort after forty years at the office.”
She laughed. “I don’t think that’s you. Stop avoiding the question. Is there a purpose to what you’re doing?”
“All life has purpose,” he said sanctimoniously. She slapped the back of his hand on the armrest between them. “Ouch.”
“Okay,” she said, “but tell me this. If you don’t achieve it, what will you do?”
He had a second’s terrifying glimpse of a yawning chasm of futility. If he didn’t defeat Transom, what next? And even if he did win, what lay ahead? Clamminess gripped him, and with it the nausea returned.
Holly’s hand closed over his. “You’ve gone pale,” she said. “Are you feeling bad again?”
With one slight movement he turned his hand over and clasped her fingers tightly. “Help me, Holly,” he said, barely certain what he was asking her.
She took it as a request to provide distraction.
“You can give me some advice,” she said. “My previous five-year plan was to get Summer and River through college and then find my father.”
Jared tightened his grip on her hand, aware that despite her apparent self-sufficiency, her plan had depended entirely on the cooperation of others, who’d let her down.
“But now the kids have dropped out, and I can’t even think about looking for Dad unless I’m vindicated. Even then,” she added morosely, “mud sticks. Some people will refuse to believe I’m innocent. Who’s to say my father won’t be one of them?”
“He can’t be that stupid, with you for a daughter,” Jared said gruffly.
She blinked at the unexpected compliment. “The thing is,” she said slowly, as if she was figuring this out as she went along, “I can’t build my life around something so uncertain. And even if I do see him and everything’s okay, I can’t go back to being eight years old. I still have to find a way forward on my own.”
It sounded lonely, but Jared knew what she meant. Relying on others for fulfillment would doom her to disappointment.
Like I’m doing with Transom. He brushed the thought aside. “What are your options?”
“Rebuild my business—alone. But it could take years with this scandal behind me. Or I could take a corporate job, or move into an existing larger partnership.”
“I’m not sure you’d get on too well in an environment where you’re not the top of the tree,” he said frankly.
She grinned. “So you noticed my abrasive personal style.”
“Any more abrasive and you’d be sandpaper,” he agreed, and enjoyed her squeal of outraged amusement.
After a pause, she said, “Jared, you know that I say what I mean, and that I appreciate honesty in others.”
Her sudden seriousness, coupled with the use of the word honesty, put him on guard. She bore all the signs of a woman about to get heavy. He disentangled his hand from hers and grunted noncommittally.
“I know you like my work, and I’ve found working with you to be challenging and enjoyable—mostly.” She bit her lip, and he wondered if she rated the kisses as enjoyable. “When my name’s been cleared, I’d like to work for you in an official capacity. It would help me get back on my feet, and there are chief executives out there who’ll follow your lead in giving me work.”
His boldness of vision teamed with Holly’s creativity and technical skill… It could work, no doubt about it.
But once Holly knew what he was doing to Transom, her offer would be off the table. Permanently. For a scant half second Jared wished he didn’t have to pursue Transom, wished this deal could be exactly what he’d told Holly it was.
But even if it had been aboveboard, how long would it be before he messed up their working relationship by throwing her onto the boardroom table and making love to her?
He gave it two weeks, max.
He shook his head. “It’s not a good idea, Holly.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HURT FLASHED IN Holly’s eyes and her knuckles whitened where her hands were clasped in her lap, but she gave a stiff nod.
“It’s not about your work, you know that,” Jared said.
“Just my sandpaper personality, huh?” The lightness of her tone didn’t fool him.
“Holly, please.” This was the kind of situation Jared hated—where something was his fault but he had no intention of fixing it. As the plane lurched into an air pocket and brought his stomach into his mouth, he clenched his teeth tight and shut his eyes.
A huffing sound from the next seat told him Holly saw it as an evasion tactic. He felt too ill to care.
NEAR THE END of the flight, when it was calmer and Jared was feeling just about okay, Holly said, “We haven’t discussed what we’re going to do when we get to New Zealand.”
“That’s because I haven’t thought about it,” Jared said.
“You’ve figured out that Dave isn’t likely to just hand over the money. You must have a plan.”
“I’m a seat-of-the-pants kind of guy.”
Holly waved a hand to indicate the aircraft. “I don’t imagine you took time away from work and spent all this money with no idea of how we’re going to get what we want.”
Okay, she was right. But Jared knew she’d hate his idea, so he’d avoided mentioning it. Now, he was too ill to invent a plausible lie. “The Colonel has some pills.”
“Pills?”
“We feed them to Dave, they put him in a semitranquilized state. He can walk, answer basic questions, but he can’t escape. We take him back with us on the next flight we can get.” Which meant more flying. He shut his eyes.
“Are you crazy?” Her words reverberated in his head. “Jared, that’s kidnapping. He’s going to report what happened and we’ll find ourselves up on charges far worse than fraud.”
Jared intended to scare Dave into not revealing how he’d been returned to Seattle, but now wasn’t the time to tell Holly that. He dis
missed her arguments with a tired wave.
“No,” she said firmly. “We are not drugging and kidnapping Dave.” When she put it that way, it didn’t sound like a great idea.
“Then what do you suggest?”
“I don’t know, but it’s got to be legal.”
She did that thing of taking his hand in hers again, chafing it anxiously. “I want you to promise me, Jared. Whatever we do will be one hundred percent legit.”
He groaned as the plane hit another patch of turbulence and lurched down then up again. Holly took the groan as reluctance to accept her stipulation and shook his arm. “Promise.”
If there was any chance she would let go of him, stop rocking him back and forth, he’d promise her his soul. “Promise,” he choked out, and sank into sleep the second she released him.
“NEW ZEALAND?” Special Agent Simon Crook clamped down on the pen between his teeth as he spoke into the phone, muffling his next words. “When did she leave?”
Beth Harding sounded flustered. “They both left— Jared went with Holly. They drove back to Seattle on Monday morning to catch a plane.”
Yesterday. If Holly Stephens was intent on doing a runner, she could have well and truly vanished by now. And Harding had posted her bail—that he’d gone, too, couldn’t be a good sign. Crook should have figured there was something between Holly and Jared when Harding put up all that money.
He cursed himself for not asking the court to have Holly surrender her passport.
He hung up on Mrs. Harding and put a call in to U.S. Immigration, which confirmed Holly’s flight details. That made Crook feel marginally better. At least she wasn’t trying to hide her trail by using a false passport.
What next, dammit?
He could phone Maggie Stephens and see if she knew where Holly expected to find Fletcher, although it was unlikely Holly would have confided in her mother. But Crook was acutely aware it had been a week since their aborted dinner date.
