by Liz Crowe
“Oh, don’t worry, honey,” a voice said to her left. Startled, she looked over at an older lady sitting with a man who was sipping a beer and staring up at a television. “Men,” she said, patting the guy’s other hand. “They always come back.”
Paige nodded, fought the urge to cry again, and headed out into the terminal, which held a newly revived sense of purpose now that flights were about to resume. She trudged through the crowd, gnawing her lower lip and coming to terms with the fact that she should probably tell Joey Preston to forget the whole thing. She’d already mentally composed her apology and blow-off when she found herself at Gate A12.
Joey was standing by the large windows, staring out at the row of grounded planes. Almost all the seats were taken so she walked over to him, steeling herself for the fake breakup with her fake boyfriend—the boyfriend she sorely wished she had all of a sudden.
Ridiculous. He’s a total stranger. And a republican. And uptight about things like pot, and he’s probably OCD about cleanliness too. A bad match all the way around.
She touched his shoulder. He turned, pinning her with the deep brown of his gaze. She swallowed, trying to regain her nerve and recall the words she’d composed not fifteen seconds ago in her head. His high cheekbones were flushed, and his jaw was clenched.
She lifted her chin, unwilling to give into the girlie urge to cry on his strong, firm chest again. She didn’t need a man, and she was sick of lying to her parents about her dating status. She had a great job in a city she loved and was learning the ropes of the business she wanted to conquer. End of story. No need for boyfriends, fake or otherwise.
When she opened her mouth to deliver the message, something along the lines of—“Well, this has been a blast, but I think you should go wherever it was you were headed when you got to the airport this morning”—he dropped his backpack to the floor, gripped both her arms and yanked her close, angling his lips over hers.
Paige tensed for about two seconds before she let go of her suitcase handle, let her shoulder bag slide off, and went up on her tiptoes so she could wrap her arms around his neck. He had a firm command of the kiss, which was something she loved in a man. There was no immediate thrust of an unwelcome tongue into her mouth, merely a soft, teasing touch of it, as it gently parted her lips.
They fit together as if they were indeed a couple and had plenty of practice at this. He didn’t grope at her, but slid his hands up and tugged out her ponytail, threading his fingers through her hair as it tumbled down around her shoulders. Paige’s entire chaotic universe slowed to a single pinprick, allowing her the perfection of this moment. She opened her lips slowly, letting him in, feeling a delicious meltdown beginning in her core and spreading downward, making her knees wobbly.
A few low wolf-whistles brought her crashing back to reality. She broke from his lips, with extreme reluctance, but kept herself up on her toes so she could look him in the eyes.
“What was that for?”
“Just wanna make sure we can fake this well enough to fool everyone,” he said, that sweet, wonderful grin setting her heart on fire all over again. His lips brushed hers, as if he, too, were reluctant to break the clinch.
“Get a room,” somebody muttered behind her.
“Should we?” she whispered, drowning in the deep pools of chocolate brown that were Joey Preston’s eyes.
“No time for that,” he said, letting go of her and stepping away, tugging the hem of his shirt down over his zipper, which made her zing from her scalp to the soles of her feet. Filled with the sort of wild compulsion that had forced her to move away from her stifling family in Kentucky to a strange city, not to mention made her form the words “I’m bringing my boyfriend” to her mother a few hours ago, she grabbed her suitcase handle and bag and said, “I know a place. Follow me.”
She marched away, her face hot, her ears ringing, and her panties damp. She wanted this man, and until they cleared the air with a quick hook-up, she was certain she wouldn’t be able to successfully go through with the farce all weekend long. Paige did a quick calculation in her head and discovered it had been a solid eight months since she’d had sex. No wonder she was so pent up.
Her last encounter had been a drunken quickie with a co-worker who, she suspected, was married. But she’d blown him off since their unspectacular moment and harbored no guilt over it. Paige liked to think of herself as a modern woman, the type who bought her own condoms and carried a few with her at all times, ready for any potential eventuality, unsentimentally meeting her body’s own need for a connection and a release, only to move on with her life afterward, like a guy would do.
But if she were honest with herself right now, this minute, she’d admit she wanted to kiss Joey Preston again and again. Not many men truly knew how to make a kiss into such an amazingly erotic experience. She shivered slightly with the recent memory of his touch. But when she stopped and looked behind her, he wasn’t there. A tickle of anger hit her brain.
What was his problem? She knew he wanted her, had read it in his eyes, and tasted it on his lips.
She took a few strides back toward the gate and spotted him still standing at the window, arms crossed, grin in place. She set her jaw, marched over and planted herself back in front of him. “Are you deaf?”
“Nope,” he said, his eyes twinkling as if amused at her obvious desperation to get him between her legs. “I don’t like quickies,” he said, taking a lock of her hair between his thumb and finger and rubbing it. “Especially not at airports. Sorry.”
“No, you’re not sorry. You’re just fucking with me.” She let her gaze wander down his chest and abs to his zipper, still covered by the T-shirt she’d snot-sobbed into earlier. He put a hand on her shoulder, then let his fingers trail down her biceps to her elbow, then her wrist before taking her hand and pressing her knuckles to his lips. She couldn’t stop the full-body shudder. He grinned into her hand.
“Maybe,” he murmured, turning her hand over and kissing her palm, then her wrist before letting her go. “Maybe I like foreplay.” He gripped her elbow and dragged her close, forcing her to feel the hard press of his erection against her lower stomach. He tilted her chin so she had to meet his gaze. Paige felt dizzy, almost nauseated with lust as he kissed her again. But he kept it short, and she found herself pressing her face into his chest, breathing deep, taking in the smell of laundry detergent that barely masked a raw, leathery, smoky odor of the skin under his shirt. He held her, pressing his lips to her hair, then let go and grabbed her bags.
“Let’s sit. I’ve got a deck of cards to pass the time.” She blinked, trying to deal with all the crazy thoughts and urges banging around inside her skull. He sat, parked her stuff at the end of the row of chairs, and pulled a tattered looking pack of playing cards from one of the many pockets of his backpack. He did an impressive one-handed shuffle, all the while grinning at her.
“Stop that,” she muttered, making her way over to him, conscious of all the eyes on them.
“Stop what?” he asked all innocent as he pulled her suitcase over to serve as a makeshift table between them.
“Stop smiling at me like that.” She flopped into the seat, conscious of the rainforest level dampness between her legs and a sudden wash of exhaustion that made her close her eyes for a few seconds. When she opened them and turned to look at him, he was still smiling, which, like a yawn, was instantly contagious. She grinned and whacked his shoulder. “God, you’re too cute for your own good, you know it?”
“I’ve been told that,” he said, dealing out a few cards and putting the deck down. “So, something tells me I know the answer to this, but . . . do you know how to play poker?” He picked up his cards and started rearranging them.
“Huh, as a matter of fact, I just learned how a few weeks ago.” She picked up her hand and studied it.
After she an hour spent taking him for almost seventy-five bucks, he threw his cards down and glared at her. “You are such a liar,” he said, crossing hi
s arms and flopping back into his seat.
“Yeah, but you knew that already,” she said lightly, picking up the cards and treating him to her best wide-eyed innocent look. “Right, boyfriend?” She fluttered her lashes and executed her own one-handed shuffle.
He shook his head and chuckled. She joined him, and after a few seconds, they were both laughing so hard neither of them could catch a breath.
“Whew,” she said, waving her hands in front of her face, her chest hitching with amusement at him, at herself, at this whole bizarre, fateful day. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her over to him before planting an utterly toe-curling kiss on her without a word.
She broke it, breathing heavily, ready to climb on and straddle him in front of God and everybody at that moment.
“You sure you don’t wanna follow me to that place I know? I mean, a quickie could be just the beginning, you know.”
He frowned. She pulled his plump lower lip into her mouth, wanting him so badly it was an actual physical ache in her bones. She let his lip go after biting down on it, gently but hoping it sent her message. She heard a low sound coming from him, a near animal growl down in his throat. He cupped her cheek with his warm hand and pressed his forehead to hers.
“No,” he whispered. “But thanks.”
“What is wrong with you,” she said, raising her voice, no longer caring who heard them. “You can’t tell me you don’t want—”
He pressed a finger to her lips. “Shh,” he said, his eyes shining. “I do want you, Paige. But I’m not gonna fuck you in some random airport bathroom, okay?”
“But—”
“No more discussion,” he said firmly.
She broke away from him and sat, pouting and staring out the large window at the grounded planes. He put the playing cards away and took her hand. She tried to pull away, but he placed something in her palm, then let her go. She stared down at the folded twenties and tried not to scream. Paige wasn’t used to men denying her. The men she’d had sex with had done so willingly and with zero begging on her part. She didn’t like this feeling—the itchy, twitchy, edge-of-something nervousness that made her want to break things.
She glanced over to see that he’d grabbed a Detroit Tigers cap from somewhere and had it tilted over his closed eyes. His long-fingered hands were laced together over his chest, which rose and fell in a slow rhythm. She frowned and studied him from head to stretched-out boot-covered toes, shocked when she discovered her mouth was watering.
“What kind of a normal person can just fall asleep like that?” she muttered, digging around in her messy bag for her e-reader before discovering the battery was dead. “Fuck,” she spat out, tossing it back into the chaos. Her fingers closed around a magazine. She spent the next hour pretending to read articles about sports stars but was really drinking in the sleeping, peaceful, gorgeous Joey Preston, before their flight was finally called.
Once the boarding doors were opened, she nudged his knee. He snorted and tugged the cap down further.
“He’s a keeper, honey,” a familiar voice said. She looked up to find the old couple from the burger place standing in front of her. The woman was smiling. The man had his arm around her shoulders but was studying their boarding passes. “Don’t let this one get away.” The woman patted her shoulder and moved past her.
Feeling frumpy, pissed off, and annoyingly damp between her legs, Paige rose and stretched out the kinks in her lower back. She turned and saw that Joey was still snoozing away despite all the noise around him. Without taking the time to ponder it, she put one hand on the armrest of his seat and lifted the cap off his head. His dark blond, short cut hair was soft under her fingers. She let herself touch it, then moved her fingertips down his temple to his lightly stubbled jaw.
He opened his eyes. She smiled and pecked his cheek, then his lips. “Welcome back, sleeping beauty. Ready to head down to crazy-town?”
He grinned.
“I told you to stop that,” she said with a fake frown.
He covered his lips with his hands. She stood up, noting that his eyes darkened as his gaze traveled down her front. She put one hand on her hip, sticking it out in a flirty, overblown way.
“Like what you see, soldier?”
He blinked fast, then leaned forward and grabbed his pack before getting to his feet. She stepped back, suddenly unsure about this whole thing. At that moment, she was having a tough time separating her body’s need for him from her brain’s need to keep him at arm’s length—in order not to involve her heart. Which pounded faster and louder as she watched him yawn and stretch, then grab her suitcase handle.
“I do like what I see, Paige. But I’m not a soldier anymore. Don’t forget that.”
She nodded, dry-mouthed and confused at the serious tone of his voice. He held out a hand. She took it, surprised that it felt so natural. His seat was half a dozen rows back from hers, but he got her rolling bag squared away in the luggage bin and brushed her cheek with a kiss before taking it. She watched him go until someone cleared their throat behind her.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, feeling her face flush.
“No worries,” the guy who had the window seat next to hers said. “He’s hot. I’d stare at his ass too.”
She giggled and dropped into her seat, plugged earphones into her ears, and tried not to smile like a cat with a belly full of canary.
Chapter Seven
Joey tried to fall back into a doze for the short flight south, but his mind wouldn’t cooperate. Irritated since he’d trained himself to sleep whenever the opportunity arose, he stared out into the cloud-laced blue sky as the plane headed over Ohio. He pressed his overheated face to the window and tried to convince himself that doing this crazy thing for a woman he’d just met this morning—whom he was beginning to suspect was the polar opposite of what he’d always thought he wanted in a woman—was a good idea.
Joey considered his tastes in females straightforward, simple even. He was typically drawn to curves and had always figured himself a breast man. When he’d told Paige he didn’t want a quickie in an airport bathroom, he’d not been kidding. Women who’d jump him in bars and make those sorts of suggestions did not make it past his first cut on any given night.
He liked to make the first move. He preferred to be in control of almost every scene—it was a work hazard if he didn’t. And losing control over a woman in a bar . . . or in an airport . . . was not his usual M.O. But damn him if it hadn’t taken everything he had in him not to follow her to whatever “place” she knew about, to rip her clothes off and give her exactly what she wanted from him.
He sighed and rolled his forehead left to right on the window, attempting without much success to shove her out of his brain. Before the plane’s rules had kicked in, he’d sent a quick text to Grey:
“Headed to Ky. Doing a favor for a friend. Will check in from there once I figure out where I’m going after.”
He craned his neck up to check on her, smiling when he caught sight of her pulling that unruly mass of curls off her neck and fastening it once more in a messy ponytail. It was one of her nervous ticks he’d picked up on that he liked. Her tendency to messiness and disorganization was something he definitely didn’t like, however.
Jesus, man, you aren’t marrying her. Who cares if she leaves the toothpaste cap off and dirty dishes in the sink? Just fuck her and get it over with.
Joey shuddered and had to concentrate on the Tigers’ bullpen stats to keep from springing another woody. He’d had to do that a lot in the past few hours, and he had to admit that a woman had not affected him to such a degree in a damn long time, if ever. The near constant state of arousal he’d inhabited since he’d met her was like an irritating itch in the middle of his back that he couldn’t quite reach.
So, clearly, he just had to get her alone, do the deed, and move on with his life. He’d consider it payback for pretending to be her boyfriend to keep her parents off her neck.
No problem.
Maybe.
He groaned and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He was bone tired. Sleep had been elusive for the last week as he processed the shit show of a case he’d been on. All he’d been able to see every night when he closed his eyes were the huge, terrified eyes of those kids he’d found in that pervert’s basement. The evil that existed in the souls of men had never affected him so strongly, despite his tours in the Middle East where he’d been exposed to all manner of horrors.
As the plane made its bumpy landing, he felt resolved. He’d do this thing he’d agreed to do for the pretty girl from Kentucky. He’d pretend to be her boyfriend, finagle her to his hotel for a night, pack his bags and then be gone for good. As they taxied to the gate, Joey fired up his phone, half hoping Grey and Athena would have found an assignment for him, but knowing damn good and well they meant it when they insisted he make himself scarce for some R and R.
“Kentucky? Who do you know there?” was the text response from Grey.
“A friend,” he repeated. “No biggie. She needs me to go to her sister’s wedding with her.”
“A WEDDING? WTF, dude?”
Joey smiled and ignored that comment, figuring for the most rhetorical of all possible questions. The plane lurched to a stop. Joey watched as his fellow passengers scrambled around as if their very survival hinged on them getting their crap from the overhead compartments and standing up well ahead of everyone else.
He sat, giving himself pep talks about his new-found resolve when it came to Miz DiFerrari. Once the line of humanity began inching its way forward like a giant centipede, he still waited, unwilling to clap eyes on the woman again for fear of blowing all his resolutions about her to the four winds.
Finally, once all the people around him had cleared out, he got up and pulled his pack from the bin, shouldered it, took a long breath and headed down the aisle.
“Thanks for flying Delta,” the flight attendant chirped at him.
“Sure thing,” he replied with a smile that made the woman blush. “Thank you.”
