Summer Fire
Page 87
“Not if my seatmate keeps talking,” I grumbled.
“Sorry,” he said, sounding more amused than sorry. “Just wondering because that is such a shitty blindfold. No way it’s going to keep out the light.”
This was true. If it had been a better model blindfold, I wouldn’t have been able to see his thighs. He was wearing shorts, so I could see plenty of firm, tanned flesh. I liked the way his leg muscles flexed every time he shifted in his seat. “You’re some kind of expert on blindfolds?”
He gave a low laugh. “I know a bit about them, yeah.”
That aroused my curiosity. Did he know about blindfolds because he used them as sex toys or something?
Damn. He’d succeeded in arousing my interest.
Which was undoubtedly a bad thing, since guys who arouse my interest almost always turn out to be the same guys who break my heart a few weeks later.
We started taxiing and, as usual, I began imagining all the things that could go wrong when we took off. I don’t even like the taxi part of the flight. Crossing those runways, hoping the air traffic controllers are paying attention and not directing any big-ass jumbo jet to smack down right on top of us.
I moved around, trying to get comfortable, my nerves revving along with the engine sounds. By the time we were number one for take-off and the captain was cheerfully telling the flight attendants to take their seats, my heart was doing its usual high-speed-this-sucks routine. I told myself I’d done this dozens of times and flying is the safest way to travel and to stop being an idiot. But, as usual, it wasn’t working.
My hands were clutching both armrests and I felt the bump of a fist against my right hand. At the bottom of my blindfold, I could see another hand clutching the armrest next to mine. Mr. Hot Thighs must have noticed because he said in a low voice that I could just hear over the roar of the engines, “You’re as scared as I am, aren’t you?”
“I’m not scared,” I lied.
“Are too.”
“Am not.”
He started to laugh and so did I. There we were, sitting in first class, where everything is roomy and comfortable, and we were both hanging on for dear life as the plane accelerated down the runway and slowly rose into the air.
“I figure if I hold on hard enough,” he said, “I can make this sucker fly.”
“If I let go, one of the engines might fail,” I confessed.
“Well, with us both hanging on, think of all the extra thrust we’re giving them. No way they’re failing now.”
There was something about the word “thrust” that gave me a little thrill. Here was this really sexy-sounding guy who wasn’t afraid to admit that he was sweating the take-off. Despite my pulse-pounding anxiety, I felt some hormonal action coming on. Assuming this plane stayed in the air, we’d have several hours ahead of us. Maybe this flight wouldn’t be so bad, after all.
“We seem to be climbing okay. No weird noises or anything.”
He must be listening for those, too. The higher we got, the more I began to relax.
“Take-off really isn’t that dangerous,” he said. “I mean, the physics of it are simple—you get enough speed and enough lift, and up you go. It’s landing that’s the tricky part.”
“As long as we don’t have to worry about landing for a few hours, I’m good.”
“Yeah, me too.”
We were climbing steadily and nothing horrible had happened. Both of us were loosening our death grips on the armrests. He took his hand from the one on the aisle side and flexed his fingers. I was fascinated by his large, capable-looking hands. But the one resting on the side near me stayed put, and I could feel his skin touching mine. It was warm. Why was he leaving it there when he was stretching the other hand? Was he touching me on purpose?
I lifted my own hand away, rubbing both palms together and then pretending to adjust my seatbelt. The big first class seats meant we weren’t jammed in as tightly as we would have been in coach. But despite my limited vision, I sensed he was a big guy—tall and broad-shouldered—and he felt like an imposing presence right there next to me.
Maybe I shouldn’t have moved my hand?
I liked the way he felt.
I pushed the blindfold up off my face and blinked. I turned my head to take a look at Great Thighs’ face. And I felt my own turn pale. Or maybe I blushed. Something happened to my face, I know that.
I knew him.
He was gazing at me with no recognition, but I knew him.
Holy shit.
Mr. MacCallum.
I was sitting next to Mr. MacCallum, my high school English teacher from senior year. Upon whom I had had the worst crush in the history of high school crushes.
Now here we were, six years later, and he was still the sexiest man I had ever seen in my life.
Chapter Two
Harry
I couldn’t believe my luck. I had seen her in the airport gate area, waiting to board my flight to Grand Cayman. I’m not sure what drew my eye to her. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman here—that honor went to one of the flight attendants at the check-in counter—but she had an appealing way of moving. Appealing to me, anyway.
She’d seemed loose and relaxed and she walked tall, with a lively, interested look on her face as she watched the other people in the terminal. She didn’t watch them as if she were watching them. Instead, it seemed as if she was curious about who they were and why they were traveling. Where they were going and what their lives were like.
She was engaged with the people around her even if she wasn’t speaking to them. She was engaged with the world. And with life.
Or maybe it just seemed that way to me. Here I was, heading off for what was supposed to be a romantic and sexy vacation in the Caribbean. It had been planned last winter and I’d paid all the damn fees in advance. But a few weeks ago, my girlfriend dumped me.
And no, she did not want to wait until after our summer vacation in paradise to split up. She was over it. Over me.
I’d tried to cancel, but I was too late. No refunds. I’d tried to think of another woman I could invite to accompany me and help me get over Portia, but it was tricky.
I’d been off the hookup market for too damn long. I knew a few single women, but no one I felt comfortable enough with to say, “So you wanna spend ten days in Cayman with me getting fucked?”
I guess there might have been some takers. But ten days of togetherness was a long time. There would be beaches and diving and dancing along with the fucking. That was too damn much intimacy for me right now. All sorts of complications might arise out of that scenario.
The resort had assured me that I wouldn’t be the only single there.
There would be “opportunities,” as they called them.
I wasn’t sure if they meant the kind of opportunities that you had to rent by the hour, or if there would really be any single women who might be interested in a little sexy fun and games.
I guess I’d find out. And even if the sex turned out to be a bust, they couldn’t take the snorkeling and diving away from me. Or the fishing and sailing.
I was determined to have a good time. A fucking great time. And here was a beautiful woman—a real summer peach—sitting next to me on a five-hour flight. Like me, she seemed to be traveling alone. Maybe her boyfriend had dumped her, too?
If I played it right, maybe we could hook up when we got to Grand Cayman. I could invite her for a swim. A dive. Dinner. Seduction. Pleasure.
Shit, I must be getting desperate. I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about all the sex I probably wouldn’t be having at the resort. Maybe I should have stayed home, after all.
When the knock-out flight attendant had saved me from the screaming babies in the back of the plane, I’d given her my best you-and-me-babe grin and thanked her profusely. As she led me up the aisle toward the front of the plane she whispered, “It’s Sheila,” and told me the name of her hotel on the island. “Only there for one night,” she added, giving me a wink. “C
all me.”
Then she’d seated me in first class.
But my new seatmate had charmed me with her fear of flying. It was charming because I shared it. Obviously the hot flight attendant didn’t.
When I’d sat down, my new seatmate had been curled up in her seat, covered with a blanket. Her face was partially hidden beneath one of those cheap airplane blindfolds. Her head was leaning against the window, and I figured she was asleep, which was odd because we were still on the ground.
She’d stiffened when she heard me slide into my new seat. As she turned her head, I saw her golden-brown hair and her generous sexy mouth. I imagined how that mouth would feel clamped around my cock and I felt a stirring in my groin.
That’s was when I realized she was the same chick I had noticed in the departure lounge. The hot one.
Ha! My luck had definitely changed.
Chapter Three
Charley
I am not often at a loss for words, but the presence of Mr. MacCallum beside me on a plane flabbergasted me.
He didn’t even look all that much older than me. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt that was tight enough to show that he still worked out. You don’t get muscles like that without some effort. His tousled reddish-brown hair needed a cut. He had vivid blue eyes, and when I looked up at him, he smiled. It was a genial smile that made his eyes crinkle up in an endearing way.
God, it all came crashing back. I’d been so crazy in love with the man that I’d Googled everything I could find on him, and I remembered it still. I knew how old he was. He’d been fresh from college; teaching at my high school was his first professional job. He’d been single. My gaze checked out his left hand. No wedding ring. That was encouraging.
“Hi,” he said, now that I’d taken off the blindfold. “I’m Harry.”
Why was the idea of calling Mr. MacCallum by his first name so damn provocative? I knew his name, but I wouldn’t have dreamed of using it, even though some of the other girls in school used to call him Prince Harry because he was tall and military-buff and had a reddish sheen to his hair like the real prince.
But he was even better looking than the real prince.
Actually, they’d called him Bad Prince Harry, because Mr. MacCallum came to school every day on a motorbike, wearing a black leather jacket that always got exchanged for a tweedy thing inside the school. We used to joke that he kept the tweed jacket in a locker and donned it to keep up appearances with the rest of the faculty. He had to play the game and behave himself, but out of school, dressed in leather and riding that big-ass bike, he must be a holy hell raiser.
He had tats, too. Not hardcore motorcycle gang ink, but something artful and delicate on his upper arms that peeked out from under the sleeves of his T-shirt when he was out on the field coaching sports.
I wasn’t the only girl with a crush. My best friend Nola, who’d had a good deal more experience with the opposite sex than I’d had at the time, flirted with him outright. “He’s one of those kinky types,” she’d claimed. “He’s prolly got a piercing in his nipples. Or maybe even in his dick.” We’d giggled for days about this and made private jokes about Mr. MacCallum’s gold-ringed nips and Prince Albert dick. Bad Prince Harry had a good Prince Albert. I didn’t even know what that meant until I checked out the Web for pictures of intimate piercings. Whoa.
Jeez, it was embarrassing to remember myself being so young and foolish.
Mr. MacCallum had also had an indefinable air of command that was impressive in such a young teacher. Something about him conveyed the idea that although he could be affable and dedicated to his job, he wouldn’t put up with any shit from anyone. He could break up a fight between a couple of hot-headed athletes with a sharp word and a narrow-eyed look. And he could be arrogant. Really sure of himself. Super-snarky and cutting when you hadn’t done your homework.
I always did mine. I wanted to please him. I wanted a lot more than that, but he’d never even looked at me. Not in high school.
He was looking at me now, though. And obviously waiting for a reciprocal name proffer from me, so I tried to get control of my tumbling thoughts and begin behaving like a normal adult. Someone who was entitled to call a male who was only a few years my senior by his first name.
“I’m Emily.” It was actually my middle name. Charlotte was my real name, but nobody called me that—to my family and my friends I was Charley. That was also what everyone had called me in high school. Well, not Mr. MacCallum. He had called me Miss Pendleton.
He probably wouldn’t remember me. My light brown hair was generously streaked with blond these days, and although I still didn’t care much about stylish clothes, I did try to dress professionally. I wore contacts now instead of glasses. I was slimmer, fitter. Several friends at my five-year reunion last year hadn’t recognized me, so why should he?
“Why are you staring at me?” he asked.
I snapped out of it. “Sorry. I could put the blindfold on again, if you prefer.”
I’d developed a bit of an attitude since graduating from high school.
He was looking more closely at me now, too. “Have we met before?”
I’m sure I blushed. “Don’t see how we could have.” I couldn’t admit it. Not after what happened on his last day at my school.
He’d been fired. And it had been my fault.
Chapter Four
Harry
“I hate commercial flying,” I told her, trying to keep the conversation going. She looked a little peaked. Maybe she was still scared, even though we were now well up towards our cruising altitude? “But it’s actually very safe. It’s a trust issue, I guess. A control thing.”
“Putting yourself into somebody else’s control? The pilots? The air traffic control folks? The aircraft maintenance people?”
“Exactly. The ironic thing is, I’m a pilot myself.”
“No way!”
“Seriously. Not a commercial pilot, of course. But I have a private pilot’s license. I learned to fly because I was afraid. Thought it would make my silly anxieties vanish if I knew all the ins and outs of what could actually happen in the cockpit.”
“But it didn’t work?”
“It works fine when I’m the guy at the controls. Cool as a cucumber then. I’ve got enough hours that I know how to handle the plane. Of course, I don’t fly the big jets, but I’ve played around with all the commercial models on the sim. You know about aviation sims?”
“I know that airline pilots have to practice handling emergencies using computerized simulations. Is that what you mean?”
“Yep.” She was well-spoken, another thing I liked about her. Educated and intelligent. “I have a good friend who runs sims for commercial pilots, and occasionally if there’s a free slot, he’ll run one for me. Hell, I almost landed my Airbus in a sim of the famous ditching in the Hudson.”
“Almost?”
“Yeah, I kinda fucked it up at the last minute. Caught a wing, cartwheeled and landed upside down. Most of my passengers drowned.”
“Wait, this was a simulation, right?”
“Yeah, I failed. But I’ve passed a lot of others with flying colors.”
She giggled. “Remind me not to fly with you.”
“Hey, I’m a good pilot. Very safe.”
“So you’d feel okay if you were in the cockpit flying the plane?”
“Safer, yeah. It’s the computers flying the plane, though. The pilots are probably playing iPad games up there. Or sleeping.”
She shivered. “Are you kidding me? Don’t tell me that. The only time I feel relatively okay is when we’re at cruising altitude. But I like to think the pilots are watching the gauges and doing important stuff, not playing computer games.”
“I’m sure our guys are paying close attention to whatever the hell is happening on the flight deck.”
She looked dubious. Maybe a little edgy. My bad. I’d been talking to help her relax, or maybe to help me relax, and instead I’d made her more nervous.
“What you need is a way to distract yourself. So you won’t think unhappy thoughts about what our pilots are doing.”
“I know, but the more I try to think about not thinking about something, the more I think about it.” She paused and gave me a knock-out smile. “If that makes any sense at all.”
“I know exactly what you mean. I just read an interesting article about that. You need to counter your fears with stronger stimuli.”
“Like what?”
“Well, one suggestion is that if you’re really nervous about flying, you should bring a laptop that’s loaded with porn.”
Okay, I knew this was a bad idea as soon as the words were out of my mouth. I forged onward anyway: “When you’re watching porn, your hormones get unleashed. They’re powerful enough to counteract the brain chemicals that induce anxiety. So one feeling overwhelms the other.”
The color had been creeping into Emily’s lovely face as I spoke. Now she turned to look out the window, leaving me wondering if I had left my brain on the runway. Mentioning porn to a strange woman on an airplane. Shit, I had been off the market for far too long. I used to be way smoother than that.
Then she surprised me. She turned back to me, and there was a mischievous gleam in her eyes. “I see you have a laptop. Since you’re both male and a nervous flyer, I’m willing to bet it’s loaded with porn.”
“I plead the Fifth. But I notice you’ve got your Kindle in the seat pocket,” I teased her. “What have you got on there? A lot of hot romance novels to read on the plane? Some of those are pretty erotic.”
“How would you know?” she laughed. “Do you read them?”
I thought it best to change the subject. “It’s just that I do think reading helps.”
“I was hoping to sleep,” she reminded me, gesturing to the now-abandoned blindfold that was nestled in the seat pocket. I had a brief fantasy of her lovely body spread out on my bed, naked and writhing, that blindfold covering her eyes so she couldn’t see what I was going to do to her next. My cock twitched. Who needed porn?