Still, it was clearly time to get off this island. “Privacy clause doesn’t seem to hold much water. I need to get out of here, and you too, if they got any pictures. We’ll sleep here and leave first thing in the morning. Okay?” he asked Janie in between mouthfuls of fragrant and wildly good pad thai noodles.
She pouted. “What? Leave here? I thought I got to move in.”
“Nice try, but I’m afraid not.”
“Well.” She grabbed her bag from the corner and dug in it till she found her to-do list. “I still haven’t done my cooking lesson.”
“Consider it done. Let’s find one right off the beaten track.”
“As long as it’s good.”
“Okay. I’m sure we’ll work it out.” A cooking class was perfect. Simple. Friendly. And he was going to find one in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
Chapter Ten
Putting down his phone, Blaine turned to her. “Shall we?”
Janie just about jumped out of her skin as the helicopter whirred into view and seemed set on heading straight for them.
“In that?”
“Unless you have a better way of getting to a private island that doesn’t involve sitting for six hours on a boat that can’t take us till the tide changes and that’s also free? Not every day a resort tries to apologize by sending you on a trip in a helicopter.”
“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod.”
“Is that a good ohmygod, or a bad one?”
Get it together, girl. Or he’s going to dump you for someone who can actually articulate a full sentence. “It’s a good thing. And a bad thing.” Seriously? “I’m sorry, it’s just, holy shit, McDashing, a helicopter and a private island? Are you going to totally ruin me for the rest of my life?”
“Like I said, it’s a free trip. Can’t argue with that. Come on, we need to get out of here before anyone sees us and decides to follow. Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.” He took her hand and encouraged her to duck low as they ran toward the helicopter.
She let him half pull her along and although the terror was far from abated, she felt as if her skin would split from the bursting surge of…what the hell was that hammering and crashing around inside her? Holy mother of infatuations. Am I falling in love with him? That made her pause a second, but Blaine kept on trotting toward the chopper, the noise from its blades getting louder with every step.
Don’t dwell on it. Even if her stupid heart had decided to make tartan valentines for Blaine, it didn’t mean squat. She was leaving, he was leaving, end of story. Time to store up what was on offer so she could pull out the real-life fairy tales and bore her grandkids with them for the rest of her Little Acre life. If she ever found a Little Acre man. And had grandkids. And didn’t pour tractor diesel over herself when she realized what she could have had if she’d somehow managed to hold on to McDashing. Jeeeeezzus, self-deprecating much? Whatever.
Janie shook her head. She would hate his life, being on display and running from the press. Best to enjoy this fantasy excerpt from his life he was sharing with her instead. Live it up now. Period.
The roar of the chopper blades was almost deafening, and despite the fear of being sliced in two by them, Janie was glad for the noise. At least she didn’t have to try and talk to Blaine while her brain was awash with maddening versions of the future.
Then they were inside the helicopter, the door had slammed behind her and she strapped herself into the backseat of the death machine next to Blaine as fast as she could, putting the pair of oversize headphones over her ears. The thunder of the rotor blades dulled, but the smallness of the space started closing in on her. Every part of her body tensed, a dark black descending over her vision and her muscles threatening to leap out of her skin and run off by their own naked selves. “What? Wait! This is nuts. What am I doing in here?” she asked, despite the fact that no one was going to be able to hear her.
Blaine adjusted his own headphones. “Is this not okay? I didn’t even really ask.” His voice was clear, and she realized they were miked together.
Awesome. I sound like a total freak. She gulped. “I think I might be a bit scared of helicopters.”
“You think?”
“I’ve never been in one before.”
The pitch of the rotors started to increase, and Janie gave a little girlie squeal as they tipped forward, the helicopter defying all common reason and connection to ordinary gravity. Janie shut her eyes tight. But the two men up front must have changed tack as the helicopter settled again.
“You’ve been in a plane, to come to Thailand. Same thing. Honestly,” Blaine said.
She shook her head vehemently. “Not the same. Not even.”
Blaine took her chin in his hand and tipped her face toward him. “Open your eyes, Janie.”
Forcing herself to squeeze them open, she took in a magnificent view. Blaine’s gaze at close quarters was full of different shades of blue and his pupils were huge, making the effect one of full-blown compassion, care, and devotion. The black hands of terror stopped clutching quite so hard at her heart. “What is it that you think is frightening you?” he asked gently.
Janie bit her lip. “Everything. Nothing. I don’t know, the possibility that the rotor blade could come flying through the window, and my last view would of your head being cut off before I was thrown into a screaming heap of burning metal as the helicopter fell back to earth?”
To his credit, Blaine didn’t flinch and he certainly didn’t laugh. “That’s plenty to terrorize a girl, I’ll give you that,” he said. He removed his hand from her chin and took her hands in his instead and the black faded a little more from in front of Janie’s eyes. “Keep your eyes on me.”
Janie blinked, but resisted the urge to look away.
“Did you know you’re statistically more likely to die in your car than you are in this chopper?” he asked, holding her gaze.
“That’s because most people can’t afford helicopter rides.”
“That might well be true, but does it help if I say my costar has flown a helicopter hundreds of times and never had an accident? Yet he’s crashed his car twice?”
“Does he give you rides?” Janie gulped, but Blaine just shrugged. “Sometimes. It’s useful if you live in the arse-end of nowhere.”
“Seriously? Please don’t tell me you live in a castle. Or I guess you could. Tales of castles might distract me.” The helicopter banked to the side, but Janie fought the urge to shut her eyes so she could keep looking at Blaine.
“I have lived in a castle, an old one, with more holes than windows, but I don’t anymore. I live in a regular old house, not even the one I own. I rent a duplex in Glasgow. It’s nothing nice, but it’s dry and central. Does the job. All this luxury is care of my agent and his connections.”
Janie scoffed. “The day you live in a regular house, or what us regular people call a regular house, is the day I’ll believe the Loch Ness Monster is real.”
Blaine smiled. “There you go.”
Janie frowned. “There I go what?”
“You cracked a joke.”
“Ha. Guess I did.”
“You know what else you did? You got through it.”
“Got through what?”
He pointed out the window and Janie realized that while he’d held her gaze, the helicopter had done a good portion of the travel to their destination and they were now hovering over water that matched Blaine’s eyes almost perfectly.
“I think I’ve run out of adjectives,” she said in a whisper. “This place. It’s just…”
“I know.”
For a moment both of them gazed out the window in silence as the ocean and islands of coastal Thailand fell away beneath them. The helicopter had flattened out and it didn’t seem all that different from being in a plane anymore, except that she felt closer to the beauty. There was nothing in Janie’s life to compare to the luxuriousness of the nature on display. Sure, the early-morning sunrise over the waving beet fields of Little Ac
re was pretty. And the emerald scales of her favorite snakes at the petting zoo had a little of the rich, opulent color that was flashing by, but this was so much bigger, so much deeper, so much…
She stole a look at Blaine and found him looking at her. “Thank you.”
“You are most welcome.”
“I spill a drink on you and you whisk me away on the most romantic adventure a girl could imagine. Actually, no, there is no way I could have ever imagined this. It’s beyond ridiculous.” She sat up straighter. “Are you sure you’re real? Not an alien sent to charm me into abandoning humanity?”
He laughed, and the sound was a warm caress in her ears. “I’m real. And I’m just an ordinary guy deep down, not that many people believe that.”
“What—” Her question was cut short as the helicopter tilted to the side, and Blaine took her hand. “We’re almost here. We’re about to land. It’s going to be fine. Squeeze my hand if you get scared.”
“If? There is no if,” she said, squeezing his hand as if it were the thing holding the helicopter together as they began a sharp descent toward the ground. But whether it was the pep talk he’d given her earlier, or the constant stream of chatter about the workings of the helicopter that Blaine kept up in her ear, Janie didn’t find landing half as terrifying as she’d thought it might be.
When her feet touched the ground and the chopper had roared off into the sky, leaving them and their two bags on the sandy shore, Janie took a moment to readjust her ears. In fact, she realized there was a lot of readjustment she needed to do.
“You look like you swallowed a fly.”
Shaking her head, Janie tried to get the jumble of thoughts into some semblance of order. Gently, Blaine propelled her to a wooden log fashioned into a bench underneath a couple of swaying palm trees close by.
“You know what I realized? I’m not just afraid of helicopters. I’m afraid of…almost everything.”
Blaine frowned. “You work with snakes. That makes you one of the most fearless people I know. And you got on a plane and flew to the other side of the world. I thought we’d already covered this?”
She waved him off. “It’s since the breakup. I had to go through with this trip. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I hadn’t. But I had Aunt Alexia book most of it for me, ’cause I couldn’t face doing it. That’s why I ended up in the couples resort in the first place.”
“Still, you would have had one heck of an adventure. I don’t know why you’re beating yourself up.”
“It’s kinda good that you were an idiot about not telling me who you were.”
“Come again?”
“You’re amazing. This is amazing. If you hadn’t lied like an asshat, hell, you would have been too perfect. I keep waiting for it all turn to custard and not in a good custard pie kinda way.”
The smile Blaine gave her was broad and warm. “Beats me why you Yanks like to turn everything into pie. What’s wrong with hot custard over pudding?”
Finally, the laughter caught up with Janie and she let herself chuckle.
He bit his lip and she waited, sure he was about to spill something big. “I’ve been where you are, being afraid of…well of the stuff of living. Afraid I was doing the wrong thing. Working with the wrong people. Saying the wrong stuff. And I’m still saying the wrong stuff to the wrong people. Probably more so. But being with you has made me care less about it.” He tipped her face up to him.
She wrinkled her nose at him even while her heart was doing its best to expand and take over her whole body. The guy was over-the-top amazing and her heart damn well knew it. “If it weren’t for your taste in custard, and your terrifyingly public job, you would possibly be the perfect man. But luckily hot custard is the devil’s spawn so I don’t have to worry about everything going to crap yet.”
The laugh was softer than earlier, softer still when he stroked her jaw. “And everything is going to go to shite because you found a perfect man?”
“Absolutely. That’s what always happens. Don’t you read anything? Come on, McDashing, it’s practically obligatory for the world to come tumbling down when the girl gets everything she wants.” Brave words, but Janie’s newly expanded heart twisted a little knowing that she could joke all she liked, but she was going to be heartbroken when she had to leave Thailand, and Blaine.
In contrast his smile was gentle. “I’m sure there’s a lot more you want in the world than a man. And there’s probably one much better suited to you than me.” He stood, not letting her reply, and took her hand, soothing the ache that her heart was sending through her body.
They walked a short distance, Blaine pulling their luggage, and found a small thatched hut with a stretch of white sandy beach surrounding it.
“We’re here.”
Janie looked around. “Here? For what? A picnic? Great.”
“No. Here, here. We’re staying here.”
Nope, Janie checked again, there was nothing else but the beach hut and a track leading off into the thickening palm trees.
Blaine led her into the hut. It was just one room dominated by a huge bed with white fluffy pillows and duvet cover, swathed in pure white mosquito nets, and with sunlight filtering through the thatched walls so there were shafts of golden light spotlighting the whole picture.
Janie’s face ached, her smile spreading from ear to ear. “It’s gorgeous. Beyond gorgeous. If I shut my eyes and you asked me to describe romance, this would be it.”
Blaine chuckled. “Compliments of the resort. Call it an apology.” He took her hand and led her underneath the mosquito net. “I’m hoping I’ll get points for broadening your definition of romance though.”
When he pulled her down onto the huge bed, it was like falling into a cloud.
“This is a trick, right? There’s a button that somehow turns the rest of this beach bungalow into a five-star resort to match the bed, because this bed is awesome.”
“No trick.” He took her face in his hands. “Only us and this bed. And the hush of the ocean outside.”
Oh my ever-lovin’ Lord. Broaden the definition of romance? Heck, Blaine Galloway was the definition of romance.
When he kissed her, Janie stopped trying to figure out the hows and whys of the glorious bed, of how helicopters stayed in the air, of how anything at all worked, just so she could fall into the kiss. Fall into Blaine.
As he stripped away her clothes and then his own, her mind was suddenly calm, tranquil, as if the emptiness of the beach yards away had snuck under her skin and let her simply be.
There was no urgency to their passion this time either, no lust-fueled hurry, and as Blaine entered her, Janie felt her world rise up to meet him. Her muscles contracted around him; her heart opened itself up to let him in. He gazed down into her eyes as he paused, and as she took a long breath, he did too. Suddenly his thrusts moved in time with their breaths. With each long, slow inhale the air entered her as he did, and as she hissed it out he retracted, pulling back until he was almost out of her. She arched her back to allow him deeper access and he took it, all of it, until their rhythm was instinctive and all-encompassing.
Too soon she felt the world starting to tilt on its axis, her muscles contracting, her vision growing blurry. It was almost too much—the perfect union, the crescendo of sensation, and Janie tried to pull back from the edge.
“I’m right here with you.” As if he knew her right down to her very bones, Blaine reassured her, held her, and paused.
“I know,” she said. “I trust you. Take me over.”
He picked up his pace again, and in seconds the sensations overtook her as he rode with her into oblivion.
When the stars had cleared from her eyes, Janie looked up at the crazy-hot Scotsman who had picked her out of obscurity and shown her the inner workings of a world she hadn’t dare dream existed. His world, where romance was as ordinary as breathing, where opulence was standard, where sensation was electrifying.
“That was…”
She put a finger over his lips. “Putting words to it will break the spell. It’s a golden thing right now. Try to name it and it will run away.”
A soft smile curved his lips. “That’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”
Oh, Lordy. Heart clenching and expanding at the same time, Janie tried to hold on to the sensation, wanting to fill up the whole world with the love that was pulsing through it. She took a deep, staggering breath. “That’s it. I’m officially done. Dead. You just killed me right there.”
“What?” He rose up on his elbow.
“This has been such an amazing ride. You have no idea. I might as well die right now because nothing is going to top it.”
His laugh, remarkably, only made her love him harder, because that was what had happened, she realized. In the last few minutes she’d gone from lusting after every part of him, to liking him, to reveling in his arms, to downright loving him. Her heart was in so much trouble when she got back to Little Acre.
“You never know,” he said as he tweaked her nose. “You might like what comes next even more.”
Janie shook her head. “I will love whatever comes next, and you know it. But it won’t top that. I am a dead woman walking.” She flopped back on the pillows and gazed out the open window through the dreamy mosquito net. “What a beautiful view.”
“It is, isn’t it?” He sighed and fell back on the pillows with her. For a moment neither of them spoke and Janie let her imagination have free rein, running out the window and frolicking naked on the beach, screaming with glee at the amazing treat the world had thrown at her.
“Tell me about what you usually see. What’s life like where you are? In America.”
When she stretched and turned her head to him, it was a luxurious movement, and she reveled in how her body ached in just the right places. “You going to head over that way when you’ve finished demolishing all the luxuries Thailand has to offer?”
“It’s at the top of my list. Hollywood. Soon.”
Every muscle in her body stiffened. Blaine, in America? She didn’t dare to hope. But man oh man, what she wouldn’t give for Aunt Alexia, or anyone from Little Acre, seeing him turn up in town and order moussaka. She kept her voice as casual as she could. “I’m sure you’d like it. Not that I’d know much about the rest of the country, but I’ve seen pictures of the Grand Canyon. It looks amazing.”
Her Scottish Mistake (A Perfect Escape) Page 12
