A Fare To Remember_ Just Whistle_Driven - Vicki Lewis Thompson [75]
She was inches from the door when it swung open, a somber operative attached to the knob. Rachel sashayed past him and made her way back through the maze until she emerged in the terminal again. Her flight, not surprisingly, had already begun to board. She had to sprint to make it to the gate, just in time for the attendant to glare at her. After waving her boarding pass beneath the scanner, the guy forced a smile and waved her through. The doors were pulled shut behind her before she’d even taken ten steps inside.
By the time she made it to the aircraft, nearly everyone was seated. She spotted Mario and Iris canoodling in the bulkhead row. She expected a seat beside them, but glancing down at her boarding pass, she realized she wasn’t seated in Coach, but First Class.
Let the Agency suck up. She wouldn’t change her mind.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” a handsome flight attendant said from behind her. “You need to find your seat.”
She turned, ready to aim a sharpened barb at the guy for stating the obvious, but decided he wasn’t worth her ire. He was just doing his job. Instead, she smiled, apologized for her tardy arrival and headed into the front of the plane. There was an empty window seat beside, of course, the blond guy in the baseball cap. An empty seat that corresponded with the number and letter on her boarding pass.
He stood up, allowing her to pass, though the spacious seats made his gesture unnecessary. As she skimmed by him, his cologne caught her attention. Warmed by his skin, the subtle citrus scent teased her with a hint of mint. Completely unlike the haunting, smoky musk tinged with patchouli and sandalwood that Roman wore, the aroma aroused her curiosity. She fought the urge to glance at his face, explore the depths of his eyes, assess whether or not the man fate had deemed worthy of sitting beside her might not make an interesting way to wash the missing Roman out of her hair.
Not that she really wanted him washed out, but what choice did she have? She’d denied Tremayne’s suggestion that Roman hadn’t returned from his assignment because he was avoiding reconciling with her, but most of that had been bravado and good, old-fashioned pride. Didn’t mean the heart-crushing thought hadn’t occurred to her more than once.
She busied herself with stuffing her backpack under her seat, fastening her seat belt and accepting a hot, wet hand towel from the flight attendant to wipe the grime of the long wait off her hands, arms and neckline, dipping deep into her V-necked blouse to remove the collected sweat.
“You’re killing me, you know that, right?”
The voice was unmistakable. A chill breezed over her freshly moistened skin, and in a daze, she dropped the towel on the flight attendant’s proffered tray and turned slowly to the man beside her.
His hair was blond. His eyes were…green? She leaned in closer, determined to see the telltale rim of colored contacts. The scar dipping into his top lip threw her off for a moment, and the new, thinner shape and lighter color of his eyebrows nearly changed her mind, but the rugged shape of his chin, the texture of his skin, the curve of his smile finally gave him away.
“You son of a bitch,” she whispered.
She moved, but Roman caught her hand and held it fast to the armrest. Smart man. She had the incredible need to slap the smug smile off his face.
“Not exactly the greeting I expected,” he said.
She tugged her hand away, gluing her gaze to the seat in front of her as the plane roared down the runway. “I don’t know why you expected anything more. Or less. You left.”
“I was deployed to complete the mission. I couldn’t have succeeded without you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Clearly. My life would have been a hell of a lot easier over the past few days if you just would have been honest with me and asked for my help rather than playing all these games, including the ones that nearly got me shot.”
His fingers tap-danced on the armrest, and she couldn’t help but give them a cursory glance. If he touched her, she’d kill him.