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The last trace of smile vanished. “I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t.”
Behind Brett, the curtain veiling first class shifted and a vision of adorableness stepped around it, with shiny blond hair, big blue eyes, dimpled cheeks and a clingy purple dress totally unsuitable for plane travel. Celine.
Instantly Elisa felt better. Screw Brett Jordan and his burning gaze. That was then. Celine and Rendezvous Dating were now. “There she is.” She made her voice light. “Hallelujah.”
He didn’t turn to look behind him. He kept his attention fixed on her. “The Facebook site. We’ll catch up online. I’ll friend you.”
She needed to end this conversation now. And she needed to avoid him for the rest of their overlapping time on St. Barts. She prayed he wasn’t also on his way to the island’s singles resort where she and Celine were headed. Wouldn’t that be the cruelest joke. She wanted him far away from her boot camp weekend. Far, far away.
Her heart pounded. It was not in her nature to be cruel, but this was self-preservation, pure and simple. She needed him gone, immediately. “No. No Facebook. No Twitter. No email. No nothing. I’m not interested in being your friend, virtual or otherwise.”
An unexpected expression crossed Celine’s face, where she stood behind Brett. Confusion. Concern. Celine touched Brett’s arm, and he turned toward her, a smile on his face.
Elisa’s internal warning system shifted into overdrive.
That wasn’t just any smile. That was Brett’s patented twenty-four-hour smile.
“Hey,” said Brett to Celine. Affectionately.
Oh, shit.
Celine’s face was tipped up toward Brett like a flower receiving the sun. “Wait a sec. You know Elisa?”
Elisa could only watch this terrible slowly unfurling mess. With an audience. People had stopped trying to pretend they weren’t listening. Elisa could see naked curiosity on a few faces.
Brett frowned. “How do you know Elisa?”
No one spoke for a moment, and Brett’s eyes moved from Elisa to Celine and back again.
And then he got it.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said to Celine. “If you were trying to date a guy who isn’t a jerk, you missed the mark by a mile.”
2
CELINE LOOKED LIKE she’d been punched. She had a sweet heart-shaped face that made her appear younger than her twenty-two years, and her bottom lip trembled. Elisa turned on Brett, years of self-righteous anger reasserting themselves. “Do you have to act like such a jerk?”
In the seat behind Brett an older woman hid a smile, but Elisa felt no sense of triumph.
“Apparently,” he said easily. He leaned back against the nearest seat, clearly enjoying himself. “I always was good at it.” The occupant of the seat gave Brett a dirty look, but Brett couldn’t have seemed more relaxed if he’d put both hands behind his head and kicked off his shoes. It pissed her off, not only because she was sweaty and stressed out, and he was the coolest customer on earth, but also because he looked so freaking good. Why were cocky asshole men so hot? It was just. Not. Fair.
She had to rein it in. Her attraction, her irritation, her temper. This was a disaster on so many levels, she didn’t know where to start figuring it out. And their audience was turning against them, passengers starting to gripe audibly to each other. Drama was one thing, open conflict another.
She’d wanted attention. That was the whole point of this outing. But now things were totally out of her control. There was this—this swerve. She didn’t want eyes on her as she untangled these knots. “We’ll talk about this after the flight lands,” she said, with as much authority as she could summon.
Brett shrugged. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
Celine watched them, her gaze moving from one to the other, as if the volley of words was visible.
“I’d like to know what’s going on.” Elisa crossed her arms.
Brett raised his eyebrows. “Ask your client.”
“I thought there might be two sides to the story.”
“There’s no story.” His expression dared her to push him. “Tell you what. I just got up to stretch my legs, but I’m perfectly happy to hang out here in coach. I’ll take your seat, Elisa.”
Celine opened her mouth once, closed it again, then managed to speak one word. “Brett?” She looked up at him, borderline pleading. Even through the haze of her own anxiety, Elisa’s dating coach radar shot to high alert. Desperate! Take it down a notch! She tried to broadcast this with her gaze, but Celine wasn’t looking at her. “I’m sorry,” Celine whispered to Brett. Actually it was closer to a whimper. “I was going to tell you.”
Brett shrugged. “Okay. That’s great. I appreciate that. But you’ll pardon me if this is just a little too effed up for me. I’m a tagalong on a dating boot camp weekend. What role did you have in mind for me?” He addressed the question to both women. “Fluffer?” He chuckled.
Elisa closed her eyes. It was either that or laugh hysterically.
“Br—”
The red-haired flight attendant stepped out of first class and glared at them. “You can’t congregate here.”
Elisa squeezed Celine’s shoulder hard. “Hon, let’s go sit, okay?”
The flight attendant’s male counterpart—tall, dark and chiseled—appeared behind the redhead and put a hand on her arm. “Everything okay here?” he asked her.
He’d leaned close to ask it, closer than the situation required. Alert! Chemistry! Were the two flight attendants a couple? Or did he just wish they were?
“Please return to your seats.”
The sharp command from the redhead snapped Elisa out of her romantic reverie. “We’ll just—” Elisa began to say, tugging on Celine.
The passenger behind Elisa touched her sleeve. “Is that Celine Carr?”
“No.”
“It is! It’s Celine Carr. Guys, you were right!”
There was a flurry of activity as the passengers within earshot dug through their carry-ons, pulled out pens and notebooks, and shoved them toward Celine. Cell phones popped up above the seat tops and into the aisle, clicking with artificial shutter noises.
“Please,” said the redhead. “I can’t have you gathering in the front of the plane. You need to return to your seats.”
The passenger who’d touched Elisa’s arm turned to the flight attendant. “Can she sign autographs in the back?”
The female flight attendant cast an uncertain look at her colleague. He shrugged.
“It’s Celine Carr! From Broken.”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t watch Broken?” That was another passenger.
“Ohmigod, it’s so good!”
Haven had warned Elisa that this would happen. Celine was a new star, not yet a household name, but she had a show that was rising in the ratings and people would recognize her, wherever she went. “As much of a pain as it is,” Haven had said, “you have to let her do it. They’re her fan base.”
“If we stay out of the way?” Elisa asked the uniformed woman.
The flight attendant sighed. “Okay. Until we get the beverage service going, she can sign in the back. But make sure people can get to the restrooms.”
A small shy smile had crept over Celine’s face as she surveyed the outstretched hands clutching paper and notebooks and business cards.
“Give me a minute. We need to talk about this weekend,” Elisa told Brett.
“I don’t see what there is to talk about.”
“You can’t just—”
“Folks,” the male flight attendant said in a stern voice.
“Come here a sec,” Elisa said, starting toward the back of the plane. It wouldn’t help her cause if she got them arrested for creating a disturbance on an airplane.
The fans followed, crowding into the back of the plane. Some startled bathroomgoers looked at them strangely, but others joined in, digging in pockets or squeezing through the throng to grab pens from their bags. Brett leaned against a galley wall, right behind Celine, frowning.
Elisa, heart still pounding, waited next to the red-haired flight attendant while Celine happily held court. Her loyal subjects produced napkins or their own arms for her to sign.
“Can you sign this for my daughter?”
“Can you write ‘Love to Suze’?”
“Do you watch Broken?” the flight attendant asked Elisa.
Elisa nodded. “Do you?”
“I record it on TiVo.” She was a pretty woman, with a smattering of freckles and a nice smile. “But we’re never home, so we don’t get to watch much TV.”
We. “You and—?” Elisa gestured to the male flight attendant who was chatting jovially with a passenger just out of their earshot.
“What? No!” She laughed. “He’s gay. ‘We’ is me and my roommate.”
“He’s not gay,” said Elisa. “Trust me.” Elisa pulled her business card from her pants pocket and handed it over. “It’s my job to notice these things.”
“Dating coach?”
“Yep. You want my suggestion?”
The flight attendant nodded, eyes eager.
God, Elisa loved her job. “Ask him if he wants to buy you a drink when you land. You’ll see. He’s not gay.”
The redhead looked doubtful.
“My cell number is on the card. Text me and tell me what happens.”
The flight attendant hesitated. “You sure?”
“Positive.” Elisa would be willing to bet a thousand dollars they’d be lovers within a week. If the woman took her advice.
That was a big if. People were shockingly bad at doing what was best for them.
Like Celine, who had apparently acquired a traveling companion somewhere between yesterday afternoon—when Elisa had helped Celine pack her suitcase—and this morning when she’d boarded a plane for the boot camp weekend. What had she been thinking?
Papers and pens still shuffled across the galley, voices ringing out with questions for the actress.
“Is it true they’re going to kill off Jonah?”
“Celine, will you have dinner with me?”
A voice rose from among the others. “Celine, who’s the new guy? Hey, new guy—can you move in a little closer to Celine for me?”
All motion stopped, and there was an instant of total silence. Everyone turned to look at the person who’d asked that, a man whose face was mostly veiled by a black hoodie. And then they turned to look at Brett, leaning against the wall behind Celine.
Elisa opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Brett pushed off the wall, took a threatening step forward and said, “Put that thing away.”
Hoodie guy’s mouth slowly tipped up into a smile, and he raised his hand. He had something clutched there, and for a brief, heart-stopping second, Elisa actually thought it might be a gun. Then she saw what it was and wished she’d been right in the first place.
Camera. Big camera. Real camera.
Paparazzo.
His smile got bigger as he began shooting, the shutter whirring as it squeezed off shot after shot of Brett and Celine.
* * *
THE LOOK ON Elisa’s face, pure panic, spurred Brett to action. He slid past her, jostling other passengers out of the way, and lunged at the photographer, yanking the camera out of the guy’s hands.
“That’s personal property!” The guy grabbed for it, but Brett turned his back and ran his hands over the camera’s casing, probing for the slot where the memory card lived. He found its catch, withdrew the card, dropped it to the floor and ground it into the carpet. The cheap plastic splintered. He closed the slot and handed the camera back to the photographer.
“Here’s your personal property.”
“What’s going on?”
It was the male flight attendant, followed by a well-built guy in a business suit. Sky marshal, Brett would wager. Most of the other passengers had dispersed at the sight of this new authority. The flight attendant glared at both Brett and the hooded paparazzo.
“Nothing’s going on.” Brett looked around at the remaining passengers, daring them to disagree.
No one spoke up. His good luck—paparazzi were so loathsome that fear of the crazy man in the aisle paled in comparison.
The guy in the hoodie hadn’t spoken.
“I’m going to need all of you to return to your seats, please,” the flight attendant said sternly.
