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Ashley’s smile fell, the plane moved slowly back from the gate and she felt the familiar lurch in her stomach.
“Scared?”
“I’ll be fine,” replied Ashley, and she would. Business problems, personal problems, fashion problems, in the big scheme of things, they didn’t amount to much that couldn’t be overcome. In the end, Ashley was a survivor. When she was working on a new store window—surrounded by encouraging mannequins draped in subtly fitted, beautifully crafted, casual couture—the dream returned. She could do it. All she needed was to keep the faith.
She gave hot man a weak smile, and he covered her hand, a grip that was supposed to be comforting.
If you’d only twitch the thumb, a tiny caress…
Shut up, Valerie.
He had large hands, warm hands, with long, long fingers that looked so full of possibilities.
“Everything all right?”
“Peachy.” The engines start to roar.
Quickly she took out the air-sickness bag.
Just in case.
DAVID MCLEAN hadn’t been excited about a side-trip through Chicago to see his brother. Ex-brother. Chris had lost any claim to family bonding after he’d slept with David’s wife. Yeah, nothing like a little wife-sharing between brothers. Four years, and it still pissed him off.
Still, in the face of pink bunny slippers and shoved in close quarters with a young psycho in training, David felt something unfamiliar tug at his face. A grin. Yes, that was definitely a grin.
The woman was just nervous enough to be unthreatening. He liked her. Her hair was dark, nearly black, and she had soft brown eyes and a nose that was too big to be called pert. But it gave her a little something extra—character. And she had a nice mouth, plump lips that were always held slightly parted, like a kid viewing the world for the first time, or a woman in the beginning throes of climax.
There was something stirring in his khakis—trouble. Sex held the whip hand, and turned men into stupid dogs. Like, for instance, Chris. And Christine. When he first introduced his future wife to his brother, all three of them had laughed about their matching names. The day he had found them in bed together, the laughter had stopped.
He shot a furtive look at the bunny slippers.
“I’m David,” he said, carefully displacing thoughts of Chris and Christine.
“Ashley.”
“Are you from Chicago?”
“Born, bred and will most likely die here as well.”
“Cubbies fan, aren’t you?” It was there in her eyes, that sort of lost hope, winning seasons long denied. Idealistic dreamers—a rarely seen species that was going to naturally select itself into extinction.
She winced. “I know, it’s pathetic, isn’t it? Are you from Chicago?”
“New York.”
“Ah, home of the Yankees.”
“What can I say? I live in New York. We always back the money team.”
“Sad to be bought so easily.”
He shrugged, and looked out the window. The plane had stopped moving toward the runway. They were returning to the gate.
Immediately Ashley noticed. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Her finger jammed at the call button, just as the captain came on the speaker, his voice Prozac calm and soothing, which only made her more nervous.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve had a slight mechanical issue. Nothing to worry about. I’m going to pull us back to the gate and have the mechanics check things out. We’ll have a short stop where you can disembark, if you choose. However, you will need your boarding pass to reboard.”
“We’re not flying?” she said, and he noticed the relief in her voice.
“We’re going to fly,” answered David, wanting to reassure her, but more importantly, he needed to get to L.A. The sooner he left Chicago the better.
“I’m not taking off my slippers,” she answered. “They can’t do that to me.”
“It’s okay, I’m sure it won’t be long,” he told her, not his usual brutal honestly, but he suspected there was normally more color in her face, and if bunny slippers made her happy, who was he to take them away?
“What sort of mechanical problems do you think we’re stuck with? I was on a flight to Miami when they thought the landing gear was hosed, but it turned out fine.”
“Let me tell you about the time that I was flying to Houston. The engine blew…” Her eyes shot up four sizes, the pale color bleached to a ghostly hue, and he clamped down on his tongue. Hard. Okay, David, great going here. “Sorry. We landed fine. They have back-up engines, so if anything fails…” He realized he wasn’t helping, so wisely he decided to shut up.
Damn. He liked talking to her. Normally he pulled out his computer and worked through flights, but this afternoon had left him feeling unsettled. Two weeks ago he had told his ex-wife that he would be in Chicago for a meeting. He would finally see them. But then he’d arrived at O’Hare and the city of big shoulders closed in on him.
He shouldn’t have called them. Christine had said she was pregnant—oh, joy!—but in the end, David lied, leaving a message saying that his meeting had been canceled and he wouldn’t be stopping in Chicago after all.
David didn’t like being a coward. He never did—except for this.
The pregnancy had stung. Not that he wanted Christine back, but it irked him that she preferred his brother, that fidelity wasn’t part of her vocabulary, and that he, a man who evaluated million-dollar business opportunities on a daily basis, could do so poorly when picking out wife material.
“I know of a little knockwurst place in Terminal One,” he blurted out, because he didn’t want to sit here sulking over the social implications of having a nephew birthed by his ex-wife. Bratwurst and sausage were so much more appealing. Then he glanced down at her feet. “Oops. Never mind.”
“Down by Gate B12, between the ATM and the security check?”
“Yeah, you know the place?”
“Heh. I eat there all the time.” Her mouth parted even more, drawing his eyes. Trouble stirred once more. “There are few things to get me out of my bunny slippers, but knockwurst and blown engines will do it. Let’s go before junior scarfs down another chocolate bar.”
2
HIS NAME WAS David McLean. His hair was a rich brown, cut conservatively short, but it suited him, suited the all-American, man-most-likely-to-know-how-to-fix-a-car-engine allure. Yes, he’d never model like one of those designer-wearing scruffy-jawed man-boys, but there was something about him that fascinated her. He was curious and intelligent, asking questions about everything, yet not so willing to talk about himself. Eventually she discovered why.
He was divorced and his jaw clenched like a vise when he’d mentioned it, so it wasn’t one of those “parting as good friends” situations.
The restaurant was quiet and dark, the wait staff moving efficiently and effortless, and the large, overstuffed booths were conducive to divulging confidences to perfect strangers.
“It’s not easy, is it?” she asked, thinking of her own divorce. Two weeks of wounded pride, several weeks of sorting out the finances and understanding what was whose and five months of awkward questions and well-meaning advice from friends. But then Ashley woke up one cold December morning and she knew she would be okay. Not fine, not great, but she was going to live. It was while in that fragile state that Valerie convinced her that she should do something radical with her life, live out her dream and buy a chain of four small Chicago boutiques. Start fresh.
“Not going that well?” asked David, when she told him what she did.
“Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. You don’t have the joie de vivre that a lot of small business owners get when things are breezing along.”
“You see a lot of small business owners?”
“Oh, yeah. From Omaha to Oahu. Kalamazoo to Klondike. I’ve seen a lot.”
“Oh.”
“Owning your own business is a lot of work. I sit on the sidelines and tell people how much their business is worth, how much it’s not worth, what they are doing wrong, and recommend whether our investors should go all in or not. My job is the easy part. After I look over the operation, talk to a few customers and suppliers, I go plug some numbers into a spreadsheet, and then I’m on to the next business, the next opportunity.”
“I used to be an insurance claims appraiser.”
His mouth quirked, amused, and she cut in.
“Don’t say it. I know. I have the insurance adjuster look.”
“Nah, not an insurance adjuster. Maybe bookstore owner or candy maker. Something more personal.”
“I think that’s a compliment.”
“It is. You’re too cute for the insurance business. So why fashion?”
Cute. He thinks you’re cute.
He’s from New York.
Who cares? Take a chance, Ash.
For a second she met his eyes—a little more bold than usual. “I want to prove something. I want to take a plant and nurture it, care for it, water it and watch it bloom.”
He snapped his fingers. “Florist. I can definitely see that in you.”
She began to laugh because if he ever saw her plant shelf, he would be rolling on the floor, too. “No florist, sorry. I wanted to do something that I could master. Something challenging. I was stuck, and I needed to prove that I could do something different.” It was nearly Valerie’s post-divorce speech verbatim, but Val had been right. Ashley had just neglected to tell her sister that last key point.
“And fashion is challenging?”
Ashley nodded. Men really had no idea. It had taken her two hours to decide on the yellow gypsy skirt, the perfect pale green cotton T-shirt and a kaleidoscopic glass-bead necklace. The outfit had vague Easter-egg overtones, but worked nicely with her hair, and best of all…no wrinkles when traveling.
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
He sat back from the table, his eyes tracking to the bank of departure monitors nearby. “We better go back to the tarmac of terror.”
“You’re anxious to get out of here?” she asked, noticing the slight jaw-clench again. That, and the disappearing smile.
“No. It’s fine.”
Yeah, she’d seen that movie, too. Knew the ending. “Denial, much? Don’t worry. It’ll get better.”
His gaze met hers, and the warm green was analytical hazel once again. “Has yours?”
“Oh, yeah,” she lied. It hadn’t gotten worse, but it hadn’t gotten better. Instead she was stuck in this post-divorce limbo where she had no knowledge of how to proceed, and no inclination to leave the comfort of her own solitude.
“So when’s the last time you went out?”
“Not too long ago.”
“How long?” he probed, and she didn’t like the awareness in his eyes. It was that same probing look that her sister got before she would launch into a lecture. Ashley shifted in her seat.
“I don’t know,” she answered vaguely. The divorce had been three years and eight months ago, but she didn’t like the idea of dating again. It felt too wrong. She was a thirty-two-year-old woman, not a twentysomething college kid. She couldn’t go sit in a bar. If she signed up for a matchmaking service, she was afraid no one would pick her. And most of the blind dates she’d had had been with total losers. People had good intentions, but their judgment left a lot to be desired.
“Has it been longer than a year?”
“Maybe. But I’ve been busy,” she said, dodging the question.
He stayed silent for a second before nodding. “Understand that. I’m not one of those men who has to be married. I cook. I do my own laundry. There’s a whole group of guys who get together to watch the games in a bar. I’m independent. I like my independence.” It was the battle cry for the walking wounded. Ashley knew it well.
“Then it sounds like you’re in a good place.” She gave him the fake smile. The one that says, “whatever you say is fine.”
“I think I am. You?”
“Oh, yeah.” Abruptly, she decided to stop the charade. Here was a comrade in arms. Someone who knew exactly how it felt. Why not tell the truth? She missed cooking for two. She missed waking up on a Sunday morning and not having to plan out the day. She missed being able to come home from work and laugh about her coworkers—not all of them, but there were a few who were laugh-worthy. Ashley and Jacob had been married for seven years, and it was never the world’s greatest marriage, but still…“Sometimes it is, but sometimes it’s not. Well, you know, there are things I miss.”
“Gawd, yes.”
“At night. It’s lonely.”
“Exactly.”
“I mean, I know I can get Valerie to watch…” He shot her a shocked look and then recovered quickly, but not before she noticed. Oh, man, he thought she was talking about sex, which she wasn’t, but now, okay, her mind was going there, she was thinking the sex thoughts…No, don’t think about it, Ash. Quickly she fumbled back into the conversation. “I like watching horror movies at night and my sister is a total wimp. All we get are historical dramas. Television is something best done with another person.” Okay, Ashley, got over that one. Not too shabby.
David, however, still looked mildly shell-shocked. “Totally,” he answered in a tight voice.
“You like horror movies, too?” she asked, getting a little cocky and daring to tease.
“We should get back to the plane,” he answered, not taking the whole teasing thing well. She knew that men got a lot more wired than women about sex, but he seemed more laid-back than that. Wrong, Ashley. Quickly she changed to a safer topic.
“Get back to Junior? You’re as sadistic as Valerie.”
“Maybe he’s asleep.”
THEY HAD NO SUCH luck once they got back on board. Junior was riding a sugar high, judging by the chocolate smeared across his face and the way he kept bouncing on his seat. But at least all weapons were out of his possession.
David watched as Ashley changed shoes again, noticing how nice her feet were. Smooth, compact, lots of well-turned curves. His cock stirred and he turned away. Turned on by a foot? Weak…very, very weak. It’d been a long time since he had spent several confined hours in the company of a single woman. After the divorce, he’d thrown himself into work, mainly because he liked it, he was good at it, and if he couldn’t have a family life, at least he could build up his retirement account. Today had been like a cold dunk in a deep ocean, the familiar patterns coming back to him, the jittery nerves coming back to him, and the hard-on coming back to him as well.
It was because there wasn’t anything they could do about it. That’s what this was. Economics. Supply and demand. Decrease the availability of supply, and boom, demand shoots out from every pore, zipping in his brain. Ergo, the hard-on.
If she hadn’t mentioned sex. Well, honestly, she hadn’t mentioned sex, she just mentioned the word night and his imagination took off from there, wishing they weren’t at an airport, wondering if that skirt was as easy to slip off as it looked so he could feel her skin under his hands. Tawny skin, creamy skin, soft, touchable skin rubbing up against him…
