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‘Duly noted.’ She reached for it, but Ronan moved it just out of her reach.
‘Let’s make a fair exchange.’
‘Oh-h-h,’ Kerry laughed throatily, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Picture that bad?’
‘Are you suggesting I don’t photograph well?’
He examined her face for a moment, the same low intimacy returning to his voice. ‘I doubt it.’
Kerry felt warmth building on her cheeks, which she’d always thought for a woman her age was just plain old sad. That very thought then bringing her in a straight line to her excuse.
‘Didn’t anyone tell you not to ask a lady her age?’
He frowned in amused confusion, tapping his passport off the knuckles of his hand. ‘And when did I do that?’
‘My date of birth is in my passport.’
‘Ah…’
‘And anyway, you have an aisle seat—you could make a faster getaway. Someone told me recently that giving your passport to a stranger is a bad idea when travelling alone.’
There was a low chuckle of very male laughter, the sound making her smile at him again. Should she have to hazard a guess, Kerry would say that the ‘flirting with women on planes’ thing was pretty successful for him. Maybe the short relationships suited his lifestyle?
‘Do I get a name?’
She spoke slowly, ‘You already have a name, Ronan.’
‘Your name.’
‘We’ll see…’ She waggled her fingers again.
His stunning eyes narrowed briefly, the passport still tapping against his large hand. ‘I’ll swap you a look at my passport for your name.’
‘Once I’ve confirmed you are who you say you are, I’ll reveal my secret identity—how does that sound?’
‘That—’ he smiled again, forcing another smile from her in response before he added ‘—is a deal.’
When her fingers closed around the end of the proffered passport he held on, waiting for her lashes to lift before adding, ‘And I’m not the only one capable of a little flirting on a plane, am I?’
Tugging it free, she informed him with a haughty lift of her nose, ‘You obviously bring out my dark side.’
‘Not sure I’d agree with that.’
Kerry shook her head, dropping her chin to flip through the passport and discovering page after page of stamps from varying countries around the globe. ‘Have you really been to all these places?’
‘Nah, I make my own stamps—it’s a hobby of mine.’ He chuckled again when she glared at him. ‘It’s easier to write a travel guide for a country if you’ve been there, I find. I tried it from home but no one ever came to visit my kitchen after I wrote the guide for there—which is a shame really,’ cos I had some great package deals going.’
Kerry continued reading all the country names, trying to imagine what it must have been like to have visited so many places and seen so many things. It had to have made for an exciting life; he’d make one heck of a dinner guest. And it was yet another thing she could find attractive about him, because even if their ‘relationship’ was only going to last for the duration of the flight, she had to admit he was pretty irresistible on many levels—full of charm, in possession of a fully working sense of humour, capable of giving as good as he got, sexy as sin…a walking fountain of knowledge when it came to travelling…
Be silly not to take advantage of the latter, really.
When she found the photograph page she laughed softly. ‘Oh, dear—now that’s bad.’
Ronan leaned in to look over her shoulder, his upper arm pressed against her shoulder. ‘Just needs a row of numbers across the bottom, doesn’t it? And a couple of shots from either side to make up the set.’
Kerry turned her face towards his, her gaze searching his eyes back and forth while she breathed in deep breaths of his scent. ‘Voice of experience?’
His smile was slow and oozing with blatantly male sexuality, the brush of thick lashes against tanned skin deliberately slow, she was certain. And when he spoke it was with that deep, rumbling, intimate tone again, the air between them seeming to vibrate and—well—sizzle a little, frankly.
‘Not in that area, no,’ he stage-whispered, ‘but I did get detention after school on a pretty regular basis. Just don’t tell anyone in case it affects my ability to get into some countries, okay?’
‘Your secret’s safe with me.’
When she answered in an equally low stage whisper, her gaze tangled with his again, a shiver of something running up her spine, radiating outwards, leaving her skin tingling and a strange tightness in her chest.
What was that? She’d never been so very aware of a man on such a cellular level before and it was—a little unsettling, actually.
‘Could I ask you to put your tray down, please, sir?’
The voice of a stewardess broke the charged silence, forcing Ronan back into his allocated space before he lowered his tray, a smile aimed up at the pretty blonde as she served him his meal. He wasn’t the least bit tempted to flirt with her, he noticed, not the way he had with the woman beside him. It was something unusual for him— not that he hadn’t been known to make small talk with someone on a long-haul flight if they hadn’t handed out the usual ‘leave me alone’ signals of burying their nose in a paperback or plugging in headphones.
But she was—intriguing, he supposed was the right word. What was someone like her doing travelling alone? No rings anywhere, he’d noted, so it would be a boyfriend rather than husband meeting her in New York if there was one. But something told him there wasn’t either one or she wouldn’t be flirting back with him the way she was. Women who blushed as prettily as she had weren’t players in that league, were they?
Business trip, then—visiting friends maybe.
Only one way to find out, so once they had their meals in front of them he turned his head to look at her again. ‘What takes you to the Big Apple?’
She handed him his passport, which he tucked between his thighs without removing his gaze from her face. She should be well used to men looking at her, as pretty as she was with gleaming chestnut hair waving around her fine features and the full mouth with a constant upward curve suggesting she smiled more often than not.
‘It’s on my fantasy list.’
It took considerable effort to keep a strangled edge out of his voice. ‘Your what?’
Because his furtive imagination had just gone straight to Sinville with that one.
‘Kind of like fantasy football only with destinations instead of players.’ She nodded, tucking a strand of richly coloured hair behind her ear so he could see a small earring dangling against the skin of her neck as she leaned forward to examine what was on her tray—the simple sight intensely sensual. ‘I’ve spent so long burying myself in work that this trip is made up entirely of places off the top of the list.’
Ronan watched as she flashed him a sideways glance and a small smile that warmed the hints of russet in her large brown eyes. ‘I’m going round the world.’
And the husky sense of satisfaction in her voice was a pleasure to his ears. ‘Alone?’
‘Now, if you were me would you answer that question when a stranger asked it?’
‘No.’
She nodded again, ripping the plastic off her utensils. ‘There you go, then.’
‘So are you?’
She turned her shoulders and fixed him with a steady ‘straight in the eye’ gaze. ‘Now, Mr O’Keefe—’
‘Oh, no, you don’t.’ He leaned a little closer— something he’d been doing a lot of the last few minutes. ‘I was Ronan five minutes ago—and you owe me a name.’
‘That was before you threatened me with a knife.’
When she dipped her chin in the direction of his hand he looked down, then back. ‘It’s a three- inch plastic knife—I’d say you’re safe from any lasting harm, wouldn’t you?’
When she continued to challenge him with her steady gaze and a minuscule quirk of her perfectly arched brows he took a deep breath and set the utensils down, replacing them with a spoon and the dessert tub, which he automatically ripped the cover off.
Her eyes widened. ‘You’re eating dessert first?’
‘Yup,’ he answered with his mouth full of a surprisingly good lemon cheesecake, mentally making a note of it in association with the airline. ‘Why wait for the good stuff? Life’s too short.’
‘That’s profound. But I think you’ll find it has more to do with the savoury-before-sweet rule.’
There was a brief pause while Ronan studied her, cheesecake dissolving on his tongue. ‘There’s a rule?’
‘Yes, and for good reason.’
‘Never was one for following rules.’
‘I can believe that.’
Ronan sat a little taller, because he was quite proud of his reputation as a rule-breaker, as it happened. He’d never been one for accepting the going odds either. And he wasn’t that easily distracted.
‘Name.’
She laughed, the sound amazingly sexy in the intimate space between them, and Ronan had been on more planes than he could count on his fingers and toes combined and never once had he found himself wishing the flight could be a few hours longer than it actually was.
‘Does it matter? Not like you’ll ever see me again after this flight touches down.’
‘We made a deal.’ And as a rule-follower she wasn’t likely to go back on a deal, was she?
She ran the rosy tip of her tongue over her full lips, bringing Ronan’s gaze to her mouth as she formed the words.
‘It’s Kerry, Kerry Doyle.’
It suited her, was—right somehow. ‘Nice to meet you, Kerry, Kerry Doyle.’
And her mouth curled into an answering wide smile that showed straight teeth and mischievous dimples—oh, she was really something.
‘Funny guy.’
Trailing his gaze from her mouth to the warmth of her eyes, and then somewhat reluctantly for the first time in his life to focus on his dessert, he silently cleared his throat before digging a little deeper to satisfy his raging curiosity.
‘Tell me more about this fantasy list.’
‘Is it a good idea for a woman travelling alone to give her itinerary to a stranger on a plane?’
Actually he wasn’t entirely convinced that was the kind of fantasies he’d meant, his mouth curling into a lazy smile at the thought as he loaded his spoon. ‘We’ve just been introduced so technically we’re not strangers any more—just as well, too, seeing you’ve just confirmed you’re travelling alone.’
When a quick turn of his head afforded him a glimpse of a recriminating frown he grinned inwardly. ‘Don’t look a gift horse and all that. You have a bonafide destination expert literally at your fingertips—feel free to take advantage of me.’
He threw in another wink for good measure.
‘Oh, you just don’t quit, do you?’
‘Being helpful? Can’t say women list that as my most memorable quality, no.’
‘Flirting.’
‘Ah.’ It took considerable effort to hold the full- blown smile he could feel in his chest from making its way up onto his face. ‘Well, you do know they say it’s all about the individual’s interpretation.’
Kerry laughed a low, husky laugh. ‘You’re incorrigible.’
‘I’ve been told. Tell me about your trip, then.’
She did, over ‘dinner’, through coffee that didn’t get spilt thanks to the code they had in place, and she even produced a colour-coded itinerary Ronan found highly amusing as she explained it to him while they ignored the movie. It was as they began their descent into JFK that he explained to her the treasures that could be found if she didn’t limit herself to the usual sights that would swallow up great chunks of her time when she was stuck in huge lines of tourists all wanting to see the same things—Kerry scribbling notes into the margins of her neatly typed sheets of paper.
Her enthusiasm was palpable, watching the thoughts crossing her expressive eyes was addictive— and Ronan found himself regretting again the fact he hadn’t met her in Dublin on the first leg of the flight.
‘It must be amazing to spend your life seeing all the places you see.’
An innocuous statement, but the words twisted like a knife in his chest. ‘Yeah, it’s been great.’
Placing her itinerary with its brand new scribbled notes into a Ziploc bag, she leaned back against her seat and sighed, a small, contented smile on her mouth and a faraway look in her eyes as she turned her face towards his watchful gaze, her voice low.
‘I can’t imagine half the things you’ve seen— you’re incredibly lucky.’
Lucky was far from the mark, as it happened. But Ronan’s imagination was too busy deciding that, with both their heads against the headrests and their faces turned towards each other, it was too much as if they were lying side by side in a bed for him to descend into bitterness—his voice husky as a result of where his brain then took that mental image.
‘Have you got everything on your fantasy list covered or is there anything else I can help you with?’
She chuckled, letting the innuendo slide. ‘This trip is just the beginning. I’ve got almost three months to pack in as much as I can, so it’s a taster, if you like. Then if there’s anywhere I really enjoy I’ll try and spend more time there next time round.’
She had dozens more adventures to look forward to. And enthusiasm danced in her eyes, highlighting the hinted shades of russet and gold in amongst the brown—though his imagination was probably filling that in…
She really couldn’t be any more different from him if she tried, could she? But he managed to keep the envy out of his voice, just. ‘I can recommend some great guidebooks to help you catch up with me, if you like.’
Kerry laughed the soft laugh he found so enthralling. ‘I’ll just bet you can. Do you have one for the first-time traveller? You know—with all those tips about never confessing you’re travelling alone, or why not to give your name to strangers on planes and that one about the passport? They’re all very useful.’
‘And you ignored every single one of them—’ he couldn’t help smiling when she did ‘—though I’m glad you did ’cos, between you and me, this has been the shortest Atlantic crossing I’ve ever had.’
After only a moment’s hesitation she leaned a little closer to whisper, ‘You’re welcome.’
He couldn’t stop looking into her eyes. Searching each of them closely, with the sense of intimacy rising as he felt the soft wisp of her warm breath against his face. And the urge to kiss her was so strong when the cabin lights dimmed and his vision blurred that it was as physical a need to him as the one for oxygen.
