In Flight (Up in the Air #1)(37)

“I’m off tomorrow,” I explained. “If I took today off, I wouldn’t get paid. And dropping a shift so last minute could get me in trouble.”

His arms tightened. He rubbed his chin on the top of my head affectionately.

“You could quit. Come work for me. I’d be a generous employer. You could be a flight attendant on my jet. We’d get all the time we wanted together, then. Or, if you want a change of careers, I could find you something else. If you don’t care for the hotel industry, I have other companies you could work for. Or hell, just take some time off. Relax. I’d be more than happy to support-”

“Don’t ever mention anything like to me again, please, or this is over, starting now,” I interrupted him, my tone icy, my face composed. I was shaking a little.

The nerve of him, I thought. I had worked like a fiend since I was a young teenager, and he had just belittled every minute of it. It was an effort not to storm out of the shower with half-rinsed hair, and just leave.

His hands began to stroke my arms in a soothing gesture. “I meant no offense. It’s just hard for me to see you struggle. Can you understand that?”

Struggle? I thought, a little wildly. Could he know the meaning of the word, if he thought that my life was a struggle? But then I remembered what he’d said about his parents, about how they’d both died when he was only thirteen. He hadn’t led the perfect life that I had pictured. It was a hardship and a struggle getting over the death of a parent. We had at least something in common. It warmed me towards him some, and helped me to give him another chance.

I shook my head slightly. “Well, don’t worry about me. And don’t mention anything like that to me again. I mean it. It’s a deal-breaker for me.”

His face was stiff but he nodded.

I took a few measured breaths to calm down, then moved away from him, rinsing off and stepping out of the shower.

“I need to go. I don’t even know what time it is, but I need to get ready for work.” I wrapped one of his big soft towels around me.

“It’s 4:40. I woke you up a little early. Sorry.”

He sure didn’t sound sorry, I thought, moving into his room to look for my dress. It was a crumpled heap on the floor. I picked it up tentatively, my nose wrinkling. I could see the stains on it from a foot away, and I wasn’t about to smell it.

I glanced back at the bathroom.

James lounged in the doorway, leaning against the open door frame nonchalantly, his arms crossed. His face was expressionless, his eyes indifferent. He looked suddenly as forbidding as his opulent home. Perhaps I’d overstayed my welcome.

“Do you have a T-shirt or something I could borrow? It doesn’t matter what. I just need to drive straight from your driveway to my garage. And I’m not wearing this.” I dropped the offending dress back on the floor.

He nodded, moving to his closet. He came out with a folded T-shirt and a pair of black boxer briefs.

“Will these work?” he asked, his voice toneless.

I nodded, grabbing them and heading into the bathroom. I changed and used the bathroom in less than a minute, coming back out.

“Do you know where I left my purse?” I asked him.

“In the entryway. By the stairs. You left your sandals there, as well,” he told me without hesitation. I didn’t even remember leaving them there.

I nodded thanks, striding out of his bedroom in a hurry. I had my shoes on and purse in hand before I turned back to him. I’d felt him following my every step.

“Um, bye,” I told him, feeling very awkward and out of my depth. I had certainly never had one of these goodbye scenes before. I was sure he couldn’t say the same. At least it wouldn’t be much of a walk of shame, since I was going straight from his front door to my garage.

He stepped closer to me, but without touching. He still wore just his towel. I kept my eyes firmly on his face. He handed me something, and I looked down at a small silver box. I blinked. He wrapped my hands around it.

“It’s a gift. It was just something that I hoped you would like. You can open it later.”

He grabbed my hair suddenly, giving me a hard kiss on the mouth. He pulled back almost immediately.

“I’ll call you,” he said.

I just nodded and hurried to my car. I didn’t have time to open his gift, or to worry about it. As it was, I’d have to rush to make it to work on time.

As I steered out of his drive, I wondered where he and I stood. Everything had moved so fast, with so many ups and downs, both of us moody with each other. He had said he would call me, but I knew from a lot of my girlfriends that men said that most of the time, whether they meant it or not. The thought that I would never hear from him again was a knot of sick tension in my stomach.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mr. Incredible

I rushed home, getting dressed in a hurry. My hair was still damp, my face bare of makeup, when Stephan walked in my front door.

He called out a greeting, showing up in my bedroom an instant later. I knew I looked like a hot mess.

“Have a good night?” he asked me with a mischievous grin.

“It was memorable, that’s for sure. It isn’t fair for a man that perfect to be loose among the public.”

He laughed. “Let me drive today. We need to go, and you can do something with your hair and makeup on the way.”