In Flight (Up in the Air #1)(7)

He gave me a slightly annoyed look. “Please, call me James,” he chided me. He leaned in closer, speaking directly into my ear. “In private, though, you may call me Mr. Cavendish.” With that unnerving exchange, he walked away.

Stephan raised his brows at me as I came back to stand beside him to see off the other passengers. “What did he say to you?” he asked, obviously curious. “The look on his face, and then on yours…”

I just shook my head. “You don’t wanna know.”

I went through the motions of our usual deplaning routine, not feeling at all like myself. Being around that man made me feel…strange. It felt a little like I’d been plucked away from my own orderly life and placed in the middle of some kind of a game. A game with rules that I hadn’t been told. And I had no frame of reference with which to learn those rules. I told myself firmly that I was only relieved that I had told James Cavendish no. He was just too much for me. He was too experienced, too jaded, too rich. And all of that would have been enough to dissuade me even if I was interested in dating, which I certainly was not. I never had been. And he was obviously into some kind of S&M besides. I had my own demons to deal with, and that sort of thing was the last thing I should be interested in. But still… in spite of myself, I did find it fascinating. And frightening. And exciting. I knew that it was probably because of my violent childhood that an excited shiver ran through me at the thought of some of the things he’d said. Like putting me over his knee… I knew from countless visits to a shrink that the things that horrified people in childhood could also excite us as adults. The thought was sobering. I worked really hard not to be a victim of my childhood. That made it all the more important that I stay away from someone like James Cavendish.

It took some convincing, but I felt I had adequately convinced myself of this as we got our luggage down, and then waited for the rest of the crew to join us.

Stephan and I walked in the front of our little inflight parade as we made our way briskly through JFK. “Mmmm, I’d kill for a coffee right now. Shall we grab one on our way out?” Stephan murmured to me as we approached a small coffee stand to our right.

I shot him a puzzled frown. “You know I’d never sleep a wink if I had coffee, but I’ll wait in line with you while you get one.”

He gave an odd little shrug, his eyes intently on the coffee stand. “Nah, I guess I’ll wait til’ after a nap.”

I followed his gaze to see Mr. Cavendish waiting at the coffee counter. He gave us an enigmatic smile, nodding cordially to Stephan. My head whipped around to eye Stephan suspiciously. He was nodding back at James Cavendish, smiling.

“What are you up to, Stephan?” I growled at him, my voice pitched low so that the rest of the crew wouldn’t hear.

He pursed his lips. I nodded stiffly as we made our way past Mr. Cavendish. I was going for polite, but cold. I thought I pulled it off well.

“What? I can’t be polite?” he asked, his tone all innocence. I didn’t trust that tone at all. When I’d met Stephan he’d been a fourteen year old street hustler who could lie the wallet off of anyone breathing. He had long ago mastered the art of playing dumb. But I knew him better than anyone, and I wasn’t fooled for a second.

“That smile you shared with him was downright conspiratorial. Tell me what you did. Did you give him my number?”

He sent me a wounded glance. “I wouldn’t do that.”

I was relieved. Stephan could skate around the truth like a pro, but he would never outright lie to me. If he said he wouldn’t give James my number, I knew it was the truth, so I left it alone after that.

The crew van to the hotel was full of excited chatter about the plans for the evening. Apparently, everyone was planning to go out for drinks together at the bar on the corner near our hotel. Karaoke night. I cringed a little at the thought. It sounded a little too loud and embarrassing for my taste, or my mood. But I would be a good sport. It was a new crew, and I’d hate to be the only anti-social one in the bunch, when they were all so obviously excited.

Also, I knew Stephan liked one of the bartenders at that bar. They’d been feeling each other out slowly for the last couple of months. We went there for either lunch or dinner almost every week, when we came to town. Stephan was ninety percent sure that the bartender was flirting with him, and not just a friendly guy. But it took him a long time to work up to actually asking a guy out.

Stephan wasn’t out of the closet. I didn’t know if he would ever be ready for that. Gay guys who were out of the closet usually just weren’t okay with dating in secret as though they were doing something wrong.

I knew that Stephan also preferred dating other men who weren’t out, because it made it easier to keep it low-key. But this made it much harder for him to date. I’d suggested to him that he could probably find people easier online, considering his restrictions, but he wouldn’t even consider it. He said online dating just felt wrong for him. He was a little old-fashioned about the strangest things.

“You’re quiet, Buttercup,” he whispered in my ear. Melissa was describing to the van at large what she was planning to wear that night, and what she was planning to sing for her karaoke numbers. Her selection of ‘Sexy Back’ did not surprise me in the least. “You’ll come with us to the bar, right?” he asked me, a plea already in his voice. He thought I was going to try to duck out. I wasn’t. The bartender was the first guy he’d been interested in since a particularly hard breakup a year ago, and if he needed me there for moral support, I’d be there.