Mile High (Up in the Air #2)(73)
Jolene’s crimson lipstick, and my eyes were wide and scared. I dragged the back of my hand across my mouth, wiping away the offending color.
I had forgotten about the bathroom attendant completely. I only recalled her presence as she kindly offered me a towel. I thanked her gratefully, wiping at the red on my lips, trying to erase every trace. It clung to my mouth stubbornly. I hated the color.
The bathroom door burst open and a furious James tore inside as though he’d hit it at a dead sprint. He took me in with wild eyes, searching the bathroom as he moved towards me.
A drop-dead gorgeous woman hurried in the door behind him. She had streaky blond hair worn down her back in whimsical mermaid waves. She wore a soft gray sheath gown that managed to be both elegant and sexy. It covered her from neck to ankle but did nothing to disguise her spectacular, supermodel figure.
I couldn’t spare her much of a glance as James reached me swiftly, cupping a hand at the back of my head, his other hand tilting my chin up to study me.
“What happened?” he asked.
My hand grabbed his where it held my chin, and his eyes flew to the back of my hand. It was covered in crimson lipstick smears.
His eyes moved from my hand to my mouth and back again. “What happened?” he repeated, his tone harsh.
“Can’t you guess? Your Exes got their hands on me. The short one doesn’t understand the word no very well,” I told him. My voice came out more coldly than I meant for it to.
His hand tightened to a nearly painful grip on my chin. His voice got very quiet, but I heard the panic in it. “They assaulted you?”
“Jules held my wrists while Jolene took her top off and forced me to kiss her. Yeah, I guess you could say they assaulted me. They seem to have some sort of routine down for pressuring your women into trying threesomes.” I made my face and voice as expressionless as I could manage. I wanted to see his response and I watched him carefully for it.
He cringed, an awful kind of rawness overtaking his face. He pulled me into his chest. “I’m sorry. I should have done a better job of protecting you. I swear I’ll take the necessary steps to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. I just never dreamed they would do something like confront you in a bathroom. And I never imagined they would put their hands on you.”
I should have realized that he’d blame himself for it all. I still felt angry and bitter about the entire thing, but even in spite of that, I felt myself wanting to soften towards him.
“Bianca, this is Lana. She’s an old friend of mine.” James made the introduction while still holding my face buried in his chest. “She happened in on you being harassed in the bathroom and was kind enough to come get me.”
I turned to meet the woman, not missing the clear affection I heard in his voice as he said the woman’s name.
The woman was even more stunning than I had realized, as I caught my second glance at her, this time closer up. She gave me a friendly, if very careful, smile. She had the face of a fairytale princess, with eyes so bright a blue they were violet. I wondered if they could have been her real eye color. I had never met anyone with purple eyes before.
Her wavy blond hair had every shade of blonde streaked through it as it flowed down her back and around her shoulders like a whimsical cape. Her face was stunning, her features perfectly symmetrical, her eyes big and thickly lashed, her nose tiny and pert, her soft, pouty mouth damn near as pretty as James’s.
She stood at eye level with me, which meant she was somewhere between five nine and six feet tall, though I couldn’t say for sure without a good look at the size of her heels. As I studied her, I realized that somehow I recognized this exquisite woman, though I hadn’t a clue how. She was not the type of woman anyone could forget meeting.
She saw my brow furrow as I studied her. She seemed to read my thoughts, and grimaced. “You recognize me,” she said with a sigh. Her voice was soft and musical. She shot James an arch look.
“James, you’re in the ladies restroom, as you seem to have forgotten. Go wait outside. I’ll help your Bianca freshen up so you two can make your escape. I’ll even make your excuses for you, but you need to get out of this bathroom before you create a scene. Anyone could come in here at any moment.”
James kissed the top of my head before heading to the door. He cast me a worried glance but spoke to Lana. “Don’t be long,” he warned.
She held out a chair in front of a vanity for me. “Sit down, hon,” she said. I complied, responding automatically to the kindness in her voice. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-six, but she had an almost maternal countenance, in spite of her bombshell looks.
I studied her in the mirror, but still couldn’t place her. “What do I know you from?” I asked her finally.
She had a huge, if fashionable, handbag, splayed out on the counter, and was digging through it determinedly.
She cast me a wry smile. “I had a dismally short stint in modeling a few years ago. I wasn’t suited for it at all, but people occasionally recognize me from some high profile covers I did. I only ever even got the covers because my mother was a supermodel from the eighties.”
As she spoke I conjured up a memory of her in a tiny yellow bikini, straddling a surfboard for a very famous cover of Sports Illustrated. My jaw dropped. “You were a supermodel yourself. You don’t model anymore?”
She shrugged, her smile turning very self-deprecating. “It’s a fact that I’m much better at working for the family business than I ever was at smiling for the camera.”