Page 26 of Dancing With Temptation

“I’ll make us some. Might as well end the night drunk too, right? Although, having a hangover on a plane is probably a bad idea.” Roxie mused and Wendy rolled her eyes.

“It’s the worst, not recommended, two thumbs down. No drunk for you tonight girl. You’re on your way to Cambodia, whether you like it or not.” Wendy laughed as they entered the dining room and Lincoln looked up with a grin.

“I think she’ll love it if she’ll just give it a chance.” Lincoln didn’t frown or look upset, Roxie saw, but he wasn’t the kind to be easily offended.

She watched him when she came back from making three margaritas and wondered just how stupid she was to agree to this crazy idea. And what did it mean about her feelings for him? Holy fuck.

“Oh, by the way, there’s a change in our flight time tomorrow. I hope you’re good at 4 am.” Lincoln looked at her with brows knitted in worry.

“It’s not my favorite time of the day, but I’ll cope,” Roxie answered, wondering if she’d sleep at all.

13

Roxie

Roxie stared out at the small airport, utterly, totally exhausted. They’d left Myrtle Beach at 5 am the day before. Or was it two days before? It might have even been three, she wasn’t certain now. They’d stopped in Charlotte, North Carolina waiting for the plane that would take them to Los Angeles. That flight had left at almost 10 am and arrived in California at a little past 12 pm.

That totally boggled her brain, even knowing it was the time zone differences that made a nearly five-hour flight turn into two. Unfortunately, there was only one flight out of LAX to the airport in Singapore, and that included a stop in San Francisco. Tanya had scheduled their flight to San Francisco for the same day as they arrived in Los Angeles, which meant one more flight before she could finally be on solid ground again.

“I’m going to die if I have to take off in a plane one more time today, Lincoln.” She mumbled as they disembarked. At least the passport had held up so far, she thought blearily as he pulled their carry-on luggage and gave her a smile that proved she wasn’t the only one who was tired.

“You’ll be able to rest once we get to the hotel for the night. I’ll order room service once we get there.” He kissed the top of her head when she stumbled into him and that felt…nice.

She was too tired to worry about anything else so she focused on putting one foot in front of the other until she saw a huge California king bed that couldn’t have looked more inviting. She wanted to shower and wash off all the germs of being closed up with other people for most of the day, but collapsed when she drew near to the bed. “Fuck, this is heaven.”

“I’ll get us some food, Rox, relax,” Lincoln said and closed the door to their room.

Some sexy time and hotel romp ideas flitted into her brain, but exhaustion took over and her eyes closed. She woke up later with Lincoln nudging her leg gently.

“Food’s here if you want to eat.” He smiled, lighting up the world for a moment. She couldn’t help but smile back at him.

“Water?” She asked, her voice tight and dry.

“Lots of it, come on, I’ll help you get there.” He tugged at her hand and helped her stumble over to the chair.

“I can’t believe how tired I am.” She blinked down at the food on the table, glad he’d ordered her a simple steak with mashed potatoes and a salad. She couldn’t have dealt with much more than that.

“I am too, but we have more traveling to do so eat up, then we’ll change into our pajamas, put some horribly boring shit on TV to drown out any noise, and get to sleep.” His eyes were taut around the edges and she could see he was as tired as she was.

“Sounds like a good idea.” She had to agree, even if it wasn’t quite past 6 pm yet.

She slept like a baby that night, and the next day they took off for Singapore. They had to stopover in Tokyo for an hour and arrived in Singapore where Lincoln told her the bad news. She was certain her face was going to just slide right off her skull, she was so sick of flying, but she took a deep breath.

“I know you’re tired, and we’ve basically spent the last eighteen hours flying. I think we slept some on the plane last night from Japan to here, but well, there’s one more flight.” He wouldn’t look at her. That was probably for the best. If she could muster up the energy she’d explode.

“One more flight?” She asked weakly, staring at him with one eye open before she closed that one too. Nope, not mustering the energy for an explosion at all. “One more flight. We can do this.”

“It’s just a little puddle jump across to Cambodia.” He sighed and looked around, trying to find something, but she wasn’t sure what.

“How long is a puddle jump exactly because I’m going to just lie down on the floor and die if it’s as long as that last flight.” She was miserable, growing cranky, and wishing terribly that she’d just stayed home now.

“Well, um, it’s only two hours. But we can rest at one of the hotels here until tonight. The flights only go out late in the evening.” He had the decency to look sheepish at least. She stared at him blankly before she spoke to him.

“Fine. Hotel. Now. Please.” She walked away from him, heading for the exit and he had to jog to catch up to her to push her in the other direction, to where the actual exit was.

Another hotel swam into her world, with a dinner she wished she could remember but couldn’t taste, and they were back at the airport. Roxie was still barely holding both her eyes open, but she hadn’t had coffee yet. Luckily, she got a really shitty cup of pure caffeine on the plane and that had her wide awake when they landed in Phnom Penh at 8 pm local time. Roxie didn’t even bother looking at her phone to find out what time it was at home. The device had updated the date and time as they landed at each new place and she couldn’t even remember what day it was anymore anyway.

She looked around at what she could see of the small airport. It was so small she wasn’t sure how it handled commercial flights at all, but she was there now. It was at least 80 degrees, even though darkness had fallen, and she wanted nothing more than AC. “Tell me we’re done.”