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Another time she might have felt awkward having a man in the doorway of her bedroom. As much as she’d come to care for Johnny, she probably would’ve been a little uncomfortable having him there. At the moment, the bed behind her mattered not at all.
“Your family owns a plane.”
Forget about the plane, already! Who cares about a plane?
“Yes.” He nodded. His shirt, cream-colored and with a denim-like texture, fit his shoulders to perfection, making him look...manly. She’d been thinking about those shoulders a lot. Thinking about those arms. About him holding her. About laying her head on his shoulder and letting him take care of her for the second or two she’d need to regain her usual strength.
Had he sensed her out-of-character neediness? Been repulsed by it?
“A four-seater? Like a Cessna?” Some only moderately rich people had them. But was he a pilot? As well as a corporate attorney and an only child with a dead wife to grieve for? Didn’t he know how dangerous those small planes could be?
“A twelve-passenger corporate jet.”
Tabitha’s knees felt like they were going to give out on her. She had no intention of letting them. “So, you hire a pilot to fly it?”
What kind of family business allowed for such expenses? He’d said his father was rich enough to have people work for him. That he made his money by investing in various projects. She’d never imagined enough magnitude to support a corporate jet. Johnny’s other life was out of bounds for her. She’d understood that from the beginning. Was fine with it.
But...he and his family owned a corporate jet? One he could just ta
ke out on a Sunday-afternoon lark? To Phoenix?
Was he getting a kick out of driving her around the state in the little SUV he’d purchased for his sabbatical?
“We have a full-time pilot on staff,” he told her, shoulders a bit hunched as he remained standing in her door. “But I took it up myself today.”
“A twelve-passenger jet.”
“Yes.”
“By yourself.”
He shrugged in lieu of yet another affirmative response to her sudden aeronautical fascination.
“What did you do in Phoenix?”
Who jotted off to Phoenix for the afternoon?
She’d been at work for twelve hours. He could have...done anything he wanted to. His time away was no business of hers. Even if he had some woman from his previous life that he’d flown to Phoenix to have lunch with. Maybe a friend to him and Angel?
The immediate stab of jealousy she felt dissipated when she remembered that Johnny wasn’t dating at all this year as part of honoring Angel. And prior to that, he’d been a married man.
There’d be no other woman to make her jealous. Not yet.
“I sent that text late this morning,” he said, side-stepping his time in Phoenix, sending another stab of...insecurity where her relationship with him was concerned. And envy, too. Any woman Johnny would fly to see would be one of the luckiest women on earth. Whether that happened now or in three months.
The man had a corporate jet that he could “take up” on a whim. No one she knew lived like that. Johnny Brubaker was so far out of her realm, she couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live in his real life.
Or to spend a day in Phoenix with him.
“I didn’t land in Phoenix,” he said into the silence that had fallen.
“Where did you land, then?” They had to talk, to get out of that moment so they could get out of her bedroom. And back to—or on to—whatever came next.
Did she dare hope he’d still be going to San Diego with her the next day? And that he’d be with her for dinner with the Harrises?
Did he find her too ordinary? Maybe he felt sorry for her behind her back, living the way she did. It probably seemed to him that she was on the verge of poverty. She owed money on her house. On her little car.
He had a corporate jet.
