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I instantly remembered her fear of turbulence and rocky planes. Images of her devastated expression as she cried at her parents’ funeral flashed in my head, and panicking, I turned to her and saw that her face had gone pale, and she was frozen in one spot.
“I’m right here, Nina,” I said, and clamped a hand over hers to show my comfort. “Take a deep breath and stay calm … I’m never leaving you,” I added just before another bout of turbulence hit, and the alarm bells went off inside the cockpit.
Chapter Five
Nina
Myinsidesshookwithfear, but in the mix of that dreadful sensation was the warmth and flutters in the pit of my stomach.
He kissed me … We kissed …the kiss was another reason why I wanted to panic, but the fear of crashing overpowered it at that moment. Tears blurred my vision, and I tried not to cry out loud. Ever since my parents’ plane crash years back, a part of me had always feared this happening.
Jack suddenly swooped his hands around my shoulder and pulled me to him. I went willingly into the crook of his arms. His touch didn’t only offer me warmth. It also offered comfort, and I desperately wanted that.
He makes me feel safe.
He kept rocking me gently and patting a hand over my back while the entire cockpit shook.
“Stay calm; I’m right here with you,” he whispered, as he smoothed a hand over my hair and pressed a kiss to the top of my head. The kiss made me freeze again, and a painful pang hit my chest.
Why did he kiss me?There were different kinds of kisses, and a kiss on the tip of the head was different from the passionate one on the lips we just shared.
Different emotions slashed through me as I snuggled closer to him. The turbulence lasted for a while, and I probably overreacted through it all.
When it finally subsided, nausea rising in my throat started to subside too, and I could finally drag in a deep breath without the threat of puking all over my lovely dress.
“Do you feel better?” Jack asked, just before the lights came back on.
His eyes remained fixated on mine, and the wrinkling of his brows showed his worry. His grip remained tight on my hand, and when I realized I was also holding onto him, I cleared my throat and removed my hand.
“I’m fine … I’m better now,” I said to him, forcing the words out of my tight throat. I pretended to cough again, then tore my gaze from his and leaned back on my chair.
The second I closed my eyes, I released a deep breath and inhaled it back again. My nerves still tingled from the kiss, and it left me confused.
The last time Jack touched me, he made it clear that it was a one-time thing—so why did he look at me that way? Why did he watch me? touch me? and now kiss me?
Stop thinking about it.It had to be his usual playboy antics. Besides, I was his fake wife now, and we were going to do a lot of fake shows of affection over the coming two weeks. I had to find a way to make sure it did not get to my head.
Or my heart.
But I wasn’t immune to Jack; I never had been. Even while I prided myself on being the one woman he had not been able to woo in the past, I had still always admired him. He was only five years older than me, so it had been easy to hang around him and my brother all the time. When I turned eighteen, it had become even more frequent.
There was always something to remind me of Jack. I fell asleep at some point while thinking, and that was the last I remembered of our journey. When next I opened my eyes, I was lying on a king-size bed with white sheets draped over my body.
It took a second for my mind to register what was happening. A tall, well-built man stood by the window, and the reflection of sunlight coming in through the parted drapes cast a shadow on his frame.
When he turned around to face me, I realized it was Jack, and he looked even more handsome than the image of him in my dream.
Slowly, I sat up on the bed and groaned. My head hurt a little, and my eyes still felt heavy.
Jet lagged.
“When did we arrive?” I asked him while rubbing my eyes. I yawned, stretched my hands out in front of me, and then flipped the sheets off my body. “I was very tired, I guess; I missed the fun of arriving here.”
“Trust me, it played out even better with you asleep,” Jack said to me as he smiled. “I carried you out of our limo and brought you in here in my arms. It was a sweet moment, and it made the sheikh believe we were so deeply in love.”
Jack was smiling because he found this amusing, but it wasn’t. “That’s mortifying,” I told him, then shuddered on purpose before getting up from the bed.
Jack was wearing his suit pants and a white shirt. The first three buttons were undone, and I caught a glimpse of his bare chest just from a side glance. My throat thickened, and I swallowed hard as a shot of desire ravaged through me.
