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But I’m tripped up by the fact that I don’t know what I’m supposed to share and what Keir has decided to keep secret. Finally, I just shrug, feeling heat bloom in my cheeks.
She grins. “I bet you don’t last a fortnight.”
James sticks his head in the cabin where we’re sitting, a smirk on his lips. He’s taken off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, looking eminently relaxed and alert. For some reason, looking at James smirking in his shirt cuffs and slacks reminds me of a prep school boy, looking for trouble.
“And what’s going on up here?”
Natasha automatically sits upright and smiles, but she doesn’t seem pleased at James’ presence. As a former ballerina, I’m used to reading body language. And the tightening of her shoulders and the strain in her fake smile scream that she’s tense.
“We’re just having a little girl talk,” Natasha says. “Nothing more than that. Right, Ella?”
I nod, although I can’t for the life of me say why.
“Yep,” I agree.
James looks between us, seeming to make some kind of choice. After a second he moves toward me, sitting on the thick white padded armrest of my seat. I have to flatten myself against the hard plastic of the wall to give him room so that I’m not practically in his lap.
“So, Ella. My brother hasn’t told me anything about you. How old are you?”
His posh British accent is much easier to understand than Natasha’s. It makes me wonder how he and Keir can be Scottish and yet still sound so English.
I clear my throat. “Um, twenty.”
“Tell me, are you hoping to catch a sugar daddy while you’re over here?” His eyes twinkle. “My brother has a lot of well-connected friends. Princes, billionaires… and then there’s me, of course.”
He winks at me, leaning in close. I am already as far away as I can get from him, so I just turn my face away when he looms close.
Thankfully, Keir interrupts.
“James!” he thunders, his voice just behind my seat.
I jump, my heart in my throat, my pulse doing a can-can dance in triple time.
James pulls back, looking at his brother with an innocent expression. “What? I’m just asking Ella about herself.”
“Get up,” Keir barks. I turn my head and see him, looking dark and brooding, his hair ruffled just so. “I don’t actually want to know how much trouble you get in when I’m not around.”
“Very funny,” James gripes. He hoists himself up, scowling at his brother. “You really know how to suck all the fun out of a room.”
Keir grabs James by the back of his shirt, dragging him into the cabin behind him. “I can see it now. Would Be P.M. In Court For Sexually Harassing Nanny. More at 11.”
James moves his head around Keir’s body, making eye contact with me. “I’ll talk to you later then, darling. That’s a promise.”
Gooseflesh breaks out across the back of my neck and my upper arms. I clamp my mouth shut and look forward, pretending I didn’t hear his words.
“Natasha, out,” Keir orders, jerking his thumb toward the back of the plane. “I want to show Ella something that Violet has been doing.”
He holds up a thin laptop, lifting his eyebrows. Natasha instantly gets up, bowing as she passes Keir. She makes a showing of closing the thin curtain that acts as a partition between the two cabins.
I give Keir a questioning look but he puts a finger to his lips. He walks past me to the front of the plane, checking that there isn’t anyone in the darkened plane hallway. Then he takes the first seat, beckoning me toward him.
Making my way over to him, I stand awkwardly as Keir opens the laptop.
“I don’t know what you could possibly show me—”
He stops me with a hand on my forearm. “Shut up.”
At his touch, I feel my blood begin to heat. And Keir gives commands like he was born to do it; I guess he really is part of the aristocracy.
