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I looked away, my head tilting back as the plane moved forward. I twisted to look out the window, and sure enough, we picked up speed as we taxied down the runway. I shot up and jumped toward the door, which was shut tight now. The illusion that I could walk away at any time was dissolving.
“I can’t leave,” I said, voice rising to a shrill whistle. “I have to go to work. Damn it, Leo, I have other jobs, and I can’t lose them.”
He pounced on me in one smooth motion, his hands gripping my shoulders. “Sit down. We’re about to take off.”
“Ma’am, you have to take your seat until after we’re in the air.” A flight attendant stuck her head in from a door up front.
Leo and I whipped our heads toward her. “Get out,” we both shouted.
“Listen to me,” Leo said in a low, serious voice. “You can’t go back home. Your life is in danger. I thought you understood that by now.”
Yes, he’d drilled it into my head, but they were just words. I remembered the gunshots and went stiff. “My grandma. And Annie. Are they in danger, too?” My body felt like it had been plunged into a freezing ocean. Icy needles of fear stabbed at me.
He pulled me into his arms, gliding his hands around my back. I could feel his heart beating as hard as mine against my chest. “I have people watching your house. Someone will discreetly follow your sister home from school.”
As warm and comforting as his embrace felt, I shoved away and barely made it to the tiny toilet before my stomach turned inside out again. The violent heaves were a relief from imagining my sick grandma being tossed into a car the way I had been. I crouched in the cramped space, moving my jaw around as my ears popped. We were in the air now, on our way to sunny Florida.
Crawling out, I sat in the aisle, emotionally and physically spent. Not even seeing Leo hurrying toward me got me on my feet. I just didn’t care at the moment.
“Come on,” he said, leaning down and scooping me up. He carried me past the four rows of seats to an area with couches along the walls and set me down on one. “Lie down,” he said in a tone I’d never heard from him before. Some strange force inside me made me sit up straighter, testing him, watching his eyes for his reaction. He rolled them. “Please,” he added. “It’s clear you’re exhausted.”
I was beyond that, and it didn’t seem worth fighting when he put a pillow down on the end of the couch and patted it invitingly. I gave in, resting my head on the cool cotton, letting my aching neck relax into the cushion. He covered me up with a blanket and sat down on the floor beside me, pushing my hair behind my ear.
Through lowered lids, I watched as he followed the line of his fingers through my hair and down the side of my face. He was just inches away, eyes full of concern.
“I’m beating a dead horse, but I still can’t believe any of this,” I said.
He nodded. “I know.”
He leaned even closer, so I could feel his warm breath on my cheek and smell a hint of the chocolate bar we shared while we waited for the plane to arrive. It seemed like a year ago, and this morning seemed like a lifetime had passed. We were all alone now, in this cocoon of a private jet. My emotions jumped around like a box of ping-pong balls spilled in an empty room. I wanted to trust him.
Suddenly my lips were parched, and I licked them. Leo’s eyes dropped from my hairline to my mouth, and the craziest feeling of all bounced to the forefront. I wanted him to kiss me. A sudden, deep, aching need made my whole body yearn for him. It had to be because I was so bone tired. Just as if he was reading my thoughts, he smiled and planted one on my forehead before leaning back again to resume stroking my hair.
“I promise you everything will be okay, Sunshine,” he told me.
The kiss was sweet and comforting, and his soft touch was carrying me off to sleep, but I still wanted to argue. “How can you promise something like that?” I murmured.
His lip quirked up in a knowing smile. “Because I can. You’ll see.”
I wanted to believe him. More than that, I wanted to give in to the hum of the plane and the gentle sweep of his fingers through my hair. I closed my eyes and released the tension in my shoulders, snuggling further under the blanket. Maybe when I woke up, I’d find all this had just been a bad dream.
Chapter 12 - Leo
Samantha finally fell asleep after a few minutes of struggling to stay awake. It killed me that she was afraid; she had every reason to be. Guilt kept me glued to her side, even though my leg was numb underneath me. No, more than guilt. I cared about this woman. She was carrying my child, and I was the one who’d put her in danger.
Anonymity had been a mistake. I never should have insisted on it. Instead, I should have paid attention to who she was and then moved her in with me the second the test came back positive. That should have been in the contract, a non-negotiable stipulation. Granted, things hadn’t been as bad with the Giannis when I started the process, but in my work, things could go south at the drop of a hat.
I was stupid, arrogantly thinking if I didn’t know anything, no one else would. And it had almost gotten her killed.
Worst of all, she was more than just a surrogate to me. The baby was important, my whole future. But Sunshine was special to me. She would disagree with me right now, but I considered her a friend. Even though we didn’t hang out or share secrets, I enjoyed our conversations and looked forward to seeing her every weekday. It was nice when she thought I was just a simple software engineer. She hadn’t been in awe of me or afraid of me. Well, until now.
Everyone in the New York territory had been shipped in from Moscow or Miami. While I’d known some of them my whole life and used to be friendly with them, I was the boss now, and they’d lost a lot of their easy camaraderie around me as if I’d changed somehow just because I was put in charge. My sister was caught up with her new husband and baby, and I missed us being nearly inseparable. I missed running the business we had back in Russia.
The women who threw themselves at me at my clubs didn’t care about me, just what I could give them. There’d even been a few times when I compared whatever woman had come home with me to Samantha, thinking if they’d been a bit more like her, maybe there’d be a future for us. A few times, I considered firing her so I could ask her out.
Then I always got wrapped up in work. My life was hectic, and no woman wanted to compete with a computer screen. Until my software business was where I wanted it to be, a romantic relationship just wasn’t in the cards. And there would always be my family and that way of life. They weren’t going anywhere. It was a lot to ask of someone who hadn’t grown up in it.
Samantha jerked in her sleep, and I rested my hand on her shoulder until she went limp again, breathing regularly once more. Her lips curled into a gentle smile as she slept, and I hoped she was dreaming about something better than the situation I’d put her in. I had no idea how I was going to make things up to her. Making sure she had everything as easy as possible while we were in Miami seemed like a poor consolation prize for the loss of her safety and freedom.
