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Her head lay tipped back against the seat, her perfect lips slightly parted. She could have been a model if she’d been thirty pounds lighter.
It relieved me that she wasn’t though it shouldn’t matter.
I studied the sliver of view my angle afforded me. Her face looked softer, younger, maybe a little sadder in her sleep.
I rubbed a soothing circle over my left pec.
I’d been unfair to her. Rude. Disrespectful. The injustice of it lay beneath my skin like an itch I couldn’t scratch.
I was jealous of the fact she could let her guard down and sleep.
That she allowed herself that vulnerability infuriated me.
I spent the remainder of the flight monitoring her surroundings and the movements of her seat mates.
Despite my best efforts at telling myself to mind my own business.
Click
Hope
“You planning on waking up anytime soon?”
“Mmm,” I hummed happily. The deep, resonant voice entered my dream and lay beside me on our bed.
In the strange manner of dreams, I knew we were married, and it was our tenth wedding anniversary. He had my favorite breakfast on a tray, pancakes with syrup. Or Syrup with pancakes as he constantly teased me. Kid-noise, the happy kind, drifted up the stairs, and I smiled in my sleep.
“Good dream?”
I sighed happily and opened my eyes even as I pressed my body to his in my dream. My voice husky with sleep and desire, I replied, “The best.”
The soft edges of my dream evaporated, and I stared in growing horror into the black, unforgiving eyes of my nemesis. “What the hell are you doing?” I snapped.
Straightening abruptly, his firm mouth flattened into a straight line. “Looking after your ass, apparently.” He tucked his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and rocked back on his heels. “Do you not have a babysitter in the form of an assistant to herd you where you need to be?”
My mouth dropped open. “You are insufferable!”
For a moment, I thought he winced, but it must have been a trick of the light as he proceeded to dip his head mockingly. “I’ll see you at the hotel, provided of course you made arrangements to get there?”
“My assistant made the arrangements,” I bit out.
How was I going to work beside this man? Our every encounter was worse than the last.
My brain worked to process the visuals, piecing together the fact that I had indeed fallen asleep, no one saw fit to wake me except him, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he was smiling when I woke. Or doing whatever passed for a smile when you lack basic humanity.
I winced. Perhaps my response could have been different.
However, I didn’t want anything from him. Where the hell was the staff? Shouldn’t there be something in their contracts about not leaving sleeping passengers on the airplane?
“Then I’ll leave you to it.”
I needed to get back onto firmer ground. “Thank you for waking me,” I gritted out as I pushed to my feet. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Perhaps you’ll find someone here to assist you with that.”
My mouth dropped open in shock. I stared up at him in shock for half a second. Had I taken half a second more perhaps my fist would not have connected with his lip.
His head snapped back.
