you like something to drink?” she asked, slipping into her perkiest passenger-request mode, knowing she couldn’t ask him what was really zipping through her brain: Why did you kiss me and disappear? Why did you have to wind up on my flight? Why are you making me so damn nervous? Would you like to go dancing again?
“Oh…sure. Coffee. Black.” Ramón paused, reconsidered and then added, “And a Bloody Mary, too. Extra spicy.” He lifted his index finger, as if to stop her from moving on, his half grin exploding into a full-blown smile. “I hope you enjoyed yourself at the club last night. I sure did.” He rested his head against the back of his seat. A glittering ray of sunlight streamed through the cabin window and lit the teardrop earring in his left ear.
“Yes, I did have a good time,” Lori murmured, not about to expand on the topic as she pivoted away from Ramón and turned to the passengers across the aisle.
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked the Middle Eastern couple sitting across from Ramón. As soon as they’d given Lori their order, Ramón leaned across the empty seat next to him and forced Lori to glance back.
“So, you’re gonna give me first-class service all the way, right?” he teasingly called over to her.
Lori sent a scowl of warning at Ramón, whose sensuous expression was begging her to forget about helping the other passengers and sit down beside him so they could chat. But that would never happen. She had too much to do to let him become a distraction.
“Yes, sir, first-class service all the way,” Lori replied with a mental jerk, her words clipped and tight. “If you need anything at all during the flight, Mr. Vidal, don’t hesitate to ask,” she finished, ignoring his request for her to call him by his first name. “Globus-Americas wants you to be as comfortable as possible.”
“Thanks, I’m sure you’ll do everything to my satisfaction,” he assured her, pinning Lori with that same dark look he’d zapped her with in Club Azule.
Once they were airborne, Lori got busy serving passengers, but couldn’t escape Ramón’s insistent attempts to monopolize her attention. If she paused by his seat, he made some remark about his love of Acapulco and how much he looked forward to visiting the city again. When she bent down to hand him a drink, he would add a tidbit about some place she should try to see the next time she was there. As she walked up and down the aisle during meal service, he had no problem stopping to make some new request. Another Bloody Mary. A more interesting magazine. A pillow, please? More coffee. Help with the earpiece before the movie came on.
As the miles slipped by and the plane zoomed toward Houston, Lori grew more and more irritated, yet intrigued, by the man who seemed to want to become her new best friend. Or more than that, she decided, amused with his determination to attract her attention and occupy her time.
Deep into the flight, Phyllis squeezed past Lori with a food tray and threw her a What-in-the-world-is-going-on? kind of look. Lori cut her eyes and jerked her head toward the galley, where she cornered Phyllis and confessed everything. “That’s one of the guys I danced with at the club last night. We danced and then…well, he kissed me and walked away.”
“Kissed you and disappeared?” Phyllis probed, touching her tongue to her upper lip as she refilled a coffee cup for the father of the still-sulking preteens. “Come on, Lori. More than a dance and a kiss must have happened,” Phyllis said. “Mr. Vidal is practically undressing you with those gorgeous brown eyes, and anyone looking at him can tell the guy is totally smitten with you. What went on that you aren’t telling me?”
“Nothing else, I promise,” Lori groaned, placing china and glassware on a tray. “And the kiss was not that much of a deal, really. Anyway, I never thought I’d see him again.”
“But there he is, chatting you up and feeling you up with his eyes.”
“Kinda looks that way, huh?” Lori admitted, feeling as if Ramón Vidal were still staring at her.
“Damn straight. So what are you going to do?”
“About what?” Lori tossed back.
“About him! I have to admit he is kinda sexy. Why don’t you find out what you can about him while you have him captive?”
“Absolutely not. I’m not going to go out there and grill him for information.”
“Oh, go on. Just talk to him. He might be a keeper.”
Lori snapped a white linen napkin at Phyllis, like a punctuation mark to end their conversation. “Please. I am not looking for a keeper and you know it.”
“Hey, don’t be so sure. Everybody needs somebody, sometime, Miss Play-the-Field. I’ve been widowed for ten years, but I knew what it was like to have a good man in my life. You deserve that, too.”
“I’m not about to rush things.”
“I understand your concern about getting involved again after what you went through with Devan Parker, but your I-don’t-want-to-be-attached attitude ought to be wearing thin by now. Go on. Your mystery man is so eager to talk…See what you can find out about him.”
Muttering an unintelligible reply, Lori finished preparing her tray and then headed out to serve her passengers.
Once food service ended, the crew tidied the cabin and dimmed the lights for in-flight movie and TV-watching. Taking advantage of the break, Lori returned to the forward galley to stash supplies while Phyllis headed to the rear of the plane to see if the guys in the back needed help getting their passengers settled in for the rest of the flight.
“Mind if I stand here and stretch my legs for a minute?”
Lori’s head whipped around. “Oh. No,” she told Ramón, not totally surprised to see him standing in the galley entry, coffee cup in hand. “Be my guest,” she added. “It’s a good idea to get up and walk around.”
“I don’t know about walking around…all I want to do is stay right here and talk to you.” His velvet-smooth voice was low and controlled.
“Yeah? About what?” Lori asked in a flirtatious manner, deciding that Phyllis might be right. Maybe it was time to put old fears behind her and stop throwing roadblocks in front of every man who threw out a pickup line.
The hum of the jet engines filled the silence as Ramón considered how to answer. He wanted Lori to talk about herself—to tell him what she liked, what she wanted, what his chances were of getting closer to her. But why would she tell all to a stranger she’d only just met in a club the night before? No, the best way to get her to open up was for him to open up first.
“Why don’t I tell you a little about myself?” he started, taking the easiest route.
Lori shut the door to the microwave oven, nodded her approval and smiled. “Sure. What would you like me to know about you?”
“That I’m single, straight, and I work hard every day.”
“Oh? Doing what?” Lori asked.
“Keeping people safe,” Ramón replied.
“Interesting. Were you in Mexico on vacation?”
“No, visiting my brother, Xavier. He’s
