“Sukie Sommersby would do it,” she repeated to herself as she followed him into the terminal. As he approached the ticket counter, Emily quickly ducked behind a large family and their immense pile of luggage, to stay out of Tyler’s sight line.
Pretending to be absorbed in a cartful of golf bags, she added, “Sukie would do it in a New York minute. Sukie would be waking up in Vegas with him tomorrow, no regrets. And then she’d be calling me to tell me all about it.”
“Who are you talking to?” demanded the father of the family she was using as cover. He strong-armed the cart she was hiding behind, sharply wheeling it away from her. “Are you touching my bags?”
“No, no. I wasn’t touching anything. I, uh, twisted my ankle and was just resting for a moment.” She gave him a weak smile, which didn’t seem to satisfy him.
She wanted to demand, Do I look like a terrorist? but she kept her mouth shut. Harrumph. She was wearing a beautifully cut navy-blue suit, a silk blouse and her grandmother’s pearls. Hardly the sort of person who planted bombs in other people’s golf bags.
Oh well. She pretended to limp as she darted behind a convenient pillar, just to allay Mr. Cranky’s fears. It provided a better angle to spy on Tyler, anyway. From that vantage point, she saw him take his ticket from the agent at the counter and disappear down Concourse C.
“For once in my life,” she said with determination, “I’m not going to be the one on the other end of the phone. I’m going to be the one in the middle of the adventure.”
Now all she had to do was buy a ticket on his flight to San Francisco—two o’clock, the waitress had said—and keep shadowing him wherever he went when he got there. She would scope out whatever it was he was involved with, and she would step in to save him when the proper time arose.
Good plan, she told herself. It was just the sort of thing Trick McCall would do. Sukie, on the other hand, would be seducing him off to Paris for croissants in bed. But Emily preferred to stick with Trick on this one.
So she hit an ATM for as much cash as she could carry, tried not to look like a drug dealer when she paid for her ticket in cash, and then made a beeline for the gate.
Tyler was already there, moodily staring into space, and he didn’t seem to notice as she skirted around behind him and buried her nose in her Trick McCall book. Either she was very good at this surveillance stuff, or he was very bad at picking up on it.
Actually, things were working out so well she wondered if she should pinch herself. But surely this was kismet, destiny, fate, with her plans neatly falling into place to show her that this adventure was meant to be.
When the gate attendant called his row, Tyler strolled onto the plane, apparently none the wiser. Emily watched him go, drinking in his reckless, easy grace, the harsh angle of his jaw, the cool green of his eyes, offset beautifully by thick, dark lashes. Yes, she was definitely doing the right thing. She couldn’t just let someone like that pass her by and not do her best to save him.
Her assigned seat was near the front of the plane, so she was one of the last people to get on. She didn’t want to appear obvious, so she didn’t look for Tyler, didn’t allow herself to scan the rows or anything. No, she just settled in and fastened her seat belt. But even though she couldn’t see him, Emily knew he was back there somewhere. He wasn’t going to get away from her now.
And then the plane pulled away from the gate. A small smile curved her lips, and she felt a tingle of anticipation and exhilaration. Too late to turn back, which meant she was actually doing this. She couldn’t believe it! She had never done anything this outrageous in her life, and she was loving every minute.
“This your first flight?” The man next to her, a hearty, blustery type with bloodshot eyes and a boozy aroma, leaned in closer. “Fear of flying, huh, sweetie?”
Emily blinked. Men like this never came on to her. Why in the world would they start now? “Uh, no,” she managed. “Why would you think that?”
“You seem a little nervous,” he said, patting her hand, glomming on, squeezing warmly. “Kinda jittery. White knuckles. Poor baby.”
Eeuw. She snatched her hand away. “I’m not nervous. I’m just anxious to get to San Francisco.” She couldn’t help embroidering the truth, hoping to put him off. “Y’see, I’m a lawyer. Criminal law. I have a really important case. A murder case. My client murdered a guy who sexually harassed her. We’re claiming justifiable homicide.”
“Okay, I get the picture.” Mr. Boozy turned his attention to the stewardess, intent on snagging an early cocktail, and Emily leaned back and shut her eyes.
There were no bumps, no turbulence, nothing. And it was taking forever.
While Mr. Boozy tossed back miniature bottles of every color and type, Emily did her best to be patient. She finished off the Trick McCall book before they were even past Iowa. After that, she took a nap, thumbed through the magazine, filled in the crossword puzzle, gazed out her window. She even pulled the odious Bentley file out of her briefcase and worked on that for a while. But this waiting stuff was driving her bananas.
She was simply gazing at the back of the seat in front of her when the flight attendant held out a napkin and a bag of pretzels. “Would you like something to drink?” the woman asked pleasantly.
Although Emily waved off the stewardess, the guy next to her made up for her and then some. He had about ten empty bottles lined up on his tray, with a tiny Scotch, a tiny bourbon and four or five wines in different colors. He wasn’t just drinking, he was having a one-man tasting party.
With a jaded eye, Emily watched him plow through his liquor supply. At least he was a fairly quiet drunk. Then he turned to ask her if she wanted to try the cognac and knocked the whole uncapped bottle off his tray and into her lap. With cold, potent-smelling liquid seeping into her thigh, Emily realized those tiny bottles held a lot more than she would have thought.
The icky man did his best to blot at her with his napkin, but it didn’t help. So, for two hours, she sat there, stuck in her puddle of brandy, willing the plane to get its tail fin to San Francisco on the double so she could get out of there before she started shoving little bottles down Mr. Boozy’s throat.
Finally, blessedly, they were there, their gate was hooked up, and she gathered her heavy briefcase and her purse and bolted off the airplane as if there were no tomorrow.
A traffic jam behind her clogged the jetway, and she decided she surely had time to nip into the rest room and splash some water on her cognac-soaked skirt. She was in and out in record time—not that it really helped the cognac problem—but her gate had cleared by now, and Tyler was nowhere to be seen.
“What now?” Emily chewed her thumbnail, glancing up and down the concourse for a glimpse of that familiar leather jacket. Where could he have gone?
Hotfooting it in the general direction of ground transportation, she wished she wasn’t wearing pumps or hauling that stupid, cumbersome briefcase with the laptop in it. Was she gasping with exertion? Or starting to hyperventilate?
And where the hell had Tyler disappeared to?
Huffing and puffing, Emily took a decisive turn toward the taxi arrow. Tyler seemed like a cab kind of guy, didn’t he? Rather than a limo or a shuttle, she thought a taxi would definitely be the best bet—
