here for you, hon. Listen, gotta run. Give me a call when you get back and you can thank me then.”
“Or not. I’d suggest you spend the next few days getting your affairs in order,” she suggested darkly.
Another laugh, followed by, “Ta,” and Darren was gone.
Giselle disconnected the call on her end. She tucked the phone back into her case and watched the rain form rivulets on her windshield. She still didn’t know how Sam had wound up on this assignment. And it didn’t really matter, did it?
Come hell or high water, she was getting over Sam on this trip. The alternative wasn’t an option.
3
GISELLE SHIFTED in her aisle seat on Sunday morning as the non-stop Atlanta-to-Phoenix flight continued to board.
Sam had arrived. She sensed him, felt him, as if she was tuned in to him on a level she’d never experienced with anyone else. She looked up from her magazine and her breath caught in her throat as her eyes met his. He just looked so…well, damn glad to see her. The kind of look lovers would share on a crowded plane.
And then he was there, beside her.
“Worried I wouldn’t make it?” Sam said by way of greeting. His cocky grin, however, carried an edge of uncertainty.
“One can always hope.” Instead of coming out crisp and biting as she’d intended, she sounded breathless and teasing, undone by that combination of smile and faint hesitation, as if it actually mattered to him whether she was glad to see him or not. And once again she was disgusted with herself that even though he was a cheating bastard, his blue eyes still set her heart tripping.
Giselle had arrived at the airport early enough to grab a coffee and bagel and skim the morning newspaper before she was called to board the flight from Atlanta to Phoenix. Arriving early hadn’t been a problem since she’d tossed and turned all night—yet another sleepless night compliments of Sam McKendrick.
She really hadn’t been sure Sam would show at all. But there he stood, larger than life.
Stepping closer to her aisle seat, he hoisted his equipment bag into the overhead bin, which was all good and fine except it put his other equipment right at eye level.
Look away, look away, look away, she told herself, but somewhere along the route to her brain her libido intercepted the message and she continued to stare at his crotch, the bulge between his thighs thrown into relief by his upraised arms. Finally, he settled his carryon and she hastily averted her eyes, which did nothing to abate the heat radiating from her core. One lousy Sam’s-crotch-at-her-eye-level encounter and it was as if a furnace switch had been flipped on inside her.
“Want to move over?”
He wished. “No. I don’t.” She smiled and stood, stepping out into the aisle. She always requested the aisle seat. A blonde who’d given Giselle a dismissing look earlier sat next to the window. Giselle hated being squashed into the center seat. She offered Sam a bright smile. “I believe you’re in the middle.”
Karma was a bitch. Going to Sedona, doing this story, this was her big chance to get over this…ridiculous…making-her-crazy…thing she had for Sam. This was supposed to be her cure, her fix. And then he’d ruined it by showing up. Of all the assignments to get—him…now. Seemed sort of fitting he had to scrunch his sixfoot plus, broad-shouldered, long, muscular-legged, crotch-bulging—self into the center seat. Served him right for plaguing her.
She extended her two hands, palms up, the way they did on game shows when they were showcasing a prize. “Enjoy.” She offered an evil smirk.
His blue eyes twinkled and she wanted to kick herself. She was aiming for hateful, at least sarcastic, and he seemed to think she was flirting with him. She wasn’t flirting. Nope. Because that would be like ducking under a line of yellow tape with Warning Do Not Cross in big bold black letters.
“Okay, then.” He slid in, folding himself into the tight spot.
Giselle sat back down and her space shrank proportionately to accommodate Sam next to her. Short of leaning out into the aisle, she couldn’t get away from his broad shoulder against hers. Her stomach somersaulted, and she felt even more flushed than when she’d been face to crotch two minutes ago. He dug around and clicked his seat belt into place, his muscles bunching against her arm as he completed the simple task.
And he smelled…well, good, dammit. Not that she wanted to be stuck next to him for the next four hours if he had body odor or halitosis, but she didn’t need this, either. His scent was fresh and clean, like that of a man just out of the shower with the faint blend of soap, deodorant and a hint of mint toothpaste. Enticing. Appealing. Arousing.
No doubt about it, karma was definitely a bitch. And she was paying for having developed a crush on her sister’s husband the first time she laid eyes on him and for wanting him from then to now and all the stinking time in between and for still feeling this horrible tingly, I’m-so-alive feeling when she was around him, even though she knew he was a cheat and she was a sick puppy to still feel that way. Yes, she was being punished.
He turned his head to face her. They were close enough she could see her reflection in his eyes. It was like being enveloped in a blanket of Sam, of forbidden want. Forget it. She wasn’t being punished. She was being tortured.
“I read through your notes and the article outline last night,” he said. “I wanted to bounce a couple of ideas off you.”
She and Darren often spent a flight brainstorming. It was the perfect use of time. She occasionally talked to other people on board when she traveled alone. But it had never felt like this—dangerously intimate, as if she couldn’t quite catch her breath. As if she was rather rapidly losing her mind…
If Sam leaned just a little closer to her, and she a little closer to him…his mouth, with that sensually full lower lip, was right there. Never once when she and Darren were seated next to one another had such errant thoughts run through her head.
She looked away from him and blindly reached out to straighten the magazine and paper stuffed in the seat back in front of her. And no, it wasn’t to occupy her hands with something other than cupping his jaw. Well, maybe it was. “I’d rather talk about it on the drive up from Phoenix,” she said.
Discussing a project with him that centered on falling in love seemed a much safer proposition with the rental car’s front seat between them. She really looked at the seatback ahead of her and realized she’d just rearranged the barf bag. Kind of fitting, actually.
He shrugged and the movement echoed through her as his shoulder rubbed against her. “Sure. However you want to play it.”
She picked up her magazine and proceeded to ignore him. Or rather, she tried. Sam wasn’t an easy man to ignore. He wasn’t loud or boisterous or ultrahigh-energy. If anything, he tended to be on the quiet side, a man comfortable in his own skin who didn’t need to be the constant center of attention. But he radiated a strength and determination, a grit that gave him presence.
She was conscious of him on every level—his scent, his arm resting near hers, the hug of worn denim across his thighs, his broad, well-shaped hands, the smattering of dark hair beneath the pressed cuff of his white shirt—the same as Christmas night two years ago.
That
