Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
PARIS
Is it him? Is that the same guy from the nightclub? I keep stealing glances at him as we interact. Trying to study his features without looking like I’m ogling him. The way he’s acting, he probably thinks he’s God’s gift to women. I fight the overwhelming urge to roll my eyes.
“You should watch a movie,” he suggests, pointing to the screens in front of us.
The first class on this flight is nicer than other commercial flights I’ve taken.
Our seats are cocooned by a wall, creating an element of privacy.
Oddly, instead of a giant armrest table between our seats, there’s an armrest that looks like it pushes down.
I guess it’s for if a couple wants to sleep side by side.
The outside armrests have little tabletops where you can set a drink or phone.
If Mr. High-and-Mighty stands up a bit and looks over the side wall toward the back, he can see the plane, but where I am, the wall behind us and in front of us keeps me out of view.
It's nice, except for my seatmate. Why couldn’t I be stuck with the nice, normal-looking businesswoman two rows in front of us or the younger man who was a little cute but was still in college based on his dormitory identification card hanging from his wallet that he shoved into his bag while we waited to board the aircraft?
Nope. Lucky me gets Mr. Charmer here.
“I might just take a nap,” I state, deciding sleep is the best route to forgetting I’m inside a pressurized tube sailing through the sky at an altitude that rivals Mount Everest.
“Well, then, I’ll leave you to it,” he says, his Southern drawl peeking through again.
Under normal circumstances, I might find that accent charming, but with him, I find it annoying. And I swear he lays it on thicker just to piss me off even more.
I grunt a response and put my book away. I take the blanket and semi-awful pillow offered to me by the flight attendant and turn away from the man.
The seat belt signs turn off and I lower my seat into a bed position and turn on my side, attempting to ignore my seatmate and also to try to avoid breathing in his cologne.
It’s like the universe has a sense of humor or something.
Let’s have Paris, the woman who hates flying, be forced to sit next to a total dick, but let’s make that asshole super-hot, sort of nice in an asshole sort of way, oh, and make sure he smells good!
I groan and pull the blanket up higher as if it will shield me from him.
I try to sleep. I count sheep. I replay in my mind the most boring show I watched on television recently.
I try to figure out if I should paint my bedroom wall grass green, mint green, or hunter green.
I remember nice moments from grad school…
followed immediately by Mr. Asswipe’s doppelganger getting me kicked out of the club last week. Ugh! I’m never going to get any sleep.
“Nightcap?” the flight attendant practically purrs. I know she’s speaking to Mr. Hottie Asshat. I sit up and turn toward her.
“Can I have a vodka, straight up?” I ask, frowning as I wonder if that’s a thing.
“Sure, miss,” she says, giving me a small smile before turning back to my nameless seatmate.
“Scotch, neat,” he says.
“Of course, Mr. Dumont,” she says and walks away.
Dumont…Dumont…wait, just like Pierre Dumont.
What a strange coincidence! I guess it’s not an unpopular last name.
I begin to wonder if his family’s French.
Maybe he was visiting them from…Baton Rouge?
Nashville? I’m horrible at placing Southern accents.
I give up on my sleep idea and reach back for my book. I might as well read for a while, that usually calms me down.
I feel him watching me and I turn toward the window. I pull out a small clip-on book light for reading and place it on the book since the aircraft’s overhead lights have been dimmed.
I read for a while, and finally, after drinking the vodka and finishing five chapters, I feel a little groggy. I’m just about to lay my head down to go to sleep when the plane rattles again, listing a little from one side to the other and then bouncing violently up and down.
Mr. Dumont places a hand over my hip, pressing me to the now horizontal chair as if to keep me from moving. His other hand calmly holds his scotch. I glance over my shoulder at him.
“It’s fine. Just a little turbulence,” he assures me. The seat belt sign turns back on, and its bright red beacon might as well be the morning sun because I’ve lost any will to sleep. My nerves are frayed once again.
“How’s the book?” he asks, motioning to where it still sits on the reclined chair.
“It’s good,” I say with a sigh.
“Just good?”
I turn and push my seat back up a little so I’m not lying down any longer. He releases his hand from my hip. “It’s very good.”
I pause biting my tongue, but my curiosity gets the better of me. “You have the same last name as the author.”
He nods. “That I do,” he states as if I’m an idiot for not knowing it.
“Have we met before?” I ask.
He looks at me. “Maybe?” He shrugs.
“You just look like some guy who was being an asshole to me at this club last week,” I say.
His eyebrows rise and I see a knowing look.
“It was you,” I state.
He shrugs. “I was wondering the same about you. To be fair, you shouldn’t have been in the VIP section.”
He’s not wrong, but that’s beside the point.
I glare at him. He looks unfazed by this information.
Wait until I tell Megan. Megan is one of my sorority sisters from college who happened to be visiting when we got kicked out of the VIP section.
She was not a fan of my new acquaintance.
I decide not to mention all the names she called him.
I don’t continue with this discussion because I feel like I’m going to make a fool of myself. I’d never admit my friend dared me to get into the VIP section to find some celebrity we saw in there.
“So…business or pleasure?” I ask and immediately press my lips together.
Why did I even ask that? Why do I care? This guy’s an idiot.
I shouldn’t give a shit about him. No, it’s fine.
I can ask questions. If I’m asking questions about him, he won’t be able to ask me questions because he’ll be too busy being a pompous asshole and talking about himself, plus it’ll distract me from my current life predicament of having to spend time with my father.
“Neither,” he answers, taking another sip of scotch.
“Oh,” I reply. Neither. What’s the third option? Alien abduction?
“What about you?” he says.
“Uh, well, I guess sort of business…school,” I reply.
“You’re in college?” he asks, almost as if I said I was a clown on the weekends.
“No. I was in grad school. I graduated,” I state dryly.
“Oh, uh, congratulations,” he says.
I try to stop the eye roll, I really do, but it happens involuntarily, or at least that’s what I tell myself.
“What?” he asks, narrowing his eyes.
“You’re not very nice,” I state.
His eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “I’m sorry, what?”
OK. Pissing him off makes him a little hotter for some weird-ass reason, but also, this is entertaining. Maybe I can spend the next six hours pushing all his buttons.
“You were rude to the woman at the gate. And you treat the flight attendant like a servant. I thought people from the South had manners.”
At my last comment, his lips twitch as if he’s fighting a smile. “I thought grad students had common sense,” he retorts.
“I do,” I say.
“So, picking fights with strangers seems a safe option for you?”
I glare at him. “It’s an entertaining option,” I reply. I lick my lips and his eyes drop to watch my tongue dart out.
He laughs and I hate that I like the sound of it. He has a nice voice, but his laugh is like a warm fire on a cold day. I feel myself relax a little, even though his responses should have me anything but relaxed.
“Do you have a job lined up?” he asks, switching the topic.
“I do,” I reply.
“What’s that?”
“I’m working with an editor at a publishing house,” I state.
“Oh? Which one?” he asks.
“A big one,” I reply, deciding that I’m not telling this man any details. What if he’s some crazy stalker? Or maybe he hates me so much he’d pull his rich-guy strings to get me fired.
His lips twitch again. “Very well. We’ll keep this casual. The spring semester ended a while ago for schools in Paris. Why were you staying there?” he asks.
Damn. He’s smart.
“I had some items to check off on my bucket list,” I explain.
“Is that so?”
“It is.”
He leans forward. “Tell me about this bucket list, fougueuse.”
Did he just call me a “feisty one”?