Chapter 5
five
. . .
Though hardly a frequent flyer, Heath was confident Westin’s Mile High Club initiation disaster would go down in history as the single best in-flight entertainment ever provided by a domestic airline.
He was equally confident the delightful shenanigans had placed him dangerously close to breaking his oath of avoiding fun.
Thank God they’d arrived in Puerto Rico early.
Heath muffled a giggle as he navigated through the crowded little airport in search of his next gate.
Oath or not, this was an experience he wouldn’t soon forget.
In all his days, he’d never imagined being stuck in a cramped space with a stranger could be so enjoyable.
And Westin’s near-castration certainly ensured he’d never try.
Though he still didn’t know the mysterious Mr. Westin’s first name, he’d learned the man had a very sharp wit, and their ongoing banter had turned the slog of travel into a blink.
There was nothing better than an animated conversation with an equally equipped partner.
Westin had more than held his own, and he’d been so poised and relaxed whilst doing so.
“Honey, pretend I’m standing there holding your hand when I say this.”
Heath frowned, tugging his carry-on to the edge of the concourse, where he could lean it against a pillar out of the way of the throng. “Don’t you dare.”
Andres’s ever-so-strained-for-patience tone sighed through his earbuds, and Heath could picture him lounging on one of his pristine white couches with his equally pristine little white dog curled at his side.
“That man, no matter how pretty, witty, or wise, is not for you.”
“I never said—”
“You don’t have to,” Manuel added, traffic sounds leaking in from the Bluetooth in his sedan. “You have this tone when the attachment happens.”
Tone? Attachment? “I am not a barnacle!”
Another sigh. “We only want to save you from yourself.”
Shoulders hunching, Heath glared at his phone with an intensity he hoped would transfer through the screen and set one of Andres’ priceless trinkets on fire. Preferably one he was currently wearing.
“The only reason I’m even on this stupid trip is because you both threatened me with bodily harm if I didn’t see it through. But the moment I check in with a juicy little story, you gang up and harangue me?”
“Honey—”
“No!” he snapped, then lowered his voice and intensified his focused frustration. Perhaps he could will Andres into spilling red wine on the Persian carpet he’d long coveted and recently acquired.
“I will not allow you to treat me like a golden retriever with a penchant for eating rocks. I know the difference between flirting and friendly, and am fully capable of identifying when a man is or isn’t interested, thankyouverymuch.”
Manuel huffed. “Chloe only did that once!”
“The problem isn’t that you don’t know the difference. It’s that you ignore it and end up getting hurt.”
A burning sensation crept into his sinuses. Dammit, he would not cry at the airport. “That is exactly how you speak to Manuel’s dog, Andres, minus the baby-talk voice.”
“Would the voice help?”
Nostalgic for the days when hanging up on someone included the therapeutic clang of slamming down a handset, Heath tore the buds from his ears and shoved them and his phone deep into the recess of his carry-on as he stormed toward the restrooms. If he was going to cry in the godforsaken airport, he would do it with dignity.
At least, what little dignity he could maintain with stall doors that never properly closed and toilet seats he’d never in a million years allow near his exposed skin.
A peripheral flash of broad shoulders in airy linen halted his march. Beyond the sea of milling passengers, a smiling Mr. Westin strode toward a petite brunette wearing a crew uniform and a flattering blush.
Hannah.
Ah, not so embarrassed after all. Good for her!
Personally, he’d have thrown himself from the plane to avoid ever seeing another soul again. Although if the other soul were to look like Westin…
He sniffed away the sting of his so-called friends’ words as he observed the two chatting away by a food kiosk. The nerve. The gall! Did they really think so little of him? As though he wouldn’t recognize that the man making that woman flush and laugh wasn’t interested in him.
Westin was handsome and charismatic, and certainly knew his way around a double entendre, but he hadn’t been flirting, and at no point during their chat had Heath thought otherwise.
Had there been moments when he’d wished they were flirting?
Well, yes. He was only human. Who wouldn’t want the attention of an obviously well-educated man who drank ridiculously expensive bourbon, dressed beautifully, and smelled utterly divine?
But just because he’d entertained a thought or two didn’t mean he’d read anything into their exchange.
It wasn’t like he’d been quietly fantasizing about counting the man’s freckles as they lay together on the beach, upon a crisp white blanket spread beneath the shade of a towering palm tree.
Heath coughed delicately into his cupped fist and checked himself in the airport’s gaudy reflective paneling. Amazingly, neither his face nor his pants had caught fire.
Okay, fine. Maybe his mind had wandered a touch, but so what? Indulging in a little fantasizing was healthy and harmless.
With begrudging honesty, he acknowledged he’d gone overboard with his fantasizing about Christian. However, theirs was a completely unique situation. He’d known the man for decades. Plus, the bastard had flirted with him. More than once.
Obviously, it was apples and oranges.
Emotionally steadied by this renewed irritation, he settled into a space where he could set up his laptop and at least feign productivity.
Thanks to his enjoyable and entirely platonic conversation with Westin, he’d not gotten a lick of work done on the first flight.
This was a problem, because the resort was annoyingly “internet-free.” Which meant that the pile of ungraded essays on his to-do list would remain undone if he didn’t use this layover time wisely.
He harrumphed at his keyboard. The discovery of that little nuance had thoroughly razed his plans to spend the entire two weeks working.
The resort, with its bothersome dedication to self-care, offered only a small area in the main building for access to the outside world.
Everywhere else was a dead zone. This made avoiding fun far more difficult than he’d expected.
The well of his pettiness ran deep, but he would draw the line at putting himself on display like some Working Stiff exhibit at the Smithsonian.
He could hear the commentary now. “Is that how the riff-raff survives? How adorably quaint!”
Then they’d sail off on their climate-destroying vessels while drinking from overflowing champagne glasses and eating carefully preserved caviar from extinct sea life. Was it any wonder the orcas had unionized?
He hmphed again, earning an annoyed glance from the person next to him, and pondered why he insisted upon becoming captivated by men who were so obviously part of the crème de la crème.
Christian, with his impeccably tailored clothes and ne’er a hair out of place, hadn’t been Heath’s first or only questionable infatuation. There’d been a string of men upon whose arms he’d gotten a taste of a world he didn’t belong in. He didn’t want to, either.
Of all the lessons he’d learned from his decades of dating debacles, the hardest had been realizing Christian, and those like him, were utterly incapable of grasping the concept of life without wealth and connections.
They simply didn’t understand the struggles of someone who hadn’t been born chewing on a silver spoon.
They couldn’t. Empathy seemed to be missing from their DNA.
Was it some Minority Report-esque designer breeding program?
A flirtatious giggle dragged Heath’s eyes over the top of his laptop screen.
Westin now leaned against a pillar with one hand in his pocket and the other arm extended over Hannah’s head while she smiled up at him.
You could have cut and pasted them onto the balcony of a Monte Carlo suite or the deck of a lavish yacht and called it a fragrance commercial.
Another frown pulled at his lips. His moment of reflection had taken the gossipy thrill out of their little rendezvous. Now he felt only a palpable unease for the young flight attendant. He worried she might find herself tossed aside, as he so often had been.
Dragging a hand down his face, Heath forced his gaze back to his laptop.
What the hell was wrong with him? He was inserting himself into an entirely fictitious drama he’d created in his own imagination.
These people were strangers. Moreover, they were adults.
Grown humans fully capable of handling whatever was going on without the intervention of a nosy nanny.
Several flight announcements spurred people into action, including Hannah. Heath watched her hand something to Westin before bouncing on the balls of her feet and hurrying off with a wheeled bag in tow.
She appeared quite happy with the outcome of their discussion. Therefore, Heath could go back to work with a clean conscience and renewed vigor toward spending the next fourteen days being as stodgy as humanly possible.
He closed his laptop with a swift flick of his fingers and shoved it into the zippered pocket inside his bag. Who was he kidding? He’d read the opening sentence of the essay he’d chosen four times and not retained a word.
His usual method for grading was to sit at his kitchen table with a pot of tea and something jazzy or orchestral playing in the background.
It had to be instrumental only, and nothing too upbeat or exciting, or he’d become wildly distracted.
No Charles Mingus or Thelonius Monk, and certainly nothing from Beethoven’s major symphonies.
He thought of his noise-canceling earbuds, which were now loose in his bag thanks to his post-call pique. Finding them would no doubt eat up what little time he had left before the next flight took off, so there was no sense in bothering.
His friends had tossed a wrench into his afternoon plans, but he’d still gotten the last laugh. While they might have won a momentary victory over his good mood, they’d also ensured the moment of near-fun he’d had was now naught but a faded memory.
Defeated but smug, Heath let his attention drift over the surrounding crowd.
Two separate flights shared the gate, and the people gathered were an eclectic mix.
Young and old. Casual and dressed to the nines.
It ran the gamut, and he made a game of guessing which person was most likely to join him on the island.
Westin, he noticed, hadn’t moved from the pillar. He’d adjusted his stance from looming to leaning, the length of his legs crossed casually as he braced a shoulder against the structure, and he was flipping a little white card through his fingertips.
It was entirely too mesmerizing, that action.
Heath hadn’t really paid attention to his hands (much), but he had noticed they were unadorned, with short, clean nails. Not manicured, like Christian’s always were. Just tidy.
For all his obvious pomp, Westin wasn’t the spa sort.
Another series of announcements went out, including the one for his next flight, so Heath gathered his things and weaved toward the jetway entrance.
Westin moved in the same direction, and Heath almost pushed ahead to call out to him, but paused when Westin’s fist hovered over the opening of a trash bin and let something drop inside.
Oh, no. He did not just—
Ignoring the disgruntled mumblings of those whose path he disrupted, Heath changed course to zigzag toward the bin. There, among the discarded snack bags and drink cups, he spotted a slightly crumpled business card bearing Hannah’s name.
His gasp further disrupted the flow of traffic.
Those closest redirected to give him a wide berth.
He paid them no mind. His mission was clear.
Fueled by the righteous outrage of secondhand betrayal, Heath steeled his will and retrieved the card.
There was no amount of hand sanitizer capable of purging the memory of reaching down into those gooey depths, but someone had to avenge the Hannahs of the world against the tyrannical whims of petulant rich boys.
Mr. Westin wanted to fuck around? Well, he was about to find out!