Chapter 3
OLLIE
“Oh, Ollie,” Mr. Toussaint said, his eyes softening and threatening to make my own spill over again. Or maybe it was just that it was so nice to hear him say my real name, all gently like that.
I mean, the name that felt like the real me, as opposed to my “real” real one, Oliver, that Grant always insisted on using because he said it was more sophisticated.
Or… or maybe the huge wave of emotion that suddenly swamped me was just because of him. Mr. Toussaint. He’d always been so nice, and I didn’t just mean how nice he was to look at, or the deliciously shivery way his sexy accent always made me feel, or the way his dark eyes were mesmerizing.
They always were, but especially when he looked at me like he was right now.
Like it was just the two of us here.
Like he wanted to be here.
To be with me.
Oh god, which of course he didn’t. I was clingy and needy and horrible at reading men, and if I didn’t already have proof of that last one in the form of every single man I’d ever pinned my hopes on, this cinched it.
Obviously, Mr. Toussaint didn’t want to be here with me.
He wouldn’t want to be saddled with me here in the airport just because he’d had bad timing in saying hello.
He’d come over because he had the best manners of anyone ever, and now he’d seen this embarrassing scene with Grant and he was…
he was just being as nice to me as he always was.
“Let me—” he started, reaching out a hand that I had the irrational urge to cling to.
I shook my head, backing away, to keep myself from doing it.
“Sorry,” I whispered when he dropped his hand and my eyes instantly teared up again, because all that overwhelming niceness of his was making me start to lose the battle with not crying like a little ninny, and I didn’t want to embarrass him, too.
I turned away, ducking my head so he wouldn’t see. No matter how bad my own vacation had turned out, there was no excuse for ruining his.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, mon chaton,” he said, because of course he did, he was wonderful.
But even though it was a little bit rude and rude was the last thing I’d ever want to be to someone as amazing as Mr. Toussaint was, I didn’t even answer him.
Just mumbled something unintelligible, even to myself, and scurried down the concourse toward the bathroom I’d passed earlier, needing to get away before I could ruin anything else… like Mr. Toussaint’s opinion of me.
If he even had much of one.
Jeez, big head much, me? I was just a barista he saw for a few minutes most mornings before he went off to do whatever amazing job he must have.
I doubted he ever thought of me at all after I handed him his coffee each morning, even if—whenever he talked to me while he was ordering—he had a way of making me feel like there was nowhere he’d rather be and nothing more important that he had to do.
Or maybe that was just my wishful thinking again.
At least he remembered me enough to recognize me down here in Orlando, though. That was something.
I didn’t know what, but… something.
I pushed into the bathroom, my shoulders relaxing when I saw that it was empty.
All I needed to do was splash some water on my face, get myself together, and try to pretend that even if I’d just been dumped and deserted by my not-boyfriend for being such a total and utter disappointment, I could somehow find a way to come out of this not looking totally pathetic to my all-time favorite customer.
The one I may or may not have guiltily been crushing on ever since the first time he’d come in…
even though I shouldn’t. I had no idea if he was gay or not, but I did know that he was so far out of my league it wasn’t even funny.
I stared into the mirror. Maybe it wasn’t such a good thing Mr. Toussaint had recognized me.
My nose was starting to peel, and I had four times the freckles I’d started with back in New York, thanks to all the relentless sunshine Grant had complained about all weekend.
And the comfy shorts and cheerful, cartoon-covered t-shirt I was wearing?
Maybe I sort of got what Grant had always been on me about after all.
This wasn’t how real adults dressed. Mr. Toussaint was in shorts and a t-shirt too, but his looked… elegant.
Me? I looked like a kid.
My eyes started to sting again, but enough already. I may have looked like a kid, but I sure as heck couldn’t afford to act like one right now. Not when I was… was all alone and needed to figure out how to get back home, all by myself.
Which, I reminded myself fiercely, dashing away the last tears I’d allow myself today, would be fine.
Like Grant had (kind of meanly) said, it was just a…
a plane ride, and then figuring out a ride home from the LaGuardia.
He’d left his car in long-term parking, so I’d of course figured he’d drive me home from the airport when we got back.
I wasn’t sure I had enough room on my one and only credit card to use something like Uber, but… but I’d figure it out. I’d have to.
Although maybe I should change into something more respectable looking? Now that I was all on my own?
I turned, intending to dig through my little suitcase and find something better to wear, and gasped, all the blood draining out of my face.
My carry-on! I’d run off like a little crybaby and just left it.
It had my boarding pass and my wallet and my clothes and the super nice body lotion I’d stolen from the hotel.
But did it count as stolen when it was there in the room for us to use for free? Grant had said I couldn’t take it, but I’d snuck it into my carry-on anyway, figuring he was just being grouchy.
Well, it was too late to change it now, so hopefully I hadn’t committed an actual crime…
and I was just distracting myself from panicking to death by worrying about that right now.
I knew darn well my potentially thieving ways weren’t the most important issue at the moment.
Getting my little suitcase back before someone stole it and really, truly stranded me down here was the issue.
I just… I just didn’t know how to handle that one.
But I had to. There was no one else to take care of me but me.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” I chanted under my breath, rushing back out of the bathroom and looking frantically toward the kiosk I’d been standing at.
Nothing.
My throat closed up. It… It wasn’t there, and neither was Mr. Toussaint anymore.
And even though I’d run off specifically not to embarrass myself in front of him—and also not to embarrass him by being seen with someone melting down, like I was right the heck now—somehow the fact that he was gone, too, made me feel more frantic and abandoned than even when Grant had left.
I wrapped my arms around my middle, trying to breathe slowly and stop freaking out.
This wasn’t the end of the world. People lost luggage and boarding passes and their favorite lucky fossil keychains every day.
All I had to do was keep it together and…
and go up to the gate agent and ask for some help.
Okay. It was a plan. I’d start there.
But first I took a breath, then another one, trying to fight back the fresh wave of tears that threatened so that when I did, I could—in the words of the last guy to dump me before Grant had—act like I was a competent adult for once, Oliver.
“Ollie?”
A gentle touch landed on my shoulder. Mr. Toussaint.
My head snapped up the second I heard the soul-soothing sound of his accent, and before I could stop myself, I launched myself at him, completely ruining any and all dignity I might have ever hoped to have in his eyes, and completely failing with the act-like-a-competent-adult plan while I was at it.
“My carry-on,” I babbled as his arms instinctively came around me and the most heavenly scent ever created enveloped me like a safety blanket.
It was him. He smelled like everything good.
And I didn’t even mind how being held so tightly stung my sunburned skin.
I maybe even liked it, because… because it was him.
I’d like anything from Mr. Toussaint, I just knew it.
“Your suitcase?” he prompted me.
I nodded. “I left it by the kiosk,” I said, sniffling against his chest, “and now it’s… it’s gone, and it has all my stuff, my wallet, my boarding pass, my… my…”
“Shh, mon chéri, I’ve got you,” he said when I started to hyperventilate, rubbing one hand up and down my back and acting like it wasn’t at all weird that I was now clinging to him like a little monkey even though we were virtually strangers and he was a full-fledged successful grown-up businessman or something while I was just… me.
Me, who was getting his (amazingly soft and probably really expensive) shirt wet with my tears.
Wet, and crumpled.
Oh god, I really was an embarrassment.
I forced myself to unclench my hands and let go of him, intending to smooth out the wrinkles I’d left behind, but then I gasped all over again because right there by his feet was… was my carry-on!
“You saved it,” I breathed out reverently, reaching for it slowly so I didn’t spook it or spoil the mirage. But no, it was real. He’d paid attention and noticed my flub and he’d saved me.
I meant “it.”
He’d saved it, my suitcase, and… and he was not helping me to not crush on him, dang it. Not the way he was smiling down at me right now, even though I’d just been a dozen kinds of embarrassing.
But I wouldn’t swoon. I wouldn’t. That really would be embarrassing, because as nice as he was being to me, there was no way he wanted me to keep hovering around him like a little lost puppy. I should probably just thank him and… and…
Well, I didn’t know what to do after that.
“Do you know how much longer we have to wait for the flight?” I asked, gripping the handle of my carry-on hard to keep from accidentally trying to cling to him again and ask him what I should do until the flight left.
“Not much longer,” he said, distracting me from worrying about what to say next when that smile of his made the skin around his eyes crinkle into little lines. Little lines that took him from normal sexy to pure fire, and…
And ugh. Why was I so hopeless? He was probably twice my age and ten times as successful at life, and if he knew the kinds of things I thought of when he looked at me like he was right now, if he knew all the things I wanted, he’d probably run for it.
And then I really would be all alone.
I sucked in a ragged breath, my stomach cramping at the thought. I knew I couldn’t cling, but I didn’t want him to leave me, either. I just… I just had to think of something else to say that wouldn’t sound needy.
Mr. Toussaint’s smile dropped. “Ollie? What is it? What’s wrong, mon trésor?”
“Nothing,” I lied, feeling my face heat up even under the sunburn as I silently vowed for about the billionth time to learn French already since he always dropped little French words into our conversations that made me feel fluttery and special, even though I had no idea what they actually meant.
Except, no. Maybe I really shouldn’t, because it was probably just stuff like, “you’re annoying me, Ollie, but I’m too nice to say so in English.” And speaking of—
“I should, um, I should go away?” I suggested, not wanting to annoy him any further no matter how nice it was to be around him.
I looked around, the bustle of the airport not nearly as busy and crowded as basically anywhere in New York always was, but still intimidating all the same because I was a ninny who’d never left the city before, and what if I somehow messed up the boarding and got stuck down in Florida forever?
But I’d have to figure it out because annoying Mr. Toussaint sounded even worse than being stranded here all on my own.
What if he stopped coming in to get coffee every day?
“Where do you need to go away to?” Mr. Toussaint asked with a frown, his accent thickening as his hand twitched toward me, almost like he’d been about to reach for me.
He didn’t though, and before I could come up with an answer that wouldn’t sound stupid, a crackling voice came over the PA system, announcing our flight and inviting certain rows to begin boarding.
But not mine.
I wasn’t actually sure what row I was in this time, but after looking dumb back when we’d been leaving New York and I’d jumped right up at the first announcement, and then Grant had had to pull me back down into one of the uncomfortable chairs and explain that the first-class passengers always boarded first (and then mumbled under his breath that I definitely wasn’t first class, in a way that had sounded an awful lot like he hadn’t been talking about airplane seats, so I’d pretended not to hear), I knew for sure that I wouldn’t be in this boarding group.
Mr. Toussaint didn’t seem to know it, though.
“Come on, Ollie,” he said with the same warm smile that I’d fallen a little bit in love with the first time he’d ever asked me for an extra shot of espresso. He tipped his head toward the gate. “That is us, non?”
“Um, no,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not supposed to be in—”
He put a finger over my lips, shutting me right up because the gentle but firm touch felt like fireworks. Fireworks that shot straight down where they really shouldn’t. Not unless I wanted to embarrass myself even more than I already had.
But then his eyes crinkled at the corners again and he looked down at me like I wasn’t annoying at all, and… and I forgot what I’d been about to say, so I just closed my mouth.
“Good boy,” he said softly, taking his finger away and sending a whole new set of shivers through me with those two little words. “And yes, you are.”
“Okay,” I breathed out, not at all sure what he thought I was or what I was agreeing to, but definitely sure that I wanted to make him happy. To be good for him like he’d just said… even though of course there was no way he’d meant it the way my horny little brain wanted him to.
Still, when he smiled at me and took my arm and picked up my wonky-wheeled little carry-on with his other hand, fishing my boarding pass out for me and handing it over at the right time so I didn’t have to fumble around and look stupid, I followed him right up to the gate and onto the plane and wasn’t even surprised when no one said a single word about me not being in the right boarding group, because who would ever want to say no to Mr. Toussaint?
Not me, that was for sure.
Not ever.