Chapter Three
She’d run out of excuses last night. Caitlin had an answer for everything she’d tried to suggest to get out of flying back to South Africa with David Cavallo.
Dana braced herself and walked toward the small plane where David was waiting for her. Oh, my goodness, just look at him! The blatant maleness of the man simply took her breath away.
For a minute, she was worried her knees would give way beneath her, but somehow, she made it all the way to the steps leading up to the plane where he was waiting.
Strangely enough, this morning there wasn’t a mocking smile to contend with. He was hiding behind his sunglasses and looked grim. With a nod, he took her arm and helped her up the steps.
The touch of his hand on her skin nearly had her tripping over her own feet, but he put an arm around her to help her up the last few steps.
The pilot came out of the cockpit, and he and David started talking.
A flight attendant showed her to a comfortable seat and offered her a glass of sparkling wine.
Wow. The rich sure did things on a grander scale than what she was used to. She shook her head and looked out the window. Wine would only muddle up the last shreds of rational thought she was valiantly trying to hold on to.
She’d hardly slept a wink last night. The whole kissing scene kept her up most of the night. And when she hadn’t been berating herself for throwing herself at David, she remembered every sensory sensation that had raced through her body.
Why she couldn’t get the whole thing out of her head was beyond her.
Yes, it had been a good kiss and, okay, she hadn’t been kissed in quite some time, but it wasn’t as if she’d never locked lips with a man before.
Yet somehow David’s kiss had managed to wipe away the memory of every other meeting of lips she’d had before.
It was as if he was the only guy she’d ever kissed!
She closed her eyes. The last things she should be thinking about were kissing and David Cavallo.
She was about to spend the next six or so hours in close proximity with him. Very close even for a luxurious plane.
She opened her eyes and there he was, taking his seat directly opposite her. A groan threatened to escape and she swallowed. How was she supposed to act normally when this hot guy who’d been kissing her a few hours ago was sitting so close to her?
She grabbed her bag and started rummaging through it. Somewhere she had a book.
Caitlin’s mother wrote love stories and had introduced Dana to the wonders of happy endings when she’d been a young sixteen.
And, to this day, when things got a bit more than she could handle, she would escape to a fictional world where everyone was happy in the end.
And right now seemed to be a perfect time to escape a different reality.
Even if she didn’t take in anything she read, she’d at least have something else to look at besides David Cavallo.
*
When Dana opened a book, David pulled his laptop closer and tried to concentrate. There was a lot of work that needed his attention at the moment, and normally he’d use the time on a plane to catch up on e-mails.
But one look at Dana this morning had left him nearly drooling.
She was wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, nothing he hadn’t seen on women before.
But on Dana the ordinary T-shirt curved lovingly around her generous breasts and the skinny jeans reminded him vividly how her warm body had felt against his last night.
Speaking to the pilot just now had forced him to think of other matters, but now that he was sitting opposite Dana, his body had taken over his brain again, and his pants were feeling tighter by the minute.
He looked up to find her gaze on him. She quickly glanced down at her book again. He stared at her a minute longer. Swallowing a grin, he moved forward and took the book from her hands, turned it over, and handed it back.
“It would be easier to read it right side up, I think,” he said solemnly.
She stared at him for a minute before she giggled and hid her face behind the book.
The giggle went right down to his groin and, in one movement, he put his laptop down and took the seat next to Dana.
She gasped. “What are you doing?”
He took the book from her limp fingers and threw it on the opposite seat.
“You weren’t reading.”
She shook her head. “You weren’t working.”
He shook his head. They stared at each other.
“David,” she began and tried to move away, but he leaned forward and put his hand behind her head.
“I have to talk to you, but first… I have to taste you again. I have to see whether I remember correctly,” he muttered before his lips claimed hers.
*
Sensations slammed into her, raced through her body, and all she could do was cling to David. His broad shoulders were a hard rock underneath her fingers while his mouth was devouring hers.
This had to stop; she shouldn’t be kissing David Cavallo. The plane hadn’t even taken off yet, and she was already plastered against him. She pushed against him, hoping he would stop, but he deepened the kiss, and she was lost.
“I’m sorry, sir,” a voice said somewhere above them, and David lifted his head. His brown eyes were smoldering, his breathing erratic.
“Yes?” Without taking his hands from Dana, he looked up at the flight attendant.
“You should fasten your seat belts; we’re about to take off,” she said with a smile.
Dana put her hands against her burning cheeks. What was she thinking? Embarrassed, she fidgeted, looking for the seat belts, until David covered her hand with his. Silently he put the seat belt around her body, his fingers lightly grazing her hard nipples.
His nostrils flared and she stopped breathing.
Unable to look away, she stared at him while he fastened his seat belt.
The plane gathered speed and she closed her eyes. David covered her hand with his again, and he entwined his fingers with hers.
She was not supposed to sit here and allow him to kiss her, to touch her! Whatever this sudden flaring up of hormones between the two of them was, it had to stop. She tried pulling her hand from underneath his, but his fingers simply folded her hand completely in his, and she stopped fidgeting.
For the few minutes it took for the plane to reach the desired altitude, she sat quietly, acutely aware of his hand around hers, of his scent slowly penetrating through every pore of her skin until it became part of her breathing, her heartbeat.
His body radiated heat, heat that was muddling her brain, making her forget all the reasons she shouldn’t get involved with this man. Ever.
When they were finally in the air, she pulled her hand away and loosened her seat belt. This time when the flight attendant offered her a glass of champagne, she didn’t hesitate to take it. She tried to move slightly away from David’s overwhelming presence.
He also took a glass and held it out to her. “To… the interesting things that happen at weddings.” There was a teasing light in his eyes.
“David, please… let’s forget about last night. It should never have happened. I don’t even like you!” Her frustration with the whole situation boiled over.
“Why is that?” David asked mildly and put his glass down.
Realizing she’d said too much, she shook her head and took another sip of champagne.
David took her glass from her and put it next to his. “Would it help if I tell you I know you don’t like me because I used to be a journalist?”
She whipped her head around and stared at him. “So you know about my dad?” she asked trying to look calm.
He nodded but before he could say anything else, his phone rang. Without taking his eyes off hers, he answered his phone. But whoever was talking to him got his attention, and he stood up and walked away.
Dana breathed freely for the first time since he’d sat next to her. There never seemed to be enough oxygen in the air when she was close to him.
She stared at his back, noticed the way his T-shirt clung to his broad shoulders, the way his jeans fitted snugly around his very sexy behind.
Swallowing a groan, she closed her eyes, remembering vividly his pulsing body as he’d made her aware of his desire for her last night.
Damn it. What the hell was going on? She’d dated guys before, gorgeous guys, hot guys, sexy guys. But at the moment, she couldn’t recall any of their faces.
She’d seen David several times before—she’d danced with him at Don and Caitlin’s wedding.
And even though her heart always went a little crazy when she was near him, although her mouth became dry, and her blood heated instantly, she’d managed to ignore her body’s antics and play it cool.
Until last night, that was. Until he’d kissed her, until he’d shown her how his own body reacted after their kiss.
Whether she wanted to admit it or not, his kiss had touched something inside of her, touched her very core.
As a biology teacher, she knew it was probably just her dopamine levels causing the havoc in her body, but her heart wasn’t listening.
Oh, no, her heart was on its own mission, merrily jumping about inside her body at the mere thought that David would be back any minute now.
And then he came strolling back. But instead of taking the seat next to her, he grabbed his laptop and moved to another row of seats altogether.
“There seems to be a problem with our website. The technical guys have fixed it, but I need to add the rest. And it can’t wait.” He opened his mouth, obviously changed his mind, and closed it again before he sat down.
“I want to talk to you about your dad and what happened, but I have to sort this out first.”
Dana nodded and opened her book again, this time with the right side up.
It was for the best anyway. She didn’t want to talk to him, she didn’t want to talk about her dad, and she definitely didn’t want to talk to him about her dad.
Somehow, she needed to make sure she stayed as far away from him as possible.
From now on, she would find excuses not to attend the Sutherland and Cavallo gatherings. At least until these foolish feelings had vanished.
Finding a way to tell Caitlin she would not be attending all the family get-togethers from now on without alerting her friend to the fact that she had the hots for her brother-in-law would be tricky, but surely Dana could come up with a good enough reason?
Exasperated with herself, Dana slowly reread the first line of the story. She couldn’t believe what she was thinking! Having the hots for David Cavallo was not what should be happening; her life was complicated enough already.
She glanced up. David was staring at his computer, a frown carved into his forehead. Her eyes trailed over his face, down his muscled upper body, and she had to force her gaze down to the book.
Every fiber of her being was aware of the man sitting a few meters away from her.
For the umpteenth time, she reread the first few lines of the book.
Maybe if she had a gory thriller to read, she would have been able to forget about the man sitting nearby.
A love story where the hero was described as sexy as sin was way too close a description of the situation with the real flesh-and-blood man sitting near her.