1. Jenna
Jenna
“You just drove past the terminal,” I say as I watch the illuminated Departure sign recede in the side-view mirror. “You missed the international off-ramp.”
“No, ma’am,” the driver says, his voice laced with the strained patience of a man who’s been dealing with type-A business lunatics since the Reagan era. “Instructions were to take you to Signature Aviation. Special manifest.”
It takes a moment for this to compute. My mind, currently running on a cocktail of caffeine and humiliation, is not optimized for last-minute logistics.
“That’s private,” I say. Which is not a question, but he answers anyway.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I glance down at the email from this morning, let my eyes trace over the emergency all-caps subject line:
CHICAGO-TOKYO: YOUR ITINERARY. DO NOT MISS
Then I open the attached PDF, where I now notice the flight number doesn’t begin with a major carrier code, but with a jarring string of letters—CFI, which is either an obscure regional airline or, more likely, a vanity abbreviation for Cruz Financial International, aka the company Dominic uses to found, fund, and occasionally terrorize the mergers and acquisitions world for his own personal enjoyment.
A private jet.
His private jet.
Of course.
I don’t even have the energy to muster outrage, though outrage is normally my resting pulse.
I just check my reflection in the blacked-out glass and accept my fate.
Thirteen hours in a close-quarters cabin with Dominic Cruz.
Crap. This is even worse than when I thought we’d be in business class together.
At least then I could have put the privacy screen up and ignored him.
Now I have to sit in the same space and be grateful for his hospitality.
And I don’t want to be grateful.
I don’t even want to look at him right now.
The car follows a winding access road toward a squat, floodlit building at the far west edge of O’Hare.
Out on the tarmac, a gleaming white Gulfstream G700 sits parked, its nose pointed at the city skyline.
A portable staircase hugs the fuselage. Ground crew in neon vests move about.
On the tail, in letters visible from orbit, is CRUZ FINANCIAL.
God save me from men with branding fetishes.
The driver pulls up to a gate that opens without him even needing to lower his window. Then we roll across the tarmac and stop at the foot of the stairs. A man in a dark suit appears at my door.
“Ms. Pemberton.” He has a pleasant, slightly embalmed expression, and I wonder if his entire career has been the ten feet between the car and the staircase. “May I take your bag?”
I hand him my carry-on. I packed for ten days in the hours between Bennett’s text and now, which means I have squashed in approximately twelve outfits, a fistful of cotton panties and bras, no fewer than three cardigans, and one lingerie set I bought years ago and have never worn because the lace is the wrong shade of red for any real-world application.
I mention this only because I’m noting, dryly, that the version of me who packed was not the version of me currently boarding.
The version of me who packed was convinced there was a possibility she might spend a portion of this trip in a position to wear seductive underwear.
I’d formed a narrative in my head about how this trip would go. Me, striding onto the jet in heels and resolve, owning the air and making Dominic sweat for the privilege of sharing it. I was going to be bold. Set the terms. Be the person in control.
Now, with my shoes clicking up the metal stairs and the wind blowing my hair into my mouth, I revise that assessment.
Last night, Dominic wanted me. I know that much. Then he asked me to wait until I was sober—like a decent, considerate human being—and I thanked him by looking him in the eye and telling him I regretted the entire thing.
So, yes. The odds of Dominic Cruz wanting to see me now—let alone undress me—have deteriorated sharply. I could show up in nothing but an expense report and he’d probably hand me a cardigan and ask if I’d like a decaf.
Because last night, I blew it.
Not because I don’t want him. That would be convenient.
I do.
God help me.
I pause before the doorway, just long enough for a self-directed pep talk.
You are not going to wilt. You are not going to stammer. And you are not, under any circumstances, going to apologize at the top of the stairs.
Apologies create conversations. Conversations create questions. Questions create admissions no woman should be forced to make while trapped in a pressurized cabin for thirteen hours.
If an apology becomes strategically unavoidable, I will deliver it on Japanese soil, where escape routes exist.
Until then, this is for Bennett. There is a contract at stake. A deal to save. Any collateral emotional damage from last night will be compartmentalized, labeled, and set aside for later analysis.
I press my lips together and finish the climb. At the top, the door arcs open with gentle, hydraulic inevitability.
“Ms. Pemberton, welcome aboard.” I’m greeted by a woman in a navy uniform. Her smile is so polite and focused it could have been laser-cut. “We’ll be departing in approximately twelve minutes. Please, let me know if I can get you anything.”
“Thank you.” I try to modulate my voice for the setting—expensive, cavernous, and exactly the kind of hollow that makes my life feel unreal. I set my laptop bag on the seat as discreetly as possible and try to look like I belong.
Dominic isn’t here yet.
I survey the main cabin. There’s a single row of four giant armchairs, upholstered in the kind of leather that makes you feel poor just looking at it.
Beyond that, a credenza loaded with glassware and a row of minimalist shelves, stocked with a whole host of Cruz-branded snacks—even the little baggies of almonds have the Cruz Financial logo, a testament to either efficiency or megalomania.
I quietly exhale.
Jenna, you will not catastrophize. You will not let your brain fill the exquisitely soundproofed space with the sound of your own spiral.
You can do this. You can sit in a small, moving room with the man you propositioned while inebriated and then verbally eviscerated on moral grounds.
Because you are very, very good at playing it cool. You are a professional.
“We have a pre-takeoff beverage menu, if you’d like something,” the flight attendant says.
“Sparkling water, please.” There’s a kind of dignity in refusing the full bar—though part of me suspects it’s the bar’s fault I’m here at all.
She vanishes, presumably to source a bottle of water from somewhere so rarefied there are probably treaties to protect its aquifer.
I take the seat closest to the window and recheck my phone, purely for appearance.
There is no new email. No incoming missile from Bennett.
I consider texting Dominic a brief, “On the plane,” but dismiss it as both needy and passive-aggressive—telegraphing a wish for his arrival, which is highly irregular and not at all germane to my function as deal-closer and professional ruiner of men’s overconfident days.
Instead, I inspect the safety card. As if, in the event of a catastrophic failure, my ability to locate the nearest oxygen mask will be the difference between a minor embarrassment and a true viral fiasco.
The attendant brings my sparkling water.
“If you can make sure your seatbelt is on, we’re about to start taxiing to the runway.”
I open my mouth to point out that we’re still waiting on Dominic when I notice the second glass on her tray. A heavy crystal tumbler with two fingers of something amber.
Whiskey.
My mouth closes. But she seems to hear the question anyway.
“Mr. Cruz is on a call in the office at the back of the plane,” she says as she sets a folded napkin beside my glass. “He said to let you know he’ll be out as soon as he’s able. He apologizes for the discourtesy.”
“He’s working,” I say. “It’s not a discourtesy.”
“He was very clear that I should communicate the apology, ma’am.”
I look at her for a beat. She gives me the same neutral smile she gave me when I boarded, and I can’t decide whether he’s being gracious or whether this is the thing a man does when he intends to keep his distance and wants the on-record proof.
“Thank you,” I tell her.
She moves to the back of the cabin and disappears through a narrow doorway near the galley, and despite every instinct in me insisting I shouldn’t look, I look.
The office door is half open.
There he is.
Dominic stands with one hand braced on the edge of a glossy walnut desk, jacket off, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, phone to his ear.
“—push legal on the revised language. I don’t care what they ‘understood’ from the prior draft. If the valuation collar moves, the governance provision moves with it. That’s not optional.”
The attendant steps inside and offers him the whiskey.
He takes it without looking away from whatever disaster is currently trying to set fire to our deal. Then he looks up.
Our eyes catch.
It is one second. Possibly less. More than enough.
Something flickers over his face—surprise, heat, restraint, all three stacked so fast I can’t sort them—and then his expression shutters into something professionally unreadable.
He gives the smallest nod, not even a greeting, more an acknowledgment that I exist inside the same oxygen supply.
Then the attendant steps back into the corridor.
“Call me when Sato stops pretending this is a translation issue,” Dominic says as he reaches out and swings the door shut.
Softly. Efficiently. Entirely. A completely normal interaction between two adults who kissed like arsonists twelve hours ago.
I stare at the blank veneer for a beat too long. Then I turn back to my water with the rigid composure of a woman absolutely not reacting to anything.
The plane begins to move.