Chapter 11
SOFIA
‘Ithought we were flying commercial -.’
I jolted in surprise at the sight of the luxury plane Jude was leading me to.
Somehow I’d missed the fact we were in a private airport, not at a Delta or United terminal.
‘Safer this way,’ Jude growled.
His face was an unreadable mask as we approached the sleek Gulfstream jet.
He gestured at me to climb the stairs first, with practiced courtesy.
However, his stoic expression told me he attached zero personal emotion to the gesture.
He was just being a gentleman.
A pretty attendant in a navy-and-gold uniform waited for us at the top of the airstairs, stepping aside to let us into the cabin.
‘Welcome aboard the Knight One Gulfstream. My name is Chloe, and I’ll be your flight purser today,’ she intoned. ‘Your pilots are Captain Miller and First Officer Sanders. Please come through, and I’ll show you to your seats. We’re wheels up in ten minutes.’
I followed her past the threshold, my brow arching at the luxury of the plane.
I’d enjoyed some opulence as an Italian soap opera actress for a time, but never like this.
The jet’s interior was a seamless expanse of cream leather, hand-stitched silk carpets, and mirror-polished walnut veneers.
Panoramic oval windows lined the fuselage, framing the tarmac below.
The cabin layout featured oversized executive club seats that appeared plush enough to swallow a man whole. Plus a separate conference-dining zone and a divan upholstered in premium chenille at the rear.
Every detail screamed luxury, down to the touchscreen controls embedded in the armrests and the clean air from the climate-control vents.
I glanced at Jude as he dropped into a seat.
He seemed unbothered by the fact that our ride to Nashville would be costing a lot of money.
I wasn’t sure it was worth it.
‘Sit, Sofia,’ Jude said, gesturing to a wide leather chair before dropping my tote bag into the overhead bin. ‘Relax, the G6 belongs to the label; I just borrowed for the day.’
‘Thank you again for everything,’ I murmured, settling in.
His lips twitched as he settled into his spot.
‘You’ve got to stop sometime,’ he rasped. ‘Maybe collect all your thank yous for one time at the end of the week.’
I couldn’t tell whether I’d annoyed or amused him, so I buckled in and relaxed into the cushioned headrest.
The cabin door sealed shut, and Chloe, the attendant, strapped in at the rear of the jet.
Soon we were taxiing towards the runway, and minutes later, the aircraft surged into the morning clouds.
‘Phone babe.’
I jolted, slicing my eyes away from the view out the window as the world fell away from us.
My gaze found Jude leaning toward me from his chair across the narrow walkway.
‘What?’
‘Your mobile. Unlocked.’
I blinked at his deep drawl, then scrambled for the device in my bag and handed it to him after unlocking it with Face ID.
He typed on the screen and then handed it back to me.
It sat open to the Contacts page, and his details were now entered and saved.
‘You now have my number. Need anything, at all, you call me.’
With that, he took out his own handset and left me to mine.
Once we reached altitude, Chloe came round offering us hot towels, coffee or tea, and a sandwich.
We ate, and after she cleared the trays away, Jude sank back into his seat.
He adjusted it to a reclined angle, his long legs spread in the spacious space in front of him.
In time, his eyes closed, and he slipped into a quiet nap.
Then I sliced my eyes to my ring, still not quite believing my upturned life.
Was I truly his wife?
I sat back, studying Jude’s face in repose.
The cabin lights caught the hooked ridge of his nose and the sculpted angles of his jawline, framed by a neat, trim beard.
Today, his thick, wavy, black hair was in a rough man bun, accentuating his ruggedness.
His inky tee stretched over a rippling chest.
He was in charcoal fitted denim pants again, leaving no doubt about how ripped his legs were.
He was an undeniably beautiful man, with a symmetry of features that seemed almost impossible.
My gaze ran over the black ink crawling up his throat, and I was hit with the need to press my lips to his nape.
Damn, what was I thinking?
Turning away from him, and with the cabin quiet, I retrieved my phone, synced the wireless headphones, and connected to the aircraft’s WiFi network.
Curious about Jude, I typed the words ‘Six Sinners’ into the search bar of the device’s browser.
I then clicked on an HD YouTube upload of a concert from their recent stadium show at the Bellagio in Vegas.
The screen exploded with light, and my breath caught in my throat.
I sat in awe as Jude commanded twenty thousand screaming fans.
He was a force of nature on that stage, his muscled arms flexing as his fingers flew across the fretboard of a custom guitar with fluid musicality.
He controlled the entire arena with a raw, masculine gravitas.
His deep voice was hoarse, gritty, growly, and pitch-perfect.
The man could sing.
His lyrics were an unfiltered, unvarnished confession of the mistakes we humans made and the redemption we sought, which sent chills down my spine.
The band’s songs resonated, as evidenced by the crowd’s response: they sang along at the top of their voices, the thunderous resonance giving me goosebumps with the sheer force of their collective energy.
I pulled the headphones away for a second, my eyes darting to the sleeping man across from me.
Again, I wondered why a man of such immense largesse and cultural power was bothering to risk his own reputation for a stray like me.
The majority of men I knew, apart from my father and brothers, had only cared for their agenda and took whatever they could grab from the weak.
Jude and his stepfather were rewriting my understanding of what a real man might be.
It was clear to me he was most girls’ dream man.
One who’d made it clear he wasn’t interested and claimed I was not his type.
I imagined he went for blondes so graceful and lissome I could never compare.
This was not insecurity talking. I was just pragmatic.
Jude Valenti, with all his fame, had women all over him in every city.
Our arrangement was for my safety, and while I was grateful, I was also acutely aware of the vast distance between his world and mine.
With a sigh, I buried those thoughts deep and swiped past Jude’s concert footage to stream the latest dramatic twists of the soap opera I was following.
We descended into Nashville by late afternoon, the jet rolling to a stop at a private hangar where an obsidian Cadillac Escalade waited on the tarmac.
Jude packed our gear into it.
After helping me to my seat in silence, he took the wheel, navigating the vehicle away from the airport and towards the sloping green hills of Tennessee.
The humidity hit the windshield like a wet towel, but inside the cabin, the air conditioning blew cool air on high.
Jude adjusted his grip on the leather steering column, the inked muscles on his forearm flexing as he negotiated a sweeping curve on the interstate.
‘Welcome to Nashville,’ he said, his deep voice cutting through the quiet. ‘It gets loud, hot, sticky, and the people will try to feed you butter until your arteries clog.’
I leaned my head on the passenger window as the blur of oak trees and distant barn roofs passed us.
‘I can handle sticky and I know how to cook, remember? I don’t think your soft spread action can defeat me.’
A small, rare smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, though his eyes stayed locked on the blacktop ahead.
‘Don’t underestimate Southern grandmothers. They don’t believe in a being thin, they see it as a personal insult. If any of them offers you sweet tea, drink it. Don’t ask how much sugar is in the pitcher unless you want a lecture on hospitality.’
After that, Jude went quiet, his focus shifting to the road.
We drove past historic brick storefronts, through downtown corridors fringed with neon honky-tonk signs.
The urban sprawl gave rise to a series of affluent suburbs.
The vehicle slowed as we reached a limestone security archway guarded by a wrought-iron gate that opened only after Jude pressed his thumb on a biometric scanner.
I also noticed the security guards in a nearby hut.
We wound down a private, tree-lined lane until we pulled up to his residence.
My brows arched at the sprawling, European-style stone mansion surrounded by manicured boxwood hedges and towering oaks.
‘Welcome home,’ Jude drawled as he opened my passenger door, then swung by the trunk for our things.
The house’s architecture was magnificent, yet as we walked through the pair of lofty mahogany front doors, a distinct sense of an unlived-in home hit me.
Everything seemed too perfect, too tidy, too neat, and in its place.
There were no family photographs, no scattered books, no signs of real life.
Dominating the living room was a huge gray velvet sofa and impressive high-end designer furniture. In contrast, the dining room was a gallery of prints on the wall surrounding a spacious table and stunning gilt chairs.
‘You’re this way,’ Jude rasped, his deep, gravelly voice echoing off the travertine tiles as he carried my bag upstairs into a sumptuous guest suite. ‘It should be clean. I’ve a team that comes in once a week.’
The room was pristine and featured a sizable king-size bed made of distressed oak, topped with a crisp, white linen duvet that appeared untouched.
A pair of floor-to-ceiling glass doors opened onto a private view of the valley, letting the late-afternoon sun spill across the hardwood floorboards.
The space contained no clutter or personal trinkets, just a few pieces of expensive furniture and an oversized armchair upholstered in charcoal wool sitting in the corner.
Through an open doorway lay the ensuite bathroom, which was more like a modern spa than a guest bath.
It featured a deep, freestanding soaking tub carved from light grey stone and an expansive double vanity with matte black fixtures.
The glass-walled walk-in shower was exquisite, lined with seamless slate tiles and featuring a rainfall head overhead.