Chapter Eight
“Why are you so jumpy?” Kolby asked as they buckled into their seats on the plane. “Everything’s going to be fine for the wedding.”
“I know that,” she snapped, then bit her lip when his eyebrows rose. “Sorry.” She shook her head. “I hate flying.”
His brows disappeared under the fringe of hair falling rakishly across his forehead.
“You’re kidding.”
“I don’t kid about potential death." Her voice cracked, causing her cheeks to flame.
“You know you have more of a statistical chance of falling in the bathroom, hitting your head, and dying from a brain injury than from a plane crash, right?”
Damn him. He sounded like he was trying to stifle a laugh.
“Don’t quote arcane statistics to me, O’Brian.”
He waited a beat, then, when he reached out and took her hand-white knuckled and they hadn’t even begun to taxi yet-said, “Charity, you know how to, and can literally, kill a man with one well-aimed strike to various body parts.”
Her brows knit together. “So?”
“If you’re not afraid of a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound attacker running at you with a machete in his hand, you shouldn’t be of flying.”
“It’s not the same.” She shook her head. “I’m not flying the plane.”
He pressed her hand and finally let out a chuckle. “So, I was right about you all along.”
She tugged her hand free. “What does that mean?”
He leaned down, the confines of the seats allowing all his masculine warmth and natural scent to waft over her as he took her hand back.
“It means,” he said in a voice that conjured a vision of him lying in her bed and that made her toes curl in her sandals, “You, Charity Quinlan, like to be in control.”
The blue in his eyes turned five different shades in the few seconds he held her stare, each one more captivating than the former.
Charity swallowed. Hard.
Unable or unwilling, she couldn’t decide which, her eyes stayed zeroed in on his until his lips pulled up into a delicious smirk she wanted to kiss and, simultaneously, smack off his face.
The choice was relegated to only a thought when the captain began the preflight spiel over the intercom.
Kolby squeezed her hand once again and turned his attention to the inflight instructions.
Seated in a two-seat row, Kolby was on the aisle because of his height, with Charity next to the window.
Whether by design or because it was her station, their flight attendant was in direct eyeline of Kolby and during her entire demonstration had her attention focused on him.
Even through her nervousness and fear, Charity was miffed that once again a female was blatantly ogling him.
Irrational? Without a doubt. But Charity couldn’t help it.
Once the inflight instructions ended, the crew went seat to seat to ensure seat belts were fastened, tables were closed and seat backs were upright. The eye-flirting crew member made a special point of stopping when she got to them.
“Everything okay here?” she asked, her question only for Kolby.
He nodded and graced her with his ever-present seductive smirk.
“If you need anything after we take off,” the flight attendant said, “just press your call button. It’s right here.”
When she leaned in to indicate the button on the upper panel, her breasts thrust toward his face, something she had to know would happen in the tight confines of the space.
With Kolby’s upper torso height, her breasts were at his eye level and only if his eyes were closed or he was struck blind would he be able to miss them.
And the suggestion they promised.
“Thanks,” he told her, leaning away from them.
She graced him with a full-wattage smile, then proceeded down the aisle.
“If we crash, you’ll be the one she saves,” Charity grumbled, “while I’ll be fending off man-eating sharks by myself.”
Kolby laughed and took her hand again, giving it a squeeze. “Don’t worry. I’ll rescue you.”
Why did that sound so good?
She just shook her head and tugged her hand from his.
When they began to taxi a moment later, Charity’s nerves ramped up again. She shut the window blind with a decisive thwack, gripped her hands together in her lap and closed her eyes.
Heart pounding so loud in her chest she could hear it pulsing in her ears, she tried to take a few deep inhales but wound up holding her breath instead. Something warm and firm and comforting snaked its way through the killer grip of her hands, took hold, and then enveloped them.
“Babe, you gotta breathe, else you’re gonna pass out.”
“Being unconscious is not the worst alternative to this.”
His voice dropped low as he chuckled. “If you do, I’m gonna be forced to perform mouth-to-mouth to bring you back around. You wanna chance that?”
Her eyes flew open and her head snapped around to find that damn grin she was sure would be the death of her, covering those lips she’d dreamed about more times than was prudent.
Good Lord, was he flirting with her? Her gaze drifted down to his mouth. He hadn’t shaved for a few days, and the scruff that covered his chin and cheeks also circled his lips. She’d give anything to rub her thumb over it.
Thumb? Ha.
What she really wanted to do was run her tongue over the stubble and then place her mouth against his.
An unforeseen force pushed her to lift her chin, inching closer to that mouth.
Sanity blew back in when the plane started to lift, tilting their bodies backward. Charity hissed, threw back her head to hit the headrest, and slammed her eyes shut again.
“Breathe, babe,” he murmured as he squeezed her hand.
The soft timbre of his voice, the gentle caress of his fingers across her knuckles, the warmth drifting her way from his breath and body, all served to do just that.
She could feel the plane rumbling and rising, the force of the liftoff pushing her backward deeper into the seat, the compressed air in the cabin shifting to almost a white noise as it did.
Her ears filled and then popped ever so slightly.
“Few more seconds and then we’re gonna level out,” Kolby said, her hands still in his. “You’re doing great. Just breathe.”
As promised, within a ten-count, the intercom dinged with the pilot telling them they were now at cruising altitude.
Charity hauled in a cavernous breath and finally opened her eyes.
Kolby’s attention was all on her, and she was gobsmacked to see it filled with a softness and kindness she hadn’t thought imaginable.
“Better?”
She nodded. “Mortified, but yeah. Thanks.”
He let go of her hands, and it took everything in her not to pull them back.
She folded them together again so she wouldn’t give into the temptation.
If her fear of flying, put on full display, wasn’t humiliating enough, she had no words to describe how she’d feel if he knew how much his simple touch affected her.
“I still can’t reconcile the fierce and fearless girl who reeked of confidence and self-assurance when she told me she could handle a drunken loser with one who’s scared to fly.” He shook his head. “You, Charity Quinlan, are a conundrum.”
“I’ve been called worse things in my life,” she mumbled, letting her eyes drift closed again.
“Look at me.” The command took her off guard. When she did, that smirk she was used to seeing was gone, the corners of his mouth now dipping down.
“What?”
“What do you mean you’ve been called worse? By whom?”
Surprise hit her first, then a gentle anxiety pushed through. Biting down on her bottom lip, she shook her head. “No one, really. Just...” she flapped a hand, “boys. When I was younger.”
“In karate class?”
She nodded.
“Tell me.”
“Kolby, it’s nothing, and it was years ago."
“Tell me.”
The forged steel in his tone was another surprise. He was angry. Why?
Resigned to it, she said, “Some of the older boys used to goad me because I was the only girl. They said I didn’t belong in karate because I was a dumb-as-rocks female. That I’d never be as good as they were because of my sex and I should just run on home to mama and learn to cook something.”
“Neanderthals.”
“No. Just...boys. That kind of attitude was common where I grew up. Unfortunately, still is. Girls do girl things like cook and sew and join the Junior League. Boys do boy things like hunt and fish and become community leaders.”
“Pretty archaic thinking.”
“Yeah, well, thankfully, my parents didn’t think that way. I could out-fish my brothers by the time I was six and every one of them had to learn to cook and do laundry so they could fend for themselves once they left home. Mama and Daddy insisted on it.”
“You have good parents.”
“The best.”
“Tell me about the morons in karate class.”
She’d hoped he’d forgotten about them.
“They tried to intimidate me because I was smaller than everybody else. They called me stupid names, some of which I was too young at the time to even know the meaning of.”
“Like?” he spun a hand in the air.
With a shrug, she told him, “Just stupid things like baby, he-girl, twat. Bitch. And the c-word. Those ones I didn’t know the meaning of but knew they were bad because they laughed at me when they said them.
I was afraid to ask my brothers the meaning because they’d want to know why I was asking and then march right into the dojo and beat the crap out of anyone they thought was harassing me if I told them. ”
“I’d have done the same.”
“Which is why I didn’t tell them.”
“Did you report the boys to your instructor?”
“Sensei, and no, I didn’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
“For one thing, even at a young age I didn’t care what people said about me.
My parents raised us all to keep our heads up, know we were good people, and to ignore what others thought, especially if it was negative.
They also taught us that tattling your way out of a situation wasn’t the way to handle it but to try and resolve it on our own.
For another, reporting them would have made the situation worse and proved to the boys that I really didn’t belong and was a baby because I had to run and cry about them being mean to me. ”