Come Fly with Me (2 page)

“We're wasting our time,” she'd protested vehemently to her implacable boss.

“You can change his mind,” Trent had assured her. “I have complete confidence in you.”

“How am I supposed to change his mind? The man doesn't want more money. You've already offered him every conceivable perk from a chauffeured limousine to twenty-four-hour-a-day champagne and caviar the entire time he's on location, to say nothing of a luxury suite and round-the-clock women—”

“A secretarial service,” he corrected dryly.

She'd scowled at him. “Whatever. This contract is ninety-nine percent in his favor. The only thing it doesn't have is probably the one thing he wants: creative control over the movie. If you won't bend on that, I don't seem to have a lot of leverage.”

“Smile a lot.”

“Right,” she'd snapped sarcastically. “I tried that on his agent. The sleaze offered to show me his personal collection of signed Picasso prints...in his suite in Monte Carlo.”

“It would have been a nice trip.”

“Oh, go to hell.”

“I'll go there, if you'll go to Denver.” His crystal blue eyes had bored into her. “I want David Morrow to write this screenplay, Lindsay.”

Lindsay had bowed to the inevitable. Now she was spending a perfectly good Friday night, when she could have been soaking her exhausted body in a bubble bath up to her chin, sitting at L.A. International, chewing on a candy bar instead of her nails and waiting for the fog to lift in Denver. On nights like this she wished she'd taken a job in a library, instead of going into entertainment law.

Maybe she should have married some nice, down-to-earth wanderer like the alluring stranger with the lazy, heart-tumbling smile, had several rowdy, dark-haired little boys, learned how to bake chocolate chip cookies and joined the PTA. This beguiling image danced briefly in her mind before she shuddered. Not a good idea. In the long run, she'd be better off in Denver, snow or no snow.

With at least an hour to kill, she decided to head for the coffee shop. She might as well sit back, try to relax and kick off the sensible, medium-heeled gray pumps. They were killing her feet after nearly sixteen hours of running
around the twenty-story tower of Trent Enterprises and the twenty-five acres of Trent Studios, where Trent Langston, grandson of the founder, reigned like some feudal tyrant. She found an empty booth, sat down and slid her slim, stockinged feet out of her shoes. She'd get the coffee in a minute, just as soon as she surreptitiously massaged her aching feet. With her green eyes closed, she sighed with sheer pleasure. Heaven! Absolute heaven!

“Stand up,” an intriguingly familiar voice suddenly ordered softly, as Lindsay's heart instinctively started skittering along in triple time. It couldn't be! Her eyes snapped open. It was.

“Stand up,” he said again, giving her another of those lazy, enticing smiles.

“You don't really want me to do that,” she replied warningly.

“Why not?”

“Because my feet may fall off and you'll have to carry me all the way to my flight.”

He surveyed her from her short, stylishly tousled auburn hair to her coral-tinted toenails, a distance of barely five feet, and grinned. “No problem.”

Lindsay shook her head. “Somehow I knew you'd say that,” she groaned, still not budging. He probably carried logs heavier than she was just for fun. “Why do you want me to stand up in the first place?”

“To see how much damage the candy did, of course.”

She nodded sagely. “Of course.”

“You did eat it, didn't you?”

“Almost every bite,” she admitted ruefully.

“Almost?”

She held up half the chocolate bar. He grinned. “And?”

“It was worth every calorie.”

Dark eyes skimmed over the empty tabletop. “And now you're starving yourself to death?”

She chuckled at the obvious disapproval in his voice. “No. I merely collapsed into the first vacant chair I came to and haven't had the energy to move again. Not even for a cup of coffee.”

He nodded and the smile returned. “Stay put. I'll be right back. You take it black?”

Lindsay nodded. She thought briefly about arguing and digging in her purse to at least
pay for the coffee, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. Liberation was not only a waste of time, but sheer lunacy at a moment like this. Besides, he didn't strike her as the type to pay one whit of attention to her protests, anyway, now that he'd apparently made up his mind to take her under his wing.

She massaged her feet one last time, then slipped them back into her pumps, afraid that five more minutes of such gloriously comfortable escape would make them swell. If that happened, she'd never get them back into the shoes again. The idea of padding barefoot all the way to her gate brought a tiny, half smile to her full, sensual lips. The thought of being carried to the gate in the stranger's strong, muscular arms set off fireworks in her abdomen. The smile grew broader.

“Something funny?” the man asked, suddenly reappearing and putting a cup of black coffee down in front of her.

Lindsay blushed and shook her head.

“Nothing you want to tell me about,” he guessed with a knowing grin as he sat down opposite her with his own cup of coffee, into which he promptly emptied half a dozen sugar packets as her eyes widened and her
stomach churned in a sort of horrified disbelief. For a chocoholic she had an amazing aversion to straight sugar.

“Something like that,” she said, responding at last to his comment.

“Tell me, do you always spend your Friday nights hanging around airports?”

“Whenever I can,” Lindsay retorted dryly. “I like to watch the planes take off.”

He glanced around and nodded. “Sounds like fun.” He paused. “Could I make just one tiny suggestion, though?”

“Certainly.”

“You might have a better view if you sat near a window.”

“Gee, I'd never thought of that.”

“Are you sure you don't just come out here to see if you can find some handsome stranger who'll whisk you away to an exotic location for the weekend?”

“Now that's an in
triguing idea,” she said thoughtfully. She gave him a dazzling smile. “Going anywhere interesting?”

He returned the smile. “Home.”

“Care to take me along?”

He surveyed her slowly, dark eyes burning into her very soul. “Now that really is an intriguing idea,” he said softly, leaving the words to whisper along her spine like a gentle, intimate caress.

Lindsay's heart slammed against her ribs. Suddenly the innocent game had turned serious and she couldn't figure out when the rules had changed. One minute they'd been teasing and the next they were...what? Still teasing, she told herself sternly. What else could it be? Strangers did not pick each other up in airports and fly home together. Her gaze lifted to meet the dark-eyed stare that hadn't wavered one tiny bit. On second thought...

“You're not drinking your coffee,” he said quietly.

Lindsay picked up the cup absentmindedly, her hand shaking so badly she nearly spilled it. If he laughs, I'll throw it in his face, she thought furiously. He had no right to get to her like this. She gave herself a mental shake. It was hardly his fault that her brain had turned into mush back at the candy counter. Maybe there'd been something weird in the chocolate. Nope. It had happened long before she'd taken the first bite. It had happened when he'd first looked into her eyes, when she'd first seen those devastating dimples.

“Don't you have a flight to catch?” she asked hopefully. This encounter had probably gone on long enough. She was getting more of those funny little feelings in the pit of her stomach, and now they had nothing to do with his excessive use of sugar.

“Not right away. We have plenty of time to catch up on old times.”

“Old times?” she echoed weakly. She'd obviously spent too much time with staid corporate types, who talked about rational things like production figures, bottom lines and industry trends. She was having trouble following this man's train of thought.

“It's been nearly an hour. What have you been doing with yourself?”

Lindsay blinked and looked at him to see if there was the slightest sign that his mental breakdown was as complete as hers seemed to be. Was that something you should be able to see by looking into a person's eyes? She stared into his. They looked perfectly normal...dark and intriguingly dangerous, clear as a bell and interested. Very interested. She gulped.

“Have you missed me?” he asked with an impish grin.

“Hardly.” Well, now, she admitted to herself, that was not exactly true. He hadn't been far from her thoughts for the past hour or more. It was hardly something to confess, however.

He looked hurt and she felt the strangest need to apologize.

“I'm sorry,” she heard herself saying, then added, “Have you missed me?” Even after the perfectly ridiculous question was out of her mouth, she couldn't believe she was actually waiting breathlessly for his answer.

“Terribly,” he said solemnly.

Lindsay started to chuckle at the man's outrageousness, but then her gaze met his...and held. Her heart skittered crazily again. The man was lethal. Definitely lethal. Or she'd been bored beyond reason waiting for this dumb flight.

Or maybe she'd just been bored lately by her life.

That nagging possibility crept in so unexpectedly, it took her breath away. She gazed back into speculative eyes, then looked away. At the untouched coffee. At the steady line of customers surveying the coffee shop's array
of salads and sandwiches. At her watch. Suddenly her eyes widened in dismay.

“Oh, my. I've got to run. My flight...I have to check on it. Thanks for the coffee,” she added, holding out her hand. It was only polite, she told herself. It had nothing to do with the fact that she wanted to touch him, to see if those strong fingers of his were as warm as she remembered. They were. Warm as a sunbeam and a thousand times as stimulating. Electric tingles went racing along her spine.

“You're welcome, bright eyes,” he said softly, releasing her hand only after several impossibly long seconds.

Freed from his touch, Lindsay ran, forcing herself to concentrate on her need to catch this damnable flight to Denver, rather than the confusing feelings about the all-too-fleeting touch that had turned her blood to warm honey.

“Hey,” he shouted after her, halting her in midstep as she raced along the concourse. When she looked back, he grinned and gave her another one of those lazy, enticing winks that tumbled her heart straight down to her toes. “We'll have dessert another time.”

She reached the gate just in time to hear
the announcement that the flight to Denver had been canceled. She wanted to pound her fist into something and, quite possibly, to scream. Very loudly. Instead, frazzled nerves and all, she waited dutifully in line to find a booking on another flight.

While she was waiting, she realized that she still had no idea who her intriguing, mysterious stranger might be. Bumping into him once was sheer, heart-thumping good luck. Crossing paths with him again had been incredible, blood-sizzling coincidence. But the odds against her ever seeing him again must be astronomical. No, she decided sadly, there would be no dessert.

But, she thought as a soft smile tilted her lips, the main course had been the stuff of fantasies.

“W
hat do you mean you can't get me another flight tonight?” Lindsay snapped irritably at the harried clerk behind the ticket counter, then winced at her unreasonable tone.

Just because she was exhausted and frustrated beyond belief was no excuse for taking it out on this poor woman, whose eyes seemed to be glazing over at the prospect of dealing with the long line of equally frustrated, nasty-tempered people behind Lindsay. She did not envy the ticket agent the
hours she'd spend trying to satisfy all of these people who'd planned to spend a nice, relaxing weekend skiing, not standing around in an airport battling for seat space. At least she'd been near the front of the line. If anyone got a seat, she would, but the outlook appeared dim and much as she hated the whole idea of this trip, she was doomed to make it. She wanted to get it over with tonight, not tomorrow.

She took a deep, calming breath. “I have to be in Denver before morning on business,” she explained in a more civilized tone. “Please. You have to get me on the next flight.”

“I'm sorry, Miss Tabor,” the flustered agent said, punching frantically at the computer keys as though that might make a seat materialize. “There's only one more scheduled flight for later tonight and there's not a single coach seat left on it.”

“What about first class?” Lindsay asked with a sigh.

She'd always resisted the temptation to buy first-class tickets, especially on these shorter trips. It seemed an absolute waste of the company's money, even though Langston Studios
could probably afford to buy its own airlines. But tonight was an emergency created specifically by Trent Langston! That alone was motivation enough to buy a first-class ticket.

On top of that, she deserved a little pampering for a change. This was her fifth flight this week, and considering how she felt about flying in the first place, it felt more like her fiftieth. It was nearly midnight already. She hadn't slept soundly in her own bed for days, and the last decent meal she'd had—or almost had—was in a perfectly delightful Italian restaurant in New York five days ago with David Morrow's awful, knee-squeezing agent, Morrie Samuels. She'd been so busy planning defensive maneuvers against his roving hands, she hadn't eaten more than a few bites of the delicious angel's hair pasta primavera. Since then, she'd been living on stale sandwiches and coffee. And—she smiled ruefully—on candy bars.

The thought of the candy reminded her of her mystery man and a little spark of pleasure soared through her. When the clerk looked up from the computer at last, Lindsay's tired grumpiness had virtually vanished. She gave the girl a beaming smile. “Well?”