Sky High (Three Contemporary Novella's) (18 page)

She had a ton of luggage, of course, since she was in the middle of moving to Mexico. He helped her with it, hauling her suitcases off the baggage carousel and stacking them on a luggage cart for her. When he’d retrieved his bag—one moderate-sized suitcase for his entire stay in Mexico—they turned to face each other.

“Good luck with your trial,” she said. Her curls were tucked behind her ears now, which made her look even younger, her face open and bright.

“Good luck with your life. I…” He stopped and closed his eyes as he got stuck on the words. He could express the horrors of war in thousands of words, but human emotions weren’t so easy. He wanted to tell her that today was her do-over. The plane had improbably, miraculously, turned around. It was a sign, a chance to pick a different ending for herself. But he didn’t believe in signs, and even if he did, Meg was never going to take his advice. In the end, he didn’t say any of that. “I really do hope it works out for you, Meg. I mean that. I hope he makes you happy.”

Her smile faded and she stared up at him. God, she was lovely. It was taking everything he had not to physically hold her back from this doomed move to Mexico.

“Thank you, Garrett.” Impulsively, she reached up and hugged him, standing on her toes to reach and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Her hug caught him off guard, so it took him a second to catch up before he put his arms around her, too. She was small, her chin just resting on his shoulder even when she was on her tiptoes. Her soft curls brushed his cheek and he inhaled. She smelled good, something subtle and floral. She felt good, too, warm and perfect in his arms. How long had it been since he’d hugged someone…a woman? A lifetime. He’d enjoyed plenty of far more intimate embraces with lots of women, but this, just a hug… It had been years and years.

She began to draw back and he loosened his hold on her, but before she was fully out of his arms, she paused and kissed his cheek. He closed his eyes as a sudden, hot flush of desire raced through him. Her soft lips against the scruff of his face were incendiary. He swallowed thickly and licked his lips. When she released him, he opened his eyes and he could see from her expression, the flush along the tops of her cheekbones, that she’d felt it, too. He wanted to wrap his hand in those curls, tilt her face up, and kiss her until she couldn’t remember her own name, never mind that asshole Spencer’s.

Instead, he forced himself to smile. “Take care of yourself, Meg.”

She nodded, still looking a little dazed.

He needed to go. He needed to break out of whatever this was that kept drawing them toward each other. She was set on her course and there wasn’t much he could say or do, not even kissing her, that would dissuade her.

“Well,” she began brightly, clearly about to back away, too.

“Wait. Do you know anybody in Mexico?”

She shrugged. “Spencer, of course.”

He rolled his eyes. “Anybody besides Captain America.” She shook her head. On impulse, he reached into his pocket. “Here. Take this.” He pressed his business card into her hand. “I know Spencer’s got things all set up for you down there, but just in case. If you run into trouble or something.”

She looked down at it and nodded, swallowing hard. Then she tucked it into the pocket of her jacket, and when she looked up at him again, the heat and promise of that moment were gone. She smiled, her brilliant, sunny smile. “It was nice knowing you, Garrett. Even just for a little while.”

He smiled back. “Yeah, nice knowing you, Meg.”

Then she turned away and pushed her luggage cart through the milling crowd. In moments, he’d lost sight of her. Time to go find a cab, go home to the dark, empty apartment that wasn’t a home, and drink until he washed today away.

#

“Miss?”

The voice of the man in line behind Meg snapped her out of her mental fog. She’d let a gap develop in the customs line ahead of her.

“Sorry.” She scooted her roll-aboard forward to close the gap and fingered her passport anxiously. She’d barely slept last night. This morning on her second flight to Mexico City, she’d grown more anxious by the hour, until now, when she was moments from collecting her suitcases and meeting Spencer, she was practically a basket case. Yesterday when she’d boarded her flight, all she’d felt was excitement that she was finally going to be with Spencer and they would be starting their new life together. Today, she was filled with worries, some vague and some painfully specific. What if they
didn’t
click? Yesterday she’d scoffed when Garrett suggested it could happen, but today she was terrified by the prospect.

Mentally, she talked herself back down off the ledge. This was Spencer. She’d spent the last four months learning everything there was to know about him, sharing everything about herself. They were made for each other. Of course they would click. There was nothing to fear, no matter how much Garrett had tried to shake her confidence yesterday. Why was a conversation with some stranger on a plane eating at her so much?

Because that wasn’t just any conversation with a stranger on a plane. All night long, when she’d been staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, her thoughts hadn’t circled around Spencer. They’d circled around
Garrett
. It didn’t make any sense. He was all wrong for her in a million ways, and besides, she was
in love with Spencer
. Without a doubt, Garrett was hot, although not at all her type. It was hard to deny his appeal, though, all knowing and bitter, with his shadowed dark eyes and messy, dark hair. Even his stubble was kind of hot, though she liked clean-shaven guys as a rule. She could still remember with vivid clarity how that stubble felt under her lips when she’d kissed his cheek… What
was
that anyway? Not the hugging part. Meg was spontaneous and affectionate by nature. She hugged lots of people for all kinds of reasons. She was definitely a hugger. Hugging him goodbye after the day they’d shared was no big deal. Until he hugged her back. She suspected Garrett was
not
a hugger. Maybe that was why, when his arms came around her, she didn’t feel like she was being hugged. She felt like she was being
embraced
. She felt like any moment, he’d lay her down and…
God
. He’d held her in his arms for that instant and her whole body had come alive. That was not supposed to happen in hugs. All that heat and tingling and inexplicable longing must have screwed her brain circuits. That had to be why she’d kissed his cheek. Hugging was familiar territory for Meg, but kissing hot strangers on the cheek was not. If hugging Garrett had short-circuited her brain, then that was nothing compared to what happened when she kissed him. And that was only his cheek. Just imagine if those lips…
Stop
!

People had momentary attractions to other people all the time. It certainly didn’t mean anything. The reason he was sticking in her mind like glue certainly had more to do with their conversation than his handsome, haunted features. She’d never met anyone like him. His jaded outlook on the world was the polar opposite of her own, which should have annoyed her. Instead, she found herself poking at him, wanting to peel his layers back like an onion to see what was at the heart of him. Despite his words, she suspected he had a more genuine heart than he thought he did. He believed all the good in him was dead, but she suspected it was just sleeping, waiting for something to wake him back up. She wished she’d be there when that happened. She’d like to know that Garrett.

“Uh…
Miss
?”

She’d let the line move ahead without her again.

“Sorry.
So
sorry,” she muttered, hurrying to move forward. There were only two people ahead of her now, and then baggage claim and then…Spencer. Panic like she’d never known gripped her chest. This was probably normal. Meeting each other for the first time was a huge thing, when you thought about it. All this anxiety was perfectly understandable. Yesterday she’d only been focused on the excitement of it all. Today, the reality was creeping in, which was to be expected since Spencer was about to become flesh-and-blood real. Not that he’d been pretend before. That sounded like something Garrett would say. Of course he was real. Now he was going to become
physical
.

Breathing rapidly through the panic, she pulled out her phone and swiped it to bring up her screen saver, Spencer’s picture. There he was, with his blond hair and his easy, open smile. This would be fine. She’d see that smile, that face, and these butterflies would become butterflies of a different sort. Not that his beauty was everything. Of course not. But it helped. Feeling tingles about Spencer would help banish all these inconvenient, unexpected tingles stirred up yesterday by Garrett. She was sure that after her first day with Spencer, Garrett would be just a memory… That weird flight, and that guy she talked to for hours.

She’d cleared passport control and navigated the airport’s strange and confusing baggage claim area. It took her a few minutes to load all her suitcases onto a luggage cart by herself, but then there was nothing to do but walk through those sliding glass doors and meet the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with. Taking a deep breath, she focused on Spencer, on everything they’d built in the past four months, and she walked through the door.

She didn’t see his blond hair and smiling face anywhere at first. Then, as her eyes scanned the crowd, she caught sight of her name scrawled on a piece of paper, being held up by a nondescript, dark-haired guy. She pushed aside the momentary feelings of annoyance and disappointment that he’d sent a driver. Maybe he was waiting out in the car.

“Meg,” he said, smiling widely as she approached. “At last.”

She smiled politely back. “Spencer didn’t tell me he was sending a driver.”

His smile dimmed slightly as he pushed his glasses up his nose with one finger. “Uh…he didn’t. I’m Spencer.”

Meg shook her head, letting out a befuddled laugh. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. Look, I can explain.”

Her heart began to pound. “You’re not Spencer. I know what Spencer looks like and…”

She looked him up and down. He was average height, maybe 5’9”, and on the thick side. He had a round face and soft, almost cherubic features. A short, sparse beard covered the lower edge of his jaw, but it didn’t quite suit him, as if he’d grown it out for kicks but hadn’t gotten around to shaving it off again. His black hair was unkempt and a little too long. There was no way, no matter how she squinted or projected back in time, that this guy could be the guy in her pictures of Spencer.

He held up his hands defensively. “I didn’t mean to lie to you. But when I first saw your picture and you were so hot, I was afraid you wouldn’t keep talking to me if you saw the real me. So I sent you my college roommate’s picture. That was a long time ago, remember? Back then, I didn’t think we’d ever meet face-to-face. I didn’t really think it through and it didn’t seem like a big deal. And then as time went on and we got closer, I didn’t know how to tell you the truth.”

This was a
nightmare
. Her head spun as she tried to grasp this new information. The Spencer she’d been picturing in her head for months was a lie. The face she’d imagined so many times didn’t exist. Well, it existed, but it didn’t belong to Spencer. Spencer looked like…this. Panic fluttered in her chest as she frantically tried to decide what to do. She opened her mouth to reply but shut it again. Garrett’s words from yesterday were ringing in her ears.

“And if Spencer turns out to be less attractive than the Captain America look-alike in the picture there?”

She’d been so smug as she’d assured him that none of that mattered, that she loved Spencer for who he was, not how he looked. She’d be a total hypocrite if she rejected him now, when it turned out he
didn’t
look like Captain America. Not even a little bit. His lie stung badly, but she could also see why he might have done it. They’d exchanged pictures so long ago, before they’d started calling what they had a “relationship.” They’d just been two people chatting online. He didn’t realize he’d be lying to his future wife when he sent that picture.

Wife
. Oh, God. The reality of what they’d been discussing came crashing down on her like a ton of bricks. She’d been talking about
marrying
this guy…a total stranger! No, not a stranger. Spencer, she reminded herself firmly. He was still Spencer inside. All those months of conversations and soul-deep revelations were real. This man was the one she’d fallen in love with during those emails. So he didn’t look like she’d imagined. How shallow would she be if she declared his appearance to be a deal-breaker? Hadn’t she insisted to Garrett that their intellectual and emotional connection mattered more than looks? Maybe she needed to give herself a chance to fall in love with this version of him. Once they started talking, she’d find that kindred spirit inside of him.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, the guy—
Spencer
—was still staring at her hopefully. He had a sweet face, really. Not classically handsome, but open and kind. Once they reestablished the connection they’d formed online, certainly the physical part would fall into place. The man he was inside would make the man he was outside more appealing. She fervently hoped so.

“I wish you’d told me the truth,” she said. “But I guess I can understand why you didn’t. You’re still the same person, right?”