Our eyes meet as he holds the chocolate before my lips. I open my mouth wide for him to slip it in and plunge into those blue eyes as I bite into the marzipan. The taste is rich and bittersweet, the texture moist, the moment charged with meaning and ambiguity. He has unwrapped a chocolate for himself and, before he pops it in his mouth, I accept it from his fingers. His eyes never leave mine. He unwraps one more chocolate from the golden foil and I watch as he eats it, his jaw moving slowly, his eyes bright like neon.
'Mmm, yummy,' I say, stating the obvious.
'Yes, yummy,' he repeats, and the ways he looks at my lips makes the flush climb once more up my neck.
He'd called me a 'beautiful woman.' A beautiful woman with secrets. It wasn't true, either part, but it was thrilling hearing him say it.
He holds up the last chocolate.
'Would you like it?'
'No, I've had enough.'
'You're sure?'
The way he looks at me, and the way he asks, I understand that we're not talking about chocolates now.
'Yes, I'm sure.'
All rights reserved Chloë Thurlow 2012
More information about me and my other books are at the end.
Flight 69: The Mile High Club
There's nothing like flying business class. It's just so...sexy. You feel…reckless. You feel, like, this is where I belong. You read in self help books you are what you think you are, what you believe yourself to be. And it's true. I hadn't yet left but I felt like I'd arrived.
It's the little things you notice. Everyone in business class is real polite. There's more space. Champagne in a crystal glasses. Food on plates, not plastic dishes. They bring you little presents, like slippers and an eye mask. Then there's the chocolates wrapped in gold foil.
As to what happens when the lights go out and you're a mile high over the mid-west, that's another story…
But first thing first.
A company driver drops me at the airport. It's coming up to 7.00 in the evening when I step through the sliding doors and enter the departure lounge with its blaring messages and people rushing by with luggage carts. There's a million people lining up looking lost and ill-tempered. Kids are running around. Women are hunting through overstuffed bags. Men stand there with gritted teeth and weary expressions that seem to say: what have I done – or, rather, what have I failed to do that's left me hanging about watching that business class babe not a day over twenty-six as she wriggles by in her tight dress, cinched-in coral jacket and black Monolo Blahnik's with a single strap and silver toes.
That's me, heels clip clopping like a pony, pink lipstick to match my jacket and Ray Bans resting on my brow to hold my wayward nut brown hair in place. Below the dress, I'm wearing black, lace-front itzy-bitzy briefs and a gorgeous matching bra with plenty of thrust and lift – stupid, I know, for a flight, I mean, no one was going to see them, but that business class ticket made me do it.
A skycap follows – his name, he's told me, is Ivan, and he looks terrible, with bloodshot vodka eyes and a long scar down his left cheek. He's pushing a trolley with a suitcase full of folded business suits and two giant duffels crammed with clothes, cosmetics, a couple of new bikinis from the end of summer sale at Bergdorf Goodman – it's still hot, hot, hot in Houston, and, of course, my shoes. It's my one fetish, my only extravagance. I love shoes and I was taking them all, an echo of all the footsteps that had brought me to where I was today: in business class.
With the eyes following my stately progress, I glide into the "Business Class Only" line and sigh with a strange sense of something. The girl behind the counter at Business is the prettiest member of the staff, they always are; check it out. Anyway, she smiles warmly like we're sisters in the same club.
'Ticket, please?' she says in a sort of apologetic voice as if you're not really the sort of person who should have to bother with such things.
Ivan dumps the luggage and vanishes with his insanely generous tip – what goes round comes round, as my dad always says. I reach for the suitcase, but the man who has come up behind to join the line heaves it up on to the scales. That's the sort of thing that happens in business class. Everyone's so...classy, so courteous.
And he's also fantastically good looking with the bluest blue eyes I've ever seen.
'Can I?' he says.
'No, that's okay...' Too late. He's done it. 'Thanks, that's great, thanks...'
Remember, Kelly, you're in business class. Toss your dark hair, turn your head to one side and smile like this is the sort of thing that happens every day.
Of course, it isn't.
I'd been working in the PR department for a 'big name' soft drinks company in the New York office for three years and had finally been promoted to head up the team in Houston. Texas sales had gone down 'exponentially,' as my boss put it. My job was to drive them up again.
I'm not exactly sure why he had put me into business, especially as there had been massive cut backs since the crisis, and had reached the conclusion that it was a sort of carrot and stick thing, a taste of extravagance on the Friday night flight, the weekend to settle into the apartment owned by the company, then straight downtown Monday to the Skyline District and the company HQ.
'Thank you, that's so kind,' I say again, and he smiles, those blue eyes assessing me coolly like people look at paintings in a museum trying to work out what the hell they mean.
'You're more than welcome,' he says, and the way he looks back into my eyes sends a little shiver up my spine, not a cold one, a warm one.
Security is a nightmare, even for business class passengers. First you have to take your shoes off, which is kind of disgusting, and the whole area smells of dirty feet. A woman as big as an air balloon runs her hands down my sides and, like, really far up the insides of my legs, and then the metal machine buzzes because I've forgotten to take off the St. Christopher necklace Nanna gave me for my twenty-first. My fingers go all twitchy opening the tiny catch, my Ray Bans fall to the floor and my hair falls over my face.
'Here.'
I peer up through my hair and he's there again, holding my sunglasses.
'Thank you,' I gasp. I'm all sweaty ad panicky. 'I keep saying thank you all the time.'
I'm grasping the St. Christopher in my palm. He glances down, then up again into my eyes.
'Can I help you with that?'
There's an amused smile on his lips and then there's those eyes, cool blue, impenetrable.
I shake my head as if to say no and what come out of my mouth is, 'Yes, Yes, thank you.'
His fingers are cool and his has no problem opening the clasp and attaching my necklace.
'I'm sure I'll see you later,' he says and collects his bag
I pull myself together. I feel like a shipwreck and the business class waiting area is a desert island with sandy gold carpets and Mozart piped from hidden speakers. There's complimentary coffee and snacks, and just about every newspaper printed in the world. I gulp down a bottle of Evian, and take a second bottle to sip. There are big wing chairs that are so comfy it's nice to sit back, gaze out at the night and just keep reminding yourself: I've made it. I've arrived. I'm in business class.
The sky is grey – 'fifty shades of grey,' I say to myself and the thought makes me smile. I was excited about my new job, but nervous, too. For the first time in my life I was going to have responsibility, not just for myself, but for the whole team. I was moving to a new city where I didn't know anyone in a state famous for tornadoes galloping over the Gulf of Mexico, spring thunderstorms and summer temperatures that regularly pass 100°. I was
at heart a cold weather girl. I had always lived on the East Coast. I'd gone to school in New Jersey, worked my way through college and spent summers holding down double shifts waitressing in Southampton. My studio apartment on 94th and 2nd was hardly big enough for my shoes, but it was my home, my oyster shell, and when I gave the key back to the landlord it was like giving away a piece of me, a chunk of my past.
The glossy magazines show this sexy, glamorous, beautiful people life, ski slopes and casinos, tennis clubs and sunsets over the Caribbean. They are the images I use to promote our soft drinks: cool and refreshing with ice beside the pool, the perfect accompaniment to gin and vodka on summer cruises. It is the life people dream of and I am one of those people. I had never been anywhere or done anything. It was all work, work, work. I'd started dressing in a more stylish way, acting the part to go with the promotion, but it was only an act.
Until today.
I am in business class. I am going to be everything I can be, cool, classy, composed.
My daydreams are interrupted by the announcement:
'Flight 69 to Houston is now ready for boarding. This call is for business class passengers and women with children.'
I finish the second bottle of water and have to stop myself leaping up and rushing to get in line. I brush down the nonexistent creases from my dress and toss my hair in the way actresses in movies always do as a sign that they don't want to be bothered by anything.
The man who had helped me with my bags leisurely refolds the newspaper he's been reading before returning it to the table. He is wearing blue jeans, a dark grey jacket, white polo shirt and loafers, smart-casual and breezily self-confident. I had thought under the bright lights of the departures area that his hair was pale blond, but it's grey with dark flecks and sweeps back in a faintly-curling wave. His hair gives him a 'sophisticated' look, but he has a young face with wide cheek bones, a strong nose and those eyes, deep blue like a lake.
He smiles, nodding his head slightly, and I feel the color rise up my neck. I'd been caught staring at him and bite my lips in embarrassment.
I make my way behind the women with children and show my boarding card to the flight attendant. He's a young guy with a bushy moustache.
'I'm Craig,' he says, and points at his name tag. 'If there's anything you want, you just have to ask. Okay?'
'Okay.'
As he leads me up the aisle, he tells me there is fresh sea bass for dinner, a new white wine that's totally gorgeous and the flight is scheduled to leave on time.
'We've got a 96% record,' he adds proudly.
There are eight rows in business class, four in a row. I am in seat 32, the last one. The seat is dark blue leather – and big, like an armchair, with wide arms and a pocket in the seat in front containing safety instructions and the in-flight magazine. I put some gloss on my lips and slide my Kindle into the pocket. I don't have much time for reading, but I had devoured Fifty Shades of Grey and wondered what pleasures awaited Anastasia Steele in Fifty Shades Darker.
Business is about half full when he appears, making his way past the empty seats until he reaches the last row. He looks at his ticket and, when he looks back at me, I wonder for a moment if I am in the wrong place.
'I'm 31,' he says, and for half a second I think he's telling me his age.
I guess that's probably what he is, 31, with that grey hair and blue eyes that look into mine with such sudden intensity I feel my neck flame again and look away.
He folds and places his jacket in the overhead locker, wedges a book and magazine in the seat pocket and sits, turning with a smile.
'You haven't fastened your seat belt,' he says and passes me the end nearest to him.
Why does this man keep making me flush? Remember girl, business class, act like you belong.
'I was just going to put this in the locker,' I tell him, and stand, shrugging out of my jacket.
He instantly leaps up to help, puts my jacket away and we both sit and strap up.
'James Swanson,' he says, offering a long slender hand with neat nails.
'Kelly Conway.'
'It's my pleasure,' he adds, peering deep into my eyes, and I would think about that short sentence later, and how he stretched out the word pleasure with a faint Southern drawl.
People in cattle class are being herded down the aisle with things hanging out of their bags, children shouting. We watch a blond with enormous breasts in a tight top and he turns to me, rippling his brow, his smile seeming to invite me into a secret.
Then he turns away and takes out his magazine – the Oil & Gas Journal, and I assume he's in the petroleum industry, although he doesn't look like an oil man. He looks more like an actor, someone in the media. With that hair and eyes, those carved looks, he could easily be a weatherman, and the thought makes me smile. It's fun trying to work out what people do, even if nine times out of ten you're wrong.
Kindle time. Christian Grey is making an effort to be charming and Anastasia is submitting to his charm. You can work out what's going to happen next: a spanking, a taste of the whip, being gagged and suspended from the ceiling in the Red Room of Pain. You can guess, but the fun is not knowing and watching like a voyeur as Anastasia goes through all kinds of mental twists before giving in and going with the flow. She's a girl who takes herself seriously, but deep down, what she really wants to do is get naked and be consumed in the moment.
If only real life were like that. Well, not exactly like that. If only there were more men like Christian Grey – and I swivel my head to watch my companion as his eyes move at lightning speed across the columns of the Oil & Gas Journal. He holds the magazine in the palm of his left hand and uses the tip of his right index finger to flick over the pages, the action smooth and mechanical, the pages swishing by, his eyes flickering as if he doesn't so much read the words as absorb them.
I'm not sure how much time goes by. I'm sort of mesmerized. I'm not exactly looking at him but looking at nothing, at the future, maybe. He reaches the last page in the magazine, flicks back the cover and turns to me as if he is aware that I've been watching him.
'Kelly,' he says, as if tasting the word. 'Kelly Conway. What do you do, Miss Conway?'
'Do?'
'You know, work? Or are you a lady of leisure?'
'I wish. I'm in PR. Soft drinks. I'm going to be heading up the department in our Houston office,' I reply and instantly regret showing off, it's so, so unbusiness class.
'Sounds good to me. You must be smart.'
'I don't think so...'
'I mean, you're so young,' he shrugs. 'What? Twenty-five?'
'Twenty-six, actually.'
'That's a good age, Kelly. It's old enough to know what you want and young enough to enjoy it.'
I wasn't exactly sure what he meant or how to respond. In New York we avoid getting too personal and I guess they do things differently in Texas.
'You're in the oil industry?' I ask, switching the focus.
'Yep, got oil in the blood. Black gold. Texas Tequila,' he replies, and leans forward, engaging me with those eyes. 'What I do is search in improbable places where no one has tried searching before. The only time I'm satisfied is when I find an untapped reservoir where I can sink in deep and suck out all that precious liquid.'
My mouth has gone dry. My armpits tingle. I feel as if I'm a chunk of wet clay without shape and it's a relief when the lights go down and Flt. 69 is ready for take off.
I sit back, tingling still, my throat scratchy. I close my eyes, and what I see in my mind is Anastasia Steele sitting beside Christian in his helicopter, the world below a swirling mass of light and stars, the past as we lift into the sky crumbling behind me.
As I climbed out of the company car at JFK I was one person and by the time I arrive in Texas I will have changed time zones and become someone else.
The lamps in business class are subdued and give off an amber glow that makes everyone appear serene and satisfied. The curtain separating us from coach is closed. T
here is no piped music. No noise. The airplane engines softly hum. Above the pocket in the seat in front of me is an entertainment center with movies and a gazillion TV shows that I have no desire to watch.
At the end of long days working, I would usually veg out with a box of noodles and surf the channels with their interchangeable shows and commercial breaks that come at you like a giant vacuum cleaner sucking out your energy. The television is a drug, a soporific, a slow cancer killing brain cells and I make a silent vow staring out into the grey night to watch less and read more, to open my mind and open myself to every opportunity. I had a habit of saying no, even when I wanted to say yes, and that was one habit I had to break.
Craig, the flight attendant with the moustache and darting eyes, is approaching with a trolley laden with fizzing flutes of champagne.
James takes two glasses...
And there's that bad habit jumping up to bite me once again.
'No, it's okay…' I begin and Craig stands back as if I'd just uttered a blasphemy in church.
'There are two rules in life. Rule one,' he says, pausing for effect. 'Never say no to champagne.'
I smile.
'What's Rule Two?' James asks him.
The attendant flutters his eyes-lashes. 'Don't forget Rule One.'
'Now we've been told,' James says, glancing at me, transforming us suddenly into a 'we'.
He passes me the glass, we tap rims, and the way he stares at me with those cool blue eyes is like a warning – although of what, I'm not sure. I take a long sip. The bubbles burst in my nose and I can't suppress a giggle.
'There, you see, you're happy already.'
'I was happy anyway,' I tell him.
'But now it shows.'
He's right. I feel light-hearted, although I know from having organized a million PR events that champagne makes people say and do things they wouldn't normally say and do. Guests at those gigs put on happy masks and slip back into their lined hard faces as soon as they leave. You don't see too many smiles on the streets of New York. Happiness is like a rare bird. You can't trap it. You can't cup your hands and hold it in your palms. You have to enjoy it as if passes and, if it stays a while, then you're lucky. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Flight 69: The Mile High Club (Hot Sex with a Handsome Stranger) Page 1