An Unlikely Deal

by Nadia Lee

  Get real. I’m just not important enough for anyone to go to this much trouble. This is what I get for having low blood sugar—nonsensical thoughts. I should save them for my stories, although I haven’t finished any.

  “Thank you.” I flash him a quick smile to disguise my ridiculous suspicions.

  He opens the rear door, and I climb in. He follows, settling next to me and shutting the door.

  The car moves smoothly along the asphalt, passing by shuttles, an airline catering truck and a huge jet bearing an Air Asia logo.

  “Would you like something to drink?” the man asks.

  Startled, I look his way and see a selection of alcohol and juices laid out on a built-in shelf. I don’t really want anything, but I haven’t eaten. Well. I did, but nothing stayed down…

  “Orange juice, please, if you have any.”

  He pulls out a bottle from the silver ice bucket and twists the cap for me. I murmur my thanks and sip the juice. My throat is still raw, and the acidic drink burns on the way down. After a few mouthfuls I put the cap back on and place the bottle in the cup holder.

  The car finally stops. My guide clambers out first and holds open the door. I climb down, then stare at a sleek private jet gleaming under the airport’s huge halogen lights.

  “What is this?”

  I might be young and naïve, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Airlines do not put you on a private jet just because there’s been a problem with your flight.

  He looks at me like I’m an idiot. Maybe my crazy imagination has been right all along. This really is some elaborate scheme to kidnap me. I take a step ba—

  “Ava.”

  Every cell in my body freezes at Lucas’s voice. I spin around and see him walking toward me.

  He’s changed into different clothes, too. The undone collar of his black shirt shows the strong column of his throat and a hint of muscular chest. His black linen trousers fit him perfectly, hugging his lean, tight hips and thickly muscled legs. He looks expensive, aloof and untouchably self-possessed.

  What the hell is he doing here?

  Blood roars in my head, my stomach churning. It’s good that I didn’t drink more of the juice. I turn to the man from the airport.

  “I can’t fly on that jet.”

  He frowns. “But…your assistant arranged…”

  My assistant? Hysteria bubbles inside me. “I don’t have an assistant.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll take it from here.” Lucas hands him a few bills. The white background and brownish ink tell me they’re thousand-baht notes, worth about thirty bucks each. “Thank you for your help.”

  The man smiles, his face relaxing into a jovial, pleased mask. “My pleasure, sir. Have a good flight home.”

  He gets inside the SUV, and the car pulls away.

  “No!” I take a couple of steps after the vanishing vehicle.

  Lucas’s hand circles my wrist. “Too late. They’re not coming back.”

  “What the hell is the matter with you?” I rage, yanking my arm. But his hold on me is like a manacle.

  The dark eyebrow cocks, slanting arrogantly. “Is it so wrong to want to reduce the carbon footprint?”

  The non-sequitur brings my brain to a screeching halt. I can’t process what he’s trying to say, and my panic recedes into the background for the moment.

  “What?”

  “Your ticket’s gone, and I have extra room on my jet.”

  “I suppose my ticket being gone has something to do with my ‘assistant’?”

  He doesn’t respond but I know.

  “What do you want? Wasn’t dinner enough?”

  “Board the plane, Ava.” His tone is firm and commanding. “You’re delaying our departure.”

  “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I get on that plane of yours.”

  He smiles with the ease of a man used to getting his way. What I wouldn’t give to wipe that expression off his face.

  “Is that so? I guess they’ll need to break out the blankets in Hades tonight.” Before I can respond, he picks me up and tosses me over a shoulder like a sack of rice. Blood rushes to my face, but that isn’t the only thing making my cheeks heat.

  “Put me down, you bastard!”

  I lash out with my legs, trying to hit him in the ribs or wherever it’s going to hurt enough for him to stop this, but he wraps an arm around the backs of my knees, effectively stopping me. My head bounces on his back, and I pound the thick slab of muscle there, but I might as well be smacking a rock.

  “You’re making a scene, Ava. Bad girl.”

  He smacks my ass with his free hand. It stings enough to make me see red with outrage. I flail around, trying to get down or hurt him or even better—accomplish both.

  “Keep doing that and I’ll drop you. Which will hurt.”

  “Like you care!”

  “But I do. Very much.”

  The softly spoken words seem oddly sincere. And for some absurd reason I believe him.

  “Then let me down,” I say quietly.

  “Not until you’re on board.”

  He takes the steps up to the plane. His gait is uneven. Did he hurt himself? Or did I manage to hit him hard enough to make him limp?

  A tiny part of me says he deserved it, but I feel bad anyway. I don’t want him injured. I just want to be left alone.

  “Welcome aboard, Mr. Reed,” comes a friendly greeting in a professional female voice.

  Oh my fucking god. Kill—me—now. “We have a crew member here?”

  “The plane’s not going to fly itself.”

  I cover my face with my hands. I don’t drop them when he puts me back on my feet. I don’t resist when he sets me in a plushy leather seat and buckles the belt.

  This has to be a nightmare. A horrible dream induced by anxiety and guilt and nerves and wine and stress. If I can just wake myself up, I’ll be back in my hotel room after a refreshing nap. I’ll go to the Night Bazaar and have that curry I saw in my dream.

  Yes. That’s exactly what I’ll do…just as soon as I wake up.

  “Would you like something to drink?” the cabin attendant asks.

  I open one eye and peer upward. She looks back at me with a professional, polished smile as though she hasn’t just witnessed my being hauled on board like a sack of cornmeal.

  Okay. I need to face the reality that Lucas did indeed carry me onto this infernal jet like a…possession, and the people who work for him are unlikely to help me get off it.

  “What do you have?” I ask in my calmest voice.

  “She won’t touch anything other than Dom,” Lucas interjects. There’s a glass of champagne on the armrest next to him, and a little movie plays in my mind: me snatching the bubbly and tossing it in his face.

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” I say with a sweet smile for the cabin attendant.

  The woman’s composure stays intact. “An excellent choice.”

  I accept the proffered champagne served in a real flute—I’ve never been served in an actual glass when flying—and take a tentative sip. The carbonation tickles my mouth and nostrils, and the wine goes down smoothly with a hint of vanilla and honey.

  I look everywhere but at Lucas as I nurse my drink. The interior of the jet is teal blue and mahogany with light cream-colored leather. There are four plushy seats that recline all the way back until you can lie flat. A workstation’s built into the other side, and there’s a well-cushioned bench behind us for casual relaxation and chatting. I spot a door in the back, probably leading to a private room.

  Everything gleams and looks hideously luxurious. This is my first time on the plane, but Faye Belbin’s undoubtedly been on it more than once. The notion clenches around my chest, making it impossible to breathe.

  She looks like she deserves to be pampered with a toy like this. You? Well. Look at you.

  Yes. Look at me. In my cheap clothes that I picked up on sale.

  I put the champagne down.

  “We�
��ll be taking off in ten minutes.” The cabin attendant smiles at Lucas as she speaks, and she continues to keep her focus on him.

  My stomach burns. It can’t be a good idea to have alcohol so soon after throwing up.

  “Once we reach cruising altitude, I’ll be serving you a light snack of chicken satay, salad lightly tossed in pineapple vinaigrette, vegetarian fried rice and figs stuffed with goat cheese and honey-glazed walnuts. And seventy minutes before we land—”

  “We can discuss the other options later,” Lucas says smoothly, interrupting her monologue.

  “Certainly, sir.” She takes his empty glass. I hand her mine although it’s still half-full.

  “Dom not good enough?” Lucas asks.

  I stare directly at him. “No. I didn’t want to hang on to it during takeoff.”

  “You don’t look good.”

  I tilt my chin, my mouth firm. “I’m fine.”

  I’m more than fine. Lucas is welcome to play whatever game he wants, but I have my own plan. I don’t have to do anything except wait until we hit cruising altitude and nap—or at least pretend to. We’re flying red-eye, and there’s nothing unusual about wanting to sleep until we land.

  I relax my muscles, one by one, and force myself to feign a calm I don’t feel.

  The Girl

  The mother looks down at the child. The toddler is barely two, but she’s skinnier than a spaghetti noodle.

  The father of the child does not wish to marry. He is often away on work, and he worries about losing benefits. The mother worries too. They can’t make ends meet without EBT and what little assistance they get from the government.

  At least he gave the girl a name. “I love her, and I love you for giving her to me,” he said.

  “Would he have said that if you were a boy?” the woman whispers to the girl. “Would he have married me? Men love daughters, but men love sons. Strong sons to carry on the line.”

  The girl looks at the woman innocently, then grins.

  She stares at her child, unsmiling, and sighs. “Why bother? You still aren’t a boy. Should of known it would happen when I learned it was a girl in my belly. Men always want sons. Your grandpa did too.” She shakes her head. “He was so disappointed when he got me instead.”

  The girl extends her arms toward the mother, asking to be held. The mother gets up. “I gotta do the dishes,” she says. “Always more stuff to do.”

  As she walks away to the kitchen, she mutters, “Should of aimed for a boy. Every man wants a boy.”

  Chapter Five

  Ava

  I close my eyes the moment the plane revs up for takeoff. I keep them closed as the plane speeds down the runway…then tilts upward, reaching for cruising altitude.

  When the plane finally becomes horizontal again, I open one eye and hit a button to turn my seat into a flat bed. As soon as I can stretch out, I turn my back to Lucas and tuck my hands under my head.

  “It’s not going to work,” Lucas says.

  “I can’t hear you. Because I’m sleeping.”

  “If you don’t talk to me now, I’m taking us all the way to America. That’s a damn long flight. I’m sure it’ll give us a chance to chat.”

  I jackknife up and glare at him. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope.”

  “You can’t do that,” I hiss, keenly aware of the cabin attendant’s presence.

  “Sure I can.” He sweeps an arm around. “It’s my plane.”

  “That’s kidnapping!”

  “And I care because…?”

  “I’ll press charges!”

  “Please do. But you’ll press them in the States.” He reclines his seat and relaxes. “Besides, who’s going to believe you’ve been kidnapped? Kidnappers don’t use private jets.”

  Anger heats my face. “Are you fucking serious? Your being rich doesn’t make what you’re doing lawful.”

  He shrugs. “Flying a friend home was perfectly legal last time I checked.”

  “You bastard!”

  He smiles, but the dark gleam in his eye remains implacable. “Thank you. It warms my heart to know you have such a high opinion of me.”

  Smacking my forehead with the heel of my hand a couple of times, I think fast. Back at the restaurant, he said I took something from him. I freaked out because that announcement felt like an ambush. I won’t overreact again. But what if he knows? I have no clue what I’m going to do if he does. I just know I can’t go to the States right now.

  I cross my arms. “Fine.”

  “Let’s eat.”

  “I’m not hungry. You have the singular effect of killing my appetite.” And I don’t want a repeat of what happened earlier. I doubt my stomach lining could survive another round of vomiting.

  The muscles in his jaw flex. “If the scar on my cheek bothers you that much, I’ll sit to your left.”

  I stare at him. “That’s not what I meant.”

  He stares back. “Does it matter?”

  I look away. Nothing matters except getting him to take me to Japan and then leave me alone forever.

  He unbuckles and moves to a seat facing me. Stretching out his left leg until the foot encroaches into my personal space, he tilts his head and looks at me with tooth-grinding insolence. “You will eat.”

  Before I can bristle at his high-handedness, he signals the cabin attendant, and she quickly serves us a tray of the food items she described earlier.

  When I don’t move, he stabs a piece of fruit with his own fork and hands it to me. “Eat.” Then he smirks. “Afraid it’s poisoned?”

  “That’s a possibility.” But I take the fork and bite into the proffered fig, which is stuffed with goat cheese. I acquired a taste for figs in Japan, but I’ve never had one prepared like this. It’s extra sweet…and the pungent taste of goat cheese goes well with the gooey meat of the fruit.

  It’s really quite good. It would go well with the champagne they served earlier.

  “Why did you bolt the way you did?” Lucas asks.

  I almost choke, but manage not to by taking a quick sip of water. “It was the food. It made me nauseous.”

  “Bullshit. We had the same thing, and I was perfectly fine.”

  “Maybe for you, but it wasn’t for me.”

  “You’re evading the topic.”

  “What makes you think I still owe you my time and mental energy after two years?”

  “The accident that left my face scarred also mangled my body. Cracked ribs and a broken leg tend to lay a man flat despite his best intentions.”

  I tilt my head at the bitterness darkening his narrowed eye. “It didn’t take you two years to recover.”

  “No, thank god.”

  My throat closes up, and I can’t eat anymore. I put my fork down. “I was there.”

  His eyebrow arches.

  “At the hospital. My roommate Erin…”

  “The nursing student,” he murmurs.

  I’m surprised he remembers. “She was at the hospital for some class.” The instructors required the students to follow doctors and nurses around to observe and learn. “She saw you come in on a stretcher and left me a message. When I got there…”

  Lucas’s mouth twists as he brings a glass of some kind of amber-colored liquor to his lips. “I must’ve looked like shit.”

  “Your injuries had nothing to do with my decision!” I breathe out roughly. The abject mortification of the moment floods through me, as though the meeting took place minutes ago rather than a couple of years. Not even my father’s betrayal made me feel so cheap and dirty. My hands shake from the bitter memory.

  Lucas pales. He’s staring at me like I’m an enemy he’d like to stab with the butter knife clenched in his hand. “What does that mean?”

  “Why don’t you ask your brother? The really nasty one.”

  He lifts an eyebrow. “Brother?”

  “Surprised I know about your siblings? I guess you must be, since you never introduced me to your family in the sev
en months we were together.” And I was too stupid to wonder about that, accepting his explanation that his family lived far away and was too busy to keep in touch. “Blake,” I bite out the name. I’ll never forget that piece of work—how he made me feel:

  He looked down his nose and spoke to me in a silky but venomous voice.

  “You’re Lucas’s mistake, a gold digger trying to swindle money out of him when he’s down and vulnerable. Better women than you have tried, sweetheart, so get the hell out of here before I ruin you. Oh, you object to my description? Should I prove how right I am then? It’d be my pleasure to dig into your past and see what kind of dirt is hiding behind that pretty face. A girl like you probably has more dirt than Mount. Everest, and I’ll make sure everyone knows about it. By the time I’m through, you won’t be able to suck a cock for a dollar.”

  “Blake.” Lucas runs a hand down his face. “Fuck.”

  “He made me realize you and I had nothing together.” Worse than nothing. Lucas had never told his family about me—I was some kind of dirty little secret.

  He looks up at the cabin ceiling briefly. When he speaks, his voice is soft. “Ava, we had something good together.”

  I shake my head. “What we had was sex—good sex, but just sex.”

  “Damn it, Ava. It was more than that for me.”

  “Really? Then who’s Faye Belbin?”

  Shock flashes in his gaze. In a different situation with a different person, I might be pleased. “What, you thought I wouldn’t find out?” I let out a dry laugh to disguise the sick feeling growing in my chest. “I got smarter after my meeting with your brother, so I looked you and your family up. It’s amazing how informative Google can be. Turns out you aren’t some college instructor like you led me to believe, and Faye’s been the woman on your arm every time you attend a high society function.”

  “Ava, she’s nothing,” Lucas says, apparently recovered.

  “Nothing? Really? Do you take ‘nothing’ to balls and premieres and expensive parties?”

  His eyebrows pinch together, and he reaches for another drink. “I occasionally need someone as a date, and when we were together I didn’t want to ask you to miss classes because of my social obligations.”