Tall Dark & Handsome

by Amelia Wilde

  I’m reaching for the handle when a shadow falls over my lap.

  “Here we go,” says the driver.

  The shadow belongs to one Juno Anderson.

  She rushes out of the lobby of the hotel so quickly she almost skids into the sliding glass doors. She balances a tablet on one arm, and her backpack is dangling from the other arm.

  She is the most gorgeous mess I’ve ever seen.

  Her hair is a rumpled mess, and her T-shirt is twisted at the waist. She’s backlit by the golden light pouring out of the lobby. Three steps into the early morning air and she stops, blinking at the line of SUVs parked in front of the hotel.

  My heart squeezes at the sight of her shifting her weight underneath the backpack and the tablet, her grip seeming more tenuous by the second. What kind of magic would it be if she climbed into this SUV next to me? I’d give my entire salary from this film to fold her sleep-warm body into my arms, to straighten her shirt, to smooth her hair.

  Her eyes skate over each SUV in turn, and then she looks right at me.

  It’s impossible, because the windows are deeply tinted, but I get a full view of her shadowed face. Her tongue darts out, the tip brushing against her lip, and she leans forward a little bit.

  No, she can’t see inside the SUV. But she’s trying.

  I get ready.

  I move to the side, to the leftmost seat, and lean toward the opposite door.

  There’s a muffled shout from the front SUV, and Juno’s head snaps in that direction.

  “Okay,” she says, and jogs for the other car.

  I let my head fall back against the headrest with a sigh heavy enough to catch the attention of the driver.

  “Forget something?” He asks the question but doesn’t seem to care much about the answer, because I haven’t yet spoken when he puts the car in drive and pulls away from the hotel entrance.

  “No. I have everything,” I tell him, and then I let sleep tug me under.

  * * *

  If there’s one thing worse than being up in the middle of the fucking night, it’s being at an airport. The fluorescent lighting in the Atlanta hub pierces straight to the center of my brain.

  Everybody else must feel the same way, because instead of moving en masse to the gate for our chartered plane, people scatter.

  I do not scatter.

  The plane, as I understand it, is essentially a commercial jet on a smaller scale. It’s nothing like some of the private planes enterprising people have tried to—no joke—sell to me. So my main priority is to get one of the seats up front. I’m too tall to be comfortable in coach, but despite what Juno thinks, I’m not dickish enough to roll onto the plane last and kick someone out of their seat. It’s not a good long-term strategy.

  That must be why I don’t see her on the way to the plane.

  I keep my head down, eyes on the prize, and I don’t look up to take inventory of who’s around me until I’m at the gate. We came in a separate entrance and bypassed security, so all there is to do is go down the jet bridge and onto the plane.

  I’m the first one here.

  I sink into the very first row.

  One by one, the rest of the cast and crew start to filter in. Chloe and Matt take the two seats behind me, and then a gaggle of crew members having a highly technical conversation about filters and lighting squeezes their gear down the center aisle. There’s Maggie, with a thermos of coffee I can smell from here, dropping into the last row of first class.

  It’s unusual, having everybody on the same plane like this, and I’m not going to say it out loud, but it’s fucking cool as hell to be here.

  A flight attendant steps out from the front and starts to go over security procedures, and that’s when my pulse kicks up into high gear.

  Where the hell is Juno?

  There’s no way she boarded the plane and slipped by without me noticing. Every time she walks into the room, I feel the cold electric charge of her presence. I’m tired, but I’m not that tired. I stand up and look back into the plane, scanning the seats.

  She’s not there.

  Another group of people comes down the aisle, apologizing to the flight attendant in hushed voices. Two of them take the last two seats in first class. The attendant pauses briefly, just long enough to get my attention, and tilts her chin downward.

  I give her The Smile, am rewarded with a brief blush, and drop my ass back into the seat.

  Something is going on with Juno this morning. I can’t be the only one who notices. But back in her seat, Maggie’s eyes track the flight attendant, her face totally calm. She, of all people, should know where Juno is and, I know, everybody here is an adult. We all know how to get on a plane before it takes off. But something strikes me as wrong.

  I’m surrounded by people who don’t seem to think there’s any problem.

  It’s a chartered flight, but I still have to wait for the right moment. The attendant is telling us how to survive if this plane goes down over the cornfields in the Midwest and she’s going to be the one serving food and drinks, so it’d be best if I didn’t have to shove her out of the way when—

  There’s a clatter at the entrance of the plane and a ringing “Oh, shit.” The attendant’s speech hiccups like a CD skipping and she cuts an irritated glance behind her. She must realize that she has an audience, because she arranges her expression into a concerned one and gives us a tight smile. “Hillary, can you come up and finish—”

  “Of course.” From the back of the plane, another attendant emerges, smiling and rosy-cheeked, and resumes the presentation.

  The first attendant steps behind the partition, only one of her heels visible. “Are you all right, ma’am?” I strain to listen over the safety presentation. Look, if we crash into a cornfield from 30,000 feet, there’s not much that’s going to save me anyway.

  “Yeah, I’m—my tablet fell, and I just need—” Juno.

  “We don’t generally transport luggage for passengers.”

  “I don’t need help transporting the luggage. I just need a second to—” She sounds out of breath. I seize the moment and stand up.

  The new attendant, unlike the first, recognizes me instantly, her face breaking into a wide grin she struggles to keep under control. I put a hand on her shoulder and step around her.

  At the plane’s door, Juno is crouched over the gap between the plane and the gangway, her tablet wedged straight into the crack. She’s trying unsuccessfully to pry it out with the backpack still over one arm and a Starbucks cup in the same hand. It’s a truly ungraceful pose. Under any other circumstance, I might laugh, but the flight attendant is just standing there, arms at her side, looking utterly useless.

  “Hi,” I say, and both of them look at me. Juno’s cheeks go pink and she ducks her head again immediately, trying to pinch the tablet between her thumb and first finger, all while keeping the cup level. Steam rises out of the top of it.

  The flight attendant does not seem to give the slightest shit who I am. “Sir, we’re preparing to push back from the gate. Please return to your seat.”

  “Of course, of course.” I decide not to enter a debate about how this is a weird hybrid chartered flight and the point of chartered flights is to give people more leeway on the flight schedule, and tone my smile to something more apologetic. Then I move around her and look down at Juno.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” she says without looking up. I can see her legs trembling, struggling to maintain the crouch, and that’s a crying shame, because there are way better reasons for her legs to shake like this.

  “Would it insult your professional independence if I lend you a hand?”

  She glances up at me, and for the first time, I notice her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy. “Honestly, I don’t think it can get any worse, so... go ahead.” She stands up with effort, exhaling sharply through rounded lips, and I bend down and pick up the tablet. Mission accomplished.

  I try my best, but I can’t resist putting a guiding
hand on Juno’s shoulder as we move past the flight attendant. I was right—Juno is the last person getting on the plane, because the moment we go by, I hear her saying, “Everyone is on board, so I’m closing the aircraft door,” to the pilot.

  “Ugh.” Juno readjusts the backpack on her arm. “I hate when they say that.”

  “So unprofessional,” I answer quietly. “She’s only doing her job.”

  “Yeah, but that part of her job means we’re going to be trapped in a metal tube an inappropriate distance from earth for the foreseeable future. Maybe forever.”

  “No. We won’t be trapped in the sky forever. We’ll land or we’ll crash, but either way, we’re going down.”

  Juno takes a steadying breath. “Great. Very comforting.” She turns toward me, extending an elbow. “Well, this is where we part ways. Wedge that tablet into my arm so I can find my seat.”

  Is it so wrong that I take so much joy in being able to say this?

  “Yeah, about that.” I gesture toward the rest of the plane, at the two empty seats in the very first row. “Remember how you said it couldn’t get any worse?”

  Juno’s eyes go wide at the same moment the flight attendant gets on the intercom and announces that all passengers must be in their seats, that we’re pushing off from the gate.

  “No.” She takes an uneasy step forward. “There’s got to be somewhere near the emergency exit.”

  “All passengers to their seats, please.” The voice bursts out of the intercom, nagging, loud.

  “Your seat, Ms. Anderson.” I hold out my arm, extending one final challenge.

  She could insist on trading seats. She could go to the back of the plane and find one of the few empty spaces left.

  But she doesn’t.

  Juno, with a little sigh that signals defeat, slides into the window seat. I sit next to her in the aisle.

  I steal a glance at her out the corner of my eye.

  She’s stuffing her backpack under the seat, her face white.

  I’ve won this round, but she doesn’t look defeated at all. She just looks scared.

  14

  Juno

  When I was eight years old, my parents took Tessa and me to Disney World for the first time. It was a Big Deal. They pulled out all the stops. A suite at the Polynesian Resort for ten days. Reservations at all the parks’ best spots. And, above all, plane tickets.

  I wish I could forget those fucking plane tickets. I wish I could forget what happened at the airport.

  At the airport, I discovered what it really means to fly.

  It turns out that flying is not at all a lovely abstract thing, like I imagined from the grassy expanse of our backyard. I’d lay there, my palms skimming the grass, and watch the planes fly overhead. It didn’t occur to me until we were all at the gate, waiting to board our flight, that people had to go inside the planes. And not just any people. Us.

  I was too old to be having that revelation, but the moment we walked by the huge windows overlooking the tarmac and watched one of the planes take off, my throat started to tighten.

  The lump grew and grew all the way through the airport until finally, when the gate agent raised the microphone to her lips and made some muffled announcement I half-understood, I was too afraid to move.

  It’s all I can think about as I glue my eyes to the netting attached to the wall in front of the first row of seats. It’s just tight enough to fit my Starbucks cup of chamomile tea. My hands shake as I arrange it, and I can only hope that Cannon doesn’t notice.

  He notices.

  “Completely professional question.”

  I wave a hand in the air, inviting him on, because I’m doing my level best to play this cool, even as the walls of the plane taunt me with how paper-thin they are and the buckle refuses to clip in. I barely manage to get it before he asks.

  “How afraid of flying are you?”

  That same choking knot at the base of my throat fights to return, and I swallow hard to keep it in its place. “I think any reasonable person would be terrified of hurtling through the atmosphere in a tin can.”

  “How long have you known?”

  I’m hyperaware of everything happening on the plane. Of the flight attendants sitting down. Of the thrum of the engines as we push away from the gate. It’s the first step toward certain doom.

  “I was eight,” I tell Cannon through gritted teeth. “Going to Disney World.”

  “How’d that work out for you?”

  “My father had to carry me onto the plane. My mother…” My heart still twists at her words. “…asked him why he thought I couldn’t be more like my sister.”

  Cannon shifts in his seat for a heartbeat, and then his voice is lower, his breath hot on my ear. “Completely professional question.”

  “Yeah?”

  The plane taxis away from the gate, and my stomach clenches as we make a sharp turn onto the main runway. “Are you ready to admit it yet?”

  “Admit what?”

  “Prepare for takeoff,” the pilot says over the intercom, and my vision blurs at the edges.

  “That you miss it.”

  “Miss. What?” I force the words through gritted teeth.

  “I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at me on the set. When you think nobody else notices.” He sounds like he could be commenting on the weather, but his words make my heart twist with shame. I have been so fucking careful not to let him see, but I’ve been looking.

  I’ve been looking.

  The plane moves forward.

  He takes my hand, casually running his fingertips over my knuckles.

  “This is across the line of strict professionalism,” he comments. “So you might have a problem with it. In which case….” He starts to pull his hand away.

  I react without thinking, clamping my other hand down on his wrist. “You always do this,” I tell him, irritation spiking through my veins.

  “Do what?”

  Beneath us, the plane kicks into high gear, and I already feel like we’re in some airless vacuum in the center of space.

  “You… you bait me.” I stare at the wall in front of me, at the Starbucks cup caught in that netting, and try to ignore the fact that my only source of comfort is Cannon Hunt. “You did it on purpose, didn’t you? You pulled away so I would…” I swallow hard again as my back presses into the seat. It’s going to happen any second. It’s going to happen—

  “Say it,” says Cannon.

  “I—”

  “Say it, Juno.” He’s teasing, coaxing, an asshole, a savior.

  “What am I going to get out of that?” The words tumble out over one another.

  “Say. It.”

  “You ignored me so I would like you. You’re an asshole.”

  “What else?”

  “It worked.”

  There’s a bump and a lift, and my soul dies to know that we’re off the runway and accelerating into the sky, but in the same instant, Cannon silences me with a kiss so shockingly raw that I gasp into his mouth. He wraps a hand around the back of my head and turns me to face him, the hard lines of the armrest digging into my side, but I don’t care, because he tastes like heaven.

  He tastes like success.

  He tastes like dirty, filthy success, and the sheer pleasure of it moves over me in a wave.

  Cannon pulls back a fraction of an inch. “Was that so hard to admit?”

  My cheeks might actually be on fire. “Yes, and you know it. I hate that you do this.”

  “What about this?”

  He kisses me again, claiming my mouth, twining his fingers through my hair, pulling back on the messy bun at the nape of my neck, and trailing hot kisses down every sensitive inch of the skin there.

  “That’s… we can’t—” I’m still fighting it. Why am I still fighting it?

  Cannon goes still. “You say the word, Juno, and all of this stops. You say the word, and we can go back to being coworkers.” His eyes are dark and luminous in the dim light of the c
abin, and part of me shatters at the thought of having to sit next to him on this flight without touching him, without tasting him. It’s so fucking selfish I can’t stand it, but the next words out of my mouth are a low plea. “Don’t do that. Don’t.”

  He laughs. “Music to my ears, that begging.”

  I shove at his chest. “You’re an asshole.”

  “You wanted it.”

  “You made me want it.”

  “Oh yeah?” He strokes the pad of his finger down the side of my cheek. “Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t do the same.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You came to my hotel room with that body of yours, with those eyes, and stood three feet from my bed in that little tank top with intentions that were pure? I don’t believe that for a second.”

  “You’re not my type,” I say, even as he works one hand up under my shirt, under my bra, and the pad of his thumb grazes one of my already-taut nipples.

  “Prove it.”

  “How?”

  The wickedest grin I’ve ever seen in my life spreads across Cannon’s face then, and I’m ready to combust. I am ready to go down in flames. His hand explores the waistband of my pants, fingers flirting with the smooth skin of my navel, his lips next to my ear. “Say it. Say you want me to stop.”

  I kiss him instead.

  I dare to bite his bottom lip, pressing it between my teeth, and with a growl, he turns me sideways, the seatbelt giving enough leeway to press my back against the oval window. For an instant, my stomach drops; there’s practically nothing between me and a long fall to my death, and the glass seems tauntingly flimsy. But then Cannon takes my chin in his hand and yanks my attention back to the here and now.

  The here and now, where we’re surrounded by the entire cast and crew.

  A new kind of horror dawns.

  “We can’t do this,” I hiss through my teeth. “Someone could hear. Someone could see—”

  Cannon puts a hand over my mouth. “Problem solved.”