Evernight Publishing ®
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2015 Tamsin Baker
ISBN: 978-1-77233-374-9
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Melissa Hosack
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
To two very special MRWG ladies. Annalise for showing me the submission call that led to this story and Lauren for the critique brilliance—thank you xoxo
ONE PERFECT NIGHT
Romance on the Go TM
Tamsin Baker
Copyright © 2015
Chapter One
Michelle groaned aloud as her eyes confirmed the fear that had been formulating in her brain. She’d been hoping she was dreaming, but what she had been told was indeed correct.
Her flight to London had just been cancelled!
“Are you serious?” she asked no one in particular as she stood in the center of the airport, staring up at the flashing screen.
Anger and frustration combined, causing hot tears to gather in her eyes. She had planned everything so well. She had almost been free. Almost.
She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand, feeling helpless and alone — not an unusual state for her as of last week — but a state she wanted to leave behind in Australia, never to be seen again.
“Can I help you?” An elderly woman with black hair shot through with grey, who obviously worked for the airline, reached out a hand and laid it on Michelle’s arm. The pressure was a welcome distraction and she inhaled deeply.
Clearing her throat, Michelle turned toward the woman. “I…ah... I was supposed to be leaving for England today, but they’ve cancelled my flight.”
The woman nodded. “I know, sweetheart. There is a huge storm moving over the city. They have grounded all flights for the next twelve hours. Would you like me to organize a taxi to take you home, or would you like a hotel voucher?”
Michelle looked around the airport and her breath hitched in her chest. It was going to be chaos soon and she needed to find somewhere quiet. “I don’t have anywhere to go, so a hotel voucher would be lovely.”
The lady smiled kindly again and pointed to an area to their right. “Take everything over to the British Airways desk over there and tell them Maria sent you to get a hotel voucher for tonight. I’d do it quickly though.”
Michelle looked around at the people gathering in the foyer. Angry and confused voices rose high around them, and she realized the lady was right. She needed to move fast.
“Thank you so much.”
“Good luck.” The woman, who was as close to a fairy godmother to Michelle as she had ever come across, wandered away.
Michelle hurried over to the desk and waited behind two other people. She jiggled and fiddled, visions of herself sleeping in a chair overnight making her bite her lip.
The people moved away and she stepped up.
“Hello, my name is Michelle Smith. Maria told me to come here and ask for a hotel voucher as my flight has been cancelled.”
The male clerk looked surprised and his eyes darted around the room at the growing crowd.
“Could I have your passport and plane tickets?”
Michelle handed over her plane tickets and took a deep breath. She was still okay. She would get to England soon enough. She had to remember that and not let the panic overwhelm her.
The man printed out several tickets then placed them on the counter top.
“Here is the voucher and your new flight details. Assuming the weather gets better and doesn’t get any worse, your new flight leaves in twelve hours.” The man handed her the voucher and tickets with a smile, and she couldn’t help but smile back.
Michelle took all of the tickets gratefully. The hotel voucher would buy her a few hours of peace and much needed moments of reprieve until she could get away.
She moved out of the queue and stood, wavering like a tree in the wind. Picking up the papers, she stared down at them. Her eyes blurred due to lack of sleep, then she closed them.
Breathe, just breathe.
Michelle heard her mother’s voice inside her head and it was enough to keep her calm.
What was the first thing she wanted to do? Food, she needed food. Then she would retire to the hotel to wait out the storm.
She forced her legs to move and started walking toward the food court.
“Food, food...” There were several fast food outlets and a small old-fashioned American diner.
Definitely the diner. She needed some real food and a glass of wine to settle her frayed nerves. Maybe two.
She slipped into a booth just as the overhead speaker announced an entire airport shutdown. Just in the nick of time!
The noise of groaning people in the restaurant almost overwhelmed Michelle’s oversensitive senses and she cringed in discomfort. She bent down and retrieved her phone from her bag so she could play one of the many games she had. That would calm her down.
“Can I get you something, Ma’am?” A waiter stood by her table and Michelle blinked as though he were an apparition. She really did need to get her head back into the real world.
“Ah, yes.” She opened the menu and ordered the first thing she saw. “An old American hamburger, please.”
“A drink, Ma’am?”
Definitely!
“Yes, a glass... actually make it a bottle of the....” Michelle scanned the very short wine list. “Penfolds Shiraz, please.”
The waiter nodded and took the menus from her hands. A heavy sigh escaped her lips. So much for her tight budget. This would just have to be part of her contingency plan. A girl had to make exceptions when the heavens opened up and produced such a massive storm.
“Excuse me? Would you mind if I sat with you? Everywhere else is full.”
Michelle jumped, startled by the sound of a man’s deep voice. Then she looked up into the prettiest blue eyes she had ever seen. Having spent a week in a jaded stupor with her damaged heart ripped in two, she still saw the beauty in front of her. Her lower belly tightened in appreciation. Yes, she was going to need that bottle of wine.
“Yeeesss... yes of course,” Michelle stuttered, looking around the restaurant to see it was no lie. Since she had arrived, the place was now full to brimming. Clearly everyone had the same idea as her, yet she had made it into the restaurant first. Wow. Since when was she lucky?
“I’m Robert McLennan. Rob.”
The gorgeous man, who was probably in his mid-thirties, held his hand out to her across the table.
Michelle eyed it for a moment before placing her hand in his. Hot awareness tingled along her palm and blood flooded her cheeks.
“Michelle Smith.”
Rob smiled at her as he sat down and called to one of the waiters. “Could I get a menu, please?”
The waiter walked back to his computer, picked up a menu, and put it down in front of Rob on his way to attend another customer. The under-staffed employees were flying around the room. It was obvious the managers hadn’t anticipated the airport shutdown. No one had.
“Not the healthiest selection in the world, is it? What did you order?” Rob’s voice was clear and cut through Michelle’s musings on the staff. He looked up from his menu, his expression open, his eyes bright and ha
ppy.
Michelle felt tendrils of light filter through her. She had been so unhappy lately, reveling in the blackness of her despair. Now, just looking at the man in front of her, that unhappiness was breaking apart. She mourned its loss.
“A burger and a bottle of red.”
Just as she spoke, a waitress arrived with her wine and two glasses. “One glass or two, Ma’am?”
Michelle shrugged and looked over at the interloper opposite her. “Would you like to join me?”
Rob nodded and the waitress began pouring their drinks. “Why not? I’ll buy the next one.”
A rough laugh erupted out of Michelle’s throat. She coughed, the feeling and sound foreign to her.
“Next bottle? You really think we’ll be getting through two bottles?”
Rob lifted his glass in the air and smiled that smile. It made her belly clench tight with awareness. She picked up her glass in a hurry.
“Well, what else is there to do while we wait for the storm to pass?”
Michelle’s eyes dropped to Rob’s full lips and she swallowed the saliva that had pooled in her mouth. She shouldn’t even be thinking about how good those lips would feel, but she was.
She nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”
“To fate,” Rob said and clinked his glass with hers.
Another of those strange laughs bubbled up inside Michelle, and she drank down a sip of her wine in a hurry. Why was she so nervous?
She forced herself to speak. “Fate? Really?”
Rob laughed. He quickly ordered the same burger she had, then looked back at her. “Yeah, why not? We could have been on a plane crashing into the ocean at this moment. I’m definitely one to believe in whatever happens, happens for a reason.”
Michelle’s chest squeezed tight. “Really?” Her words choked out, tears welling in her eyes. She dropped her head and went to clasp her hands in her lap, but Rob reached out and gripped one of them in his.
“Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Michelle wanted to pull her hand away, her senses recoiling from the touch of a man she barely knew.
“Tell me what’s wrong.” Rob used his thumb to caress the back of her hand, which once again calmed her. As he felt her relax, he withdrew his hand.
The loss of that warmth made a pained sound rise in her throat, and she grabbed her hand back quickly. What was wrong with her?
“Nothing’s wrong.” She picked up her glass and swallowed twice, most of the wine disappearing down her throat.
Rob waited until she set her glass down, then filled it up again.
“All right. Where are you going and why?”
Michelle twirled the glass in her fingers, the red wine seeping into her blood stream.
“I am moving to England, permanently. I have a few cousins over there. I needed a change.”
Rob moved their drinks out of the way as the food arrived. In front of Michelle sat one of the biggest burgers she had ever seen. Yellow melted cheese oozed over the red meat. The egg, lettuce, and tomato were threatening to slide out of the bun and onto the plate.
“Wow.” Rob picked up his burger with both hands. He opened his mouth wide and took a massive bite, moaning in appreciation as he put it back down again.
Michelle watched him acting without fear or thought. He was so artless, so hungry for every little pleasure. Her cheeks flushed again at the thought.
In all her twenty-five years, she had only ever had two lovers, and both were long-term relationships. She had never really enjoyed love making. Whether her lovers were selfish (well her last one definitely had been), or she hadn’t learnt to enjoy it, she didn’t know. Either way her starved body was aching for a real man’s touch. A man like the one sitting opposite her.
She buried her no doubt red cheeks in her glass of wine once again. Was it the horrible year she’d survived? Or the unusual circumstances of being stranded for the next twelve hours? Either way, something was happening to her.
“Try the burger, Michelle. It’s really good.” Rob brought the burger back up to his mouth and took another huge bite.
Michelle picked up her knife to cut hers in half. She needed to slice it into more manageable pieces if she was even going to attempt to eat such a monster.
“No, just pick it up,” Rob said even though he still had a full mouth.
Was he kidding? Michelle eyed the burger once again and put both hands around it. She was about to make a fool of herself in front of this gorgeous stranger.
“Here goes nothing…”
Chapter Two
Rob chewed his greasy, delicious burger as he watched the girl opposite him attempt to pick hers up with her tiny hands. She was a petite little thing and so fragile looking, as if she could be blown down with a feather.
Not physically. Physically, she looked healthy. Beautiful in fact, but he felt her weakness as clearly as he had seen the tears in her eyes earlier. What had happened to her? He decided he would find out. His plane wasn’t leaving for at least another twelve hours. Surely that was enough time to get acquainted with her.
“Go on, good girl.” He praised Michelle as she managed to not only pick the burger up, but take a sizable bite out of it.
Her eyes slid shut as she chewed, and he smiled at the bliss evident on her face. He knew she was enjoying it as much as he was.
Rob looked after himself. He worked out, ate well, and didn’t give in to the excesses of life. – work excluded, of course! But tonight was going to be an exception for all of his self-imposed rules. How often did he find himself stranded with a beautiful woman?
He topped up his wine glass, the bottle now empty. With a chuckle, he signaled to the waitress. “Another bottle, please.”
She nodded and ducked into the bar.
“Are you kidding? We finished that already?”
Michelle’s shock made him smile. He had just started his second glass, but he wasn’t pointing that out. It was obvious she’d had a rough time of it as late.
“I told you I’d get the next one.”
He smiled at her and continued eating, not wanting to make an issue of it. He would be paying for the whole meal if he got his way. He needed to thank her. She had saved him from eating takeaway with a thousand other people out in the food court.
But he would deal with that at the end of the meal. He had a feeling she wouldn’t like him paying, which was strange in his experience with women. He didn’t know how he knew, but his gut instinct told him this woman was proud.
“Do your parents mind that you’re moving so far away?” Rob asked the question that had instantly entered his mind when she said she was moving away. He picked up some fries. Ah... fried potato. His personal trainer would kill him if he found out. The thought brought a smile to Rob’s lips as he chewed on the forbidden carbohydrate.
Michelle’s smile dropped at the same rate as her hamburger, landing on the plate in front of her. Uh-oh. This was going to be bad.
“My parents died in a car accident last year actually.”
Crap! Rob’s ribs constricted as he inhaled. “That is beyond horrible. I’m so sorry.”
Michelle nodded, accepting his condolences, and took another sip of her wine.
Rob pushed forward. He wasn’t a stranger to death. “So that’s why you’re moving?”
It made sense to him, especially if she were an only child.
Michelle looked at him, her warm brown eyes assessing. She sighed and laid her hands on the table.
“I’m not getting rid of you tonight, am I?”
Rob laughed, loudly. She’d figured that out already? Clever girl.
“Nope, sorry. Hopefully, you will stop me from going insane while I wait for my flight.”
A quiver of a smile played at the corner of Michelle’s lips as she absently spun her mobile phone around on the table in front of her.
“Well, yes and no. I broke up with my long-term partner last week and decided I wanted a fresh start some
where. Somewhere with no memories.”
Rob nodded. He understood that. “Well, it’s a bit drastic, but why not? If there are no other commitments here stopping you, why shouldn’t you go?”
She nodded and opened her mouth to say something else, before she shut it again with a snap.
Rob took a swig of his wine and gestured with his hands for her to continue. He was impatient by nature but tamped down his need to rush her. Slow and steady was the key.
“Look, Michelle, I know you don’t know me, but I’m a good listener. You can tell me anything you want and I won’t tell a soul. Scout’s honor.” He held up his hand in a scout salute and grinned at her.
The beautiful woman opposite him bit her lip, the unconscious movement arousing both Rob’s protective instincts and his sexual appetite. His body twitched beneath the table.
“I... I caught him cheating on me.”
That got Rob’s attention and he felt his eyebrows rise high on his forehead. Her parents were killed in a tragic accident, and then her boyfriend cheated on her in such a way to make the poor woman want to flee the country she lived in? Wounded didn’t even cover this girl.
He said the first thing that popped into his head. “What a wanker.”
Michelle’s mouth dropped open in shock and Rob picked up his burger again, grateful to have something to do with his hands. He felt suddenly restless, and annoyed.
“It’s true. Number one, you are lovely and you’re beautiful, so any guy would be crazy to cheat on you. And number two... well.” His brain wasn’t working as she continued to look at him like she wanted him to hold her tight. What else could he say? “Well, that’s pretty much it.”
He took another bite of his burger, a blush heating his cheeks because of the intense stare she was giving him. Maybe he should blame it on the wine? He wasn’t usually quite so honest.
Michelle picked up her burger, her appetite obviously returning. “Where are you traveling to, Rob?”
One Perfect Night Page 1