by Christa Wick
Melanie shot a glance toward the front of the cabin to find Declan studying her. He did nothing to hide his attention, either. She looked away, losing her nerve to ask him about Cammie being able to pick her up.
The plane started moving, pulling away from its gate and giving her something new to focus on. She'd never been in a plane this size, just the big jets that held hundreds of passengers. She didn't know if it experienced turbulence differently or landed harder or softer than the giant planes.
Sticking her coffee in the cup holder built into the loveseat's armrest, she gripped the front edge of her cushion and tried not to look worried.
Why in the world was he still staring at her anyway?
The plane picked up speed and then she felt that first bit of lift as the wheels separated from the ground. She felt the drag at her center of gravity and the tickle it produced low in her belly. An enjoyable tickle, but unwelcome with Declan nearby.
She risked a side glance and damn her if he wasn't still watching.
Jerking her head in his direction, she glared at him. It wasn't as if he was going to make the pilot circle the airport, land again and kick her off. Now that they were airborne, she could call him on his rudeness.
Although maybe she should apologize first for her behavior that morning.
Nope, she thought, shaking her head at the idea while still looking at him. He no longer deserved an apology. He'd been rude so many times over, embarrassing her in front of the stewardess about the alcohol, directing her like she was some disobedient dog that had peed on his thousand dollar rug, and letting her hang in the airport while he made up his mind to have someone fetch her at the last minute.
Before her stomach could finish unknotting, the captain announced they were at their cruising altitude and could use their devices, including texting on their phones. He also told them they were free to move around the cabin.
Melanie got up before she could lose her nerve and walked over to Declan. A smirk lit up his face and grew bigger with every step she took.
If he thought she was coming over to thank him or grovel, he was misreading her face. Right at that moment, she wanted to kick him in the balls. But first she needed to know if Cammie could pick her up at the airfield.
"My roommate was supposed to pick me up at LAX—"
Declan cocked an eyebrow at her. "Are you trying to mooch a ride home from me now?"
Her hands landed on her hips and she answered with a snort. "No. I need to know if the place will allow mere mortals to park their decrepit, non-luxury cars there so she can pick me up."
The gray eyes got all flinty again and his mouth danced a thin line. "How are you going to explain landing at a private airfield to her?"
"Right," she said, realizing she was facing the same dilemma as when she had wanted to let her mom know she would be on a different plane. She couldn't do so without lying or mentioning Declan.
She shrugged. "I don’t know. You tell me. I suck at lying."
He shifted in his seat, his head tilted as he eyed Melanie's body from top to bottom and back up again. It felt weird having his eyes crawl over like that, especially since there hadn't been an ounce of interest flickering in them, just cold calculations—like he was measuring her for a casket.
"What time is your scheduled flight supposed to land?"
"Three-thirty," she answered. "I got bumped, so I assume it's still landing about then."
"That should give me plenty of time to drop you at whichever baggage claim area at LAX."
Finished talking, he pointed his chin at the loveseat, dismissing her all over again.
She didn't obey like a good little girl. She kept her feet planted and her hands on her hips, her stance anything but conciliatory as she started to apologize despite all the arguments running through her head against doing so.
"Look, Declan, I'm sorry about what I said this morning."
"You said a lot of things this morning," he reminded her, his words stiff and his gaze boring into the back of her skull.
"I know. But I freaked out a bit when I woke up and saw you in bed."
"So, that's not a regular occurrence after you drink—waking up next to a man without remembering what you may or may not have done with him the night before? Or are you saying you freak out like that whenever you wake up next to a half-naked man you barely know?"
Damn him! He was trying to get her riled up and it was working. She mashed her lips together.
"Let me start again.” She exhaled. “First of all, I'm sorry I asked whether it was you or Bujo who peed on the couch..."
She thought she detected a hint of a smile playing at the corner of his sensuous lips, like he was laughing on the inside.
What she wouldn’t give to actually see him smile a genuine smile, laugh a genuine laugh.
When his face became its usual mask, Melanie pulled a long breath in before she launched into the last of her apology. "And I am particularly sorry you thought I was implying something I wasn’t about your reputation in Hollywood. You and I both know that part of your reputation is a complete nonissue where we’re concerned.”
Declan pushed into the back of his chair, his broad shoulders denting the soft leather as he stared at her. Once again, his gaze made a trip from head to toe to head, this time without the clinical coldness.
"Who says it’s a nonissue?” he retorted then, practically knocking her over with a feather.
When she simply gaped at him for another long minute, he leaned closer and added silkily, “In case you were wondering--and you clearly are--regardless of what you’ve heard about my reputation from all the countless unreliable sources out there, I do have a very hard rule. No matter how much a drunken female is trying to seduce me, no matter where her hands or lips try to roam on my body or the dirty promises she whispers in my ear, I always say 'no.'"
Melanie stared at him, mortification spreading through her chest and out her limbs.
"Wh-what are you saying?" Was it really possible that she’d done all that?
And damn it, why couldn’t she remember at least the touching part?
He smiled a canary eating grin then jabbed a finger at the tail end of the plane. "You don't want to know what I'm saying, Melanie Lee. Now go sit down."
10
Exiled back to the loveseat, Melanie woke her iPad and dug out her art stylus from the bottom of her bag. Opening a drawing application, she started to sketch, the lines seemingly random and angry with the way her wrist whipped her hand across the screen.
Art was the only thing she could ever concentrate on when her mind was in turmoil. Not just lines on paper or pixels on screens, but the physical manifestations of her drawings, especially the costumes.
She still remembered the first fancy dress of her mother's that she had altered—completely without her mother's permission, of course. She’d been six at the time. The dress had been layer upon layer of some gauzy material she hadn't yet learned the name of. With no access to needles and thread, she'd used scotch tape to piece her creation together. Lots and lots of scotch tape.
Her mother had been horrified and it had been Melanie's first lesson that when mommy said "yes," or "okay" while her nose was in a book, it really meant "not now."
Her father had bought her mother a replacement dress, but he had also taken Melanie to a fabric store and found someone to give her sewing lessons and then, for her seventh birthday, he bought Melanie her very first sewing machine.
The small smile she had nurtured grew bigger but also turned sad. She missed her father, even if he had always put her mother first. Being George Archer's second best girl was still better than most daughters got from their fathers.
More than most women got from any men, really.
Returning to the cabin, the flight attendant stopped in front of Declan. Forcing herself not to look, Melanie kept her eyeballs glued to the plump female archer who was finally emerging from the lines she had been laying down.
Over the l
ow mechanical hum of the plane at cruising altitude, she heard Declan talking to the woman, the words haphazardly reaching her ears and in too small a quantity to make sense.
Out...cabin...PA...remainder...flight...
Studiously avoiding turning her gaze toward the front of the cabin, Melanie saved the file, closed the drawing app and imported the sketch into a painting app. She fiddled with colors, trying to decide on a palette for her archer, something that would be both strong and feminine.
Absorbed in the process, she didn't realize Declan was heading toward her end of the plane until he was a few feet away. She pulled her outstretched legs closer to the loveseat, absently glancing to her right where the door to the restroom was located.
Declan slid onto the loveseat next to her.
She dropped her art stylus, the slim pencil like device landing on the curve of her stomach. She grabbed at it, fumbled and sent it tumbling toward Declan.
Capturing the stylus, he half-offered it to her, the look in his eye and the shape of his mouth threatening to play a game of keep away.
No, no, no, no. What the hell was he doing? She needed him to ignore her, for her own sake.
The half heard words came back to her.
Out...cabin...PA...remainder...flight...
"You ordered her away?" she asked about his conversation with the flight attendant.
"Yes," he said and tucked the stylus behind his ear, confirming her suspicion he had no intent of returning it to her any time soon.
"Why?"
Her brain couldn't come up with a reason. A very specific reason would have occurred to her if he'd been giving a ride to Cammie, who was curvy and thick but not nearly as big as Melanie, or to one of the starlets on set who were always trying to capture his attention. But she wasn't one of them and there was no reason for him to send the attendant away for the duration of the flight.
"Why?" she repeated.
"We have some things to discuss."
His face was as cryptic as his answer. The gray gaze was smudged with an uncharacteristic softness, but his mouth was a thin, stern line.
"About Roger?"
With the movie and its promo done, they had nothing else connecting them.
He chuckled grimly. "No. I don't plan on ever thinking of them again."
His shoulders lifted and his mouth pinched forward. "No offense to your mother. She seems perfectly fine."
Melanie could have dwelled on the lukewarm compliment for hours, but she didn't.
"Seriously, if it's what I said about Wikipedia and TMZ, I was just trying to figure out why you were looking at me like that."
She shifted in her seat, his body too close to let her turn and stare him directly in the eye, but she tried to. "I want you to know I would never, ever, ever do that."
Declan said nothing for a few seconds. His lips twisted in strange contortions, her stomach knotting in equal turns as worry built inside her over the reply he was clearly holding back.
"Looking at you like what?" he asked at last.
She blinked as she remembered the look. He had seemed so remote and she had felt so small, despised even.
"I really don't want to say it, please."
She drew her bottom lip in, chewing at it mercilessly to keep from blurting out an answer.
Or a question—like what had she done that truly deserved his disdain?
All through Declan's short interrogation of her, Melanie had kept her hands wrapped around her iPad. He took it from her and gently slid it into the bag, followed by the stylus he had tucked behind his ear.
Reaching up, he placed the pad of his index finger against her bottom lip and slowly pulled it free from her bite.
"You do that during fittings sometimes," he murmured.
Her first reaction was surprise that he had ever looked at what she was doing. But then it occurred to her that, of course, he had to look occasionally. He was an actor, a good one, maybe even a great one if she could peel her eyes and thoughts away from his body long enough to study his application of craft. And paying attention to what people did and how they did it was part of being a good actor.
"You're doing it now because I upset you," he said, the contemplative tone almost soothing to her. "But why do it at fittings?"
That was another question she didn't want to answer. Declan was the only person she had to help dress who made her bite at her lip. All the times before that moment on the plane could be characterized as unsuccessful attempts to quell a building hunger for the man sitting next to her.
Shaking her head, Melanie refused to answer.
"If it's not about Roger or my mother or my telling anyone, what do we have to talk about?"
Twisting against the loveseat, Declan planted one arm behind Melanie and stared intently at her, his head cocked to the side. His appraising gaze didn't remain in one location and only occasionally lingered—stopping once at the quiver of the bottom lip she was no longer biting, again at the curve of her neck, then a little lower when he reached the breasts that had started to swell, their two hard tips aching for his notice.
She tried to pull back, but he'd left her nowhere to go. He had that look on his face, the one she'd seen so many times in the mirror during fittings and scene changes, that look of self love that she'd found so narcissistic—like he was literally drowning in his own image.
Shaking her head as he began to lean closer, Melanie placed her hand against his muscular chest and pushed.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Hearing the mounting hysteria in her voice swept Melanie closer to true panic.
Declan slowed his forward progression, his dark blond brows crinkling at her while his eyes glittered like diamonds on a cold winter's day.
"All the times I must have looked at you like this and you're just now asking me?"
She shook her head again, more wild and emphatic than before. "It's not like you did out in the terminal. That made me—"
Not wanting to remember how she had felt like something Declan needed to scrape off his shoe, she swallowed down the rest of her explanation.
"You're looking at me like you look at you."
Confusion corkscrewed his features.
"In the mirror!" Her other hand joined her first to rest against his chest. She didn't push as she had before, his bewildered state contagious.
"Oh," he smiled absently, his brows lifting. "What mirror?"
"On set!" she growled. Was he being intentionally obtuse? Was tormenting her his in-flight entertainment? Didn't they have a damn movie he could watch instead?!
"You're talking about when we're both standing in front of it...like yesterday?"
The grin edging his lips whipped through her. Suddenly the angry heat that had built in her chest was nothing more than a flickering candle in the wind compared to the inferno that roared and danced between her thighs at his smile.
How many times had she brushed off his interest in the mirror's reflection as nothing more than the self-absorbed preening of a male—thinking he was no better than the muscle-bound morons lined up at the gym insisting they had to keep their eyes on their reflections to make sure their form was perfect?
A dozen times or dozens of times?
The dream on the flight into Denver plucked at the fine hairs on the back of her neck. Had she subconsciously known all along?
Not possible, not freaking possible...
She pushed at his chest, shaking her head. "I don't know whether you just like being cruel or you think this is the perfect way to get back at your unc…at Dodgy Roger or maybe you just think you need to put me in my place."
"You're already perfectly positioned," he mused, the dreamy quality of his voice making her shrink further into the loveseat's padding.
"Positioned for what?" she demanded to know.
"This." Declan captured the rounded bottom of her chin, tilted her head upward as he leaned over her.
"Why are you doing this?" she whispered.
<
br /> "Because I want to." He brushed his lips softly across hers, nothing hard or demanding in the gesture. "Because I've wanted to for months, Melalee."
Between him shortening her name to Mel and him using the nickname her mother used to soften her up when she screwed up, she much preferred the former.
"Don’t call me that."
“But I like it. It’s cute.”
“Just stop, Declan. Stop messing with my head. Stop playing whatever game it is you’re playing. And stop lying to me.”
As soon as the accusation of his being deceitful left her, she mashed her lips together, tension trembling along the thin line as she tried to defend herself from a second brushing of his mouth against hers.
"You think I’m lying? Let me kiss you and you'll know that I'm more serious than I've ever been."
Her nose stung at the glib line so expertly delivered. She blinked, the sharp sting traveling to her eyes almost instantly. She wanted to punch him, but there was no space between them for her to haul her hand back before delivering the blow.
So she pinched, then sharply twisted, his nipple.
"Ow..." he pulled back, his gaze going wide before he broke into laughter. "I'm going to remember that when you're all soft and liquid beneath me, baby girl."
"That," she promised, using the space that had opened between them to stand and move toward the front of the plane. "Is never going to happen."
11
If she could have strapped a parachute to her back and jumped off the plane at that very moment, Melanie would have. But such an escape wasn't possible. She was stuck with Declan until they landed.
Thankfully, he retreated to his earlier seat, although he wore a smug grin as he summoned the flight attendant into the cabin with a request for a snack.
Melanie tried to ignore both of them, but meekly said she would like a water when the stewardess drew near. Cheeks flaming, she watched the woman disappear and wondered if she had any inkling as to what had happened in her absence.
"You're a bit ruffled, Melalee," Declan teased, his fingers dancing to indicate her hair was a mess.