Never Be the Same

by M. A. Binfield

  “I’m sure you have plans. You’re waiting for friends, family, partner, whatever. My turn to apologize. Turns out I’m more eager for company than I realized.”

  The woman hadn’t stopped staring at her. Olivia was pretty sure that last comment could be construed as an insult. She really was bad at this.

  “I’m afraid I’m busy working, or I’d probably—”

  “Sure you are.” Olivia cut her off, not wanting to hear the excuses, not wanting to feel the embarrassment. The woman was in a hotel lobby, mid-morning, with a book on her knee. None of it suggesting she was working. Even Olivia could recognize when she was getting the brush-off.

  “I’ve got a very specific itinerary anyway. It probably wouldn’t be your bag. And I’m very busy, like I said.” Olivia picked up her books, wanting the ground to swallow her up.

  The woman’s dark brown eyes would have been the standout feature on anyone else, but Olivia couldn’t see past her mouth, past those perfect lips. A few minutes ago, they were oh-so-kissable, but they were pursed now, seeming to judge Olivia as someone crazy. And to be fair, she was kind of acting that way.

  She picked up her phone, her face hot with shame. “I have to call my driver, excuse me. He should be here waiting for me. They said he would be.” Olivia scanned the lobby. “If he’s late, then that’s going to make a bad day even worse. I don’t have the time to waste hanging around.” She couldn’t stop herself from sounding like a prima donna.

  Olivia turned away, found the number they’d given her, and pressed the call button, sensing rather than seeing that the gorgeous but disapproving woman was still looking at her.

  As the call connected, Olivia heard the ringing tone in the ear she had pressed close to the phone. At the same time, she heard a phone ringing in real life and saw, from the corner of her eye, her lobby companion leaning back to fish it from the pocket of her pants.

  “Hello.” They spoke at the same time and Olivia turned back to see the woman shrug before taking the phone away from her ear.

  “Your driver.” The woman gave her a small smile. “Here waiting for you like they said I would be. And like I said, most definitely working. I’m Casey.” She stood and held out a hand for Olivia to shake.

  Olivia had already pegged her as dark and handsome, but the fact that she was also tall made her want to roll her eyes. They’d really sent her a driver who looked like her every fantasy? Not fair. She felt a surprising amount of desire and from somewhere else, an anger that this woman had been playing with her all along.

  “Olivia Lang.” She shook the woman’s hand reluctantly. “But then you knew that.”

  The woman—Casey—shook her head.

  “I didn’t actually. I thought you were just the woman from the sauna who was worried about me falling asleep and dying in there.”

  “I’m pretty sure you must know who I am. Unless you’re telling me you’re unprofessional enough not to have bothered to find out which set of TV stars you’re driving around for the next two weeks?”

  Olivia didn’t understand why she was being so snarky. She didn’t believe her, but so what. It wasn’t Casey’s fault that Olivia had embarrassed herself by accidentally inviting her driver to go out with her for the day for no good reason.

  “I figured the people I was driving would call me,” Casey held up her phone, “and then I’d know who I was driving. Driving doesn’t require much preparation.” A wry smile spread across her face.

  Olivia found even that annoying. Charming definitely, but also annoying. She’d been to England before. She knew all about the diffidence, the sarcasm, the micro-gestures that suggested they thought that everyone from “across the pond” was a little stupid.

  “Perhaps if you were wearing a uniform, I’d have realized who you were and I—” Olivia was going to say “wouldn’t have made a fool of myself,” but she wasn’t going to admit it out loud. Casey didn’t look like the type she could have laughed it off with. “I wasn’t expecting a woman.”

  It was true, but she immediately wished she hadn’t said it out loud.

  “We’re allowed to fly airplanes too. Not me, though. I just drive cars. But I am definitely your driver, and I am certainly female. I’m also parked right outside and ready to go.” She picked up a jacket from the chair and put it on. It transformed her instantly into a uniformed driver, rather than just the hot butch woman in pants and a fitted shirt that Olivia had thought she was, and Olivia felt even more stupid.

  “Okay.” The word came out a little croaky. Olivia tried again, tried to sound more in charge than she felt. “Okay, then. I want to go to the Tower of London first and then the British Museum, then Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre after that, and if there’s time, I want to drop into Harrods.” Olivia was determined to rescue as much of this disaster of a day as she could.

  In front of her, Casey hadn’t moved. She was looking at the guidebooks that Olivia had picked up and had her bottom lip trapped between her teeth. She was frowning and looked a lot like someone who had something disapproving to say.

  “Can we please get going?” Olivia was determined to maintain the upper hand.

  “Sure.” Casey said the word, but still wasn’t moving toward the door.

  Olivia really needed Casey to stop staring at her and get a move on.

  “But doing all that today is going to be a challenge. The queues will be long, and the traffic is going to be horrendous. You’re gonna hit the afternoon rush hour at some point. And, given everywhere you’ve chosen is going to be really busy…” She paused, and Olivia couldn’t help but feel her choices were being judged and found lacking. “It might be better to go by public transport.”

  Olivia felt the last of her patience drain away. “You’re my driver and you’re telling me to go by public transportation. Are you even serious?” Olivia was a big TV star, even if she didn’t always feel like it. She wasn’t going to let herself get told what to do by her uppity English driver.

  “I’m not ‘telling’ you anything. I’m happy to drive you. I’m your driver, as you helpfully point out.” The sarcasm wasn’t hidden. “I’m just advising you. I know the city, I know the traffic, and I know sitting in the car all day isn’t going to be much fun for you.”

  “I’ll decide what’s fun for me, thank you. And I would very much like it if you’d drive me like you’re paid to?”

  There was a flash of something in Casey’s beautiful eyes and Olivia felt tension in the air between them. And then it was gone.

  “Whatever you say, Ms. Lang.” Casey nodded, turned, and walked slowly to the revolving doors. Rather than walk through them, as Olivia had expected, she waited to one side for Olivia to go ahead of her. Her good manners shamed Olivia slightly. She had behaved like the entitled diva that she definitely wasn’t. Something about Casey knowing better—and judging her—was getting under her skin.

  But there was something else about Casey too. Olivia was madly attracted to her. And she wanted her approval, not her disapproval.

  She passed through the doors and waited for Casey to join her outside. Casey pointed to a black luxury SUV parked across the forecourt and set off to open the doors. As Casey was standing, back door open, waiting for Olivia to climb inside, she wanted to stop and apologize, to ask if they could start over, to tell Casey that she wasn’t normally like this. But Casey was now avoiding her eyes and there was something about her, about the combination of being so hot and buttoned up, that made Olivia feel like she shouldn’t say a word. She climbed into the car and watched as Casey walked around to the driver’s side, cast off her jacket, and got inside.

  “The air conditioning is set at seventy, but let me know if you want me to change the temperature at any point. There’s a remote control in the seat pocket in front of you that controls the stereo if you’d like to listen to some music.” She sounded completely professional, but also like s
omeone who had absolutely no interest in talking to her, and Olivia couldn’t help but feel sorry. It was her own fault for being such a bitch, but it was going to be a long day with no conversation.

  “Thanks.” Olivia couldn’t think of anything else. She leaned her head back against the headrest, gave in to a huge yawn, and hoped that Casey wasn’t right about the day she was about to have.

  * * *

  “This is ridiculous.” Olivia said it for the third time. It was as if saying it out loud would make the traffic move quicker. “We’ve been in the car for an hour and my phone says it should only have taken fifteen minutes.”

  “It’s summer. The tourists are out in force. As well as the Tower of London, you’ve got HMS Belfast, Tower Bridge, and the river boats. And this road is the main arterial route crossing the river. It’s also the only road we could have taken to get from the Tower to the museum.” Casey’s reply was even in tone and contained not a hint of the I-told-you-so that Olivia was waiting for.

  They got to the Tower of London in reasonable time and she’d felt a little smug, like Casey had been exaggerating how bad it would be, out of, she supposed, sheer laziness. But then Olivia had had to line up for what felt like hours to get in—her prepaid ticket not making much difference in the wait time—and then she’d waited again to be shuffled past display cabinets containing the Crown Jewels with hundreds of other tourists who oohed and aahed as much as she would have if she’d had someone to enjoy them with. She picked up the glossy brochure she’d bought—yes, she’d lined up for that too—and opened it out again on her lap with a sigh. The jewels were beautiful—literally jaw-dropping—and almost worth the headache that she was beginning to develop.

  She looked at her watch. It was a quarter after two, and while she’d snagged a coffee and a muffin from a street vendor enterprisingly parked next to the line at the Tower, she hadn’t had lunch. It wouldn’t have mattered, but she’d skipped breakfast too.

  “Is there nothing we can do?” She wanted Casey to simultaneously cure her headache, satisfy her hunger, and make the traffic disappear. She had a Q&A later. It was at the hotel, mercifully, but she still needed time to shower, dress, and hopefully, eat something with Louise and Liam. But she hadn’t even gotten to stop two on her planned itinerary. This day was driving her crazy.

  “You might do better if you—” Casey stopped speaking and Olivia waited a beat.

  “What?”

  “You could walk. We’re really not very far away. It might be quicker on foot for you. I could give you directions. Then I could wait out this traffic and meet you in the square behind the museum in an hour or two. I know you want to be driven everywhere, but honestly, we’re crawling along and the museum is just up there. You can practically see it.” Casey pointed out the front window. “You’d get there in no time if you walked.”

  “I can’t walk. No way. I’ll get lost.” Olivia felt a rising panic. She didn’t know this neighborhood at all and she’d heard a lot of stories about London. “Why don’t you come with me? You know the way. You could park somewhere here and take me there. You’re being paid either way, so it shouldn’t matter to you if you’re sitting in traffic or walking me to a museum. And even you must want to see the British Museum.”

  The tension in Casey’s shoulders wasn’t hard to miss. She took a long time to respond, and Olivia figured she hadn’t quite worded her request as well as she could have.

  “I’m getting paid to drive you.” Casey’s tone was brusque. “Not to play chaperone. Walk there yourself, or sit in traffic, it’s all the same to me.”

  She deserved that response. Objectively, Olivia knew that. But it didn’t help.

  “Maybe you’re forgetting that I’m a TV star, that people will recognize me, will stop me, harass me. Why do you think they gave me a driver in the first place? A driver who doesn’t seem to want to drive, a driver who seems to have driven all the busiest roads, probably just to prove a point.” Olivia couldn’t stop her frustration from bubbling up.

  “You think that I’m trying to get us stuck in this traffic?” Casey didn’t wait for an answer. “You couldn’t be more wrong. I don’t want to spend a minute more in this car than I have to. If I could get you there quicker, trust me, I bloody well would.”

  “Take me back to the hotel. This day is a total bust and your attitude stinks.”

  Olivia couldn’t help raising her voice. The jet lag was making her tired, and her head was thumping. She was annoyed that Louise and Liam had bailed on her and forced her to spend the only day she was going to get off this trip with a driver who obviously thought she was some kind of idiot. She slumped back in her seat and willed herself not to cry. She knew Casey was watching—and no doubt judging—and she didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.

  “I said take me home.”

  They moved forward the length of a few cars in silence and Olivia couldn’t believe that Casey was going to ignore her. But then Casey held up a hand out the driver’s window to ask for the oncoming traffic to wait for her while she U-turned. She accelerated down the road they had just crawled along, the traffic in that direction being a little lighter.

  Olivia considered apologizing for her temper, but she couldn’t imagine Casey doing the same, and anyway, her tiredness now felt overwhelming.

  “I’m not scared of the city, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She said the words through the sleep she was trying to keep at bay. “I’m from Brooklyn. I might not sound like it anymore, but I am. Born and bred. And I walked every inch of that city, even the neighborhoods I was told to avoid. I’m not as useless at this as you seem to think I am.” She didn’t know why she cared, why she needed Casey to know.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, the humming of the engine, the warmth of the car, making Olivia drowsier and drowsier.

  “Well, I probably know every inch of the British Museum. I’m not the uncultured heathen you obviously think I am.” The muttered words and Casey’s dark eyes staring back at her in the mirror in the dim light of the car, were the last things Olivia remembered as sleep overtook her.

  Chapter Five

  Casey got back into the car, closing her door gently, trying not to make a noise. She put the coffees on the seat beside her and looked over her shoulder. Olivia was still sleeping like the proverbial baby. Her face relaxed enough to suggest she was in a deep slumber. The occasional twitch suggesting she might have been dreaming.

  Casey had pulled into the hotel parking lot, expecting Olivia to wake up as they parked and storm off into the hotel to raise hell about what a terrible day she’d had and how it was all Casey’s fault. She almost called David to get her side of the story in first, but that would have meant admitting to a disastrous first day on the job and she didn’t want to do that. David was one of her oldest friends, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be mad as hell.

  And blaming Olivia for being a bitch would get her nowhere. A lot of the people she’d driven for had treated her like crap. It came with the job, and there was never any point getting mad about it.

  She decided instead to simply let Olivia have a nap. Maybe it was what she needed and maybe, just maybe, she’d wake up acting a little more like the sweet, kind of shy woman she’d met in the sauna and a lot less like the entitled obnoxious TV star who had climbed into the back of her car.

  She took the lid from the coffee and blew on it before turning and considering Olivia again. Her face looked almost cherubic as she slept, her head poking out from underneath the jacket Casey had draped over her after it had become clear that she wasn’t going to wake up without a firm shake to the shoulders. Casey had done enough to upset her today and she wasn’t going to add an assault charge to her list of misdemeanors.

  She sipped the coffee. It was hot and black and just what she needed. But mostly what she needed was food—lots of it—and for Olivia Lang, TV star worried about bein
g accosted by her fans walking through the not-very-mean streets of Bloomsbury, to wake up in a much better mood than she took with her into sleep.

  She picked up her book vowing to make the most of the downtime this ridiculous situation afforded her, trying—and failing—not to steal glances at Olivia in the rearview mirror. She really was beautiful. It was a shame she didn’t have the attitude to match.

  “Where are we?” The voice from the back of the car sounded sleepy, and Casey couldn’t fight the urge to see if Olivia looked as gorgeous waking up from sleep as she did when she was sleeping. She looked over her shoulder.

  “The hotel. Specifically, the parking lot out front.”

  Olivia sat forward to look out the window, the jacket falling from her shoulders as she moved, her face a picture of adorable confusion. She turned back to Casey, and Casey waited for the telling off that was about to come forth.

  “Why are we parked out here?” She yawned. “Is that coffee?” Olivia’s eyes widened.

  “I got one for you.” Casey passed the extra coffee back to Olivia, who removed the lid without hesitation. “I didn’t know if you took milk, so I got it black. But I grabbed some creamer and sugar if you want it.”

  Casey watched as Olivia’s lips caressed the side of the Styrofoam cup, testing the liquid for temperature before taking a long, slow sip.

  “That’s good.” Olivia sank back into the seat, pulling the jacket back around her shoulders. “How long have we been out here? Why didn’t you wake me? I could have gone inside. It’s not your job to babysit me while I nap in a parking lot.”

  “We’ve only been here half an hour. We made good time back, but you were fast asleep when we got here, and I figured you needed some sleep. I think the jet lag was making you…” She hesitated ever so slightly.

  “A bitch?” Olivia lifted an eyebrow.

  “I was going to say cranky.” Casey could have said worse. “I didn’t want to wake you, and I wasn’t sure you’d thank me if I left you here alone.” She had been tempted. Olivia had behaved exactly as she’d expected, and she wasn’t impressed. “But I wouldn’t have let you sleep too much longer. I know you have things you wanna do.”