Stella squinted at him, wondering what business it was of his what line she was in, even though she was in the right one anyhow. As she looked at him she noticed he had the warmest brown eyes, with thick, long lashes that were, to be truthful, wasted on a guy. Though they looked damned good on him.
“Pardon?” she said, just wanting to get the ninety-minute flight from Milan to Paris over with so she could get some shut-eye.
He pointed again at her boarding pass. “Ecco. Here. Your boarding pass has you in ‘zona quattro’, zone four, but you’re standing in the group for zone two. I’m afraid you need to go to the end of that line.” He pointed to a queue that had a good thirty people in it. She counted the number of people in front of her in the current line in which she stood: only about six. She furrowed her brow. Who was this clown trying to police the airport line? So maybe she hadn’t even looked at her boarding zone. What was the harm to him?
“Look, uh, signor,” she said with emphasis. “My friend is in zone two and we’re sitting together so I just got in line with her, assuming we’d be boarding at the same time. See, look at her boarding pass.” She pulled the slip of paper from her friend’s hands and held it up next to hers. “See, she’s in seat 27 B and I’m in... I’m in...”
“Ah... It appears that was the confusion,” he said. “You’re in seat 14D.”
Stella shook her head, her long, auburn waves dancing angrily across her shoulders. “Wait a minute. That’s not right. We’re supposed to be seated next to each other. What the—”
She was about to stomp over to the gate agent to fix the situation when an announcement was made that the flight was overbooked, which meant there would be no correcting of wrong seating assignments. Stella groaned. She still didn’t understand why the guy had to be such a bossypants about it. Who died and made him the airport Stasi?
“What a coincidence! It looks like your friend and I are seated next to one another.” The man combed his fingers through his thick, wavy dark hair. As much as Stella wanted to hate him for being such a buzzkill, he was awfully easy on the eyes. Even her overly-tired, void-of-a-good-night’s-sleep eyes. She smiled one of those smiles you’d force onto your unhappy face after the nurse tells you you’ve gained ten pounds at your annual physical. Woo-hoo. Mr. Tall, Dark and Rigid gets to sit next to her friend and she’s stuck in zona quattro, waiting forever to even get on the plane. Grrrr.
The man reached his hand out to Alexa. “Forgive my manners. I’m Dominico. Dominico Romeo.” He turned and nodded as well to Stella and attempted to shake her head, which she ignored and instead crossed her arms and tucked her hands neatly beneath her armpits. Zona quattro my ass. Those airline zones were bogus, anyway. Every time she flew she got stuck in the one that was the last to board. It didn’t matter where she sat on the plane, it was always the wrong damned zone. She just wanted to get on the plane, put her seatbelt on, have the plane take off, and finally settle in for a cat nap, which would have to suffice until she got back to her apartment.
Ugh, but the Nudge seemed to want to engage in conversation for some reason, which was plucking her last nerve.
“Yeah I had hoped to get a seat in first class, or at least business class, but I had to change flights at the last minute, and this was all they had.”
Stella turned so that only Alexa could see her and pretended to be him talking, taking great joy in mocking him. Pretentious git. First class, schmirst class.
It was a shame she couldn’t just tell the guy to go to hell, but that wasn’t in her nature. She grew up in in an environment of conflict, with warring parents and warring step-parents and combative step siblings. She got quite practiced at hiding her animosity toward anyone who pissed her off, and she would do so yet again now. But still, it really irked her.
The gate agents announced that boarding was about to begin, and she stood there and watched as Alexa and Mr. Romeo—as if. He was about as Romeo as, well, hmmm. Actually he was sort of Romeo-handsome. And he was tragic—in that his personality obviously sucked. so that fit into the whole Romeo thing. Maybe he’d swallow some poison over the loss of a girlfriend, or whatever it was that Romeo guy did for Juliet, and she could take his seat on the plane. Did they serve strychnine on airplanes? She could send him a complimentary glass, on the rocks.
She stood there with the weight of her overloaded purse tugging on one shoulder, her computer bag on the other, watching as streams of people were being allowed onto the plane while her miserable zone four line stood, constipated. It took forever but finally they called her group, the last one, naturally. As she wheeled her carryon suitcase forward, a gate agent halted her just before scanning her ticket.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” she said. “You’re only allowed one carryon item.”
Stella frowned. “But that’s all I have, this suitcase.”
The agent pointed at her shoulders. “What are those?”
“They’re my personal items!”
The gate agent pinched her lips shut and shook her head. She held up her pointer finger. “You’re allowed one personal item. You’re going to have to gate-check that suitcase.”
Stella rolled her eyes. If she’d have just gotten on board before half of the city of Milan got on the plane, she’d have gotten away with it. But with all those people hauling all that luggage—most of them far more than she had—of course they were going to run out of room for carryon bags. Meanwhile she had all of her cake-decorating equipment in it in case of last-minute repairs. She couldn’t afford to lose that because she couldn’t afford to replace it, and it was her livelihood.
She heaved a sigh, grabbed the baggage check ticket from the gate agent, and relented.
It wasn’t till she was on the plane, her bag long separated from her, that she remembered she’d tucked her breakfast into the rolling suitcase, in which she’d stashed some of her favorite Italian cheeses and salume. The icing on the cake was when she arrived at her seat to see she was sandwiched between a very large man whose leg-spread had spilled into her personal space by about ten inches and a child with a whooping-cough sound wheezing from his chest and a booger-encrusted nose whose middle name, she was sure, was “contagion”.
At the rate things were going, this day could only get better. Or at least that was the optimistic take she was going to try to at least pretend to believe.
The upside was minus the rolling luggage, at least there was no last-minute desperate search for enough overhead bin space to jam her supersized carryon bag. But of course she had to wedge her laptop bag into a compartment in the far in the back of the airplane, which meant she’d have to wait for everyone else to get off the plane before she could walk the opposite direction of exiting passengers to recoup her bag. Lovely.
Once she finally settled into her seat, she carefully inspected the safety card. If there was to be a crash-landing, she wanted to know how to get out of this tin can in the air. Then, taking care to turn her head away from Typhoid Tommy next to her, she discovered the airline offered up a clever little app called Seat Chat, which allowed passengers to send messages to friends who were in other sections of the plane, using the screen in the headrest in front of them. At least she could communicate with her Alexa, if she couldn’t be next to her. Far be it from that goon to have done the gentlemanly thing and let her sit next to her good friend.
She pressed the screen and typed in the seat number she wanted to send to.
“Hey girl. It’s me. Stuck in passenger hell between a diseased boy determined to take advantage of my sleep-deprived immune system and share his germy air with me, and a man even more obnoxious than that cranky guy, the blue-blooded Mr. First Class jerk who kicked me out of line with you. What a jerk. I mean seriously. Who died and made it his business where I stood or what zone I entered through. I hate arrogant men like that. If he was actually a nice man, he’d have done the gentlemanly thing and offered to switch seats so you and I could sit together. Instead I’m sure he’s sitting there looking all hot
with his bedroom eyes and ugh, I couldn’t help but look—with Italian men and those tight pants, how could you miss it? —he was seriously packing. Hope that thing doesn’t get in the way of your seat haha! Now that makes me laugh—can you imagine him with his big old Italian Stallion cock spilling into your personal bubble? You’d best be careful or you’ll be bitten by his love snake. In your personal bubble, no less. Omigod, I needed a good laugh after the past few hours. God I’m so freaking exhausted. I cannot wait to burrow under my duvet and crash out for about twenty-four hours. By now I’d be napping happily were it not for the jerk with the big dick. Or is he the dick with the big dick? Ugh, promise me you two won’t fall in love in the next ninety minutes and then I’d have to be nice to him for the rest of my life and go to your wedding and then I’d have to admire the babies you made together even though every time I held your baby and stared into its eyes I would be reminded of what a complete prick your baby daddy was. But you’re too smart for that. Maybe when he’s not looking you can spit in his drink or something. I’d appreciate the passive aggressive gesture on my behalf. Oh well, I wish I had one of those hospital masks to cover my nose and mouth against the crud that little junior here is spewing my way.”
She re-read it and laughed at her smartass comments. Oh, god, Alexa will be peeing her pants cracking up at this message. She hit the “send” button, put her seatback in its upright position, and awaited take-off, hoping the rest of the day would be drama-free and filled with sweet dreams.
Blue-Blooded Romeo
coming July 25, 2017.
Available now for pre-order!
About the Author
Jenny Gardiner is the author of #1 Kindle Bestseller Slim to None and the award-winning novel Sleeping with Ward Cleaver. Her latest works are the It’s Reigning Men series, featuring Something in the Heir; Heir Today Gone Tomorrow; Bad to the Throne; Love is in the Heir; Shame of Thrones; Throne for a Loop; It’s Getting Hot in Heir; A Court Gesture; and her new Royal Romeos series, featuring Red-Hot Romeo; Black Sheep Romeo, Red Carpet Romeo, Blue Collar Romeo, Silver Spoon Romeo, and the upcoming Blue-Blooded Romeo. She also published the memoir Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who's Determined to Kill Me, now re-titled Bite Me: a Parrot, a Family and a Whole Lot of Flesh Wounds; the novels Anywhere but Here; Where the Heart Is; the essay collection Naked Man on Main Street, and Accidentally on Purpose and Compromising Positions (writing as Erin Delany); and is a contributor to the humorous dog anthology I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship.
Her work has been found in Ladies Home Journal, the Washington Post, Marie-Claire.com, and on NPR’s Day to Day. She was also a columnist for Charlottesville’s Daily Progress for over a decade, and is the Volunteer Coordinator for the Virginia Film Festival.
She has worked as a professional photographer, an orthodontic assistant (learning quite readily that she was not cut out for a career in polyester), a waitress (probably her highest-paying job), a TV reporter, a pre-obituary writer, as well as a publicist to a United States Senator (where she first learned to write fiction). She's photographed Prince Charles (and her assistant husband got him to chuckle!), Elizabeth Taylor, and the president of Uganda. She and her family and menagerie of pets now live a less exotic life in Virginia.
Visit Jenny at her website and sign up for her newsletter, her blog, or find her on Facebook and Twitter. And every blue moon she’ll post adorable pictures of her pets on Instagram as @thejennygardiner.
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Also by Jenny Gardiner
Confessions of a Chick Magnet
Skirt Chaser (Coming Soon)
Falling for Mr. Wrong
Falling for Mr. Wrong
Falling for Mr. Maybe
Falling for Mr. No Way In Hell
Falling for Mr. Sometimes
Falling for Mr. Right
It's Reigning Men
Something in the Heir
Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow
Bad to the Throne
Love is in the Heir
Shame of Thrones
Throne for a Loop
It's Getting Hot in Heir
A Court Gesture
It's Reigning Men - Books 1 - 3
The Royal Romeos
Red Hot Romeo
Black Sheep Romeo
Red Carpet Romeo
Blue Collar Romeo
Silver Spoon Romeo
Blue-Blooded Romeo
Big O Romeo
Standalone
Sleeping with Ward Cleaver
Where the Heart Is
Accidentally on Purpose
Compromising Positions
Naked Man on Main Street
Bite Me - A Parrot, a Family, and a Whole Lot of Flesh Wounds
Anywhere but Here
Slim to None
Watch for more at Jenny Gardiner’s site.
Silver Spoon Romeo Page 12