Sex Drive

by Susan Lyons

  “Just lazy, I guess. Brissie for Brisbane, bickie for biscuit.”

  I tried to focus on his words rather than on those warm fingers taking far too long getting the damned sweater off my other arm. “But the ‘ie’ forms are often no shorter. It can’t be laziness.”

  “Huh.” He paused. “Footy for football, tinnie for a tin of beer, damned if you’re not right. Guess it’s our way of making things a little friendlier.” With a final seductive stroke, he slid the sweater free. “There you go. Now, let’s see what others I can think of. Sunnies for sunglasses.”

  I turned to face him and took the sweater he handed me. “Thanks.”

  “Hottie for…” He paused, eyes twinkling.

  Damn, he was thinking back to the bookstore clerk’s comment about him being hot, and my response. Crossing my arms across my chest, trying to salvage my composure, I said, “Hottie? That’s one I haven’t heard.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched. “That’d be short for hot water bottle.”

  I had to chuckle. He’d set me up perfectly. “Not something I’ve had much need of in Sydney.”

  “Nah? Got something better to warm your bed?”

  “That would be telling.” My gosh, was that me? Almost…flirting?

  “Here you go,” a female voice broke in. I looked away from gleaming gray eyes to see a very attractive brunette flight attendant with a wide smile. “Amenity kits from L’Occitane.”

  She handed us the little bags. “Mr. Black, I see you’re all settled. And you’re Ms. Fallon. How ya going?” This was the Australian way of asking everything from “How are you?” to “How’s it going?” or “How are you doing?”

  “Fine, thanks.” I was surprised she’d addressed us by name. Obviously in business class the flight attendants had a list of seat assignments.

  Her brow furrowed. “You’re not traveling together, are you?”

  “No,” I said quickly.

  The man shot me an amused glance.

  “Right, then,” the woman said, face clearing and another smile flashing. “It’s a long flight, but I’ll do my best to make it a pleasant one.” Now she was looking directly at my seatmate, leaning into his space as still-boarding passengers stepped around her, and I thought she’d put a special emphasis on the word “pleasant.”

  “That’s good of you, Carmen,” he said, seeming quite happy that the fabric of her uniform trousers brushed his jean-clad knee. He sent her one of those eye-crinkling smiles.

  So he knew her name, too. I could see her being his type. Well, pretty much any man’s type. I gathered the two of them had been chatting—flirting?—before I arrived.

  Not that I cared, except I’d as soon not be ignored when it came to service. I cleared my throat to remind her I was there. “Thank you.” I paused. “Carmen.”

  She gave me a smile that looked a trifle pitying. Women like her always gave me an irrational urge to spout off the fact that I’d been awarded a PhD—summa cum laude—at the age of twenty-two. Ridiculous, because I knew perfectly well that academic credentials wouldn’t impress her. She’d be looking at my average figure, average face, average clothing, and knowing my attributes could never compete with hers.

  “May I offer you a glass of champagne?” she asked me.

  I swallowed the silly surge of…surely not jealousy? “That would be lovely.” The treat would be a nice start to a long trip, and maybe distract me from the man beside me.

  “Same for me,” my seatmate said.

  “Of course. Coming up.” Was she actually fluttering her eyelashes at him?

  When she went to talk to the older couple across the aisle, he turned to me. “All psyched up for ten hours on a plane? Any ideas how to pass the time?” he asked in a suggestive tone.

  Great. He was a “love the one you’re with” guy who’d flirt with whichever female was closest. Even a woman like me.

  The urge to banter had left me. “I have work to do.” I slid my tray table out of the arm of my chair and slapped the exam booklets down on it.

  “Yeah, happens I do, too.” Despite his words, he didn’t take out any work, just reclined his seat, adjusted the footrest, and closed his eyes.

  Fine. He didn’t care whether I chatted with him. I’d got what I’d hoped for: a seatmate who would leave me alone. Not that I wanted the attention of an arrogant flirt like him, but sometimes it truly irked me that men found me so easy to ignore.

  I tried to adjust my own footrest, but it didn’t cooperate, so I focused on the first exam. I’d barely started when my mobile—no, cell; I had to transition to Canadian terms again—rang.

  I pulled it out of my purse and saw from call display that it was my sister Kat. There were four of us, a three-pack plus one, with the one—the unplanned afterthought—being Merilee. I was the oldest at thirty-two, the plain brainiac. Kat was a year younger, Ms. Sociability. She lived in Montreal and handled PR for a gorgeous hotel.

  “Hi there,” I answered quietly. My seatmate’s eyes were still closed. “Can’t talk long, the plane’s almost loaded.” My brain was calculating time. It was five thirty at night here, which made it…“Kat, isn’t it three thirty in the morning? Are you just coming in or getting up?” Surely even a party animal like Kat wouldn’t stay out this late.

  “I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. Did you get the e-mail I sent a few hours ago? I haven’t heard back.”

  “It may be on my laptop. I downloaded e-mail before I left. I’ll look at it during the flight. Were you able to swing that leave?”

  Carmen was back with the drinks. I nodded my thanks as she handed me a flute of bubbly champagne. When she placed my neighbor’s drink on his tray, his eyes opened quickly enough.

  Kat was saying, “Do you know how difficult it is for me to take time off without notice?” She went on about all the people at the hotel who depended on her. My sister. Always the life of the party, be it in her social life or at her workplace.

  As she spoke, my seatmate and the flight attendant chatted away, accompanied by considerable eyelash-batting on her part. Didn’t she have other passengers to attend to? Or did she plan to spend the entire trip flirting with him, like he was God’s gift to womankind?

  I broke into Kat’s ramblings. “If it’s a real problem getting off work, don’t worry about it. As I said before, I can handle this.”

  There was a pause. Then, “Well, of course, I forgot that you’ve already handled one wedding, and so successfully at that.”

  Ouch. I knew my younger sisters had always resented me: my brains, the responsibility our parents had given me, the way I’d lived up to their hefty expectations. Now I’d pushed one of Kat’s buttons, so she’d retaliated by pushing one of mine. My failed marriage.

  If I’d been alone, I’d have sniped back about her brilliant ability to always pick the wrong guy. However, the flirtatious Carmen had departed and the man beside me apparently had nothing better to do than sip champagne and listen to my side of the phone conversation. So I said, “Sorry. It would be great if you could get off work and help out.” I picked up my own flute and took a calming swallow.

  “God, Theresa, you make it sound like it’s your project. It’s ours. All of ours. Yours and mine and Jenna’s. That’s what we agreed. We’ll work together to give Merilee the wedding of her dreams.”

  I dragged a hand through my hair and rubbed my temple, where a dull throbbing signaled the beginning of a headache. “Right. Of course.” There was no question I wanted the best for my baby sister. It was just that I preferred not to work with a team. No one else, especially my sisters, ever met my standards.

  “Anyhow,” Kat was saying, “if you’d have let me finish, I’d have told you I did arrange the time off. I’ll get train tickets and e-mail you the schedule. It’s about a four-day trip.”

  “If you flew, you’d be home in half a day.”

  “You know I don’t do planes.” Her voice held a warning edge and I could picture her face, brown eyes narr
owed, that vertical frown line bisecting her forehead. She was probably on the verge of a headache, too.

  Giving each other headaches was about the only thing we had in common.

  I sighed. Kat was the craziest mix of traits. She was fluently bilingual, had done very well in school, held a responsible job, and had dozens of friends and the most active social life imaginable. And yet, she had an irrational fear of flying and appalling taste in men.

  Not, of course, that my record with the opposite sex was any better. However, I knew better than to keep trying, whereas she was forever falling for someone new and totally wrong for her.

  Knowing no amount of logic would persuade Kat to fly, I asked, “Any word from Jenna? I left her a couple voice mails and e’d her, but no response.” Jenna was the next sister, the third of our three-pack, as we’d called ourselves long before Merilee was born. A year younger than Kat, Jenna would be turning thirty soon. She had carved out her niche in the family as the flaky one.

  “No. And we did all promise to keep in touch at least on a daily basis.”

  “You know Jenna. She loathes any sort of rules or accountability.”

  “True. But this is important.” Kat gave a frustrated growl. “She’s probably off in the wilderness with those birds of hers.”

  Jenna, who’d never stuck with one job—or man—for more than six months, had followed a surfer boyfriend to Santa Cruz and got involved in a peregrine falcon survey. “I’ll try her again from the airplane phone once we’re under way. Uh, what’s the time in Santa Cruz?”

  “Three hours different than me, so it’s like, almost one o’clock. Saturday night, Sunday morning. She’ll be out having fun, probably have her cell turned off. Or the battery will have run down because she forgot to charge it.” We shared a moment of silent understanding. “If you do connect with her,” she said, “get her to call me. I’m going to grab a couple more hours sleep, then I’ll be in at work getting things organized.”

  “Tell me about it.” My secretary and I had spent a good part of the last twenty-four hours doing the same thing.

  “Can’t believe we’ll all be in the same place at the same time. It’s been a while.”

  “Christmas the year before last.”

  A loudspeaker voice told the passengers to turn off electronic devices.

  “Kat, I have to go. I’ll check e-mail and voice mail in Honolulu.”

  “Right. Safe flight.”

  As I shut off my cell, I was shaking my head. When my sisters and I had been growing up, there’d been a lot of competitions and petty jealousies. We’d each developed distinct personalities and interests, and those had taken us in different directions. Now, living in four different cities in three countries, we rarely spoke, much less saw each other. Of course we all loved each other, but it was easier for us to love from a distance. It was kind of sad, but that was the way the Fallon girls had turned out.

  Now, thanks to Merilee, we were teaming up for the first time in ages. White lace and promises for her. For the rest of us, a little bit of hell as we tried to make nice—or nice enough—with each other to pull off a wedding in less than two weeks.

  “That’s not the way to start a long trip,” the man beside me said.

  “Sorry?” I turned to look at him and saw a twinkle in his gray eyes.

  2

  Damien Black grinned at the intriguing woman in the seat beside him. The sexy prof who was marking Sydney Uni exam booklets but didn’t have an Australian accent. The woman whose conversation on her mobile had given her a stress headache.

  The literary snob who thought his novels were superficial crap.

  Not that he necessarily disagreed. But, hell, they were fun to write and they were damned lucrative superficial crap. He had the best fucking job in the universe: making up stories, playing with imaginary friends, and getting paid well to do it.

  The prof intrigued him, and not only because she was hot in a subtle, classy way. He wondered how she’d react when she found out he was the guy whose books she’d dissed, but he was going to hold off on satisfying his curiosity. They had a long flight ahead of them, and together they could make it a hell of a lot of fun. But he stood a better chance if she got to know him before she learned his identity.

  “You’ve been shaking your head and heaving sigh after sigh,” he said. “And not drinking your champers.”

  She glanced at his empty glass. “Not a problem you’ve been suffering from, I see.”

  Had to admit, there was a definite appeal to a woman who wasn’t afraid to use her tongue. Banter was a good start. Maybe she’d soften up and think of a friendlier use for that tongue. “Drink up. It’ll help your headache.”

  She frowned. “I don’t have—” Then she winced. “Well, maybe the beginning of one.”

  The flight attendant arrived with the champagne bottle and a big smile. “So sorry, I certainly don’t want to neglect you.” She filled his glass.

  “Ta, Carmen.” The flashy brunette had told him her name when he’d first got on the plane and she’d recognized him.

  She cocked a brow at the prof. “You don’t care for it, Ms. Fallon? Can I get you something else?”

  “No, it’s fine. I was just on the phone.” She held up her closed mobile. “Which is off now, and I’m about to enjoy the champagne.”

  “Good on you,” Carmen said, then gave him a wink before she moved on.

  Yeah, Carmen had gushed all over him when he came on board. She’d made it clear she was available for a little action. Her, and about a hundred other girls in the two years since his first book hit the bestseller lists and he’d become a familiar face on TV talk shows. Not to mention, been voted one of the country’s ten sexiest bachelors.

  The “sexy bachelor” angle had featured prominently in the promo plan his agent and publicist had developed, a fact that at first he’d found humorous but had soon worn thin. This business of women flinging themselves at him had gotten a little old. Truth was, it wasn’t all that flattering when females swarmed all over a bloke just because he was famous and supposed to be sexy. Celebrity had its disadvantages.

  Truth was, the prof interested him more than Carmen. She was a turn-on, with an appealing face that wasn’t caked in makeup, a slim, shapely bod, and boobs that looked to be all her own. Plus, she intrigued him. The woman presented a challenge. Though she clearly wasn’t immune to the physical spark between them, she sure wasn’t throwing herself at him.

  Could he win her over before she found out who he was?

  He held out his glass to her. “Bottoms up, safe trip, don’t let the buggers get you down.” He’d have said “bastards” but figured it might piss her off.

  A chuckle spluttered out of her and her eyes warmed. Those eyes reminded him of the water in a billabong: shades of reddy brown brightened by specks of blue and green, like the reflections of red rocks and trees in blue waters. As with a billabong, a bloke could stare into their depths and lose himself. Especially now, when her amusement made them sparkle as if sunshine dappled the still water.

  She clicked her glass to his. “The buggers?”

  “Whoever’s got you sighing like a high wind through the gum trees.”

  Her lips twisted, more in rue than amusement. “My sister. Actually, all my sisters.” Her eyes widened and he sensed the information had slipped out, laughter creating a chink in her reserve. She glanced away and raised the glass to her lips.

  “Ah. Families. Can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em. Easiest to just avoid them.” That was his current strategy with his own family.

  “True.” She gazed into her glass. “But it’s not always possible.”

  “No?”

  She glanced up, eyes narrowing. “I really do need to work.”

  Why was she so intent on keeping him at a distance? He was about to ask when he felt a hand brush his right forearm.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Carmen purred, not sounding sorry at all. “We’re readying for takeoff. I ne
ed you to fold up your tables. You can hang on to your glasses and I’ll be by with more champagne once we’re in the air.”

  He heard a quick swallow on his other side, then the prof extended her glass past him. “I’m finished. You can take this, thanks,” she said coolly. He gathered she hadn’t exactly warmed to their flight attendant.

  “I’ll keep mine,” he said.

  When Carmen had gone, he turned to his seatmate. “You know what they say about all work and no play.”

  Her lips pressed together, their fullness folded in to make a thin line. When she released them, they were plump and a deep, natural pink. Ripe for kissing.

  But her voice was chilly. “Believe me, I do. They make Theresa a dull girl. Which I am. So, you might as well get over yourself and let me get on with my work. I’m sure Carmen will be more than happy to let you chat her up.”

  Interesting. Damien figured he was pretty damned observant for a guy—a writer had to be—and she’d just delivered a whack of information. Not only her name, but the fact that folks thought she was too serious and didn’t hold back from telling her. Now, what was that bit about Carmen? Did he detect a hint of jealousy?

  This was going to be one interesting flight.

  He decided to let Professor Theresa Fallon win this round. When they were in the air, having drinks and appetizers, she’d have to put the exams away.

  “Okay,” he said easily. “You get on with your work then.”

  Besides, it wasn’t like he didn’t have work to do himself. This wasn’t a vacation. He’d finished a weeklong book tour in Australia, had a couple days at home in Sydney to get turned around, and was now headed off for a month’s tour in the United States and Canada. With him, he had the galleys for Gale Force, which had to be back to his publisher in a week. And of course, there was Scorched Earth, the book he was currently writing. Or had been, until a plot point had hung him up.

  Beside him, Theresa was again studying the exam. Absentmindedly she lifted her hand and rubbed her temple through short, gleaming auburn hair. The gesture made him focus on her slim fingers, which, even with their short, unpolished nails, had a particular feminine grace. Fingers that he’d bet would feel nicer on his skin than Carmen’s red-tipped claws.