“I’m sorry.”
“Hey, it’s not your fault. I’m the one who forgot it.”
He clapped a hand to his heart. “You mean I didn’t distract you?”
“Well, you were annoying.” She pointed ahead. “Quick, before that guy leaves.”
They hurried to an information desk where the attendant was closing up and he directed them to a bank of telephones, though his expression suggested they were going to have trouble.
Summer stood next to Jai as they called one place after another. It soon became clear that with the airport now closed, every on-site hotel room was already occupied.
“Damn,” Jai muttered. “While we wasted time racing between gates, everyone else snagged beds.”
“The last one I tried said they’re letting people sleep in their lobby.”
Jai dragged his fingers through his untidy black hair. I could do that for you. She sighed. At least she’d not said it.
“The hotels in the center of town have rooms but apparently there’s no transport running.” He chewed his lip.
I could do that for you too. Just a little nibble. The muscles clenched between her legs and her panties dampened. Even staring at the lovely Javier hadn’t had that effect. She swallowed hard.
“Any ideas?” he asked.
Oh yes. Loads. You, me and… “No…yes…maybe,” she mumbled.
He gave her a curious glance.
Oh god. Now I have to say something. “I’m pretty sure if we leave the secure side of the airport, they won’t let us back through if we change our minds because we don’t have boarding cards. The check-in desks will be shut if the airport’s closed so we won’t be able to book a flight until tomorrow, won’t get on a flight until tomorrow evening. If we go to a hotel and find the lobby’s packed, we’re stuck on that side rather than this.”
“Good point. And I’m worried you might freeze to death the moment we set foot out of the building. Neither of us is dressed for snow.”
“So we’re probably better staying here?”
They looked at the chairs; rows of hard plastic seats with armrests, which made lying on them impossible unless you were thin as a plank and could slide underneath.
“We can’t sleep on those,” she said. “It’ll have to be the floor.” Especially appealing if you’re lying next to me.
“Alcohol might make it feel softer,” he said.
You could rest your head on me, your hand on me, your—
“Wonder if there’s anywhere still open in here to get a drink.” He smiled at her. “Want to find out?”
Summer nodded, flushed with gratitude that he hadn’t just dumped her. She suspected if he’d asked if she’d like to go skinny-dipping with great white sharks or play in a pit of vipers, she’d have smiled and nodded. All this time thinking how strong she’d been not to sleep with anyone, and it was just because she’d not been sufficiently tempted. She always had been very picky.
“Where did you fly in from?” he asked as they wandered along the concourse.
“I started off this morning in Bogota, flew to Cancun and then here. I’ve been working in Colombia, Peru and Chile for the last eighteen months.”
“Doing what?”
“Meteorological research. I work for a company that supplies meteorological information and data to governments and a wide range of industries.”
He raised his eyebrows. “A weather girl and your name’s Summer?”
“I know. And a Winter boy who doesn’t like snow. How about that?”
He laughed.
“What about you?” she asked.
“I’ve been in LA. Hey look, a wine bar. That’ll do. Vino Volo.”
The place was busy, presumably with everyone who was stuck overnight and had the same idea as them, and they were given a table in the corner.
“What can I get you?” asked the waiter.
“What would you like?” Jai asked. “Red, white, something in between?”
“There’s not much I won’t drink apart from tea.”
Jai smiled. He is so good-looking. It was hard not to stare, but Summer guessed everyone told him he was gorgeous.
“Would you like to try a selection of our wines?” the waiter asked.
Jai shrugged. “Why not?”
The waiter held his pencil ready. “And to eat?”
Summer glanced at the list. “The brie-and-prosciutto sandwich. Just a half, please.”
“And I’ll have the other half.”
As the waiter walked away, Summer glanced across the table to see Jai staring at her. Chiseled cheekbones, sexy lips and his bloody eyelashes are longer and thicker than mine. Bastard. He looked like a model, though a slightly tired or hung-over one.
“What were you doing in LA?” she asked.
“Having lots of meetings.”
“What sort of business are you in?”
“Movies. I’m a scriptwriter.”
She widened her eyes. “With meetings in LA? You must be good.”
“I’m far too modest to agree with that, but since you’re twisting my arm, and applying thumbscrews, yep, I think I’m pretty good.”
She smiled. “Any Oscars yet?”
He laughed. “No, but I’ve been invited to the ceremony this year.”
“Wow.” Presumably on the arm of some stunning starlet. She pictured him in a tux and her spine tingled. “Do you use your material or convert other people’s books into screenplays?”
“The project I was pitching was my own, though they didn’t like my title.”
“Which was?”
“A Demon’s Guide to Sex.”
Oh god. He said that just as she took a slug of water, complete with ice cube, and she almost choked.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes, sorry. I think that lump of ice would have taken down the Titanic.”
Jai had no idea what he was playing at. He was writing a screenplay but he’d never told anyone that before, not even the two guys he lived with. The chances of anyone significant ever reading it were miniscule, let alone his being invited to pitch in LA. Why did I say that? Though he had been invited to the Oscars.
Shit, he knew why he’d lied. He wanted to get as far away from the truth as he could and he wanted to impress her. If he’d told her he was a model, well, that might have impressed her but not the rest of it. I’m thick as a brick. Just a pretty face who lets his agent fuck him in more ways than one.
It was refreshing not to be recognized. She wasn’t pretending. She had no idea who he was from his face or his name. He wasn’t arrogant enough to think every woman should find him familiar, but if she’d been in the UK or the US over the last eighteen months, it would have been hard to miss him. He was all over the place—on posters, magazines, TV and even the backs of buses. Fixx, a fashion line up there with Prada, Armani and Hugo Boss, was not only into clothes, but perfume, glasses and accessories, and Jai was the face of the company.
He wished he wasn’t so wired and could relax and enjoy this, because it had been a long time since he’d had a normal conversation with an attractive woman who wasn’t drooling over him and pestering him about what it was like to be a model and what did he think of Naomi bloody Campbell. Summer was tall, tanned, curvy in the right places, had the most amazing blue eyes and freaky short pink hair that made him want to smile every time he looked at her. The only time he’d seen hair that color was on his cousin’s My Little Pony. Before he’d cut it off.
The wine arrived and as the waiter rattled through his spiel, Jai stared across the table at Summer’s breasts. Unless he was mistaken, and he was pretty sure that wasn’t the case, she had piercings in her nipples. His dick perked up without any artificial aid. Christ. Down boy.
“This one is a cheeky little number from California that’s been called liquefied Viagra.”
Jai bit back his smile. I can’t use that as an excuse when I haven’t even tasted it.
The waiter grinned at Summer and a
surge of annoyance rushed over him. She’s with me, dickhead.
“It has a sexy bouquet with a hint of caramelized blackberries, cappuccino and roasted sunflower seeds and the texture is delightful.” The waiter swirled the glass. “There are no hard edges.”
Summer pressed her lips together. He could see her struggling not to giggle.
“Not bad,” Jai said after he’d taken a sip. “I totally get the sunflower seeds, though not the Viagra. Not yet anyway.”
Summer turned a snort of laughter into a cough. Jai thought about making a joke about not being a wine buff but being an expert on Viagra, and then thought again. He wouldn’t be lying, she’d think he was, and it would all get much too complicated.
She took a swallow and turned to the waiter. “You know, I think this is one dimension away from being the best wine I’ve ever tasted.”
He beamed and Jai rolled his eyes. Once the waiter had gone, she groaned.
“It tastes nice,” she whispered. “But no hard edges? Liquefied Viagra? What sort of crap is that?” She gave an unladylike snort.
I don’t need the wine. Nor Viagra. Nor a fucking cock ring. You’re enough to make my dick hard. Which was a surprising novelty considering his little problem over the last couple of months. He shifted in his seat.
“What kind of meteorological research were you doing?” he asked.
She winced. “Sure you want to know?”
“As long as it wasn’t about the imminent arrival of another ice age, yes. I thought that was just a throwaway line about the guy in Russia and now I know you’re an expert on the weather, you have me worried. Were you researching snow?”
“It was a part of it. Snow’s fascinating and meteorologists are no different from the general public. We always want to know how many inches and how long it will last.”
What a line to feed me. He leaned forward. “About seven and half inches and I’ll last as long as you like.”
She clapped her hand to her mouth as she laughed, then said, “About? Haven’t you measured it? I’m not interested in estimates. I deal in accuracy.”
Her lips curved in a grin and he smiled, reached for his wine. When he realized he’d drunk it, he twirled the stem in his fingers. “I thought global warming was supposed to be the problem, not an ice age.”
“We scientists like hedging our bets.”
“So you’re never wrong.”
“We’re often wrong but we always have an excuse.”
“Ah. What were you researching?”
“The changing frequency of the El Niño Southern Oscillation.”
“Is that measured in inches and longevity?”
She laughed. “Longevity, yes. Now remember when your eyes start to glaze over that you asked for this. El Niño and La Niña are extreme phases of climate cycles. They’re intermittent disruptions affecting the short-term climate around the Pacific Basin. The sea temperature warms up with the El Niño effect and cools down in La Niña periods.”
“Keep going.”
“You sure?”
He nodded. She was mesmerizing even if he didn’t understand a word.
“Usually sea-surface readings off the west coast of South America range in the 60s to 70s Fahrenheit, while they rise to over 80 degrees in a warm pool in the central and western Pacific. When it’s an El Niño episode, the warm pool extends to cover the tropics but in a La Niña period, the easterly trade winds strengthen and cold water moves along the west coast of South America and the equator. We’re in an El Niño phase at the moment. It’s detected by satellites, moored buoys, drifting buoys, sea level analysis and—damn it, sorry.”
She blushed and his heart jumped.
“I’m not good at explaining and get carried away. Did any of that make sense?”
He’d been too busy looking at her lips to try to understand most of it. “Hot boys, cool girls.”
Her delighted gasp made his stomach flutter.
“Exactly. That’s a brilliant way to remember. La Niña is a cool girl and El Niño a hot boy.” She gave a rueful grin. “I usually stun people into silence when I start talking. They say they want to know all about it but they don’t really. Not the technical bits and I could talk for hours, believe me.”
Jai suspected he could listen to her for hours. He wished he’d been to university, but then again, he wasn’t clever enough. Even if he’d gone to some low-grade establishment and studied gardening, he’d have fucked it up sooner or later and destroyed all the plants.
The sandwiches arrived with more wine.
“Now I’ve killed the conversation, you need to liven it up,” she said. “What’s A Demon’s Guide to Sex about, apart from the obvious?”
“Well, it starts with this sexy weather expert who gets stranded at a snowbound airport and ends up under attack by a demon. What are the chances?”
She chuckled. “Alternatively?”
“A couple of demons who come to the UK on an official mission to find a runaway soul but they go looking for sex, which they’re denied in hell, and eventually they find love. It’s a comedy.” Did I need to say it was funny?
“That’s much more interesting than weather fluctuations. Tell me more.”
She was easy to talk to, asked entirely the right questions, laughed when he’d hoped she would and made him laugh too. Genuinely. And that was another first for a long, long while. And he hadn’t drunk too much. Another first. Fuck it, am I ill?
He wouldn’t—couldn’t—see her again, though he wished he could. He suspected she’d want to see him. Was that arrogant? Yes, it fucking is. But he couldn’t afford to see this become more than a pleasant way to pass a few hours until the flight home. They couldn’t get too involved in that length of time, especially without a room. Could they?
Jai didn’t do involved. Thoughts of what he’d gotten up to for the last two days bombarded his head and he suppressed a shudder. Outside of Marta and Saul’s influence, he stuck to one-off fucks that he could walk away from and he hadn’t even had one of those for a long while. Too many women just wanted to shag a celebrity to make them famous too. With those monsters, Saul and Marta, sitting on his shoulders, having an actual girlfriend was impossible, though Saul linked him with some vacant beauty every now and again. Krista Mills was the latest.
“You ought to get the demons to go looking for women at a snow dome,” Summer said. “They’d think the snow was a novelty and would get all silly. Maybe they’d try to ski and melt the snow when they fell.”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
“Of course it isn’t.” She mock scowled. “Cold drinks too. They’d never have had those before. Lots of crushed ice and you could give them brain freeze. They’d really freak out. It makes me freak out. Maybe they’d buy loads of ice and bathe in it or something and get addicted to ice lollies.”
He pulled his notebook from his bag and scribbled a few lines. “Good ideas.”
“I have one of those too.” She reached into her backpack and took out a small tatty book. “I call it Infinite Shades of Gray because there are a lot more than fifty.”
“Fifty what?”
Her eyes lit up. “Clouds. I collect them. Well, not the actual cloud, obviously, though I did try when I was little. I rushed around in the mist with an empty bottle, pressed the top on and when I got home was upset to see all I had were drops of water. My dad explained condensation and that was it, I was hooked.”
“Are there many types of cloud?”
She gave him a pitying look. “You shouldn’t have asked me that. If there was an Olympic medal for talking about clouds, I’m not being modest when I say I’d have a good chance at the gold. Look at my book.”
He took it from her and opened it. “Mamma clouds?”
She blushed again, which was adorable. His cock thought so too. Not a scrap of makeup on her tanned face. No pretending to be anything else. Just her.
“You would pick that one,” she said. “Mamma means udder in Latin. Mamma clouds
hang below other clouds. Hence the idea of an udder. Each lobe is a mile or two across.”
She’d drawn a picture. They looked like boobs.
“So are they storm clouds?”
“They’re associated with storms but they form at the rear not the front. So when you see mamma clouds, the storm’s already passed over.”
She’d listed when and where she’d seen them and referenced the sightings to photographs. He flicked through the book to the back and she snatched it from his hand.
“Now you have me intrigued,” he said and grabbed it back.
There was a long list and an image reference next to each item. “Dragon, dragon with baby, cow, cock and balls…” He laughed and handed her the book. “Shapes of clouds?”
“Yes, Mr. Smarty-Pants, and if any of my colleagues ever find out, I’ll never live it down.”
“I won’t tell. I’d like to see some of those photos.”
“The dragon with baby? Or the cow?”
“Definitely the cow.”
* * * * *
An hour later, Jai was drowning in a perfect way. Summer was smart and funny. Too smart and funny for him. Even so, at a different time, and in a different place, he’d have persuaded her back to his bed, and the telephone number he’d give her would have been the right one, and he’d have called her when he said he would because she might be The One.
His dick went rigid with shock. Or something else.
But there was no different time, no different place. He was who he was and he had no future until Marta and Saul were either bored with him or were dead. Or he was dead. Buried under a ton of ice in an ice age. Not a likely scenario and not going on his list. Oh hell, why not if it might happen next year? His cock deflated.
“You’ve gone all moody,” Summer said. “What’s wrong?”
He’d thought he’d hidden that. Shit. “Just thinking about how hard that floor is going to be.”
“I’ve slept in worse places. At least it’s clean. No llama poop or guinea pig bones.”
He’d slept in worse places too though the beds had been comfortable and the sheets high-quality Egyptian cotton, but the people with him—fucking bastards. It wasn’t where you slept but who slept with you.
Summer Girl, Winter Boy Page 4