by R. S. Elliot
“Olivia, I’m swamped, I can’t—”
“We’re all drowning, Luke. Listen, I’ve done my best to keep the press conferences and speaking invitations at bay, but eventually, you’re going to have to go to one of them. The conference in San Francisco is perfect. You can kill a lot of birds with one stone and be back in forty-eight hours. I know you can do this.”
I sighed, massaging my brow. Olivia was seated in one of the nearby chairs, legs crossed primly as she sipped a triple Americano. Her coffee consumption probably funded all the cafes within a mile radius. Her lipstick this week was a deep berry, and it stained her cup like a smear of blood, which was appropriate since she seemed ready to rip anyone’s throat out without a moment’s notice. In all honesty, I was too.
“Do I have to tell them you’ve come down with something horrible,” she asked with a sigh.
“No, no,” I said, waving away the out she had given me. “I’ll go, you’re right. As usual.”
“Good. I’ll get the itinerary in order, and I’ll be there at the airport to meet you the morning of the flight, as usual. You’re going to be fine, Luke. Just shake hands and give your speech and pose for as many photographs as they want, and then you can come home.”
Photographs. The word stirred in my mind, hatching a plot that I knew I would enact even before I thought whether or not it was a good idea.
“Olivia…” I began. She glanced up from her papers, dark eyes searching.
“What is it?”
“I don’t want you to come along on this one.”
An ashen pallor came over her dark skin. “What?”
“It’s not that you aren’t a huge help to me!” I said quickly. “You’re the best there is, honestly, but you’re burning yourself out. You’re frayed down to the wire, Liv.”
“I’m not—”
“Yes, you are. I’ve been pushing you to the brink the last few months and I know I'm a hypocrite, but you need to take a step back. I’m afraid if I take you to San Francisco you’ll drop dead on me or something. You’re excellent at your job, but it isn’t essential for me to take my assistant along to every conference. I’ll manage, really.”
“Really?” She said, one skeptical brow creeping towards her hairline. She had never been good at letting other people take over her duties. Arguably, she was worse at it than I was. “You’ll be fine with no one to pull your schedule together or call the hotels or arrange dinner reservations or—”
“I’ll take Sonia instead. She’s a social butterfly; she loves these sorts of things. She can handle an itinerary just fine.”
“And what am I supposed to do here while you and Sonia try not to burn down San Francisco?”
I couldn’t help but smile at this. Olivia’s dry wit always brightened my mood, no matter the circumstances.
“Rest. You might have to look up the meaning of the word in the dictionary, but I think you can figure it out. Take some half days. Hell, take the whole day off. We’re past the launch now; the public reaction is out of our hands. You’ve done everything you could and then some. I want you to rest. I want you well.”
Olivia wanted to stick up for herself, to insist that she was happy to work until she dropped, but I saw her eyes soften. She needed this, and she knew it.
“What’s going on with you, huh? Usually, you’re Mr. Asshole, and now suddenly, you’re the soul of charity.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. You’re more useful to me alive than dead, so really I’m being selfish.”
“That sounds more like it,” she said, sweeping to her feet. “Alright. I’ll take a step back on this one. I’ll email Sonia and make sure she’s available. I’ll brief her to high heaven before the two of you leave and transfer over all your scheduling details to her phone.”
“You’re a Godsend.”
“Yes I am,” she said over her shoulder, and then disappeared back to her desk.
I waited a full minute before I retrieved my phone and pulled up my contacts, my mouth dry. I scrolled until I found Emily’s name and then typed out a simple message.
Are you free this weekend?
Chapter Twelve
Emily
If I was honest with myself, I hadn’t expected to hear from Luke again. It didn’t matter how tenderly he spoke to me the last time I saw him, or how passionate he had been when he took me, or even that we worked in the same building and had to pass each other in the halls awkwardly. He made the fact that we could not be trusted together quite clear. As angry as I was with him for saying it out loud, I knew he was right. No amount of good sense could keep me from looking at Luke Thorpe in a way that wasn’t appropriate for the workplace or fantasizing about his hands on my body, and probably not from offering myself to him the moment he asked. It was safer for us to be apart, and I appreciated him respecting my request for space. I knew that eventually, we would have to talk again and move past things, but the two weeks of silence helped me to breathe again. Not that I particularly wanted to, but Olivia had been right. I was smart enough to know that Luke was trouble, and we both needed space to think.
When his name lit up my phone on Monday morning, I could hardly believe it. Heart pounding, I read his message. This weekend? Was he asking me out on a date? A second later, another message followed.
I have a speaking engagement in San Francisco and need a photographer. I wondered if you would be interested.
Interested was putting it lightly. I was well beyond interested in advancing my career, and in seeing Luke again, but the last time those two things happened, the results had been explosive. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the way he felt inside me, the way his hands burned fingerprints into my skin. There was no forgetting it. I couldn’t go a single day without losing myself to the memory. I couldn’t sleep; I would always end up writhing in the dark under the oppressive weight of the memory, aching for release. My stomach dropped every day as I rode the elevator up to work. Would I see him today? Would he ever speak to me again?
I guess his text answered that question.
I stared at the screen for another minute. Surely he wasn’t inviting me along on a private trip? That would go against what he said the last time we spoke.
I leaned out over my desk to peek around the edge of my cubicle. The door to Luke’s office was closed, as usual. Olivia was typing away at her desk as though nothing had happened. Did she know he had asked me to travel with him? Something told me he probably hadn’t wanted to have that conversation since it would have surely turned into a screaming match.
I glanced back down at the phone in my hand, suddenly nervous that anyone might pass by and read the text over my shoulder.
I might be, I typed back. How long would we be gone?
Just one night. Sonia is coming along as well.
I breathed out a little sigh of relief, then realized with a twinge of guilt that I was disappointed as well. The last thing I needed in my life right now was unchaperoned time with Luke, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t sound appealing to some foolishly animal part of my brain.
I don’t have any other plans. I’d be happy to come along and snap some photos.
Great. We’re meeting at the airport at five am on Saturday morning. I can send a car around to pick you up from your apartment if you’d like.
The offer seemed insanely lavish for someone in my paygrade, but it must seem like nothing to Luke, who lived in a world of private cars and valet parking and penthouse suites. I couldn’t imagine what the accommodations would be like if we were traveling on the company dime. Like the handbags Olivia and Sonia sported, it seemed needlessly luxurious, but I had to admit that it also sounded appealing.
Maybe hanging out with the girls in the office was rubbing off on me.
That would be perfect.
Send your address over to Sonia, and she’ll handle the scheduling. Looking forward to having you as part of the team on this trip.
His texts were so succinct and business like
, the complete opposite of the sweet words he used on me in his office a few weeks ago. I desperately wanted to go to him, to knock on his door and ask what precisely this offer meant for us, but I knew that if he decided to text instead of call or walk out and talk to me himself, he wanted some distance. He was doing his best not to treat me indecently, and I should respect that. Saturday would come soon enough. And then, under Sonia’s watchful eye, I would figure out what this offer was about.
The crack of dawn on Saturday came earlier than anyone wanted it to, but I was up, dressed, and standing out on my front stoop with my bags in hand five minutes before the car arrived for me. I had my camera charged and ready to go in the satchel slung across my body, and I cradled it in my lap like a baby as I rode to the airport in tinted-window, leather-interior comfort. The car, shiny black with a partition between the front and back seats, was nicer than any I had ever ridden in, and it certainly beat the subway. I expected to be dropped off at one of the major airline terminals as we drew into the early morning traffic of La Guardia, but instead, my driver pulled around to a part of the airport I had never been to before. He got out before me and opened my door to help me out, popping the trunk and rolling my suitcase down a narrow strip of concrete. We were, to my surprise, not heading to a gate at all. We were walking straight toward a private jet.
I swallowed hard. There was no way this was happening. I knew that Luke was rich but seriously? A private jet?
Sonia was already there, looking breezy and runway ready in a cherry colored jumpsuit and tall strappy heels. A white snakeskin purse emblazoned with the Marc Jacobs logo shone on her hip. She gave me a jaunty wave from her position near the staircase that led up to the jet’s interior.
“Just in time! We’ll be departing in about a half hour. Come on in; I’ll show you around.”
I tried not to let my wonder show as I allowed one of the flight attendants to take my bags and followed Sonia up the stairs to the lap of luxury that I would sit in for the better part of the morning.
“Luke’s already inside,” Sonia said over her shoulder. “He’ll be happy to see you. He’s so glad he doesn’t have to put up with a bunch of press photos from people he doesn’t know. He can be very private about things.”
“Sure,” I said weakly. It was hard not to think about what Luke and I had done in private. He opened himself up to passion when the eyes of the world were off him.
The jet’s interior was as lavish as any rap song would have led me to believe it would be, albeit lacking in gaudy additions. Lushly carpeted floors sat beneath plush leather chairs that swiveled to face each other, and someone had set a tray with orange juice and scones out on one of the glass-topped tables. Subtle, naturalistic lighting and discreet matte black speakers set into the walls made the room feel more like the lobby of an upscale hotel than the passenger area of a plane. And in the middle of it all, sitting, feet up on an ottoman with a newspaper fanned out in front of him, was Luke.
He glanced up at us, and for a moment, our eyes met, green on blue. He held my gaze for a fraction of a second longer than was necessary and then said, with a courtesy that could only be described as professional, “Emily. Good to see you. How was the drive over?”
Sonia deposited herself carelessly in the seat across from Luke, leaving the one in the aisle next to him open for me. I hesitated next to it for a moment before I lowered myself down.
“Just fine, thanks. Wonderful, actually. Your driver is very thoughtful.”
“He’s one of the best. I’m glad he treated you right. I hope you got some sleep before the flight.”
I tucked my camera bag under my seat. I wasn’t sure if the same in-flight protocol applied to private jets as it did to commercial airlines, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t make a faux pas.
“A little. I kept waking up, though.”
Thinking about you, I wanted to add. And your mouth and your hands and your —
“Good luck sleeping on the flight,” Sonia put in. “It doesn’t matter how cushy these private planes are; I can never get any shut-eye suspended thousands of feet in the air.”
“Do you have flight anxiety?” I turned to Sonia when I asked her this, hoping that taking my eyes off Luke would take my mind off him as well.
“Not with two shots of tequila in me,” she said with a wicked smirk and waved over a flight attendant who had been waiting in the wings.
The flight was beyond comfortable. I had never enjoyed such elegant accommodations in my entire life, and I tried not to gawk at the giant flat screen television that appeared from the ceiling mid-flight, or the baskets of hot almond croissants, bagels, and muffins that were wheeled out after we reached altitude. They offered me champagne, which I declined for fear of looking like a lush, but Luke ordered himself a mimosa and insisted I have whatever I liked, especially since it was a long flight to San Francisco. So I followed his lead and sipped champagne and orange juice and nibbled on a croissant while trying to ignore how much he was staring at me — studying, really, with a look of amused delight tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“Have you ever been on a private jet before?” He asked me once the attendants had retreated to the back of the plane. His voice was gentle, sitting in that warm place that I heard when he was congratulating me and yanking down the zipper on my dress. If it had been anyone else, I would think they were making fun of me, but Luke just seemed curious.
“No,” I admitted. “Am I staring an awful lot?”
“Just a little,” he said with a chuckle. “But it’s okay. It’s alright to enjoy things. I remember the first time I got onto one of these. I never wanted to leave again.”
I glanced over to Sonia. She was definitely still awake but was dozing with her chin in her hand, and a silky eye mask pulled down over her face.
“It is pretty amazing. Do you fly everywhere like this?”
“No, only when I need to get somewhere quickly and need privacy, or when I’m doing a long haul international trip and don’t want to spend fourteen hours cramped between two other sleep-deprived businessmen on a commercial flight.”
“Sounds fair to me,” I said, taking another sip of my drink. Luke’s green eyes roamed over my face, and I felt my cheeks growing hot. Why couldn’t I control my blushing around him for ten minutes? It was a dead giveaway of my emotions and always had been. But Luke didn’t seem bothered. He just cut into his English muffin and egg and smiled over at me.
“I’m happy you could make it. On short notice, of course.”
“Of course! I was happy to get your text. About the job, I mean,” I added quickly.
Luke’s smile didn’t fall away, but his face was inscrutable. What was he thinking? Had he been thinking about me the same way I thought about him? Or had he put our illicit encounter out of his mind entirely, just added it to a list of lousy past decisions? Had he found someone else to warm his bed and take his mind off his intern? I didn’t have much to offer a man in his position, after all, and I had almost jeopardized his career.
“Good,” he said and turned back to his newspaper. We chatted again on and off during the flight, but mostly Luke went over his speech with Sonia, highlighting weak spots and making last-minute adjustments. I listened to him practice stirring words about innovation and change, and I couldn’t help but feel a pang of swelling pride in my chest. He truly was an exceptional man and one who believed in people and their dreams so much. I had no idea how I was supposed to get over him when he was so close to me, speaking so eloquently about the things he cared about. So I listened, miserable, and delighted at the same time.
It was dreary and overcast in San Francisco when we arrived, which put Sonia off her mood a bit. She grumbled about Luke’s promise of California sunshine as our bags were being unloaded onto the tarmac, but he didn’t seem sympathetic.
“I told you it wasn’t a vacation,” he said simply.
“Yeah,” Sonia countered. “And Olivia made it sound like she was sending me int
o the front lines of a world war, so who was I supposed to believe?”
“Just get me to where I need to go, and I promise there’ll be plenty of time for sightseeing later.”
The three of us waited at the front of the airport for our rental cars, Sonia and I loitered protectively over the bags while Luke lost himself in answering work emails. When a shiny black car that looked exactly like the one that picked me up from my apartment pulled up alongside the curb in front of us, Sonia rolled Luke’s bag towards the trunk. But then he looked up and shook his head.
“Sonia, I want you to take this one and go on a few errands before you head to the hotel. There’s a short list of things I need picked up on your phone; Olivia should have sent it over. And call the venue; make sure they set everything for the conference.”
“Are you sure?” Sonia asked, reluctantly taking the keys from the rental attendant who had driven the car over from the garage. “Olivia said not to let you out of my sights…”
“Olivia worries too much. I’ll be fine, I promise. I’ve got Emily. We’ll go straight to the hotel and get checked in, and I’ll get a little work in before we all meet up for lunch. The errands shouldn’t take too long.”
“Alright,” she said warily, her dark eyes skimming over me before she got into the car. I stiffened instinctively. Did she suspect something?
But if Sonia wondered about Luke’s reason for wanting to be alone with me, she kept her thoughts to herself. Within minutes she disappeared into the car and pulled out into the steady stream of midday traffic, leaving me alone with my bag and the last man on Earth I could be trusted with.
I considered saying something, looking over at him and even opening my mouth to ask why he would send Sonia off by herself. But I never got the chance to ask, as a black car identical to the one Luke called for Sonia pulled up alongside us. Luke was still engrossed in whatever email he was reading and hardly glanced up as he handed his bag off to the valet who placed it alongside mine in the trunk.