“I didn’t think so.”
“I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
Marsha is watching this little drama play out, of course, so I have to be discreet. “I have a plan.”
“That’s such a relief,” Charli says with a disbelieving eyeroll.
Honestly, it’s hard to blame her. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and she can probably sense my ineptitude, which is leaking from my pores along with stale whiskey.
“Once we reach cruising altitude, I’ll be serving brunch,” Marsha says, ignoring the tension in the room. “You can peruse the menu while we taxi.”
“She needs us to take our seats.” I nudge Charli toward the table. “Do you want to ride forwards or backwards?”
“Which one is safer?” she asks before plunking down in the nearest chair.
“Are you a nervous flier? There’s nothing dangerous about this.” I sit down opposite her.
“Oh my God. Are you trying to jinx us?” She leans over and knocks on the wooden wall panel.
“Easy now. I was just thinking that after all that’s gone wrong today, it’s time we catch a break.”
“Okay, stop it.” She knocks on the wall again. “Maybe that’s how luck works in the Drake family empire. You have a little snafu, and then the world rights itself.”
Marsha makes a strange choking sound which I assume is her trying not to laugh.
“But it doesn’t work that way in the real world.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine, but just so you know, I say this from a place of knowledge. Our safety record is unmatched, and in the event of an emergency, I could actually fly the plane myself.”
Her eyes bug out. “Really?”
“Sure. You can’t grow up in the Drake family empire and not know how to fly a plane. I was a qualified pilot at seventeen.”
“You are such a freak.”
I laugh for the first time all morning.
Charli is not like any of my other friends. My whole life, women have been trying to get closer to me. They want a trip on the jet. They want to join the Mile High Club. They think it’s sexy. And if the planes don’t appeal to them, the money does.
But not Charli. She looks vaguely revolted by this whole experience. She hasn’t touched the menu that Marsha set down in front of us. She only grips the cool edge of the marble table as the plane begins to move, taxiing on the tarmac and then, after a few moments’ delay, accelerating for takeoff.
“Breathe, doll. Everything is going well at the moment.”
“Neil!” she snaps, and I chuckle.
The silly nickname was an intentional ploy to distract her. I’ve been ordered to never call her “doll.” That’s how we met, actually. I mistook her for a member of the training staff, and casually called her doll, which is admittedly a patronizing name.
And she ripped me a new one.
Fun times.
“Now.” I push the menu across to her side of the table. “Let’s eat. I’m going to need a good meal to get us through this mess we made.”
She sighs deeply, then picks up the menu.
Thirty minutes later I’m hoovering down a huge plate of eggs and bacon, while a waffle waits its turn on a fluted china plate.
“You’re not eating,” I say to Charli between bites. “How can you cure a hangover if you don’t eat?”
She’s seated across from me, a wedge of barely touched quiche in front of her. “Neil, there are two kinds of people in the world—the kind who eat their feelings, and the kind whose feelings eat them. I think I’m the latter.”
My fork pauses on the way to my mouth, and I make a sad puppy-dog face, the kind that usually gets me out of trouble with women. “Hey, I’m so sorry.”
“You said that already,” she growls.
I have it so bad for Charli that her attitude only makes her more attractive to me. Even her growl is sexy. “I’m going to fix it. I promise. This is all my fault.”
“It’s not just your fault.” She puts her head in her hands and takes a deep breath. “This is my fault, too. Last night I had a lot to celebrate. And things got out of hand.”
She isn’t wrong. Before we’d started drinking ourselves silly, it had been a fortuitous night. She’d just won a medal at the women’s All-Star exhibition—a silver in the fastest skating competition. And my All-Star team had taken home a trophy. I’d stood on that podium thinking I knew a thing or two about how to live my life.
Things began to deteriorate pretty quickly after that. First, I’d fought with my ex-girlfriend. I’d told her we were done for good. It had been inevitable, and I’d do it again, but it had left me feeling guilty.
And when my sister—Iris’s bestie—had started in with her angry texts a half hour later, I’d just felt rage.
It’s my damn life, right? I can date who I want.
That had been the battle cry that had led me to drink more than one pour—my usual amount. After that first whiskey, I’d just kept on going.
I really don’t see why Charli is blaming herself. “Did you pour the whiskey down my throat?”
“No.” She snorts. “But I probably egged you on. You were in a ‘fuck Iris’ mood. And I’m always in a ‘fuck Iris’ mood. So I didn’t step in and tell you to slow down.”
“Not your job,” I grumble. “I’m pretty tired of people telling me how to live my life. And when you say you were in a ‘fuck Iris’ mood—” I use air quotes. “—Did you mean, like, literally? Or figuratively?”
I give her a cheesy grin, but the truth is I’m damn curious about what happened last night. Things are still not adding up for me—and not just the parts that I can’t remember. Because I distinctly remember Charli’s mouth on my dick.
But I spent the last year and a half thinking she wasn’t into men. At all.
“Not literally,” she clarifies. “I have never wanted to fuck Iris. She’s too prim. I’ll bet even her sex face is prim. Am I right?”
I shove another strip of bacon into my mouth so that I don’t have to answer. Iris’s sex face is definitely prim. She leaves her pearls on and only likes missionary. There’s no way I’m telling Charli that, though. I’m a gentleman.
A confused one.
“Help me out, here,” I try. “Didn’t you tell me last year that you didn’t do guys?”
“Well…” She looks guilty. “Those weren’t precisely my words. I didn’t say that I don’t like dicks. I simply said that I would never ride a hockey player’s dick. Do you hear the difference?”
“I guess I do. But—”
“You just assumed I meant all men. But I was just laying down some rules so that nobody would hit on me.”
“But then you changed your mind,” I point out. Last night I know she was about to saddle up and tango on my mango.
“Not necessarily.” She gives her red hair a careless toss, but I can see the heat climbing up her neck. It’s Charli’s one tell. She blushes easily.
“Oh, so I just imagined the part where you tore some of my clothes off? And I’m being literal here. My tux shirt is history.” And don’t get me started on the dick-sucking. The sight of her lips wet against my—