“You’re welcome. I can’t wait for to tomorrow.”
“Me too, but I’ve got to go home and finish packing. I have to bring a little of everything since I don’t know where we’re going.”
He kisses me quick and says, “Sounds good, sugar. Let’s go.”
And he takes me home with my new clunky shoes and puffy pink vest.
“You know it’s really hard to pack when I don’t know where I’m going. Can you please give me a tiny clue?” I yell from my bedroom while I stand in front of my bed with my suitcase laid out in front of me overloaded with clothes for every occasion. I hear Jude making his way to me with Mia prancing after him.
When he gets to my room, he proceeds to move me out of the way and starts digging through my neatly folded clothes. “Hey. That took me a long time.”
He removes a super cute short flowy tunic I wear with leggings, two pairs of jeans with bling on the pockets, a cowl neck sweater with fringe on the neck, three semi dressy tops, a pair of strappy black heels and leopard print flats, tossing them all aside. He continues to dig through my suitcase but all of a sudden stills. He brings his hand up slowly holding my new Victoria’s Secret midnight blue nightie that is sheer under the bust that has matching lace panties.
He lets it fall holding it by the straps and I complain, “That was supposed to be a surprise.”
His only response is to drop it back into the suitcase muttering, “You can bring that.”
Then he turns walking to my closet and I fold my arms across my chest to wait on him. He returns with a huge stack of sweats, t-shirts, plain jeans, my winter running leggings and a couple pairs of lounge pants.
“Here,” he thrusts it into my arms. “You might want all of this.”
“What if we go somewhere dressy? I’ll have nothing to wear,” I protest.
He grins at me. “Don’t worry, we won’t go anywhere dressy.” Then he turns to leave the room.
I proceed to repack and hang all of my nice stuff back up.
About an hour later, I’m lying in bed reading on my Kindle while listening to Jude close down my house. I can’t concentrate on my book thinking about my surprise trip tomorrow. Jude comes in, puts Mia on the bed with me. “Be right back.” I hear him brushing his teeth and getting ready for bed.
He comes in and climbs in bed with me, I look over to him and try to clarify our plans. “We’re leaving at eight? Leaving the house at eight, not having to be somewhere else to leave at eight, right?”
“You really do have an issue with surprises, don’t you? Yes, we will leave here at eight, drop Mia off with Emma and be where we need to be when we need to be there. You need to relax.”
“It’s hard to relax when I don’t know where I’m going.”
He scoots himself down in the bed, takes my kindle out of my hands and tosses it to the foot. Then he yanks me down so I’m facing him, his hand comes behind my knee pulling it up and over his hip.
“Do I need to make you relax, Gabby?” he whispers against the skin under my ear.
“Maybe,” I whine, but this feels good. He’s got his hand on my ass pulling me in tight to him and he still has his mouth on my neck.
“Alright, let’s relax you,” he whispers and his hand dips into the back of my panties. His head comes up to kiss me deep and rolls me to my back. “Don’t worry about this weekend, it’ll be great, trust me.”
“Okay,” I give in and weave my fingers into his hair kissing him back. He does all kinds of things to relax me and I fall asleep tucked into Jude. And instead of worrying about my surprise birthday weekend, I fall asleep looking forward to it.
Chapter Sixteen
Surprises
Jude throws it in park and turns to look at me. “Ready?”
“What are we doing here?”
A couple of things have confused me this morning.
I know I packed heavy, I added more stuff after Jude left the room because as much as I trust him, a guy never knows how much a girl is going to need on a weekend getaway. Besides, I don’t know what I’d be in the mood to wear, so my suitcase is big and heavy. When Jude loaded the car, he hefted in my ginormous suitcase followed by his gym bag. Not a gym bag big enough for say, football or hockey equipment, but a gym bag big enough for your stuff to play a pick-up game of basketball. Minus the ball.
When I asked him about his lack of provisions for the weekend, he simply said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got everything I need.” This made me wonder if he plans on spending the whole four days and three nights in bed. Not that this would be a terrible thing, but the suspense of the surprise is starting to drive me a little batty.
We proceed to drop Mia off with all of her stuff, which when you get right down to it, her bag was bigger than Jude’s. Then we stopped by some office building that held multiple businesses inside and Jude said, “I’ve gotta run in and get something, stay here.” Before I could ask what in the hell he was doing, he was gone.
And now is now and we are here. Jude looks at me. “Come on, we need to get going.”
He gets out of the truck, opens the back door, drags out my mammoth suitcase and his light as a feather gym bag. I get out and meet him at the front of his truck as he’s beeping the locks.
I semi repeat myself, “Why are we here?”
“We’re flying.”
“But,” I look around at the tiny airstrip that they call an airport and continue, “these are really little planes.”
One side of his mouth turns up at me as he replies, “But they’re still planes.”
He heads into a small building lugging my suitcase and I have to skip to keep up. He holds the door for me and we enter a little office space. The whole place is decorated with plane models and pictures of all sorts of planes—new and old. Jude starts talking to the attendant behind the desk, showing him all kinds of papers, ID and finally handing him a credit card.
Holy shit.
It’s all coming together.
“Wait,” I shout softly. “Are you flying the plane?”
Giving me the half-grin. “Yeah.”
“Do you know how to fly these planes?”
I mean, flying planes isn’t exactly like driving cars, right? Aren’t they all different? He flew fighter jets while doing scary stuff, it can’t be the same as flying these little planes, can it?
“I am a pilot, Gabby.”
“But that can’t be the same as flying these planes. Do you fly these little planes?”
“Yes, it’s pretty much the same and yes I fly these planes. Come on, I’ve got to go through preflight and we have a scheduled take off. Get your stuff.” With that, he grabs my suitcase heading out the backdoor leaving me standing here with my two additional carry-on bags and a nosy attendant who is listening to our entire conversation. Pulling myself together, I grab my bags and hurry after Jude. He’s about twenty yards ahead of me, throwing my suitcase in the back of an itty-bitty-tiny-little-airplane. Well, its itty-bitty compared to all other airplanes I’ve ever flown in.
“Did you rent this?” I ask.