Page 100 of Caribbean Crush

“You told her to look for me?”

“I was desperate! I told her what you looked like—” His eyes rove over my face like a gentle caress. “A gorgeous brunette with caramel highlights framing her face and expressive blue eyes. I told her your name, and then she walked away, and I laughed to myself because there was no way in hell you were on this flight, but I had to know. I’d prepared myself for her to walk back and shake her head and say, I’m sorry, Mr. Woodmont, she’s not here, but instead, you walked up.”

“Because I’m on this flight!”

“How?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know exactly. I mean ... I just booked the first—well, second—flight out of Fort Lauderdale once I got to the airport. I was going off of pure instinct.”

He laughs. “This is insane.”

“Insane,” I repeat. “Did you upgrade my ticket?”

“Apparently,” he says with a little smile.

“Thanks. I owe you.”

I settle back against my seat and start fiddling with the remote control for the TV. I just need to figure this thing out. I want to watch a movie or, or ...

“Casey.”

My hand shakes as I press buttons. The TV doesn’t start up, but that’s because I haven’t turned it on. Right.

“Casey,” Phillip stresses my name, and I squeeze my eyes closed.

“How is this happening?” I ask myself out loud.

“Will you just look at me?”

I shake my head. “I can’t. What were those complimentary drinks she listed off? I think I need something. A soda. No, a shot.”

I’m leaning my head into the aisle, but all the flight attendants who were just here are now nowhere to be found!

Phillip says my name again, and I finally look at him. God, I can barely stand it. That face. Those terse eyebrows and intense blue eyes, those sharp cheekbones, and that perfect mouth.

“You don’t understand how much it killed me to walk away from your suite this morning. I really thought that was the last time I was ever going to see you. And now you’re just here, sitting beside me.” Tears gather in the corners of my eyes, but they don’t fall. “Phillip, I feel like I don’t deserve it. It’s too good.”

He leans over the partition between us and scoops his hand beneath my hair, tilting my face so that I’m looking only at him.

“Please don’t walk away from me out of fear. Not after this.”

“You think this is fate?” I ask, trembling against his hand.

“It has to be.”

He’s right.

It has to be.

“I caught what you said earlier, about falling for me.”

He pulls me closer to him so that I have to lean over the partition. “I meant it, Casey.”

My stomach squeezes tightly, nerves and excitement blending and buzzing through me.

“Are we insane?” I ask with a little laugh.

His expression doesn’t lighten. “If we are, I don’t care.”

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