Page 4 of Changed Plan

“I can’t just not do that. What are you, a trust fund baby?”

“No.” I motion for her to step forward in line. “My father is a firm believer in his kids making their own way in the world.”

She looks at me over her shoulder as she steps up a few feet. “But you did grow up rich, right?”

“I had a privileged upbringing, yes.”

“Yeah, you have that look.”

“I could say the same about you.”

“Really? I look like the girls you grew up with?”

“Maybe. If you changed into a plaid skirt and knee socks.” I look her up and down teasingly, as if I’m trying to imagine it.

“Of course you went to private school.”

She completely ignores my pretend leering, obviously not in a joking mood. Yet.

“Oh, you were one of those wild public-school girls, huh? I heard about you.”

“Please. My cousin went to private school, and we did all the same dumb shit in high school.”

“Yeah, the only real difference is the uniforms.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” She steps forward again. “But she was no saint.”

“Teenagers aren’t meant to be saints. But your current look is very well put together, and you carry yourself with a great deal of confidence, so I would’ve had no way of knowing whether we had similar upbringings or not.”

“Our looks as teenager would’ve been much more telling.” She advances a few feet and checks a message on her phone.

I do the same, and send a quick reply to tell my sister for the second time that, yes, I’m positive my flight isn’t going to be rescheduled today. And no, I can’t get out on another airline. I resend the picture I took earlier of the snow coming down through the window at the gate. Maybe it didn’t go through the first time.

“What was teenage Darby’s look?”

She glances up from her phone and almost smiles. “A lot more eyeliner.”

“Oh, so you did look like the girls I grew up with.”

Her laugh is sexy. It’s not a flirtatious giggle, just a genuine laugh. A genuinely sexy laugh. She’s not wearing anything provocative or trying to garner any attention. In fact, aside from her raised voice when she was talking to customer service, I get the impression she’d rather go completely unnoticed.

But I’ve already noticed her. We’re both stuck here, and I am drawn to this woman in a way I can’t even describe. She smells incredible, but I didn’t know that when I first moved to stand closer to her at the gate. She’s definitely pretty, but there’s something more.

In all honesty, after the week I’ve had, I might’ve gotten angry at any other pretty woman who spilled coffee on my shoes, but the moment Darby looked up at me with that pissed-off expression and offered her half-hearted apology, all I wanted was to know her better.

She was real. Honest. Not at all flustered, just ready to offer a solution and be rid of me. Besides, she was already pissed off enough for both of us.

People don’t intrigue me anymore the way they once did. But she does.

Darby Bartlett is intriguing, and I’m in the mood to be intrigued. I’ll just have to figure out how to intrigue her back because, so far, she doesn’t seem any more interested than when she ran into me.

“You staying in Palm Beach?” I ask.

“Yeah. You on vacation, too?”

“No. Going home to visit family.”

“You grew up in Palm Beach? Of course you did.”

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