Page 19 of Love at First Flight

“Are you now? Well, that’s interesting.” Naomi’s smile grew brighter. “Sister dearest, you have a gentleman caller.” She stood back, opening the door wider to allow him access.

“Who?” Selah asked.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust once he entered. Selah was leaning back in an office chair with her laptop on her lap and her legs propped up on a desk, eating a bagel. She was wearing her no-nonsense flight uniform of navy pants and a tight black T-shirt. Her aviators rested at the top of her hairline, holding her dark curls away from her face. In short, she looked like a badass.

Her eyes widened in surprise, her feet quickly landing on the floor as she sat up. “Dex? What are you doing here?” She moved her laptop to the desk along with the bagel, dusting the crumbs from her shirt.

“I, uh, just wanted to make sure you got back okay last night.” His nerves hit him full force.

“Oh. Well, as you can see, yeah, I managed to get back okay.”

“Great. That’s good. Glad to see it.” Also, duh, because nothing was more obvious. He wanted to sink into the floor at his apparent awkwardness, and would have, if he didn’t have an audience. It didn’t help that Naomi continued to stand and watch as he stumbled through the conversation.

“How are you feeling? Do you want some water to drink or something?” Selah asked.

“I’m fine. Actually, the real reason I stopped by was because—”

Suddenly, the door crashed open and another young woman with long, curly hair burst through. “Oh, hi! Did I miss anything yet?”

“Now you show up? And what do you mean, did you miss anything? What is there to miss besides you doing your job? In that case, yeah, you’ve missed a whole lot,” Selah said flatly.

“I’m not listening to you right now. Mom just said there might be something interesting to see around here finally.” The younger woman grinned at him, while sweeping an assessing gaze along the length of his body. He had another urge to brush his hand across his hair to make sure it was truly clean and neat.

“Oh my God,” Selah huffed in an impatient breath. “Mom? Mom!”

“What?” came the muffled response outside the closed office door.

“Why is everyone being weird right now?” Selah shouted, probably to make sure her mother heard the question as well. She turned her attention to Dex again. “Sorry. I don’t get a lot of, uh, visitors to the office. Obviously. Those two are my younger sisters, Naomi and Hailey. The woman spying through the door is my mom, Elena.”

“I’m not spying,” her mother said from outside the trailer.

“Oh. Sorry. Should I not have come? You don’t like visitors?”

“Oh, no, I’m okay with you visiting. Wait, are you visiting? Or did you need something?”

“I just wanted to give you this. You forgot it at my place.” He removed her cell phone from his back pocket and handed it over.

She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could say anything, her mother jumped in to say, “What? What is it?!”

“It’s a phone,” Hailey answered. “Wait just a minute.” She swooped over, took Selah’s hand so she could rotate it and look at the other side. “It’s Selah’s phone!”

Naomi released a squeal. “Oh my God, is this the guy you went on a date with last night? So you weren’t lying? You actually did it? And you went back to his place? Selaaaahh!”

“They’re dating?!” her mother asked. “Ask him if he wants to join us for a family dinner someday.”

Dex’s cheeks burned at the misplaced attention, but truth be told, he’d never experienced this kind of excited reception before. Meeting his previous girlfriends’ parents hadn’t been bad, but they were never at this level of enthusiasm. Selah’s family appeared ready to declare him a member of the family. It was similar to when he was a kid, going to Lincoln’s home. After a few months of feeling rejected, this was nice, even while knowing the situation wasn’t what they thought.

Selah rolled her eyes. “Okay, everyone needs to calm down. Mom, why don’t you just come in instead of snooping through the door?”

“I’m not snooping. I’m giving you your privacy, just like you asked.” To prove this, she remained outside the office trailer.

“Okay, first of all, you all are jumping the gun. All I did was give Dex a ride home last night.”

Boiling down their whole experience to giving him “a ride home” was somewhat deflating, even if it was true.

“I accidentally left my phone there. That’s it. Thank you, by the way, for returning it. I was freaking out this morning when I couldn’t find it and was about to pull up the Find My Phone app to locate it. I tried to call it. Why didn’t you answer?”

“Oh, you must have called when I was in the shower.” He wasn’t ready to admit he spent a good twenty minutes of his shower standing under the hot stream in an attempt to feel human again.

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