Page 2 of Blocked Score

“Please just wipe the last thirty seconds from your memory,” I groan, keeping my voice low.

“No way, I’m looking for good book recs.” His voice is full of playful humor, and it helps to diffuse some of the embarrassed tension stiffening my shoulders.

“Yeah, you totally look like the mafia romance type,” I snark.

His brow jumps. “Mafiaromance? That’s a thing?”

I laugh, giving him a slow shake of my head. “Oh, you sweet baby,” I say with joking condescension, “the things you don’t know …”

“I didn’t expect to be introduced to the world of mafia romance when I got on this plane today. I don’t think the old woman sitting across the aisle from us was, either.”

Awkward laughter sputters from me, and I hide my face in my hands. “I’d rather pretend she didn’t hear.”

“Oh, she heard, alright,” he says in a conspiratorial whisper. “Something tells me your book made her feel things she hasn’t felt in a long, long time.”

I have to bite back a guffaw even as embarrassment has me cringing so hard I almost vibrate. “You’re not helping,” I tell him.

“Don’t feel bad about what you read,” he answers breezily. “You know, with?—”

He doesn’t get to finish that sentence. Suddenly my stomach’s leaping up my throat again, but for a very different reason.

The cabin lurches wildly, the plane rocked by a wave of the worst turbulence I’ve ever felt. Gasps fill the enclosed space as it shakes. Just when I think it’s calming down, a new tremor hits us like an earthquake in the sky.

My stomach curls into a tight, heavy ball as my anxiety spikes. My knuckles go white, my hands clenching into the armrests.

When the turbulence finally subsides and I’m able to feel something other than panic, I realize how different the armrestto my right feels than the one to my left. It’s firm, but giving. And warm. Like …

I glance down to see that my right hand isn’t clenched around the armrest between me and the window seat; instead, it’s clamped onto the forearm of the guy I was just talking to, my fingertips digging into the muscle that feels hard and dense even through his sleeve.

When I notice, tendrils of heat shoot from my hand and snake through my body, settling low in my center with a tight thrum. The sensation mixes with the adrenaline coursing through my veins to make a buzz of arousal spread through my chest.

I pull my grip away from his forearm. “Sorry,” I say.

He tilts a grin at me. “No problem. That was pretty freaky, huh?”

I blow a heavy breath through my lips. “Yeah, I’ll say.”

“Lane, by the way.” He holds out his right hand.

I slide my hand into his. It’s massive, and the gentle but firm pressure he applies sends sparks skating across me. “Scarlett,” I introduce myself.

“Is Chicago your stop, too, or are you heading off further?”

“Yeah, Chicago’s my stop.” Recalling the reason for this trip throws enough cold water on my mood to douse the sparks on my skin and the heat in my blood stirred by contact with Lane.

Caleb’s face flashes in my mind’s eye. My ex.

A heavy concoction of anger, regret, and more doubt than I’d like to admit rolls through me. I try to push the thought of him and all the emotions I associate with him into a closet in my brain and shove the door closed, but I know it won’t latch shut.

“What are you doing there?” Lane asks.

“Visiting a friend,” I answer truthfully.And running away from the wreckage of a relationship that took way too muchfrom me and that I waited way too long to end.I don’t say that part out loud. “How about you?”

“I’m working as an assistant coach at a summer hockey camp,” he answers. “Gonna be there until early August.”

“Hockey? Not football?”

He cants his head to the side, and his cheek twitches. “Football? You thought I was a football player?”

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