Page 1 of Accidental Mile High Daddy
Chapter 1
Sienna
Ididn’t pay for a single drop of the champagne in my flute, but I was damn well going to enjoy it.
The first-class lounge smelled likemoney. Not the crisp, papery smell of a freshly printed hundred-dollar bill with the Word Art on the backside, but real money.Oldmoney. Like a heady bourbon or polished leather, like bergamot from someone’s cologne. I sank deeper into the ridiculously soft armchair, trying not to think about how just the seat alone probably cost more than my monthly rent.
I didn’t belong here. I knew that. But then again, this whole trip wasn’t supposed to have been mine anymore, and I took it anyway.
Bubbles tickled my nose as I took another sip, my hand shaking just aminusculeamount. I’d been fine until now — until reality smacked me in the face the moment I sat down alone instead of next to Ryan. His name, hiseverything, still buzzed in my brain like a fly I had no way of squishing. Ryan. Ryan and his smirking, lying mouth. Ryan and Lauren. God,Lauren.
I set the glass down a little harder than necessary. The bartender glanced at me from across the room.
We were supposed to be here together. We weresupposedto be heading to the Amalfi coast, having sunset cocktails and couple’s massages and his-and-her bathrobes in Positano that I could have never afforded myself without Ryan’s connections and wallet. But instead, I was sitting alone in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International terminal, marinating in false status, and pretending like I hadn’t found him balls-deep in my best friend four weeks ago. A month. A goddamnmonth.
But the vacation was already paid for. And if he thought I was going to stay home and cry into a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream while he got laid on a private yacht off the coast of Italy, he could eat shit. So, I’d convinced him to let me keep the trip.
At least I was taking backsomething.
I tugged at the hem of my sundress — yellow, cute,too short for first class. Definitely not in the dress code of what everyone else in the lounge seemed to be following, but I’d told myself I wouldn’t care about it. Even if it was a lie. Even if the woman with a face sharp enough to cut glass glared at me over the rim of her espresso martini like I’d tracked in mud. I gave her a sweet smile and picked up my champagne again, swallowing down the knot at the back of my throat.
The plush seat seemed to swallow me just that little bit more as I sank further. I just had to keep my thoughts off him. That was all.
A voice came over the intercom, announcing boarding for a flight that wasn’t mine, and I let my head tip back on the cushion, closing my eyes and trying not to imagine Lauren’s face when I’d opened that door. I was almost relaxed, almostconvincedI could make it through the next five days pretending none of it mattered, when a low voice behind me cut through the silence.
“Mind if I sit here?”
I didn’t realize I’d dropped the champagne flute until I heard the shatter.
Shards of crystal glinted like ice on the little table beside me. I stared at them for half a second too long, body locked, heat creeping up my cheeks, heart beating like a drum in my ears.
“Shit,” I muttered, instinctually reaching to clear it up myself, shards be damned — but a large, warm hand locked around my wrist before I could make contact.
“Don’t think they’ll want to clean up champagneandblood,” the voice cut in, chuckling as he slowly pulled my hand back from the mess. He let go the second my arm was back within the space between the armrests on either side of me. “For the record, I wasn’t trying to scare you.”
I turned my head toward the sound, swallowing down the rising humiliation, and got my first proper look at the man behind the voice.
And promptly forgot how to breathe for half a second.
Tall. Older, maybe mid-to-late forties. Mostly silver hair that looked like it belonged in a goddamn cologne ad, swept back from bone structure that was just wholly unfair. A smattering of scruff along his jawline, blacks swirling into the grey, just enough to know you’d feel it if you ran your fingers over it. And hiseyes, Christ, hazel and sharp. He was striking, commanding almost, like he expected the world to move when he stepped into a room because itwould.
But most of all, he just looked amused.
“Are you going to speak, or should I just assume I can sit?” he asked, raising a single mostly-black brow at me.
I blinked away enough of the fog clouding my head to get my mouth to cooperate. “Um—yeah, yes, sorry,” I swallowed, gripping my carry-on’s handle and dragging it slightly out of the way for him. “I can, like, move if you want this section?—”
“I’m not asking you to move,” he chuckled, gripping the sides of the arm rests as he lowered himself into the plush seat to the right of mine, cocked at a ninety-degree angle. “Saw you when I was at the bar. Your hand was shaking. Thought you might be nervous about flying.”
A dry laugh crackled out of me. “Yeah. That’s it. Planes.”
He didn’t call me on the lie — just leaned back slightly, giving a subtle nod to the bar staff. A second later, a suited attendant appeared like magic to clean up the glass, and I stared at him for half a second too long before remembering that I probablyshouldn’tlook like I was in shock from someone cleaning up after me. The man to my right hadn’t said a word, and the attendant had justmoved, and I couldn’t get over how absolutely ridiculous it was that he somehow expected and received the world following the order of the jut of his chin.
Rich. Definitely rich, and not in the flamboyant,posting photos of Louis Vuitton bags on Instagramkind of way. No, this man had weight. The kind that didn’t need to brag. The kind that knew he could walk into a room and own it without saying a damned word.
“I should’ve just stayed home,” I muttered, mostly to myself as I turned my head away from the last bits of broken crystal being swept away.
“Why didn’t you?” The words were casual, but the answer to them was charged, sticky in my mouth. My eyes tracked him as he stretched one long leg out in front of him and leaned back, the cuff of his shirt riding up just enough to flash a stupidly expensive-looking watch around his wrist.
