Page 34 of Accidental Mile High Daddy
She shrugged as she looked at me, her gaze holding far too much in it. “They’re honest,” she said. “They haven’t had enough time to learn that the world rewards you for lying.”
The next round of drinks came — a high-end scotch for me, something with lavender and gin for her. She sipped it, made a bit of a face, then took another sip anyway.
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward, though. None of this was. I’d been sitting here just like her, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the moment everything shifted and one of us got irritated or ran out of things that engaged us. But it didn’t come.
She leaned back, her eyes on mine, her voice a little quiet. “So…”
I waited, resting my chin on my palm. “So?”
She swirled her drink, her eyes catching on the lavender sprig dancing against the rim of her glass. “You’re forty-seven. You own an airline. You’ve got a kid who adores you. And I highlydoubt you have trouble finding someone to sleep with.” Her eyes flicked back up to mine. “So… what’s the catch?”
I let out a slow breath as I sat back in my chair. “Why do you think there has to be a catch?”
“Come on. Men like you don’t just float around from woman to woman unless they’re hiding something,” she smirked, one brow raising as she sat a little further forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, a laugh already being suppressed. “So, what is it? Tax evasion? Blackmail? Pending SEC investigation?Erectile dysfunction? Tell me, Matt, is that why you waited two hours on that flight to ask me to get a drink with you, so you could pop your Viagra with dinner?”
I nearly choked on my scotch, a laugh bursting out of me before I could hold it back. “Jesus?—”
“I’m serious!” she chirped, fully beaming now, her shoulders shaking with giggles, her hand flitting about as she spoke.Fuck, she’s cute.“Don’t tell me it’s something weirder like, I don’t know, funding and running a whole cult on the side, or maybe you’ve got some private island where all the monkeys have dubbed youking?—”
I caught her by the wrist, grinning, my thumb dragging along the base of her palm. “I don’t have a private island. I don’t runorfund a cult,” I chuckled, smirking at the way her cheeks warmedjusta hair as her gaze flicked to our hands. “And I sure as hell don’t have erectile dysfunction or any of the ridiculous ideas your brain can come up with.”
She sat back with a huff, her hand slipping out of my hold, and crossed her arms over her chest. “There’s got to besomething,” she said, nudging my foot with hers beneath the table.
“Sienna James, are you playingfootsieswith me?—”
“Shut up,” she hissed, but she was still laughing, her cheeks and neck still warm. “What are you hiding?”
I watched her as I rolled the words between my teeth, tempted to let them out, tempted to see what she’d do with them. She lifted her glass again, her eyes boring into me in a way that screamedcurious, like she wasn’t going to let this go until I gave her something.
And fuck if I didn’t want to reward that.
“You want the honest answer?” I asked, lifting my head from my palm and wrapping my fingers around my drink instead.
“Obviously.”
“I don’t let people in.” There. Said, done. “I don’t do relationships. It’s cleaner that way. Easier.”
She blinked at me, her smile faltering, but she didn’t interrupt this time.
“But you,” I huffed, pausing as I tried to find the words, my tongue dragging over the back of my teeth. “You were chaos in a yellow sundress, sitting in a seat that should’ve belonged to someone else, looking like you didn’t give a damn what anyone thought when you clearly did.”
Her lips parted, her brows knitting together like she wanted to cut in.
“I didn’t plan this outside of showing up, making my brother feel small, and going home. I didn’t plan to sleep with you on that flight. I sure as hell didn’t expect tolikeyou, but now you’re here, at a dinner with me that neither of us planned on attending when we could’ve just stayed in the villa in our respective rooms for the evening,” I said, the words falling out easier now that I’d said the hard part. “Hell, Sienna, I could be watching T-Rex Time Jam with Zach curled up in my lap if I wanted to. And I’m not.”
The silence stretched for a beat, her eyes searching mine, her chest rising and falling just a little bit faster. “No,” she said softly. “You’re not. But you don’t know me, Matt?—”
“Maybe not yet. But if I’m being entirely honest, I want to.”
Chapter 11
Sienna
The morning came too quickly.
Warm light through the slated blinds, the quiet whoosh of the ocean beyond the glass. Somewhere in the villa, the sound of Zach’s giggles rose and fell like music. For a moment, just one, with my head still buried in the pillows and the blankets still pulled around me, I let myself imagine this was mine.
Not the room. Not the view. But the laugh, thelife.
