Page 75 of Accidental Mile High Daddy
I quirked a brow at her, gesturing to my casual jeans and white button-up. “We’d both be woefully underdressed for that.”
She shot a glare over her shoulder at me as she reached the top. “I wouldn’t put it past you to have ajust-in-casesuit stored somewhere in this jet.”
I had to hold back the laughter creeping up my chest — she was absurdly good at reading me sometimes. There was definitely a spare tailored Tom Ford suit hanging in the closet on board.
The moment she stepped through the door and turned to the right, she stopped dead in her tracks. I came up behind her, my hand naturally gravitating to the space between her shoulder blades.
“Going to complain again?” I asked.
She loosed a breath like it pained her. “If I asked you how much this cost, would you tell me honestly?”
I leaned against the wall of the plane, watching her carefully. There wasn’t really a part of me that was ashamed to admit how much I’d spent on it — not when I knew planes like the back of my hand, not when this was half for work and half for personal travel. But I had a sinking suspicion she might actually lose her mind if I answered that. “Before or after the renovations?” I asked, glancing toward the cabin with its sleek, dark wood interior and black leather seating.
She winced. “After. Just rip off the band-aid.”
“About thirty-one,” I answered honestly.
Her head whipped around toward me. “Please tell me you meanthirty-one thousand.”
“If this cost me thirty-one thousand,” I said carefully, trying to stifle my chuckle but failing miserably, “I would be truly terrified that it wouldn’t even make it off the ground.”
“Christ.”
She slowly sank into the seat on the right-hand side of the plane, closest to the front, and sighed with almost performative exasperation as she glared up at me. “This is so much worse than you just being a cocky asshole in first class.”
I smirked and sank down to my knees in front of her, fishing the seatbelt out from where it had been stuffed between the cushion and the armrest. “Do I need to remind you how you agreed to sleep with that cocky asshole in first class?”
Her nostrils flared as her gaze met mine, stubborn, defiant, andsofucking cute when her fingers wrapped around my wrist. “I was drunk,” she said simply.
I snorted. “Sweetheart, you’d had two drinks at most.” Her hand slipped away with a huff as I clicked her seatbelt into place, my fingers brushing against the small swell of her stomach before I rose back up. “You don’t get to use that as an excuse.”
We were up and off the ground within twenty minutes.
We didn’t talk much during the flight — she curled up in her seat, footrest out and bare heels dug in, a dog-eared paperback resting on her lap. I watched her read more than I should have, couldn’t help it. There was something about her when she wasn’t doing anything, when she justwas, that made the cabin feel warmer, more lived in, morealive.
Two hours and thirty-eight minutes later, we landed.
The air was far cooler in western Massachusetts than it had been in Atlanta, thinner and tinged with the crisp edge fall brought sooner up here than it did back home. I’d taken Zach a couple of times last year, just the two of us, him clamberingover rocks and demanding to know if bearsactuallylived in the woods. He’d fallen asleep on the drive back to the airport, sticky fingers curled around the empty cider cup I’d bribed him with.
The trees had been a full blaze that time — but now, so early in the season, they were only just beginning to change. Greens mixed with yellows and reds and oranges, and part of me almost wished I’d waited until everything had turned fully, but there was a softness in this, too. One I didn’t want to put a name on, one that seemed like a goddamn mirror staring back at me as I drove us up the winding road.
Sienna sat in the passenger seat, her gaze locked out the window, eyes wide and taking in the view as we climbed higher and higher. Golds and burnt oranges and deep, dark green painted every hillside, bleeding into one another, and I saw the exact moment it hit her that this wasn’t a spa, or a hotel, or some ego-driven date. She turned to me as I stopped the car in the secluded spot, brows slightly furrowed like she was trying to decide if I was about to murder her somewhere remote or sweep her off her feet.
She didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t offer her any explanations.
I helped her out of the car beneath the shade of the trees, not a building in sight formiles, and walked her past the trail marker for a hike I didn’t intend to take us on. On the other side of the tree line, a grassy expanse was level before sloping downward to another crop of trees, a little meadow of sanctuary overlooking the Appalachian mountains turning from burnt fall colors to dark blue in the distance, the sun starting to dip low in the sky.
And just at the edge where the grass began to angle downward, a little picnic set up on thick blankets and throw pillows waited. A basket sat open, half its contents already laid out — soft breads, hot apple cider in a flask to be served, roasted vegetables, a spiced chicken salad that didn’t use soft cheese,and enough fruit to make Zach lose his mind if he were here. Everything pregnancy-safe. Everything perfect.
She squinted at the display like it might explode.
“You flew me three hours from home,” she said slowly, “for apicnic.”
I started walking toward it backward, watching her. “I thought you’d kick me if I’d taken you somewhere overly high-brow.”
She blinked, taking slow steps forward, following me. “This might actually be worse. You’re alunatic.” Her feet came to a stop at the edge of the blanket, her arms crossing, her eyes surveying the spread as if it had personally offended her. “This is a rich man’s fever dream. Are therethreedifferent types of bread there?”
I bit back my grin and held out a hand in offering. “Would you rather I’d just packed Lunchables?”
