Page 89 of The Bossy One

Then I ran that timeline through my head and narrowed my eyes at Declan. “If it didn’t have anything to do with us sleeping together, why didn’t you recommend my blog to your sponsorship team before you knew who I really was?”

He looked down at our joined hands, his curled protectively around mine. “Is it horrible to admit I’m a selfish bastard who didn’t feel like sharing you with the world?”

Something warm bloomed in my stomach.

It took everything in me not to lean forward and kiss his mouth so I could taste the flawed, perfect words coming out of them.

Abruptly he dropped my hands and stood. He turned on his heel and headed to the door. When he looked back over his shoulder, any trace of greedy tenderness was gone, hidden behind an impassive mask.

“We leave from Dublin at half past ten tomorrow. So make sure you and Catie are completely packed tonight. We’ll leave early in the morning.”

And then he was gone.

I stared after him, wrestling with my emotions.

Then I turned back to my laptop and resumed planning for a future without Declan in it.

* * *

I probably would have appreciated the glamor of a private plane more if I wasn’t half-asleep and unsure of where I stood with Declan. Ever since he’d walked out of my room yesterday, he’d maintained an air of cool, stoic distance. He was his normal warm self with Catie, but with me, he was back to being the curt, powerful man he’d been when we first met.

Normally, I would have dealt with his cooling temper by dialing up the sunshine wattage of my own personality, but I’d woken up at the crack of dawn to coax a grumpy six-year-old out of bed and sunshine just didn’t feel like it was in my repertoire today.

We all buckled in as the flight attendant ran through the safety information and the lavish in-flight menu with equal amounts of detail.

Declan barely listened, already scrolling through work emails on his phone.

“Can I havetwochocolate cookies, Uncle Declan?” Catie asked.

“You can have whatever you wa— I mean, that’s a lot of sugar,” he corrected himself, finally looking up from his phone. He glanced first at Catie, then at me.

“How about one cookie?” I suggested. “But we have to wait until the plane takes off.”

Catie wrinkled her nose at that, but was quickly distracted when the plane took off down the runway, gaining speed. The force pressed us back into our seats, and Catie grinned wildly.

“Ilovethis part,” she said. When the plane left the ground, and the friction of the runway evaporated, she spread her arms wide, palms down, like she was the plane. “We’reflying,” she said, awestruck.

Declan and I shared a smile, delighted by this kid who temporarily linked us. His smile was wide and unencumbered, and I felt something inside me relax in response.

I’d missed that smile.

“This one isn’t the same plane as the one we took before, when we flew to your house,” Catie asked, looking around confused. “That one had red seats. And different cookies. There were no chocolate ones.”

That surprised a laugh out of me. She was right. Did the man actually have two private planes? And if he did, why had he been flying coach when we met?

“It’s not my personal plane, it’s the company’s,” Declan explained. “And some other executives were already using it when your mom called and asked me to come pick you up. So I flew coach to get to you and your mom as quickly as possible, and then I rented a different one for us all to go home. I’m sorry if their cookies weren’t up to snuff.”

“If you waited until the company people were done, we could have used this plane,” Catie said thoughtfully. “It’s important to take turns, Uncle Declan.”

“I didn’t want to wait,” Declan said. I thought of that first day I’d met him on the plane. I’d written him off as a hot antisocial grump. But now I realized he must have been jet-lagged and wrecked with worry over Sinead. He’d just found out his sister was struggling with alcoholism, and I’d been whining to him about losing ajob.

No wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk to me.

“Besides,” Declan shot me a wink, startling me out of my thoughts. “You get better nanny recommendations flying coach.”

I laughed. Maybe this trip wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe we’d moved past the most painful parts of being “on a break” and could shift into something more comfortable. Something like friendship.

Maybe.

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