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But the door opens a few moments later, and Jacinthe follows the flight attendant toward me. I gesture to the seat across from mine and wait for Jazz to sit down.
She folds her hands in her lap, letting her eyes drift from the fully stocked bar to the long sofa lining the far wall, and down to the lounge area complete with a huge television and a glimpse of the bedroom beyond. Her eyes return to me. “Nice digs,” she says, and it sounds like an insult.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I’ve been working.”
“I am your job.”
She snorts. “Arrogant much?” Her hand smooths over the top of her head and down the length of her ponytail. I watch as her fingers twirl around the end of it, laying it flat against her breast. Something tightens in my gut. Jazz unbuttons her blazer and settles in her seat, returning to her study of every detail of the royal jet.
“Why do you hate me?”
She swings those dark eyes back to me. “I don’t hate you.”
“You act like you do.”
“Why, because I don’t drop to my knees whenever you’re in the room?”
I choke on the image, lust dumping into my veins. Fuck, I’m hard again. This woman will be the death of me—but at least she has the decency to blush after saying something like that.
It takes a moment for my heartbeat to settle, then I get to the reason I asked her to come up here. “Are you coming to the Gala of the Press in Farcliff?”
Jazz’s eyes narrow. “Why?”
“Because I want you to.”
My words seem to surprise her, but she recovers quickly. “Why?”
“I don’t know, Jazz.” I huff out a laugh, shaking my head. “Because you treat me like your equal? Because you’re not afraid of looking me in the eye? Because I want to see what you look like in a gown?”
Her blush deepens, a hand rising to rub the center of her chest. A little strip of skin is exposed when she moves her hand over the edge of her blouse, and more blood rushes between my legs. She flicks her eyes to mine. “Are you trying to win me over so I don’t write a critical article of you on the tour?”
“Are you always this suspicious of people?”
“People like you? Yes.”
“What do you mean, people like me?”
She shakes her head. “You know exactly what I mean.”
I lean my cheek on my fist and stare out the window. The seatbelt sign comes on, and Jazz makes no move to get up. A part of me thinks it’s because she wants to spend time with me, but I’m not stupid enough to believe my own ego. She’s staying because she thinks she won’t get another chance to talk to me one-on-one. She probably thinks I’m going to give her a headline.
Still, when she reaches for the seatbelt and clicks it into place, a part of me relaxes. It’s only a forty-minute flight, but that’s forty more minutes than I’ve had with her for the past week.
“Why did you take Wolfe’s place?” she asks after a pause, and I’m not sure if she’s asking because she wants to know for personal reasons, or because she’s a journalist interviewing me. I’m not sure there’s a difference between the two.
I shrug. “My sister asked me to. Told me to.”
“Because you missed the speech with the French delegates the day after the party?”
My lips stretch into a smile. “Miss Crawley, have you been reading up on me?”
Red rises up her neck, and it’s her turn to stare out the window. The plane takes off, and we don’t speak until a ding notifies us we can take our seatbelts off.
All I want to do is drag her across the space that separates us, let her straddle me in this seat so she can feel exactly what her presence does to me. I want to take her to the bedroom behind us and show her what I’ve been dreaming about since she walked into my life a week ago wearing a cheap yellow wig and a pig’s snout. I want to thread my fingers in her hair and spend my time tasting every inch of her body. Worship her. Serve her.
But I’m not stupid enough to think she wants the same. Why would she? I’m the very definition of everything she hates.
