“Were you on a call?” he asks.
“No.”
“Who were you talking to?”
I will not blush. I will not blush.“Myself.”
George crosses his arms over his broad chest. “Do you do that a lot?”
“I find my conversation stimulating.” I attempt to cross my own arms and match him pose for pose, but the brownies make that impossible.
George watches my awkward arm flailing. “Is that so?”
“Yes.” I end up cradling the dessert in my hands as if that was my plan all along. “Anyone who can’t converse with themselves is probably boring. If you don’t find your own thoughts interesting, then why would anyone else?”
The corner of George’s mouth twitches before he smooths it out. “Are you ready to talk to other people? I can’t promise none of them will be boring.”
They’re all pilots. How could they be boring?
I wave for him to lead the way, and George starts a slow stride from the parking lot toward a stretch of familiar hangars.
“You’re sure I’m allowed to come to this?” I ask, when what I really wonder is…
You really want to introduce me to your pilot friends?
But I guess want has nothing to do with it. I really need to sit Shawn down and tell him to stop guilting his best friend into doing things for me.
“I’m sure. You can come to two club events before you have to join.” He said the same thing at the diner. “The club is always looking for new members.”
Newpayingmembers, I’m sure.
And I’m also sure I won’t become one of those. Not because I don’t want to. But because of money. It always comes back to money.
We walk side by side, the wind tugging at my hair until I wish I had a hat like George to hold the short locks in place. As I push red strands out of my eyes for the fifth time in five seconds, a thought occurs to me.
Will anyone here recognize me?
As far as I know, Karl Newton has done his best to stomp out any indication that he has a second child. I’m sure just the fact that we share the same shade of red hair must aggravate him.
And the guy might have been successful sweeping me entirely out of his life if it wasn’t for Shawn. Maybe if the Newtons had given my brother another sibling, he wouldn’t have latched on to me so hard.
So this leaves the question: Who knows who I am and how I came to exist?
“Are any of these BBN people?” It’s a transportation company, after all. With a whole fleet of private jets.
George tilts his head in thought. “A few of the pilots in the club fly for BBN. Not sure if they’ll be here. No one from corporate, though.”
No one other than you, I silently add with a sigh of relief. The people in the cockpits of BBN planes would have no reason to keep up with the corporate gossip enough to know about one of the CEO’s illegitimate kid. I should be safe from those kinds of sneers.
We’re almost to the club hangar, from which I can hear the rumble of chatting voices and smell meat on a grill, when George stops me with a hand on my arm. When we face each other, he slips his sunglasses off, hooking them on the neckline of his Henley that fits entirely too well.
“These are good guys.” His gray stare holds mine.
“Cool.”
“You don’t need to be nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” I grumble, my fingers fiddling with the plastic wrap covering my food offering.
