Ace arched an eyebrow at Jack as Fitz took his seat, or at least attempted to. “Where’s your boyfriend, Jack? Did you exchange him for a giant Pomeranian?”
Fitz stopped struggling and narrowed his eyes at Ace. “Very funny.”
“Fitz!” Ace put a hand to his chest and feigned a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness. For a moment there, I thought Duchess had a new playmate.”
“Babe,” Jack said gently. “Maybe take off your coat until we get there?”
“What if I get cold? Oh, wait.” Fitz opened his designer carry-on duffle bag and pulled out a thick, fluffy blanket. “Never mind. I’m good.”
“How…? That blanket is bigger than the bag. How did you fit it in there?” Ace stared at the duffle and then the blanket. It should not have been possible, and it looked like he had more stuff in the bag. A lot more. “Does physics not apply to you?”
Jack snickered. “Fitz is a master packer. I can fit twice as much stuff when he packs my bags.”
Ace marveled at how Fitz folded and stuffed the fluffy coat into the black hole that was his bag. It clearly contained some kind of vacuum because that was the only logical explanation.
“When working in the fashion industry, I had to travel a lot, which meant hauling around my equipment and wardrobe. I became an expert.” Fitz sat, fastened his seatbelt, then snuggled up to Jack under his blanket.
“How are you cold?” Lucky asked as he sat next to Mason in the row across from them. “We are not in the mountains yet. This is still Florida. It’s eighty degrees outside.”
“And in here, it’s freezing,” Fitz replied. “If everyone stopped setting their air conditioners to ‘arctic,’ maybe I wouldn’t have to wear sweaters in Florida.”
“Everyone buckled up?” Colton asked as he took his seat next to Ace. He received eleven yeses and three barks. Ace laughed. He couldn’t wait to see how the dogs handled the snow. He was certain they were going to lose their furry minds since none of them had ever experienced snow before.
With everyone strapped in and ready to go, Larry, their flight attendant, went through all the safety procedures while the pilots prepared for takeoff. Before long, they were in the air, leaving the palm trees and humidity behind. Ace glanced out the window and sighed.
“It seems like only yesterday I was traveling commercial with the rest of the common folk.”
Joker snorted from his seat across from Lucky. “You’re ridiculous.” He turned his attention to Colton. “You should have seen him when we had to fly commercial down to Key West that week you were in New York. The pouting was epic, and like the man-child he is, he complained abouteverythingthe entire flight.”
“They didn’t give us any food!”
“We were on that plane for maybe an hour, probably less.”
“I almost starved to death,” Ace said, hand on his stomach. He gave Colton his puppy eyes. “It was a very traumatic experience. The mean lady on the plane tried to give me crackers, Colton.Crackers. Now that I think about it, she might have just pulled a packet of saltines from her purse. Who carries saltine crackers in their purse?”
Colton gasped dramatically. “How dare she! My poor darling. I’m so sorry you were subjected to such cruelty. Larry will bring you some Doritos.”
Ace thrust a thumb up at Larry. “Thanks, Larry!”
Larry smiled, amused, and removed a bag of Doritos from the snack cabinet. He promptly brought them over to Ace.
“Seriously?” Joker shook his head at him. “You can’t go ten minutes without snacking?”
Ace popped a Dorito into his mouth and crunched loudly. “Delicious. And no. I can’t. A body like this needs sustenance.”
“Right. I didn’t know Doritos were part of the four major food groups.”
Jack groaned. “Why? Why would you do that to us?”
Ace promptly went on to explain in great detail how Doritos were, in fact, part of the four major food groups. At least some of the ingredients that made up Doritos were in their original form. The amount of research he’d resort to in order to one-up his brothers knew no bounds.
The flight took less than four hours. Ace felt the excitement building up among Colton and the rest of the significant others, who were often lovingly referred to as the Boyfriend Collective. His brethren still seemed a little uncertain, probably because they hadn’t gotten the chance to overthink everything to death.
On the job, they made countless split-second decisions, many concerning dangerous situations, and much like when they’d served, King often gave the orders, which they followed.
In their personal lives? It was like herding cats. Their significant others weren’t former military. Most of the time, the Boyfriend Collective went with the flow, but Ace and his brothers valued their lives too much to give Fitz an order. He might be a cinnamon roll wrapped in cashmere, but he would cut a bitch. The guy had worked with models for a living. Ace knew firsthand how dangerous models could be. He shuddered at the memory of the beach incident. So many hangry models had latched onto him. They had very poky elbows.
When they landed at the municipal airport, an Airbus helicopter awaited them. The transfer was seamless, with Fitz seeming to have somehow magically teleported from the plane onto the helicopter because he was in his seat before anyone else. Either that, or he’d broken the speed barrier in an attempt not to let the winter air touch him.
