That didn’t change the situation, not one iota.
“Yeah, no, sorry,” he voiced hisnopein the form of an apology. “Mike and Dave are going wheels up, and Rio has... Something. With his family. So, yeah. It’s me. Sorry. Really.”
She was nodding now, her movements jerky as she shifted her carry-on-sized suitcase closer to her and adjusted the big, zippered bag she wore on one shoulder.
“Well,thisday just keeps getting better,” she said. “Ted needed to leave early, to make a stop in Toronto for his mother for some obviously manipulative reason, and Jeff and Kayla went with him, so this flight is just me. And now... you.”
Oh, good.
Alone on a private jet with Tasha Francisco. For six hours.
Not that he’d been looking forward to sitting in the back of the plane while she spent the flight sipping champagne and laughing with her royal boyfriend’s royal arm around her soon-to-be-royal shoulders.
But now...? It would be just the two of them.
Although, wait. If the answer to the question wasYes, baby bump,then ix-nay on the ampagne-shay for the near future. Unless she’d changed even more than Thomas had imagined possible—and no, he did not believe that.
However, dressed as she was inthoseskinny jeans, if the answer wasYes,he was likely gonna get a strong confirmation as soon as she got onto the plane and took off her jacket.
Tasha shifted her shoulder bag in order to unzip it, and then nearly dove inside to search for...
A giant pair of headphones.
She snapped them down over her ears, and adjusted her phone to whatever playlist she’d made for this flight to the New England mountains to meet a queen, as a flight attendant—or wait, no, she was the captain—gestured toward the stairs, letting them know it was time to board.
Thomas reached for Tash’s bag, but she gave him her back as she picked it up herself, carrying it easily up the stairs.
So he just nodded to the captain as he followed Tasha into the plane, which was radically different from the military transports on which he and his SEAL team usually flew.
Comfortable leather seats that swiveled. A sofa. An open door leading back into a bedroom with a king-sized bed that had a white comforter very similar to the one he still had in his apartment.Shit.
Tasha sat down—jacket still on—in one of the leather chairs and locked it into position facing forward, turned away from a table and a second similar chair.
Thomas sat his ass down there, behind her, glancing over at the bit of the back of her head that he could see as the real flight attendant approached to store their luggage and offer drinks.
Thomas shook his head, but the young man brought a glass filled with red wine for Tasha, who smiled up at him as she took it, took a sip.
And that was his confirmation—baby bump no. And that filled him with more relief than made sense, considering.
She glanced over at Thomas then, and in that brief moment, she let down her guard, and she was back. His Tasha. The girl he’d met on a San Diego beach so many years ago.
The girl who’d grown up—or so she’d thought at the tender age of eighteen—and gotten drunk and planted herself in his bed on his birthday.
Their birthdays were within days of each other, so maybe it was more aboutherbirthday than his...
But, what was it she’d said, just a few minutes ago...?
No. Nope. Nope. No.
Five years after his very adamanthell-no-this-is-not-happening, she wasstillmortified.
But probably also damn glad that at leastoneof them hadn’t thrown caution to the wind that night.
Also...? Yo, drunk girl. There’s this thing calledconsentand it goes both ways.
Thomas took a deep breath, exhaling it fully, mindfully. He willed himself to be present, here and now, instead of time-traveling in his head to that moment when he’d first woken up and realized he was no longer alone in his bed, when Tasha had pressed herself against him and kissed him, before he’d recognized this wasn’t just his crazy brain sending him an unsettling and inappropriate dream—that she was really and truly there with him, kissing him, her skin soft and sleek beneath his hands.
“What thehell...?!” He’d gone full falsetto as he’d all but launched out of his bed, slapping on the light to reveal...
