CHAPTER ONE
RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PLACE
DYLAN
December
I don’t like to rush, but I also don’t like to be at the airport with too much time to spare. Today I rushed to get to LAX after cutting it too close and thought I might have missed my flight. I got to the gate, and as my luck would have it, my flight was delayed.
Worst of both worlds.
I shrug off the tension in my shoulders, wishing I could beam myself up to Minnesota right about now. I never knew I had the capacity to get stressed until I moved from Minnesota to LA. I grew up going to Lake Superior every summer, and when I was in high school, my family went on vacation to California. I fell in love with the ocean and surfing. In fact, I loved it so much that I moved back to ride the waves and opened a surf shop in Malibu that’s now thriving. But the traffic has threatened to take my sanity on more than one occasion. If I could just stay in my neighborhood, surfing andhanging out with the peeps I meet on the beach or who come through my shop, I’d be the most chill person I know.
Contributing to the stress is the reason I’m at LAX at least once a month, if not more…my dad has cancer. And I’m doing everything I can to turn the shop over to someone who will care about it as much as I do, so I can move back home to be with Dad. He insists that I not just drop everything for his sake, and I’m trying to honor his wishes, but it’s getting harder to leave him every time.
As I sit here trying to catch my breath, a pair of endless legs walks by me, and I’m ashamed to say that every other thought leaves my brain.
Fucking hell.
Who is that supermodel, and where can I follow her for life?
My eyes track up from her long legs to her ass, just barely covered by a skirt that I’d love to see outside in a breeze. White tank covering a toned stomach, and tits that are the perfect handful. Graceful arms and the prettiest hands. Long dark hair that falls down her back, splashing over that white tank like velvet. And then I reach her face.
Goddamn. That face.
Her eyes meet mine and they hold. I swallow hard, divided between staring at her full pink lips or the most mesmerizing green eyes I’ve ever seen.
I blink, and she’s walking away.
I stand, ready to introduce myself or to just follow that sweet scent trailing in her wake. If pheromones are honey, jasmine, citrus, vanilla, orchid, peach, chocolate, and blackberry, I kid you not, that’s what just walked by, blasted my senses, and woke everything up inside me.
The reason I’m at the airport rushes back. Probably as the blood eventually returns to my brain.
I sit down in a stupor.
I’m at an airport and moving from LA over the next few months. I’ll never see this girl again, and while that’s a fucking shame, it’s just the way it is. I look at the screen to see if it has any updates, and when I see that nothing’s changed—we’re still stuck here for at least another hour—I bury myself in my phone and don’t look up again until it’s time to board.
Since my legs are so long, I’m in an exit row. When the flight attendant comes by to have us state that we know what we’re signing up for by sitting in this row and then gets our agreement, something catches my eye.
Those sexy legs.
The girl is across the aisle and a few rows up from me. Maybe my luck is changing—she’s going to Minnesota too.
Still. Doesn’t mean much.
Gotta love it when you’re traveling and someone finds out you live in a state that the person you’re talking to is familiar with, and they say, “Oh! Maybe you know my friend John?”
Uh, no, Jim. I’m sorry, I don’t know your friend John.
The chances might be much greater in Minnesota than California, but yeah…no.
Doesn’t mean I’m not going to enjoy the hell out of being in the close vicinity of this girl for a few hours.
While I feel a bit pervy staring at her from my seat, it feels like a gift that I want to accept…but then my sister Goldie’s voice rings out in my head:Just because you want to look doesn’t mean she wants you to.Damn Goldie for sitting on my shoulder, talking sense into me, even when she’s across the country. She’s always done her best to keep me in line, as most big sisters do, I guess.
So I do the gentlemanly thing and keep my eyes to myself. Okay, maybe not entirely, certainly not every second,but more than I would’ve without my big sister’s stern voice correcting me.
I get a drink and a snack, thinking enviously about first class. I can afford it, I just can’t always excuse the expense when it’s a last-minute, extra-pricy fare. I guess my parents instilled that in me—save the dollars wherever I could…even though they were loaded. My dad still is.
