1
DAN
Lights flicker as I walk down the boarding tunnel, luggage in one hand, phone pressed to my ear with the other. My heart thumps against my ribs, faster with each step. “I’m leaving England now. I’ll be in Rome in about three hours.”
“Is Dom with you?” Riccardo, my cousin, asks.
“Nah, he’s staying home working, plus he’s all loved up with a redhead called Poppy.” My lips quirk into a grin as I think of my brother wrapped around Poppy’s finger.
Riccardo snorts. “Isn’t it about time you found yourself a woman?”
“Not me. My heart’s a block of ice and I plan on keeping it that way. No distractions. No drama. Just how I like it. No woman is worth that kind of chaos.”
Riccardo chuckles down the phone. “Keep telling yourself that, cugino.”
A hint of jet fuel filters in from the cool air outside, making me nauseous. “I gotta go. I’ll see you soon.”
“I’ll have a car waiting for you at the airport.”
“Great. See you then.” I cancel the call and slip my phone into the inside pocket of my suit jacket. I pop a piece of gumin my mouth and the strawberry flavour bursts on my tongue, giving me something to focus on besides my impending doom.
The light up ahead is anything but welcoming. My stomach turns as if I’m on a rollercoaster. I rarely fly, but Riccardo insisted on me coming out for his sister’s wedding. Plus, my other cousin Matteo is flying in from the States next week. Hopefully, this will be the last trip I take for a while, killing two birds with one stone.
Moisture gathers on my brow. I clench my fist around the handles of my holdall. The threshold’s only a few feet away. I should’ve taken a Valium, but I need a clear head on foreign soil.
“Good morning, sir. Welcome aboard flight R606,” a flight attendant says in a familiar voice as soft as a petal.
My chest tightens. My gaze floats from her black patent shoes over her skin-coloured tights. A skirt hides her knees, covering thick thighs. A belt pinches her waist between generous hips and even fuller breasts, all outlined by a dusky pink uniform.
But it’s those lips that steal my breath away. Lips I’ve kissed a hundred times or more and a thousand times in my dreams.
“Rose?” Any remaining air is sucked from my lungs as I say her name out loud. My head pounds like a warning siren. This woman froze my heart almost fourteen years ago. Now her icy blue eyes stab me in the chest as she blankly stares at me as if we never knew each other.
My mouth parts as I wheeze in the thick air between us. Does she not remember the night we made love, the pink roses I would send her that matched the colour of her cheeks, and the secret rendezvous we’d have away from prying eyes?
“I’m sorry, sir.” She taps her silver name badge with a perfectly French tipped nail. “I’m Grace.”
I scan the metal badge. “Grace?” Blonde hair peeks outfrom under her hat and I’m questioning my sanity. My Rose was a brunette. And her family has enough money that she wouldn’t need to work. And she certainly wouldn’t be working as a flight attendant. But when I glance back into Grace’s eyes, memories of Rose come flooding back like a tidal wave threatening to pull me under her spell and drown me once and for all.
“Yes, sir. Grace Finch.”
It’s the impending flight and returning to Rome that’s playing tricks on my mind. That has to be it. “I’m sorry, miss. I thought you were someone I knew.”
She gives me a wide smile, pushing her cheeks up, making her eyes sparkle with a hint of sadness. Her hand reaches out and holds my arm over the cotton jacket, but I still feel the electricity surge through me from her touch. “Maybe we knew each other in a previous life.”
Her mask slips for a millisecond, and I see a glimmer of the woman I knew. Her hand snaps away as if she felt the spark too and her lip twitches before stretching back into a fake smile.
We lock eyes for a beat too long, the pulse in my neck throbbing like I’ve run a marathon. It feels like another lifetime when we were together, but the pain is as raw as it ever was.
A passenger behind me clears his throat, breaking my trip down memory lane.
She jumps right back into flight assistant mode. “Do you have your ticket, sir?”
I reach into my jacket pocket and hand her my boarding pass with a trembling hand. “Here you go, little bird.”
Her fingers brush mine, sending a spike of electricity through my limb. She scans the ticket. Her eyes narrow. Just for a second. Then she says through a tight jaw. “Welcome aboard, D’Angelo Bianchi.”
She eyes me again, this time with annoyance. “Businessseats are towards the front.” Her voice tighter now, her fake smile a fraction more forced. “Please place your luggage in the overhead locker and review the safety instructions in the seat pocket, sir.” She hands back the boarding pass as if it’s laced with poison and gestures towards the front of the plane.
