“You live there?”
“Yep.” He glances at me, and I grin.
“Lucky bastard to be living in paradise.”
The corner of his mouth lifts, and my heart beats faster.
“What about you?” he asks. “Vacation?”
“Sort of. Catching up with a friend. Escaping my life for a bit before it finds me and drags me back.”
“That bad?”
“Let’s just say that if I don’t get sunlight and a cocktail in the next twenty-four hours, someone may need to file paperwork.”
He laughs again, and that same hot, helpless wave rolls through me. This is actually ridiculous. I shift in my seat and fasten my belt a little tighter, like that is somehow going to help with the fact that this man smells like temptation and laughs like sin.
He notices the movement. His eyes dip over my face, my throat, then come back up, and there’s no mistaking the amusement there now. Or the interest.
We take off through the Seattle sky and come out above the clouds into actual sunlight, and it’s one of those moments that always get me—that specific second when the world below disappears and there’s just light and blue and you remember that the weather is only weather and there’s always something better above it. I take a breath and feel the tension in my shoulders drop by a degree.
Ace watches me do it. He doesn’t say anything about it, just stares forward when I turn back, and I’m grateful for it.
Once we’re cruising, a flight attendant appears with a tray of drinks, and I get champagne because it’s first class and I’ve had a week. Ace selects the same without seeming to think about it.
“Okay,” I say. “What’s the worst line you’ve ever used on a woman?”
He turns his head slowly. “That sounded dangerously specific.”
“It was.”
His mouth curves. “You ask that question often?”
“Only when a man looks like he’s gotten away with nonsense because of his cheekbones alone.”
That gets a real grin out of him. “I see.”
“There’s also the voice. Very unfair advantage.”
He studies me for a second as though he’s deciding what to do with that. “You saying I’m dangerous, Adelaide?”
“Just that you look as if you know how to get what you want.”
He lets out a low laugh, then rubs a hand over his jaw. “There was one time I told a woman she had the kind of smile that made men forget their own names.”
I stare at him. “Okay, interesting.”
“I was twenty-three.”
“That is old enough to know better.”
“She liked it.”
“Did she?”
“She took my number.”
“Tragic.”
