In two more hours, she’d walk off this plane. He’d go his way. She’d go hers. They’d become a story she’d tell herself late at night—about a storm and an emergency landing and a brief moment when two people who probably shouldn’t have met had somehow found each other anyway.
Shoot. The thought made her chest ache.
“For what it’s worth,” Mags said quietly, “ Thirty years from now, you won’t regret the chances you took. You’ll regret the ones you didn’t.”
Jayden didn’t respond.
She just sat there, eyes on the seatback in front of her, the hum of the engines filling the silence.
The flight attendant stopped at their row. “Anything to drink?”
“Just water,” Jayden said.
The Australian coast appeared on the horizon. Gold and green and impossibly blue.
She didn’t look back at row twelve again.
Couldn’t.
Because if she saw him smile one more time, she might do something stupid. Like text him first. Like suggest they stay in touch. Like admit that the thought of never seeing him again left a wound on the terrain of her heart.
And she couldn’t afford to be wounded. Not now. Not with Alan Martin still out there. Not with a mission waiting.
So she kept her eyes forward. And told herself that two days with Dakota Rivers were enough.
But yes, she’d remember this time. Treasure it. Keep it as proof that she was still human.
At least, Jayden Pierce was. Lynx was a different matter altogether.
FIVE
He just needed to grab his bag and go.
Really.
So maybe he should stop tracking the dark-haired woman on the far side of the crowd. Never mind that he hadn’t stopped thinking about her since Fiji.
Nor had she stopped to wait for him when they’d disembarked from the plane.
He tried not to let that hurt a little.
The Cairns airport hummed with passengers. Bright light through floor-to-ceiling windows. Announcements in cheerful Australian accents. The smell of coffee, and outside, the scent of the ocean.
His phone had signal again. Three missed calls from Ham, followed by a text.
Ham
Call when you land.
Yeah, so he should call. Should report the delay, the emergency landing, the fact that he was hours behind schedule with the Sydney summit looming. And if Ham was right, the Bratva already had a head start. He should get his head back in the game.
Instead, he was watching Jayden navigate the crowd toward baggage claim.
Interesting. She moved like a spy, slipping through gaps in the crowd like water finding its path.
It ticked something inside him, but he put it away.
He lost sight of her once, then found her at baggage claim. She stood, watching the gray bags circling the carousel like a slow-motion parade of identical choices. He counted at least three that could be his. The universe apparently had a sense of humor about luggage.
