Part Three
Chapter 1
BRITTANY
Waking from a sex coma on the private jet taking us to Texas has me looking into my fiancé’s gorgeous blue eyes and wondering how this all happened so fast. It’s been a week, and here I am, engaged and ready to marry this man.
“Hey, beautiful,” he murmurs. “Did you sleep well?” His lips graze my cheek, igniting a slight burn.
I guess I have a bit of whisker burn from the stubble on his face and all the kissing we did before exhaustion overtook us and we fell asleep.
“I slept like the dead. I’m surprised to see you awake.” I take his hand and hold it against my chest, near my heart.
He’s back in my heart. All of it.
I can feel the comforting sensation of having faith and hope in this man once again. When he slipped the engagement ring on my finger, I let the doubts fly away. There’s no room for doubts if this is going to work. And I want this to work more than anything I’ve ever wanted.
“I checked the time.” He turns away from me and gets off the bed. “We’ll be landing in Dallas soon. I’ll rent a car and we can stay in Dallas until my meeting on Wednesday. The place I need to go is about forty minutes away from the east side. You can stay in the hotel while I have the little meeting. Then I’ll come get you and we can go visit our parents.”
I turn over on my side and prop my head up on the pillows and watch him going through his suitcase to find something to wear. “What’s the meeting about?”
He stops and makes that deer in the headlights face and I know the meeting may not be a real meeting. His body tenses and every muscle stands out. “Oh, nothing, really. I’m going to take a quick shower. I’d ask you to join me, but you distract me and we need to hurry up. The plane should be landing in twenty minutes.”
I let him get in the shower. Then I get out of bed and go to the bathroom to brush my teeth and look at the rat’s nest that’s now my hair. “You really did a number on my locks, luscious.”
“I saw that,” he says with a chuckle. “Medusa doesn’t hold a candle to you.”
After I rinse out my mouth, I pull the little shower curtain back. “I’m getting in. Try not to get distracted.”
He looks me up and down and growls. “Too late.”
With a laugh, I bump him with my hip and knock him over a little so I can get my hair wet. “Well, control yourself. I’m already going to look less than fantastic when we go inside the airport and being that this is Dallas, I may run into people I know.”
“Do you have any of your boy toys in Dallas?” he asks as he rubs shampoo into his dark hair.
“All of my men are in New York.” I hold out my hand. “Would you please put some shampoo in my hand? It’s behind you and if I have to get it myself, I may cause you even more distraction.”
He obliges me, but has a frown on his face. “Let’s stop calling them your men and my women, okay? I’d like to think I’m your only man and you are my only woman.”
“Great. I like that way of thinking, myself.” I massage the shampoo into my hair as he rinses his out. “So, this meeting, what time is it?”
“Early. You know, one of those first thing in the morning things. Maybe over breakfast, I guess.” The way his eyes look everywhere but at me has my brain doing flips to get me to see he’s up to something.
“Is it about your app?” I bump him again, making him move so I can rinse out my hair.
“Sure,” he says, as if that sounds convincing at all. “My app. It’s about that.”
“And it’s outside of Dallas?” I ask as I hold out my hand. “Some conditioner, please.”
He pours some into my palm. “Yes. I’m done in here.” He kisses my nose then gets out of the shower and away from my questions.
I hurry to finish showering and hop out of the shower, wrapping a towel around me and finding him buttoning up his shirt, already dressed. “Would you grab me a bra and panty set and a little dress, baby?”
He nods and grabs them out of the suitcase and lays them on the bed. “I’ll be in the cabin. I think there’s something to eat in there. I heard some noise a minute ago.”
“You and food, Jason. You have such an appetite.”
“I did have a few hours work out earlier, baby. Jeez! And you need to eat too. I’ve only managed to get about three pounds on you and I wanted to get ten in this week.”
“Trying to fatten me up so no other men will look at me, Jason?” I ask as I pull my panties on.
He watches me with his jaw clenched. “You're making me nuts. Get dressed. Then we can talk. You’re making it very hard to think about anything other than getting you back in that bed.”
He leaves the room and I still don’t know what he’s really going to be doing on Wednesday morning.
Maybe it’s some kind of surprise for me!
I shake that thought off. It most likely has nothing to do with me. It most likely has to do with one of those women he has on his app. And now I’m kind of pissed, and not in a very great mood any longer.
After I dress, I go into the cabin of the jet to find Jason scarfing down some kind of pie. “What do you have there?”
He looks at me with a grin. “Apple pie. Come sit with me and let me feed you.”
I sit next to him and he places a bite in my mouth. I’ve decided arguing with him about eating is futile. And food has never tasted so good as when he’s placing it in my mouth.
Only three bites in and the older woman, who is the stewardess, comes out of a little door. “Sorry, I have to put that up. We’ll be landing in just a few minutes. Take your places and put on your seatbelts please.”
Jason gets up, pulling me along behind him. “Don’t worry. I’m getting you something to eat in the airport. You have to be starving.”
I’m not so much hungry as I am curious about his damn meeting, but he seems more intent on feeding me than letting me in on the true nature of this meeting.
Gently pushing me to take the seat next to the window, he leans over and latches my seatbelt. A quick kiss to the top of my head and he sits down next to me.
I realize he can’t get away from me now. “So, who is this meeting with?”
“A man,” he says as he buckles his own seat belt.
“You seem very sketchy about this meeting, Jason. I don’t like it.”
He looks down for a while, then back at me. “Britt, can we talk about this at the hotel? It’s complicated. I want to tell you. I do. But not here. Okay, pumpkin britches?”
“It’s that serious?” I ask, as a knot forms in my stomach.
He merely nods, then takes my hand and kisses it. “I’ll tell you everything once we’re all settled in the room. I promise.”
I can’t help thinking about all the possibilities. And since this thing has stopped us from heading straight out to Vegas, the way he had been planning if I accepted his proposal, I know it has to be bad.
He tightens his grip on my hand and tugs it so I’ll look at him instead of out the window at the black night sky. “It’s going to be okay. No matter what, it won’t affect you and me and what we have.”
I nod and find I can’t talk, as a lump has lodged in my throat. Deep inside of me I knew things wouldn’t go along as smoothly as I hoped they would. Except for my work, nothing else in my life has ever gone according to plan.
I have to ask one more question to try to ease my mind a little. “Jason, is this legal trouble or woman trouble?”
He sits quietly, for what I deem too long. “A bit of both.”
I nod again. “Do you have a lawyer?”
“I do. He’s going to be there.”
He’s already called his lawyer about this. I know it’s big now, and I’m having a hard time not freaking out. So I look back out the window and try to breathe as I see the lights of DFW airport.
It’s nearly eleven at night and I promised my mother I’d call when we arrived safely at our destination. I left out it was going to be Dallas. She thinks I’m going back to New York.
I let her know I was going to Bora Bora with Jason and she was none too pleased. I told her we were going away to see if we wanted to get back together, which made her furious.
She told me, of course, he could be good for a week, away from all of his tramps. But I felt something very different with him during that week. I felt a change in the man I used to know.
He said the same thing himself. He told me he felt a change in himself he never dreamed he’d feel.
I’m not sure if he’s become a brilliant liar or really means it. I’m putting my faith in that he really means it.
As I sit here and watch the lights getting closer and closer as we descend, I can’t help comparing this to where we are in our lives. On the way to a marriage and family.
Just like landing this jet, it’s iffy. I’ve seen planes crash right as they land. We could, too.
Jason and I could make it right up to the altar and everything could go wrong. I don’t know how or why, but things could go wrong.
I glance back at Jason. He’s laying his head back on the headrest with his eyes closed. I know it’s not because he’s nervous about the landing. I know he’s nervous about telling me what this meeting is really about.
It’s that bad of news that he’s nervous about losing me over this. Otherwise, he’d have told me about it right away. Instead, he’s skirted around it, and that makes me extremely worried.
I lay my head back on the headrest too and close my eyes. Seems right now a little prayer wouldn’t hurt.
Please let things work out for us!