She looked up at me and smiled, folding her arms over my shoulders.
“And I love you, Blaine,” she replied. “And I will continue to do so for the rest of our lives.”
Best Seller: Mine Forever
Blurb
Jess White is trying to keep it all together. With a child to care for and only her sister to help her do it, she most certainly has her hands full and her job as a flight attendant doesn’t make keeping it all together any easier. When a gorgeous new pilot joins the team for one eventful flight, Jess can’t help but notice him but all of her warning bells go off. The last thing she needs is the complications that come with a hot shot pilot, especially one as good looking as this guy.
Drew Larson is all business, almost all of the time. He takes a no nonsense approach to his job as a pilot and doesn’t hesitate to implement it when he meets a less than responsible pilot. He has his life pretty well figured out, except for the hot blonde flight attendant he can’t seem to get out of his head. The last thing he wants is to get involved with a woman, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t interested in doing some very inappropriate things to the very sweet attendant on his plane.
As the tension begins to build, will Drew and Jess find a way to navigate their intersecting worlds or will everything come to a head and blow up in their faces?
Chapter 1: Jess
“Red light, Mom! There’s a red light coming up!”
The yellow light about to turn was something I had seen with no problem at all, but I hadn’t been prepared for the sound of my daughter's yelling. I slammed on the brakes of my little white Volvo, throwing both Emma and me forward in our seats. The seatbelt tightened, making me feel like I was suffocating, and I heard Emma make a little strangled sound as her own belt struck her across her throat. When I glanced back at the light, I saw that it was just, at that moment, turning from yellow to red. There had been no need whatsoever for the rapid stop. I rolled my eyes and glanced up at the rearview mirror, where I saw my beautiful ten-year-old girl smiling devilishly.
“Emma, what was that for? We had plenty of time. It would have been safer to stop more slowly.”
“Dunno. This was more interesting, you know?”
"Interesting isn't always better, baby. We're not trying to make things interesting. We're trying to get you to Aunt Sophie's place in one piece."
"But everything's fine, Mama! No big deal, right?"
I rolled my eyes again and hoped that Emma couldn't see the little smile playing at the corners of my mouth. She was only ten years old, but sometimes, I felt sure that she was going on thirty. The way she delivered her little one liners. She had a level of sarcasm and knowing in her that could make it difficult to remember she was only a kid.
I'd talked to Sophie about it a time or two, expressing my concern the way I was sure any mother would. It was probably because she'd had to grow up faster than a lot of little girls, Sophie had always said. Losing her daddy when she was only five years old was certainly enough to do it.
Being shuttled from one home to another would do it, too, and that was something that wasn't going to stop any time soon. Case in point, our current car trip. For the third time in less than a month, I was dropping my daughter off to stay with her aunt, my younger sister, so that I could do my job. Being a flight attendant was something I had always dreamed about, and it was something I mostly loved, but leaving my kid every other week? That part sucked, and there was no getting around it.
"Hey, Mama?"
“Hey, what?”
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked.
"That's not a very nice question!" I answered with a laugh, hoping Emma couldn't see how much her keen perception of me shook me up. "And there's nothing the matter with me. I'm just thinking, that's all."
“But thinking about what?”
“Nothing important,” I said.
“Thinking about something bad, I bet.”
“And why would you think that?”
"Because your head got all wrinkly. Your head always gets all wrinkly when you're thinking about something bad."
“No, Emma, I promise. I’m not thinking about anything bad.”
At least, I hoped it was nothing bad. I added that last part inside my own head as I worked on making sure my forehead remained unwrinkled. Emma was right, the little frown line in between my eyebrows was one of my tells. It was where my worry showed, unless I worked on suppressing it, and Emma appeared to know it.
It shouldn't have been surprising, either. She got the same line of worry on her own small face when something was bugging her. I thought about leaving our conversation where it was and then thought better of it. One thing I had always promised myself was that I would never lie to my daughter. It was a promise I had made directly after the death of her father, my husband, and one I intended to keep.
Not telling her what was on my mind wasn't exactly a lie, but it wasn't giving her any peace of mind, either. I was already about to drop her off and leave her for a couple of days, which was hard enough. The least I could do was dro