please.” The voice was wonderfully male. It was the Do Not Fear. I Am In Control-type voice. He was at one of the flight counters. He had all their attentions.
He was a marvelous-looking, well-made man in a perfect uniform who was asking the muttering crowd to listen to him. He’d had all the female attention right away.
No one in the trapped pack believed there was any solution. They were mostly restless and disappointed, and some were sulky, but they all quieted down.
It was unarguable that the airport had no control over the weather that was lousing up other airports someplace else. Or even if by some miracle bad weather sneaked into TEXAS, who could control weather? So why would anyone be angry with the airport personnel?
The person addressing them was a captain of one of the stranded planes. He stood on a movable step-up and scanned the crowd. As always happened when men scanned crowds, and Jo was in the crowd, the man’s eyes landed on her. He smiled in the way men smile at a woman who interests them.
And it was mostly to Jo that he said, “I have some hotel rooms available. Because of the locations in the hotels, they are not choice rooms, but you can shower and rest. It would be better if you could double up.” He smiled at Jo. “It would be rude to use a double room as a single. Who’s double? Raise your hands.”
A man’s voice next to Jo said, “We are.”
While she was recovering from the sound of him, a slip of paper was passed from the pilot to the hand that reached past Jo’s shoulder.
In the crush, a body pressed slightly against Jo’s side. And her own body reacted strongly. That was weird. She hadn’t reacted to any touches since”Well, Jo,” a nicely rumbling voice said in her ear. “Want to share. again?”
All the bedlam around faded away as she turned like a particle in a slowly melting glacier. She didn’t have to turn far, but it took a long time and her lips parted during the same millennium.
Since a millennium takes a while to pass, she had the time to notice, in all that while, no one around aged. Interesting. They were all locked in by her shock, but they appeared unaware of what had happened.
Eventually her slight, slow turn did take her stare to the speaker at her shoulder. And it was, indeed, he. Her ex-husband.
He looked the same. His brown hair was thick. His brown eyes were lazy and amused. He was thirty-eight and old enough not to accost an ex-wife.
She spoke. She said, “Chad.” With him, she’d always been a similarly brilliant conversationalist. She hadn’t actually needed to talk, but her inability to communicate was why she had her master’s degree. It was one of the reasons.
He smiled at her as if they’d amicably parted just last week. “So you do remember.”
“How amazing to run into you here.” Not having seen him in so long, she could evaluate him more critically.
He looked fantastic. No wonder all the female students in his seminars stared and shifted in their chairs. Just seeing him, her own body was being crass. At twenty-eight, she was old enough to have better control.
He lifted the paper slip to call her attention to it. “I have a room. You’re my first choice. Want to share?”
How could her body carry on that way? Did it expect—Of course not. Then why—Her mouth said, “Why, how amazing to run into you in an airport!” And she was immediately aware she’d already said something similar. In turn, he would immediately know he’d boggled her.
He always had.
Females acted so silly around Chad Wilkins that he’d accepted it as the normal behavior pattern in women. He simply assumed all women, at all times, acted the way she did around him. He used her conduct as a measuring stick for women. He had never assimilated his lure and he wasn’t at all egotistical about himself.
He’d never been very bright about women.
In the crush, the stranded pilot had come through the mob, and he touched Jo’s shoulder. “Are you alone? There’s one vacant room left. It’s mine.” His grin was just great.
Why couldn’t she just go along with the pilot? It was the perfect escape from Chad. She could make an excuse later with the pilot. But she should seize on this chance to avoid the temptation and escape Chad!
However, Chad smiled kindly at the discreetly salivating pilot and replied, “She’s with me.”
That had a familiar ring to it. And Jo remembered Chad saying that to friendly men. But then after he’d shooed off whomever, he would tilt his head down to listen to some foggy old man’s dissertation on something so obscure as to be beyond heeding.
The pilot, who wasn’t empty peanut shells, gave Chad a studying look, then returned his regard to Jo. “If it doesn’t pan out, I’m in 409.”
She looked at him in serious regret. There stood a normal man. And she heard as her mouth said, “Thank you. But don’t wait up.”
The pilot waited for more.
She again looked at him regretfully, but she slowly turned back to Chad, taking another millennium to do that simple thing.
Her ex-husband ignored the reluctant-to-give-up pilot who’d never before been turned down. Chad took hold of Jo’s elbow as if she was property. Come to think of it, he’d always been possessive.
Chad asked Jo, “Where are your things?”
“Here.” She indicated the across-her-body, shoulder-slung, light bag. “I travel light.”
He accepted that as logical and informed her with confidence, “I’ll find a cab.”
And he would. He always could. In all the time Jo had known Chad, he could solve anything. But not Jo. He had never been able to solve Jo.
As they plowed through the packed people, the divorced pair left the abandoned pilot watching after them.
Chad got the first cab that was available. Of course he would. He invited any of the waiting others who were going to that particular hotel to join them. Altogether, not counting the driver, they squeezed in six.
“This many’s illegal.” The woman driver mentioned her evaluation—to Chad. She would sort him out as their leader.
With authority, Chad gently instructed the cabdriver, “It’s an emergency.” With a pithy, deliberate pause, he added, “And we tip well.”
That was language the driver understood. Most people recognized Chad’s position as unheralded leader right away. The cabdriver was no exception. Males sometimes had trouble with the premise of Chad’s superiority, as had the pilot, but most people finally would accept the fact that Chad was the leader.
Leaders have very little spare time.
In the cab, Jo was squashed between Chad and the window. He had arranged it so that no other man was close to her. He’d been deft about it. He’d always done that. He could shift her quite discreetly from one side of him to the other depending on who was crowding her.
He was possessive.
Not anymore. They’d been divorced for almost four years. He’d allowed her to leave quite thoughtfully. He’d said, You’ll be back when you’ve had a taste of being on your own for a while. You like being married!
He’d been wrong.
It was probably the only time, in all the while she’d known Chad, that he’d ever been wrong. Well, any person was entitled to one mistake in his life.
She had been his.
Sitting forward in the cab on the edge of the back seat, with Chad pressed against her hip and the noisy shadows of other people packed in the small enclosure, Jo’s body was afire with ants of desire. How foolish of her sex to react again and so violently to Chad.
She