Fight or Flight Read online

  “What happened?”

  “Some volcano in Iceland.”

  “I thought that was just affecting European flights?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Huh. That sucks. You okay?”

  Aware of the man sitting next to me, I turned slightly toward the window and lowered my voice. “I just want to get home.”

  “I should have come with you.” Harper’s voice was filled with regret.

  “No, sweetie. I had to do this alone. We both know that.”

  “We both don’t know that. You are always there for me. You should have let me be there for you with this.”

  Maybe I should have. But the truth was, I didn’t want the way I was treated back in Phoenix to affect Harper’s perception of me. She knew my side of the story, of course, but I was afraid that all those people would somehow convince her everything was my fault. And it wasn’t my fault. It was a ridiculous fear, because Harper loved me, but still it had snuck under my skin. “You didn’t have to be there for me to be there for me.”

  Harper sighed. “Okay, babe. Just call or text me when you land in Chicago and let me know when your flight gets in at Logan tomorrow. I’ll see if I can cut out of work to come get you.”

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “Well, I want to, so shut it.”

  I laughed softly. “Okay. I’ll call you. Bye, sweetie.”

  “Bye, babe.”

  When I hung up, switching my phone off, I could have sworn I felt the Bastard Scot’s eyes on me. When I glanced over at him, however, he was frowning at his computer screen.

  The announcement that we were getting ready for takeoff came over the PA and we were asked to stow away larger devices like laptops. I surreptitiously watched my obnoxious neighbor as he put away his laptop and settled back in his seat.

  He closed his eyes, and I used the moment to study him. The sleeves of his henley were still rolled up, so I could see up close some of the tattoos on his left arm. In among smoke, dust, and what looked like debris from buildings was a modern-day soldier running with his rifle. Above him there was what looked like the foot of another figure, but the rest of it was hidden by his shirt. My wayward gaze moved upward to his interesting face. His lashes were a fair golden brown color, so I hadn’t realized how long they were until now. His full, pouty lower lip surrounded by that short beard drew my attention. Stubble was usually a turnoff for me, but I had to admit the pain in the ass suited his.

  I wondered if it scratched or tickled when he kissed a woman.

  The mere thought caused a tingle between my legs that shocked me.

  Flushing at the thought, I wrenched my gaze off his face, intending to return to ignoring him and the physical response he’d elicited in me, when my eyes caught on his big hand curled around the arm divider.

  Not curled.

  Gripped.

  Tight.

  White-knuckled.

  Looking back at his face, I saw the wrinkle between his brow and the slight flare of his nostrils.

  Was the badass Scotsman afraid of flying?

  I was instantly reminded of Harper. She was terrified of flying. We’d gone on vacation with each other a few times to Europe, and every time I’d felt powerless to help her. She was a ball of nervous energy as soon as we boarded an airplane, pale and trembling until we were up in the air. Even then she’d stay tense in her seat, her whole body clenched with fear. On long flights, I’d walk her to the bathroom and stand outside the door for her, a constant reassurance. Still, I hated how scared she was. I’d even tried to convince her to vacation in the States in places we could drive to. But Harper never let fear control her. That was one of the things I admired most about her.

  Reminded of my friend, I felt an unwanted and unwarranted sympathy flood me.

  “Excuse me,” I called to the flight attendant as he was passing. I saw the Scot’s eyes fly open out of the corner of my own. “May I have another glass of champagne?”

  “We’re getting ready to take off, Miss Breevort.”

  “I’ll be super quick. Promise.”

  He didn’t look happy about it, but returned quickly with a glass for me. I smiled my thanks and then turned to the Scot, whose eyes were closed again. “Drink up.” I held the glass out to him.

  Those icy blues flew open. “What?”

  I shoved the glass toward him. “It’ll help.”

  He lifted his head, grimacing. “What are you talking about?”

  “Is it a fear of flying or just of taking off?”

  Instead of answering, he shot me another baleful look. “I don’t drink champagne.”

  “You’ll drink this. It isn’t whiskey, but it might take the edge off.”

  When he ignored me, I sighed. “Jesus, I don’t think you’re any less of an alpha pain in the ass because you’re afraid of flying.”

  At that he snatched the glass out of my hand and threw back the entire lot. Wiping droplets off his lips, he glowered at me. “It’s just the takeoff and landing.”

  The words were bitten out, and I had to quell a smile. “I’m not surprised. A plane isn’t exactly a longboat.”

  His lips twitched. “Scot. Not Scandinavian.”

  “If you’re telling me you don’t have an ounce of Scandinavian blood, I don’t believe you.”

  The flight attendant appeared to take the empty glass, but my seatmate didn’t even seem to notice as he was too busy staring at me like I was suddenly a puzzle. “Swedish.”

  “What?”

  “My great-great-grandfather was Swedish.”

  “I knew it. And here you were getting prickly because I called you Scandinavian. Technically I was kind of right.”

  “You’re also more than kind of annoying.”

  “Well, you should be comfortable around annoying. You’re the king of it. Although I’m beginning to wonder if this ‘mean guy’ thing you’ve got going on has more to do with you being afraid of flying than you actually being a mean guy.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Mean guy?”

  “Uh, yeah. You’ve been mean to me from the moment we met.”

  “I beg tae differ. You got in my face the moment we met. How else was I supposed tae respond?”

  “You practically knocked me off my feet barging past me to get to the gate check-in desk.”

  “I didn’t see ye.”

  “Seriously?”

  “You’re five foot nothing. Seriously.”

  “I’m five foot three. Five foot seven in my heels.”

  His gaze drifted down my body again, lingering on my legs. “You dinnae look it.”

  I frowned. “Are you suggesting I have short legs?”

  “No, your height suggests that.”

  “I have surprisingly long legs for a short person.”

  “You can turn anything into an argument. That’s quite a talent.”

  “You are distracting me from my point. Which is that you were clearly acting out because of your fear of flying, the same way I perhaps have not been myself due to exhaustion.”

  If I wasn’t mistaken, I thought I saw a hint of curiosity in his expression. “Exhaustion?”

  I shrugged. “It’s been a trying week.”

  “Separated from your boyfriend?”

  Huh? “What boyfriend?”

  “The ‘sweetie’ on the other end of the phone.”

  I smiled. “That was Harper. She’s my best friend.”

  “I’m surprised someone as annoying as you has a best friend.”

  “Everyone else loves me. If you weren’t currently acting out, you might like me too.”

  “Look, I’m not acting out because I’m afraid. I didn’t see you earlier in the airport, didn’t know I’d clipped you with my laptop bag, but maybe if you hadn’t come at me like a wee harpy, I might have apologized.”

  “I doubt it. You have no manners. I mean, what was your excuse for embarrassing me at Olive & Ivy? For being rude at the barista cart? Huh?”
/>   He grinned suddenly, a sexy flash of his teeth that sent a fizz of pleasure shooting low across my belly. My physical response to his smile stunned me. “I did that because it was fun. You make it too easy tae wind you up.”

  I sniffed in an attempt to squash my absurd physical attraction to him, but even to me it came off sounding haughtier than I’d intended. “You are a very twisted, belligerent individual.”

  “And you might want tae consider having that huge stick rammed up your tight wee arse surgically removed.”

  “I’m sorry, I think you’ve mistaken me for someone who actually gives a damn what you think.”

  He scoffed. “Babe, like I said, I dinnae even know you and I know you care too much what other people think.”

  Infuriated that he kept pushing that particular button but refusing to let him see how much he was getting to me, I started calmly patting at my jacket pockets and then riffled through the magazines in the seat pocket in front of me.

  “What are you doing?”

  I turned to find him scowling at me. “Looking for some paper and a pen.”

  He raised an eyebrow in question.

  “I thought I’d take some notes on your sage advice … and then you should take the paper and shove it up your ass.”

  “Do you want tae shut up and let me get through this?”

  My smile was admittedly supercilious. “You almost are.”

  He frowned and then glanced around, only then realizing that we were in the air. We hadn’t leveled out yet, but the plane had juddered up into takeoff minutes ago. The Viking/ Scot had risen his voice to be heard over the engines, but he’d been so focused on me, he hadn’t been paying attention.

  He turned back to me, seeming uncharacteristically taken aback.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Four

  Maybe I really was exhausted beyond rational thinking, because for a second I almost thought the Scot would thank me for distracting him during takeoff.

  The surprise in his expression abruptly transformed into surly with a curl of his upper lip. “I hope you dinnae expect a thank you.”

  His tone was so cold I almost shivered. I realized at some point in our conversation I’d started leaning toward him. Pressing back against my seat away from him, I mirrored his expression. “Silly me to even expect it.”

  “Aye, well, annoying me tae distraction doesn’t count as being helpful.”

  I returned my attention to my e-reader, readying myself to ignore his existence. “You are a miserable bastard, do you know that?”

  “Babe, when I start caring what pampered princesses think about me, I’ll know my life is no longer worth living.”

  Hurt flashed through me hot and unwanted, making my cheeks prickle. This guy was horrible. Just horrible! My fault for feeling sorry for him and mistakenly thinking his behavior could be excused due to his fear. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. “Stop calling me ‘babe.’ My name is Ava.”

  He didn’t respond and I wished I’d just ignored him entirely.

  When they announced that we could start using larger devices, my loathsome neighbor pulled his laptop back out and returned to disregarding my presence—something I decided was a blessing. I was no longer insulted by his pretending I didn’t exist. Clearly, it was better for my self-esteem that he did.

  However, either it was the book I was reading or he was affecting me more than I’d have liked, because I could not get into the story. I would have turned to sketching, whether it was designs for work or just random sketches for my own pleasure. But Stella had told me not to pack my laptop and to set an out-of-office notice on my e-mails so I wasn’t distracted by work, and I’d decided not to bring my sketchpad either. My boss was covering for me for the next few days, because she wasn’t just my boss; she was my friend. There were only four of us at Stella Larson Designs. Stella, myself, Paul, and our junior designer, Gabe. We handled projects all over the world, not just in the U.S. I was used to flying out to a project, taking specs, measurements, an abundance of photographs, so I could design the space from our office in Boston. Depending on the size of the project, I’d maybe have to fly back to the site a number of times.

  The budgets we worked with ranged from the mid six figures to well into millions of dollars. And we were dedicated to Stella’s company. She made it easy, demanding excellence with a no-nonsense attitude, but treating us as more than employees: as friends who could talk to her when we had a problem. There were not a lot of employers like Stella, and she’d won our loyalty with her own. The day she approached me after seeing the results of my first big solo project out of college (I’d convinced my uncle to let me overhaul his office, and he just happened to be Stella’s accountant), was one of the luckiest days of my life.

  But right now, I was cursing Stella for being a good boss. I wish she’d demanded I stay on top of my work because right then I could have been answering a bunch of e-mails—e-mails I was sure were piling up between the two projects I was currently working on. Sometimes I had clients who turned the reins fully over to me; most times my clients just wanted to have the overall aesthetic (maybe even fabrics and palettes) run by them. And then there were the few who wanted to be involved in every choice I made. They were the exhausting clients and right now I had one of them.

  I could only imagine she was going nuts waiting on me to get back to work.

  Well, I knew the feeling.

  I enviously watched my seatmate work away on his laptop.

  The only bright spot was when the flight attendants offered us a light lunch and I got that cup of coffee I’d been longing for. It was instant, so it wasn’t great, but it was caffeine and I could not help the little sigh of pleasure that escaped my lips after the first sip.

  I thought I felt the Scot tense at the noise, but when I side-eyed him, he was digging into his lunch, ignoring me.

  My lunch could wait. First I savored my coffee.

  “If you’re not going tae eat that, I will,” he said, sounding annoyed.

  How I managed to rankle him just sitting there I did not know.

  “I am going to eat it. I’m enjoying my coffee first.”

  “I thought maybe you were one of those women that doesn’t eat.” He shrugged, throwing back the rest of his coffee.

  “I think we’ve established you’re a judgmental pain in the ass.” I smiled sweetly before turning to my lunch. Feeling his eyes on me, I ate it slowly and deliberately, knowing intuitively that it would bother him. And it was not my imagination that the tension between us thickened as I brought bite after bite of the ham salad to my mouth at a snail’s pace.

  “Take that,” he grunted out, and I turned my head to see he was holding his empty tray out to the flight attendant. The flight attendant stared at it, momentarily stunned.

  “Of course, sir,” he said calmly, practiced, before taking it and walking away.

  Irate at his behavior, I couldn’t help myself. “Do you ever say please or thank you?”

  He cut me a dark look. “What?”

  I gestured with my plastic fork to where the flight attendant had been standing. “People aren’t your servants. The flight attendants are not your servants. They’re doing a job and trying to make this flight easier on you. You can be forgiven for being abrupt and standoffish and maybe unintentionally insulting because you’re anxious about flying. I was trying to tell myself that, anyway. But the way you speak to people in customer service makes you an arrogant, entitled prick.”

  “If I were you, I’d shut up and mind my own business.”

  “Yeah, well, if I were you, I’d reach into that goddamn dark soul of mine and pull a thank you out of there every now and then.”

  I didn’t know if it was the honest pique trembling in my words, but the Scot’s eyes widened marginally before he glowered and pulled his laptop back out with a clatter on top of his table.

  Hateful, hateful man.

  Ignoring him now came much, much easier. In fact, after
lunch (and another coffee) I actually got into my book. The urge to use the bathroom about fifty minutes from our estimated arrival, however, made continuing to ignore my neighbor impossible. I was going to have to ask him to move. Plus, I was too warm and was dying to take off my jacket.

  “Could you please let me out?” I asked in a carefully neutral tone.

  Equally lacking in expression, he grabbed up his laptop, pushed his table back in, and gestured for me to get out.

  I stared at the barely-there gap between his knees and the seat in front of him. Was he kidding? He wasn’t going to get out of his seat? My gaze flew to his face, but he was staring determinedly ahead.

  Fine!

  If I happened to step on his feet and then grind my stiletto into his toes, that was his fault. Huffing, I got up, grabbed hold of the top of the seat in front of him, trying not to touch the head of the woman sitting in it, and I shoved my right leg into the teeny gap he’d left. If he’d been an average-sized man, I probably would have squeezed past no problem in the spacious first-class seats.

  But he wasn’t an average-sized man.

  My leg touched his and my fingernails dug into the headrest in front of me. I shimmied into his space, bringing my left leg into the mix, and I heard him curse when my heel came down on his left foot. A fizzle of satisfaction moved through me and I pushed farther into his space. I felt his legs tense and I was suddenly very aware that my ass was in his face. Thankfully, it was mostly hidden by the peplum of my jacket.

  With one last shimmy I stumbled out into the aisle and looked back at him, hoping he was seared and scorched by the heat of my glower.

  The bastard already had his laptop back out.

  Wondering how it was possible a person as ill-mannered as he hadn’t been caught by karma by now, I marched down the short aisle and into the bathroom at the entrance of the galley.

  Inside, I did my business, washed up, and yanked out of my jacket, feeling unbearably hot. Thankfully, the silk camisole I wore was cut low enough under my arms that there were no damp patches on the material. I patted under my arms and sniffed to make sure I didn’t smell. Though I didn’t, I’d need to freshen up soon in order to avoid it. Not that I cared if I smelled while sitting next to that asshole. I’d do anything to make the rest of his flight uncomfortable.