Escaping Reality

to
    make room for mine, and it’s as much a struggle as breathing is right now.
    “Let me help you.”
    The deep, slightly husky male voice has me turning to my left to find
    myself captured in a familiar stare. My heart sputters. It can’t be. But it is.
    I’ve made a fool of myself by gaping at a gorgeous man and he’s here to
    make me pay in buckets of embarrassment. The man from the terminal is
    standing beside me, towering over my five feet three inches by close to a
    foot, and standing so close that I no longer have to guess the color of his
    eyes. They are blue, a piercing aqua blue that is almost green, and they are
    once again focused one hundred percent on me.
    “I…ah…thank you.”
    “My pleasure,” he says, a quirk to his mouth that I am once again
    looking at, along with the dark stubble shadowing his strong jaw along with
    his barely there goatee, which makes me think pirate. The kind that steals a
    girl’s senses and ravishes her body, leaving her incapable of anything but a
    whimper as she watches him walk out the door. Mr. Tall, Dark and
    Potentially Dangerous reaches over me to adjust the compartment, his
    t-shirt stretching over a perfectly sculpted broad chest. I don’t move—me,
    a person who believes wholeheartedly in personal space. I know I should
    and I mean to, but I don’t seem to have control over my legs, let alone
    anything else tonight.
    He glances down at me, still shifting my luggage. “Just this bag?” he
    asks, and there is heat in his eyes. Or maybe amusement. And conquest,
    definitely conquest, which must get old for a man like him.
    The thought is enough to make me step back, probably a bit too
    obviously. “Yes. Thank you.” Arms still stretched over his head, he adjusts
    my bag, muscles flexing, long torso stretching deliciously, and I don’t try to
    look away. Admiring this man keeps me from thinking about the hundreds
    of other people on this flight that could be trouble.
    “We’re all set,” he says, motioning to the seat. “You want the
    window?”
    “Window?” My belly tightens and I feel breathless. “We’re seated
    together?”
    “Appears that way.” Humor lights his eyes, and his mouth that I am
    somehow looking at, quirks as he adds, “Small world.”
    My cheeks heat at the reference to our little encounter in the
    terminal. “Too small,” I say, and an announcement over the intercom urges
    us to sit, saving me from some witty comment I don’t have.
    “Last chance,” he says. “Window?”
    I open myself to decline and snap my mouth shut. An aisle seat
    exposes me to the other passengers, many at my back. The only person
    who will ravish me while I’m trapped between this man and the wall is this
    man. “Do you mind?”
    “Not at all.”
    “Thank you,” I say, before I grab my bag and move to the seat he’s
    just given up, only to remember that he’d been settled here before I
    arrived. “Do you want your things from under the seat?”
    He slides in beside me and he is big, and broad and too good looking
    for the safety of womankind. “Why don’t I just put yours under my seat?”
    he suggests.
    He smells spicy and masculine, and the scent stirs a distant memory
    in the back of my mind. I shove it away, frustrated that I’m back to every
    little thing triggering flashbacks. Today has undone the strength I’d spent
    years creating in myself, made me weak as I once was. “Yes,” I agree. “Just
    let me grab a few things for the flight.” I quickly remove my file and my
    purse and hand over my carry-on, and in the process my hand brushes his.
    A jolt of electricity darts up my arm and I quickly turn away, buckling myself
    in. Maybe being locked in a corner with a man I am powerless to control my
    reactions to isn’t so smart.
    “Champagne?”
    I glance up to find a pretty twenty-something flight attendant holding
    a tray and gobbling up my seating partner with unabashed approval that
    makes me think of the bold way Chloe lives her life, and suddenly it’s hard
    to breathe. I will never see Chloe again.
    “Why yes, we will,” my travel partner says, accepting two glasses,
    and turning to me, successfully dismissing the flight attendant.
    I hold up a hand. “No. Thank you.”
    “We have a designated driver.”
    “I’m afraid it will make me sleepy,” I object, though I am certain the
    visit from my guardian angel, or handler, has ensured I won’t rest well again
    for a very long time.
    “It’s a four-hour