R Is for Rebel (26 page)

“May I sit here?” A male voice inquired.

Mari looked up.
Hmmm. What do you know? Tall. Lean. Inquisitive gray eyes with long black lashes. Nice accent.
“Sure. Go ahead,” she answered, letting her eyes skid away from the sharp turn of his jaw, then looked at her bare left hand with a twinge of… something. She never wore her engagement ring when she traveled to war-torn, third-world destinations. Not only because of the threat of theft, but also because the harsh disparity between her wealth and their poverty did not need to be brought into such glaring relief. It seemed disgusting somehow. Now that she was back in Europe, however, she felt kind of bare without it.

Whatever. This handsome young man to her left was just sitting in a spare seat, not hitting on her.

She certainly wouldn't hit on her, if she were him. She looked down at her scuffed Doc Martens, khaki safari pants, long-sleeved fitted black T-shirt and shook her head. She looked like an ill-used car mechanic.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

She tried to place his accent… plummy, upper-crust, British.

“Well, I was raised not to be a complainer, but I am, if not complaining, on the verge of being very, very peeved.”

And then he smiled a fabulous, spontaneous, velvety ooh-la-la smile and burst out laughing.

Marisa had never been prone to butterflies or flutterings of any sort, so she grabbed at her stomach, thinking that the fourth double espresso might not have been such a good idea. But when that rolling laugh came to an abrupt end, so did her stomach's response to the putative caffeine overdose.

“You have a very nice laugh,” she said without thinking.

He was still holding his copy of the
Financial
Times
opened wide in front of most of his torso, looking at her curiously over the top. Then he folded the paper, letting one finger rest in the section to hold his place.

“Have we met before?”

“I don't think so.” Marisa felt a brief wave of cool suspicion. Maybe he
was
just hitting on her.

“Sorry, did that sound like I was hitting on you?”

“A bit.”

“Shall I go back to reading my paper?”

“No!” Marisa answered with far too much eagerness. “I mean, no. I have been sitting here for six hours, with the dust of sub-Saharan Africa still gritting in the seams of my pants, and I have not had a pleasant word in that entire time. If I have to speak to Saskia the Lufthansa taskmistress one more time, I'm not sure both of us will come out alive.”

He folded his
Financial
Times
neatly and put it down on the small built-in table that separated the two of them. He reached out his hand and introduced himself. “James Mowbray, pleasure to meet you. No one should have to suffer through the Lufthansa lounge alone.”

She reached her bare, unadorned hand out to shake his, and, after a quick up and down motion, she was quite reluctant to let go. He wasn't holding on to her exactly, but he certainly wasn't letting go either. She looked down at his hand then up to his face and smiled.
I'm engaged
, she almost blurted out, then was relieved she hadn't, then she was guilty she was relieved.

She pulled her hand back into her lap and resisted the urge to smooth her hair. It was probably as worn and frayed as the rest of her, but that didn't seem to be the least bit disappointing to one James Mowbray.

After all of her years in the United States, Marisa's accent sounded almost entirely American. She had never been able to fully master the very round
r
, but Eliot said it was a sexy touch and not to try too hard to rid herself of it.

Eliot. Her fiancé.

She was alone and bored in a foreign airport, nothing more. And as much as she had tried to be understanding about Eliot's recent cold feet, that was not exactly the type of conversation even the most confident woman wanted to hear mere months before saying, “I do.” Marisa's eyebrows pinched together at the thought.

“And you are?” James prompted.

She realized she had not introduced herself in reply. A small, secret part of her thought of giving him a fake name and suggesting they check into one of the nearby airport hotels. His eyes were an insanely gorgeous shade of gray, and his shoulders… well, she would definitely have something to hold on to, if it came to that.

“I am Marisa Plataneau. It is quite a pleasure to meet you.”

“Are you French?”

“I am. But I've spent most of my adult life in the United States and Switzerland. What about you? Oxford or Cambridge?”

“Aaah, you wound me, Miss Plataneau. It is
Miss
, is it not?”

Isn't he the thorough one?
she thought. “Yes, at the moment.”

“As long as it is yes, I don't want to know about the moment.” He smiled innocently, then added, “Shall we go for dinner?”

Marisa laughed and James felt something old and broken in his gut come springing to life. And that was just after a dinner invitation.

“Which of the fabulous restaurants in the Frankfurt airport shall we grace with our presence? Or shall we be really bold and take a taxi into town? I am obviously dressed for five-star dining at Main Tower.” She ran her hands down her black T-shirt as if she were a baker brushing off the day's flour.

James found the gesture utterly distracting. Her hands were careless and familiar, dismissive of her beautiful curves. Her figure, despite her self-deprecating remarks about sub-Saharan dust and too-casual T-shirts, was superb. The black cotton top clung to her firm, full breasts and trim, flat waist. Her pants hung low and did nothing to conceal the endless, fit legs that seemed to stretch forever across the hideous yellow nylon carpet, languidly crossed at the ankle.

She supposed he was visually corroborating her less-than-satisfactory appearance, letting his gaze trail down the dusty length of her.

Then he looked up and nodded his head with a small, “Obviously.”

She turned away to hide her pleasure. She wanted this man to approve of her. More than that, she wanted him to see her clear through. Past the long, cool, straight blond hair and icy blue eyes, to the warm, hungry woman beneath. With Eliot, especially lately, she always felt like she was trying too hard. She often felt she had to be “on” when they were together. Cheerful. Optimistic. Confident.

Whereas.

Whereas, James didn't seem to be in the market for cheerful, optimistic, or confident. He seemed, funnily enough, to be in the market for a travel-weary, unprimped castaway.

“Ouf,” she exhaled the quintessentially French syllable, then asked, “Was that a compliment?”

“Why yes. I believe it was. You are just like a breath of fresh air.” He held her gaze and she felt a wave of slowly awakening—then rather demanding—attraction. Her breasts felt unaccountably heavy and she quickly crossed her legs, as if he might see the small muscles at her core tensing in response to his unwavering look.

Crossed legs or not, he saw. He saw everything. A few minutes earlier, she had hoped that this man would see clear through to her core, and it seemed that wish had been very rapidly granted.

The anonymity of the frequent-flyers' lounge in the Frankfurt airport, so recently scorned, was ideal for whatever it was that was brewing between them. All of the other travelers were lost in their isolationist, environment-dismissing activities: reading books, listening to music on small headphones, playing games on handheld devices, working on laptop computers.

James and Marisa might as well have been invisible.

She'd always thought she was far too verbal to believe in nonverbal communication, but James Mowbray was connecting with her, without a word.

She usually balked at any kind of public display of affection, thinking it smacked of too-happy-by-half, but when James reached across the small divide that separated them, she leaned in with hungry gratitude. He cupped her cheek in his warm palm and she closed her eyes and let her head rest there, tilting just slightly into his steady hold.

“Lovely,” he whispered.

She didn't know if it was a term of endearment or an adjective, but it sounded quite delectable coming out of his mouth. His thumb began to slowly caress her cheekbone and she feared she might crawl out of her seat and into his lap. She simply didn't care. She didn't care who his parents were, what he did for a living, where he lived, or with whom. She didn't care if he was rich or poor, smart or addled. She just wanted to fall into his waiting hand.

She was bone tired. She had been traveling for days. That was all it was. She wasn't really falling for a man she'd just laid eyes on, right here in a departure lounge.

Her eyes flew open. James let his hand come away slowly, his thumb happening across her lower lip as he did. They sat there, beholding one another.

Marisa's multilingual upbringing had been a blessing and a curse. She loved the formal perfection of French; she loved the emotion and vitality of Italian; she loved the quick, biting honesty of English. But she often found herself searching for just the right word in every language, and not finding it, left adrift in a sea of cultures and imprecise words.

At this moment, though, she felt she had it.

Behold.

It was ancient, spiritual, demanding, formal, compelling. She didn't want to look away. Nor did he. They beheld one another.

Marisa finally breathed a deep, long inhale and looked down at her hands resting loosely in her lap. This was one of those moments in life. One of the defining moments. Maybe her life would now be rained upon by such moments, maybe she had turned a corner of cosmic happiness. A flood of charming, interesting people would now cross her path. But what if this was not the beginning of a steady stream, but a single precious drop?

“I am engaged to be married,” she said slowly, not looking up.

“Oh.” James silently cursed his ineloquence.

“Yes. Oh.” She looked up that time and her eyes were guarded. “That probably doesn't matter much to you—”

“It does matter.”

“That is, we just met in passing, just now, for an instant. Right?”

James tried to weigh her words. Did she love her fiancé? Was she merely tired and strung out and alone in a soulless airport, seeking a comrade?

His body thought not. He could practically hear the hum of her desire. What passed through the palm of his hand when he felt her cheek was not simple friendship. The tremor on her lips when his thumb grazed the chapped tender skin there was not platonic.

He wanted to take her hands in his, but he sensed she wanted to be intellectually soothed first. Then, maybe, physically. “I don't go in for any of that fate business—”

“Phew!” Marisa interrupted. “Me neither. Total, what is the phrase?” She snapped her fingers, eyes alight. “Claptrap.”

The whole finger-snapping, word-searching animation made James even more certain he was not going to let this moment pass. He held up one hand slightly, to stall her. “That said… I don't think we should simply pretend it is nothing whatsoever. The two of us meeting, that is.”

Marisa's mouth felt like dust. “Go on,” she said.

“Well, and stop me if I am being presumptuous…” James smiled that crazy, deadly smile again and Marisa wanted to tell him to presume the night away. He continued in a businesslike tone, “What we might benefit from is a simple battery of tests. You seem like the scientific sort. Evidence, that sort of thing.”

“Very true. I am a lover of rational thought.” But her throat caught for a nanosecond on the word
lover
and she felt it hanging there in the space between them.

James forced his thoughts back into order and proceeded apace. “I suggest a kiss—”

“I don't know about that.” Her hand flew up to her lips, at first to cover them from his seductive look, and then to steal a quick touch, a gentle foretelling of what his lips might feel like against hers. She forced the treacherous hand back into her lap. “It feels duplicitous, no?”

James looked up for a second when a flight to London was called out over the loudspeaker, then let his eyes lock on hers. “Does it? What would be the greater deception? Lying to him? Or to yourself?”

She knew what he was asking before he finished the thought. Marisa's pants were feeling too warm and too tight, but she forced herself not to squirm in the nondescript airport chair. Her exhale was a hiss between her teeth. “Maybe that would lay it to rest. As they say.”

Perhaps she was right, that a quick kiss would be the end of it, but James thought not. “Come with me.” He didn't reach for her hand or look back, he just got up and headed for the small alcove across the private lounge where coffee and light snacks had been set up for the elite travelers. James assumed, correctly, that she would follow of her own accord.

He had his back to the wall, and stood immediately to the left of the entrance to the partially concealed room. Marisa had been a few paces behind him, and he grabbed her hand when she crossed into the small space a few seconds behind him.

“Just a kiss. Okay?”

“Okay. Just a kiss,” James agreed.

Then Marisa stood up on her toes to bring her mouth closer to his, one hand still held in his encouraging grip. She stopped, her lips scant inches from his, and licked her own in a moment of tentative anticipation. Suddenly, Marisa was unable to resist the urge to taste his lips in exactly the same way: after sweeping her tongue over her own lips, she held his gaze, inches from hers, and let the very tip of her tongue trace the full, beautiful curve of his mouth. His contracting pupils and a low moan were her reward.

“Was that the just-a-kiss?” James whispered, his hot breath touching her lips.

“No. That was just a taste,” she said.

“So… do I get a taste and a kiss too?”