Come Fly with Me Read online

  “Hey,” he said softly. “I thought you were going to tell me about your rotten day.”

  She smiled back at him and admitted honestly, “It doesn’t seem so rotten now.” Even more astounding, she had actually missed the precise moment when the plane left the ground. The man was a miracle worker.

  He nodded with satisfaction. “Good. Then we can talk about other things. Like who you are and why it’s taken me all my life to meet you.”

  “You’ve probably been looking in all the wrong places,” she told him dryly.

  “Obviously. I avoid airports like the plague.”

  “I don’t spend all my time in airports.”

  “Then where should I have been looking?”

  “Oh, here, there and everywhere.”

  He shook his head. “Not precise enough,” he said with feigned sorrow. “By the time I look all those places, we may both be old and have gray hair and wrinkles down to our knees.”

  “I don’t suppose you could love me anyway, under those conditions,” Lindsay teased right back, absolutely amazed at the crazy, daring words that seemed to be coming out of her mouth tonight.

  He studied her closely. “Well...maybe. With those eyes, I think I could overlook almost anything. Now tell me all about yourself. Then we can tell our grandchildren we fell in love high in a midnight sky, surrounded by stars.”

  Lindsay blinked, sighed softly and fell a little bit in love right then. The men she knew did not whisper romantic, poetic phrases in her ears, not at 30,000 feet in the air. They talked contracts and megabucks and videocassette rights. The way her pulse was dancing along right now, she had a feeling contract discussions were a whole lot safer. More boring maybe, but safer.

  “Maybe we should start by talking about you,” she suggested with a little catch in her voice.

  He shook his head stubbornly. “You first. Then maybe I’ll know what it’ll take to keep the sparkle in your eyes and the laughter on your lips.”

  She sighed again and wondered if the man had a bit of Irish blarney in him. What did it matter? If the man wanted to do that for her, she had absolutely no choice but to comply. You did not turn down offers that came along once in a lifetime, even if you knew they were only good for the length of one flight to Denver.

  “Deal,” Lindsay agreed soberly, though her head felt anything but sober. She felt as though she were floating away on a cloud of champagne, although the flight attendant had only just now put a glass of the golden, bubbly, intoxicating liquid in front of her.

  “Deal,” he confirmed, holding out his hand. Lindsay put her hand in his and suddenly, inexplicably felt safer than she had since those long-ago nights when her father had picked her up, swung her high in the air and then held her tightly the minute he’d come home from work.

  Until she was nine.

  Until he’d died.

  Since then she’d felt she had to keep running, to fill her life with lots of places, lots of people, none of whom ever got too close. Even as a child, she’d been afraid, though her fears had been vague, unformed. As she’d grown older, the fears had been more easily recognizable. She’d been afraid to be alone with her thoughts. Afraid of her growing desires for companionship. Afraid of commitment. Afraid of losing someone she loved. She’d even kept an emotional distance between herself and her mother, always preparing herself for the inevitable day when her mother would leave her too.

  Lindsay looked again into the stranger’s eyes, felt the warmth of his firm hand holding hers, the security hinted at by the touch and knew instinctively that the running might very well be over. She also knew she wouldn’t stop without a fight. She’d been at it far too long and grown far too good at it.

  Even now, however, she couldn’t talk about herself, despite the deal they’d just made.

  “You first,” she urged again. “Who are you?”

  He was clearly puzzled by her reluctance to open up, but he relented.

  “Okay, if you insist. I’m Mark Channing. I live just outside of Boulder, in a small, cozy house with a spectacular view of the mountains, and not a soul around to spoil the quiet,” he said in a soft-as-silk, bedtime-story voice. Lindsay settled back in her seat and let the sound wash over her, replacing the low roar of the engines, lulling her into a wonderfully soothing, near-hypnotic trance.

  “The pine trees stand out dark and bold against the white backdrop of snow this time of year. In the spring pink and purple and white wildflowers pop up everywhere. The world looks as though it’s been covered with a crazy-quilt of color.”

  The deep voice throbbed with passionate excitement as he talked about this special wonderland, yet Lindsay couldn’t help feeling a certain amount of dismay. It sounded so horribly lonely.

  “You must feel very isolated,” she suggested tentatively.

  “Only if I choose to be. There are some terrific people who live nearby and I’m not that far from town. I go in at least once a week for supplies. I try to meet some friends for dinner, maybe take in a movie and then go back. Usually I can hardly wait to get home,” he confessed, with a rueful half smile.

  “Do you do a lot of traveling?” she asked hopefully.

  “Not if I can help it. Not anymore, anyway,” he added almost as an afterthought. “The last couple of weeks have been an exception. I had to go into Los Angeles to see a producer, then to New York to straighten out some business problems and then back to L.A. to try to get out of a ridiculous contract I’d told my agent not to negotiate in the first place. With any luck I won’t have to leave Boulder again for the next six months. Maybe more. I don’t want to miss summer.”

  Lindsay grew increasingly uneasy as he talked. His comments seemed to strike an all-too-responsive chord. Surely he was not the elusive author she’d been sent out here to track down and seduce by whatever means possible into signing a deal. The contracts in her briefcase were for David Morrow, not Mark Channing. But exactly how many men from the Denver area could possibly be playing cat and mouse with a movie studio at precisely the same moment?

  “What do you do?” she asked with what she hoped was no more than casual interest.

  He grinned at her in a way that gave her the distinct impression that she’d committed some sort of social gaffe. “I write a little.”

  “Books?”

  “Usually,” he said cryptically.

  “What else?”

  “I’ve done a couple of screenplays.”

  “Under your own name?”

  “Yes.”

  Lindsay breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t the same man after all. Thank goodness. Mark Channing was taking enough of a toll on her senses without throwing in the electricity of a volatile contract negotiation.

  “What have you done?” she asked.

  He sighed, as though the question were all too commonplace and bored him to tears. He ticked off several titles, including an Academy Award winner, as Lindsay’s relief turned to dismay all over again.

  “But you said your name was Mark Channing,” she muttered accusingly.

  He looked puzzled. “It is.”

  “Those films were written by David Morrow.”

  “That’s right,” he agreed easily. “David Mark Channing Morrow. I stick with the middle names in my private life. It’s easier.”

  “Oh my God!” Lindsay moaned, burying her face in her hands. She’d forgotten all about those stupid, double initials—M.C.—in the middle of the man’s name. So much for magic and romance. She was about to start talking megabucks at 30,000 feet after all.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She looked at him and tried for a sunny, dazzling smile. It wavered. “It appears I am following you, after all,” she announced.

  “You’re what?”

  “Well, Mr. Channing or Mr. Morrow or whatever your name is, it seems I’m on my way to Denver with an excellent contract for you from Trent Studios,” Lindsay explained with practiced confidence, trying to ignore the little white lines of annoyance that sudd
enly edged his mouth. He looked as though he might be about to let loose with an angry roar. She tried to forestall it with another smile.

  “Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?” she said cheerfully.

  He glared back at her, the twinkle in his eye gone, the dimples vanished. She missed those dimples like crazy. Aside from being sexy, they’d been reassuring. There was nothing reassuring about his current expression. He looked like an angry thundercloud about to dump a flood on a world with which it was greatly displeased.

  “It really is a coincidence,” she swore solemnly, holding up her hand.

  Finally, his stormy expression wavered, then softened. And then he was chuckling.

  Lindsay stared at him indignantly. “What’s so amusing?”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  He nodded, then laughed again, shaking his head. “You’re quite a surprise.”

  “Why?”

  “My agent’s description did not exactly do you justice, Ms. Tabor.”

  At least he knew her name. Morrie’d probably taken it in vain in very graphic words her mother would wash her mouth out with soap for using. Lindsay waited expectantly for him to say more...about the contract, about his agent, about her. Nothing. “Well,” she prodded at last. “What did Morrie have to say?”

  Mark threw up his hands. “If you insist. Let me try to recall it exactly. He said you were, and I quote, ‘more aggressive than a damned Doberman. If she’s got a heart, it must be made of iron and her mind’s like a damned steel trap.’ He threw in a few other, more colorful adjectives, but I’m sure you get the drift.”

  He looked over at her, his eyes twinkling again. “I gathered that you must have turned down his advances. Morrie doesn’t take rejection well.”

  Lindsay’s mouth had settled into a grim line. “I told him to take a flying leap off the George Washington Bridge.”

  “That must have crushed him.”

  “I don’t think a steamroller could crush him.”

  He chuckled. “In the long run, you’re probably right. Defeat never lasts more than a minute or two with Morrie. That’s why he’s such a good agent. He really liked you, you know. He told me I was being a stubborn, damned fool for not sitting down and talking to you about this contract. He said you were just my type.”

  Lindsay was confused. “But you said...”

  “I said his description didn’t do you justice. He didn’t say a thing about those bright green eyes of yours.” A finger reached out to gently outline the curve of her cheek, just below her eye. Lindsay felt her skin grow warm, responsive.

  “Or the way your lips curve into a sexy pout when you’re thinking. Or the shimmering silk of your hair.” A handful of short, dark auburn curls ran between his fingers, as his eyes captured hers, teasing her with their mischievous twinkle. “Or the fact that you’re hardly bigger than a kitten I could hold in the palm of my hand.”

  His voice was soft and husky with sensuality. It washed over Lindsay in soothing, enrapturing waves. She tried to snap herself out of the hypnotic spell he’d cast over her again. This wouldn’t do. Not at all. She was supposed to get this man to sign a contract and she had no intention of doing it by tumbling into bed with him. And if she didn’t get a grip on herself she hadn’t a doubt in her mind that bed was exactly where they were headed. Unlike old Morrie, the sleaze, this man clearly could wrap her around his finger—or do far more, if he chose—with a single little come-hither glance.

  She tried to revive every ounce of her irritation when he’d failed to show up for their previously scheduled meetings. She’d spent a frustrating extra two days in New York, days that she didn’t have to spare, waiting for his promised arrival, only to learn he’d gone back to L.A. She’d trailed after him, only to discover that he was already heading back home.

  Instead of being angry at thinking of all that, Lindsay suddenly started chuckling. She couldn’t help it. Glancing sideways at him, she noticed that his lips were twitching as well.

  “Interesting how fate has accomplished what Morrie and Trent Langston were unable to do,” she noted dryly. “They both tend to believe they’re omnipotent.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing.” He shook his head ruefully. “If I’d only known.”

  “What would you have done? Skipped the coffee?”

  “I think, Ms. Tabor,” he said, his tone suddenly quite serious, “I might very well have bought you the best dinner you’ve ever had in an airport.”

  His seemingly innocuous words hung in the air between them and Lindsay’s heart skipped one beat and then another as she tried to interpret if there were any hidden meanings behind his remark, whether they were entirely personal or whether there was anything to suggest that he might listen to reason about making a deal with Trent Studios after all. Ironically, at this precise moment, she wasn’t at all sure which interpretation she preferred. She decided to stick to business for the moment. It made her less nervous.

  “Would you have signed the contract?”

  He shook his head slowly. “No,” he said flatly, killing her rising hopes. “I’m not interested in the deal. I’ve told Morrie that. I’ve told your boss that. Now I’m telling you that.”

  “I thought you were just bargaining for creative control over the movie.”

  “Would you give it to me?”

  “No. It’s the one thing Trent will never give up.”

  “Don’t look so defeated. It doesn’t matter. That wouldn’t have done it anyway. In fact, there’s not a thing in the world that will change my mind.”

  “Then what did you mean...”

  “When I said I wouldn’t have given you such a run for your money?”

  “Yes.”

  “I meant, Ms. Tabor,” he told her in a low, husky tone that sent an anticipatory quiver shooting through her spine, “that I’d have met with you a whole lot sooner, if I’d had any idea what a lovely, intriguing woman you were.” His eyes met hers and held. “But I’d have done it for one reason and one reason only.”

  Lindsay couldn’t tear her eyes away from his. “What’s that?” she asked in a little choked whisper.

  “To get to know you better.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Once Lindsay’s heartbeat slowed to its normal rate, she groaned in frustration. She felt like screeching in a decidedly unladylike way or punching her fist into the thick padding on her seat...or, better yet, slapping David Mark Channing Morrow’s smilingly complacent, handsome face, which was once again displaying his dimples to full, charming advantage. He obviously had big hopes for the two of them. For that matter, so did she. Or anyway, she had.

  Three hours ago, back in the newsstand, or even fifteen minutes ago, she might have given anything to hear those sexy, complimentary, seductive words tripping off this man’s tongue. Now she’d have been a whole lot happier if he’d said something thoroughly boring and businesslike, such as, “Where do I sign?”

  Then he could have told her how beautiful she was and how much he wanted to get to know her and it would have sounded like sheer heaven. Instead, Trent Langston’s edict that she come back with David Morrow’s signature on a movie deal put something of a damper on her purely feminine response to the sultry look in his eyes and the suggestive tone in his voice.

  Which, come to think of it, might be just as well.

  Still, she glowered at him. “Do you mean to tell me that I’m on a flight in the middle of the night into some godforsaken, snowbound place and I’m wasting my time?” she raged, not quite sure why the confirmation of what she’d known before she ever walked out of Trent Studios should upset her so much now.

  The man next to her grinned infuriatingly. “Oh, I don’t see this as a waste of time at all. We can spend the next few days getting to know each other at Trent Langston’s expense.”

  “I do not use my expense account to wine and dine lost causes,” she snapped indignantly. It was beginning to seem that David Morrow was exactly as she’d imagine
d him after a week of this ridiculous cross-country hide-and-seek: a nut, a jerk, another obnoxious, immature, egocentric, macho... She ran out of adequate words to depict her rapidly sinking opinion of the thoroughly despicable rogue next to her. She was even more irritated by the fact that her still-skittering pulse had not seemed to register just how much of a louse the man obviously was.

  “Then we’ll use Morrie’s,” he said with perfect aplomb. “He dragged us into this. It’ll do him good to spend a little money for a change.”

  She gazed at him in astonishment. “You think it’s amusing, don’t you?”

  “Amusing?” he repeated doubtfully, then shook his head. “Not really.” He smiled lazily and those devastating dimples deepened. She’d never have believed that was possible. “I just think it has endless possibilities. Don’t you?”

  Lindsay looked into his steady, interested gaze and blinked. When he looked at her like that, he didn’t seem like a jerk at all. He seemed incredibly alluring, downright sexy. She sighed. When he sent those little sparks tripping over her nerves, the weekend certainly did have possibilities—none of them good for her state of mind and every one of them almost impossible to resist. She clenched her hands together in her lap again and resisted like crazy.

  Pretend he’s Morrie, she told herself sternly. That ought to do it.

  She glanced out of the corner of her eye. Impossible! They might have some sort of odd-couple business relationship, but this man was definitely no Morrie. Morrie Samuels had beady little eyes, sweaty hands and slick lines that had made her skin crawl. This man was something else entirely and, while he made her nervous as hell, he definitely did not make her skin crawl. He made her tingle from head to toe and that was intriguing but very dangerous.

  Well, resist anyway, a little voice muttered back. She did the best she could.

  “I do not!” she said adamantly, noting proudly that there was only a slight squeak in her voice. “You must be out of your mind if you think I’m going to hang around Denver for no good reason.” She shuddered. “It’s cold there. Record lows, in fact.”