I’m still trying to decide which option is least likely to kill me when a voice beside me says, smooth as dark liquor, “I think you may be in the wrong seat.”
I look up, and forget how to breathe.
He’s older. That hits me first.
Not old. Just older than any man I usually let myself really look at. Maybe late forties, maybe a little past that. Dark hairbrushed back from his face, silver at the temples that somehow only makes him more attractive instead of less. Broad shoulders under a dark coat. Strong mouth. Beautiful hands.
He’s standing in the aisle beside my seat, one hand resting lightly on the top of it, looking down at me with calm curiosity and not much patience.
And all at once I’m aware of everything.
My cheap sweater. My nerves. The fact that I’m probably sitting in the wrong seat in business class in front of a man who looks like he belongs in private jets and international scandals.
Heat climbs into my face. “I…” I glance down at the boarding pass, then back up at him. “I think I might be.”
One dark brow lifts.
I hold up the pass helplessly. “There was a man at the gate. We bumped into each other. I think we switched these by accident.”
He takes the paper from my hand. His fingers brush mine, only for a second, but even that brief contact is enough to make something low in my stomach tighten for no good reason.
He reads it once and a strange look flickers over his face.
Then he huffs a quiet laugh through his nose. “Of course.”
My embarrassment deepens. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize until I was already getting on the plane and then the flight attendant said a name that definitely wasn’t mine and I tried to tell her, but she was gone, and now I look insane.”
His mouth curves. Not a smile exactly. Something smaller, more private.
“You don’t look insane.”
That shouldn’t feel the way it does.
I push out a breath. “That’s generous.”
“No,” he says, still looking at me. “It’s accurate.”
He glances down the aisle behind him where people are still boarding, then back at me. “But it appears,” he says, “that my bodyguard is currently on his way to economy with your boarding pass.”
Despite myself, I laugh. It slips out before I can stop it, thin with nerves but real.
His eyes stay on my face, and something about that makes my pulse trip.
I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “The bald one?”
“The bald one,” he says.
“Rude.”
That gets a real smile from him this time. It changes his whole face.
Makes it feel more dangerous somehow.
“Yes,” he says. “He can be.”
I look down at the pass still in his hand. “So I should move.”
His gaze flicks over me once, slow enough to make me intensely aware of the seat, the smallness of the space around us, the fact that I’m looking up at him while he fills the aisle like he was designed to dominate narrow places.