“Excuse me, ma’am?” The young woman spared him a conspiratorial glance, then placed a perfectly manicured hand on Millie’s shoulder. “I’m going to need you to stow your bag. Would you like me to lift it for you?”
Millie looked up, incredulity written all over her face. Without taking her eyes off the woman, she gathered the long leather handles and made a show of trying to lift the tote from her lap. “Oh, no, thank you, dear,” she crooned. “I have this big, strong man to help me.” Ty barely had a chance to process what she’d said before she settled an imploring gaze on him. “What do you say, sweetie? Help your hot mama out, will you?”
The flight attendant split a perplexed look between them, then recovered her wide smile as she straightened. As if Millie had somehow disappeared, the girl turned her limpid gaze on Ty. “Wonderful. Well, if you or your mother need anything, you let me know.”
Millie gaped after the girl as she swayed toward the front of the cabin, astonishment shining in her wide eyes. Knowing there was nothing he could say to recover the situation, Ty simply took the tote bag from her grasp and placed it in the overhead compartment. Settling back in his seat, he buckled his seat belt low and snug across his hips, then rolled his head to look at her.
“I think I get my coloring from you, Ma.”
She huffed a laugh, then tugged on the end of her own seat belt. “Too bad you didn’t get my smarts, kiddo.”
They shared a smile, and he watched the last of her pique fade away. Not for the first time, he wondered if she truly was a redhead. She had the flash-fire temper of one, for sure. Mesmerized by the gleam of humor in her eyes, the question slipped out before he could censor himself. “What color’s your hair?”
One perfectly shaped eyebrow rose. “I think it’s called Strawberry Crushed.”
His ears burned with embarrassment, but he was in too deep to back out now. “I mean, for real.”
“I have a thousand inappropriate remarks running through my head right now, but I promised myself I wouldn’t work blue for the cheap laughs.”
He chuckled and glanced away, the heat traveling from his ears into his cheeks. “Sorry. I was curious.”
“Brown,” she said with a smirky little smile. “Plain old brown.”
“Nothing about you is plain.” He shifted a few precious inches closer to her as the clueless attendant took her place for their preflight instructions. He waited until the girl looked directly at him, then reached over and took Millie’s hand from her lap. “Or old,” he added. “Unless you were one of those medical miracles and gave birth at six.”
She looked down at their clasped hands. “I’m good, but I’m not that good.”
“I bet you are.”
The quick response coaxed another smile from her. She started to extricate her hand, but he held firm. “Ty, this isn’t a good idea—”
“It’s the best idea.” When she attempted another escape, he pulled her hand over to rest on his thigh. “Takeoff scares me witless.” He held her gaze, unrelenting. “I need you to hold my hand so I don’t cry like a baby.”
Millie blew out a breath and let her head fall back. “Bullshit.”
Ty just grinned in response. She made it through the part about seat cushion flotation devices before she glanced at him again. “What happened to your mom?”
He tossed the question off with a weak shrug. “She left when I was four.”
A small gasp escaped her, and he squeezed her fingers to show both his appreciation and to reassure her. “We were fine.” He chuckled. “That’s what my dad kept telling me. ‘We’re fine. We’re gonna be fine.’”
“You never heard from her?”
He answered with a bitter little laugh. “Oh yeah. She showed up when I was playing college ball. The second the press dubbed me the next Michael Jordan, she came flitting around doing the old ‘that’s my boy’ routine, but I shut her down.”
“How?”
He gave her a sad shadow of a smile. “Distract, deflect, deny. You’d have been proud of how well I handled her. Eventually, she went away.”
“How long did it take?”
“She hung in for a couple of seasons after the draft. When she realized she wasn’t getting a slice of the pie, she tried manufacturing stories for the tabloids.” He looked up to find the attendants stowing their props. The plane began to taxi toward the runway, but his heart slowed to almost a stop when he saw the stark outrage on Millie’s face. “What?”
She narrowed her eyes, not the least bit put off by his inane question. “Nothing. I hate when people fumble planting a fake story. It’s so damn easy, a child could do it.”
Ty laughed. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t quite Kobe Bryant and nowhere near M.J. in terms of success. I think Kris Humphries ended up with a better Q score than I ever did, but I didn’t have to get hitched on TV either. Why bother with a headline about a guy no one cares about?”
Twisting in her seat, Millie crossed her slim runner’s legs and angled toward him. “I love that you know about Q scores.”
“I think I peaked when I was twenty-two.”
She shrugged. “Most men do.”
He grinned. “A myth.”
“So you would have me believe,” she retorted without missing a beat.
She gave his hand a gentle squeeze as the plane started down the runway with a roar of engines. Enthralled by the contrast of her skin against his, he traced the lines of her long, slender fingers with his free hand. “I’d like nothing more than to prove my…stamina to you over and over.”
“You’re a married man.” She uttered the reminder as the nose of the plane lifted. The moment they were wheels up, Millie
