Reluctantly, he let her go. But she didn’t put the expected distance between them. Instead, she loosened her seat belt a little, pushed the button to recline, and shifted fully onto her side.
“It isn’t that I’m not interested,” she said bluntly. “I think we both know I am. I know you are. We like each other, which is both a bonus and an obstacle—”
“How do you figure?”
“Bonus, because, hey, we like each other,” she said, throwing up her hands. “It’s also an obstacle because, hey, we like each other.”
Her delivery on the second part held a note of warning that rang too true to suit his purposes, so he ignored it. The crew moved through the dimly lit cabin, working with the kind of hushed efficiency he equated with hospital waiting rooms and the lobbies of funeral homes. But he wasn’t anyplace so morose. He was on a plane winging his way to the most vibrant city in the country with a woman he’d found fascinating since the day they were introduced. He didn’t want to be hushed or quiet or, heaven forbid, circumspect. For the first time in years, he wanted to draw attention to himself. To her. To the fact that he was the guy she chose to sit beside.
But of course, she hadn’t really chosen to run away to New York with him. She was going because leading him through the press steeplechase was her job. He was her project. The pathetic part of this whole mess wasn’t his wife leaving him for another guy. No, he worried more Millie could be playing him with this whole “we like each other” spiel, and he was falling for her line. She might be humoring him. Or worse, babysitting to be sure he didn’t go off the deep end live on the National Sports Network. And the only defense he had was to play his kind of up-tempo offense.
“And your folks?” he asked, pretending their conversation hadn’t taken a sharp left turn at sexual hypocrisy.
She blinked, and her forehead creased. “What?”
Pressing his shoulder into the seat, he mimicked the intimacy of her body language as much as the space would allow. “Your parents. Tell me about them.”
The lines of her brow smoothed, and the wariness in her eyes melted into something close to gratitude but not nearly as standoffish. “What about them?”
“Anything.”
She smiled, and he could have sworn she set the whole cabin ablaze. Or maybe only him. Either way, heat pumped through him with every thud of his heart.
“Nothing much to tell. Still alive. Still married to the first taker. My mom was a teacher, and my dad worked for a small appliance company. They were bought out by General Electric about twenty years ago, and he took an early retirement.”
“Golf?”
She shook her head. “He plays poker. Tournament level. She spends whatever he makes at the tables on crafting supplies.”
He grinned, wondering if Mrs. Jensen had passed the creative gene on to her daughter. “Do you do crafty things?”
“Well, some people would say I’m pretty clever with a press release, but other than knitting, I leave the crafty stuff to Mom.”
“And Mr. and Mrs. Jensen live…where?”
She laughed softly, then gave his attempt to draw her out a pitying, little head shake. “Well, last I heard, they were in Phoenix, but Mr. and Mrs. Piotrawski live outside Atlanta.”
He peered at her, confused. “What? Who?”
“My maiden name was Piotrawski. Jensen is my ex-husband’s name.”
“Ex-husband’s? You were married?”
This time she actually scoffed. “So hard to believe?”
“Yes. I mean, no!” He tripped over his tongue, then tried again. “No. Not hard to believe. I mean, I didn’t know.”
She looked him in the eye. “Why would you?” she asked with a bluntness so characteristically Millie she could trademark it. Still, the question felt like an accusation. He opened his mouth to reply, but she shut him down with an airy wave. “Ancient history. I haven’t seen or heard from John in, God, almost twenty years.”
“Right.” Ty digested the information. “No kids?”
“Not a one.”
He nodded. “But you kept his name?”
“Jensen is a helluva lot easier to spell than Piotrawski. Makes ordering pizza a snap.” She snapped her fingers to punctuate her assertion.
Taken off guard, he frowned at her. “It never occurred to me you might have been married before.”
Millie gasped softly, then pressed her hand to her throat in mock dismay. “You mean you thought I was a virgin?”
“No, I just…”
He didn’t complete the thought, so she jumped right into the gap. “…thought I was an old maid?”
“No!”
“…hoped maybe I was saving myself for the love of a good man?”
“Hardly,” he retorted dryly.
“…never dreamed I’d be the type to host orgies on the weekends?”
He sighed. “Nothing I can say to stop this now, is there?”
“Not much,” she agreed amicably.
“I suppose an invite to one of those orgies is out of the question?”
“I’ll put you on the waiting list.”
Never one to pass up an opening, he charged down the lane. “Think maybe a space will become available in about six weeks?”
“It’s possible,” she said with a coy smile.
He returned the playful curl of her lips with the broad grin of a man who’d scored on the first drive to the hoop.
“I do tire of them so quickly,” she mused, almost to herself.
Ty barked a laugh so compelling, the sound drew the attention of the businessman across the aisle. Shaking his head in awed dismay, he straightened his cramping muscles and sprawled as far as a first-class ticket would allow. “And his shot was blocked, folks,” he murmured to the crowd of air vents and reading lamps above their seats.
Following his lead, Millie rolled onto her back, a grin spreading across her face as she joined in on his color commentary. “And the crowd goes wild.”
He shrugged. “I’m known for coming from behind to win.”
“Again, so
