“Huh. Like you’ll help me with all those spreadsheets I’ve been dying to make?” he counters, zinging me once again.
This time I take the bait, and return to my deal-with-the-hottie approach. “Aww, you’re so sweet. Talking our love language.”
That makes him laugh. “And I believe the retort to that is . . . fuck you.”
Just like that, my mind is right back where it started.
Thirty minutes later, I slide my messenger bag under the seat in front of me, and park in a first-class seat for the first time.
It’s cushy, and spacious, and wow—this is a whole lot swankier than coach. Plus, the flight attendants treat us like kings, offering hot towels and asking if we need anything. This is a different country up here, and I love it more than I’d thought I would.
I’m a little bit like a kid at Christmas as I run my hands along the armrests and stretch out my legs.
Asher’s lips curve into a grin. “So you’re a first-class virgin, Banks?”
It’s that obvious? I swallow past the dry patch in my throat. “Yes. Thank you. That was really nice of you,” I say.
But nice hardly covers it. Asher’s flair is as ridiculously sexy as his body is annoyingly perfect.
And I have more than one hundred hours to spend with him. Time to strap in and buckle up.
8
YOU POSH FUCKER
ASHER
Maybe I can put Mark out of his misery for a few minutes.
The guy seems to swing between discomfort and deadpan humor around me. I get it. I’m a lot.
And he’s a little awkward by nature.
So to ease the tension once we’re airborne, I smack his arm gently. “Look, Banks. I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”
His dark blue eyes flicker as his defenses go up. “Let me guess. You hate my shirt. My shoes. My haircut.”
Actually the whole neat, trim haircut he has going on is sexy in a let’s-mess-it-up-already way. “No. It’s this.” I take a deep breath, like I’m prepping to say something hard. “This isn’t easy to admit. But I’m going to do it anyway. I had a mullet once, too.”
A laugh bursts from him. But then it fades, and his eyes turn suspicious. “I think you’re fucking with me.”
Oh, you have no idea how much I wish you were into that . . .
The way his skin flushed in the dressing room yesterday makes me wonder, too. Makes me want to go fishing again about his red briefs, and his one-syllable speech whenever he’s near me. But now isn’t the time. Not when we’re stuck in the air with literally no escape. So I return to that drunk text, when he’d said he’d had a mullet once upon a time, and I share my story.
“In my fifth season in the Premier League, we were playing great. So, naturally, none of my teammates got a haircut or shaved. Superstition and all,” I say, then drag a hand across my clean-shaven jaw, like I’m remembering those days. His irises follow my hand, almost like he’s wondering what I’d look like with a trim beard.
Hot, Banks. I looked hot.
“Anyway, we won the championship, and a few days later, I cut my hair in a mullet just to fuck with my teammates.”
Mark smiles and it’s easy, relaxed. Maybe the first one I’ve seen from him like that. His body language seems to shift, too. “Pics or it didn’t happen,” he counters.
Interesting. Mark’s a challenging one. “I’ll find something on YouTube for you. I promise,” I say, then make a beckoning gesture for him to serve up the goods. “Your story now, since I can’t picture you as anything but the guy with the banker’s cut.”
“My mullet was part of a Halloween costume when I was thirteen. There was a contest at school, and I wanted to win.”
“What was the prize? A calculator?”
“No. A chess set.”
“Kind of the same thing, isn’t it?” I tease.
“Not at all.”
“And so you dressed up as . . . a guy with a mullet?”
“I went as Rob Lowe. In his ’80s, brat pack mullet days,” he says, and I stare at Banks, counting the similarities he shares with the actor. Dark hair. Captivating blue eyes you can’t look away from. Carved jaw. A boy-next-door sex appeal. Put a pair of black glasses on the movie star, and you’ve got my traveling companion. “I can see that. Circa 1984,” I say, but Rob Lowe was and is hot in any era.
“Thanks,” he says, and a tiny smile seems to tug on his lips as he shrugs. “But I didn’t win.”
“Whatever did you do about the chess set?” I tease.
“I got a used one at Goodwill. It was missing a knight. I made one out of a pink ceramic pig salt-shaker that my mom had,” he says, a determination in his voice, and there’s more to that story. Something about who he is, and I want to know more.