Stealing Her Heart

Robert is nodding at all this. “So Hawaii. France. Japan. Not bad. A little tame, but not bad.”

He’s not looking down on me exactly, but from his mock condescending tone, I can tell that he is looking to show off. And after the day I’ve put him through, I can only acquiesce to his unspoken request. “And I suppose you’ve been to some more exotic places?”

Robert looks over at me with a pleased smile. “Not just some of them.”

It takes me a second to process what he could mean by this. And when it clicks, I’m sure I must be misunderstanding. “Not just some? You can’t mean you’ve been to every country in the world. There’s just no way.”

“I can show you my passport if you like. Or passports, actually. I had to get a new one after I filled up all the pages.”

“How? And why?”

“How is easy. Just fly and land and fly again. Stop a night here and there. A week sometimes. Eat. Drink. Party. Then fly again. Why? Because I wanted to. I took two years off after university and didn't step foot back in the US until I ticked off the last country on my list.”

I’m literally leaning forward on my seat, looking over at him, amazed that someone like him can exist. “So you’ve been to Antarctica?”

“Not technically a country, but yes. Cold. Boring. Researchers are surprisingly fun to drink with though.”

“And Australia?”

“Oh, yeah. Stayed there two weeks. Got lost in the Outback for a day. That’s a good story actually.”

“You’ve been to China? Afghanistan? Peru? Ethiopia? Laos?”

“Do you really want me to list them all off?”

I shake my head in amazement. “That’s just crazy. I haven't even been to a dozen states. And here you are flying everywhere on Earth.”

He looks over at me from the driver’s seat. There’s something wild in his eyes. It automatically sends my thoughts down more sultry lanes as I imagine him looking up at me like that while I ride him in some exotic location on the other side of the globe. I have to physically shake my head to rid it of this thought, but it’s not gone; I’ve only managed to push it down where it will stew and wait for it’s chance to pop back up and make my heartbeat speed up all over again.

“What is it?” I ask. “Do I have something on my face?” I go to pull down the sun visor to check myself out in the mirror on its backside, but there’s nothing. And Robert is still looking over at me.

“How about we start crossing some places off your list then?”

“What?”

“We’re on the way to an airport anyway. That’s where they keep all the airplanes, you know?” He’s teasing me. Both with words and with the possibilities of where this could lead if I say yes.

“But go where? I don’t have anything with me. I don’t even own a passport.”

Robert nods at this, but where I see it as an insurmountable problem, for him it’s just the teensiest of hurdles. “That just makes choosing the destination all the easier. There’s only one place on your list that doesn’t require a passport, after all.”

I feel dumb as a bag of rocks when I can’t think of the place he’s hinting at. In my mind, every fun place requires a passport.

“You’re cute when you’re thinking hard. You know that?” Then he leans over and places his lips on mine. It’s so fleeting that when it’s over, I couldn’t swear in a court of law that it had actually happened. It might have just been a figment of my rattled imagination. But when I lick my lips, I can feel where his touched mine seconds before.

“Figure it out yet?” He raises his eyebrows.

I’m just about to shake my head when it hits me.

“We’re going to Hawaii?”

Chapter 8

Robert

What I wouldn’t give to have recorded the past thirty minutes. Watching Hailey gasp, her eyes widen and jaw fall with shock at every new revelation; it’s something I could watch over and over again. The girls I’ve wooed in the past always expected this sort of first class treatment. For Hailey, it’s something she didn’t even know existed.

“So we don’t have to go through security?”