Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“A black hole of misery, maybe. Sucking me in against my will.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re dramatic in a terrible way?”
“There’s good dramatic?”
“No, but the way you are is the worst.”
“Good.” Sighing, she put up her tray, grabbed her purse from beneath her seat, and rummaged through it, eventually pulling out her phone.
She swiped over the screen, then jabbed her fingers on it. “Ways to enjoy traveling with someone you hate,” she said, grinning. “Make the best of a bad situation and find utter joy in annoying the hell out of them.”
Then she pointed the camera at me. “So angry…” The electronic sound of a shutter clicking sounded. “Ah, what a terrible picture of you.”
“You really want to start down this path, Blake?”
She frowned before cramming her phone into her purse. “If you post unflattering pictures of me, I’ll report them.”
“You’re one of those people.”
“No. You are because you’d post something on purpose just to make me angry.”
She wasn’t wrong.
We disembarked and went through customs without incident. That seemed to have taken Blake by surprise. Evidently, when she’d flown out of Colombia once, she’d ended up detained because they found suspicious residue on her laptop.
I watched the luggage rotate around on the carousel. “Did you ever figure out what set off the sensor?”
“My hand lotion. Apparently, it had glycerin in it, which left glycerin all over my keyboard.” Blake grabbed a neon-pink, hard-shell suitcase with lime-green polka-dots from the conveyer belt. “You’ve had nothing like that happen?”
“No.”
A sick smile pulled at her lips. “I guarantee you, by the end of this trip, you’ll have been detained at least once.” She popped up the handle of her suitcase. “I’ll go grab a cab.”
After I’d retrieved my luggage from the carousel, I headed toward the front of the airport. Halfway to the clearly labeled exit, I spotted Blake following a random man through a door that led to the parking deck. “What in the hell is she doing?” With her luck, she would end up getting kidnapped.
The wheels on my suitcase rumbled over the tile as I maneuvered through the crowd of weary travelers and crying children. By the time I’d made it through the door and down the parking deck ramp, Blake was standing behind the popped trunk of a black Mercedes.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice echoing through the enclosed space.
“Getting a taxi.” She rummaged through her purse. “He needs cash, though…”
My gaze went to the man holding a portable card reader, then to the car. Everything about it reeked of shady shit. Shaking my head, I walked straight to the open trunk and grabbed her luggage. “Come on.”
“What are you doing?”
“He’s trying to scam you.”
Her slightly agape mouth snapped shut. A light pink tinged her cheeks. Frustration looked hot on her. Although, most anything looked hot on her.
Huffing, she marched toward me, her sneakers padding over the oil-stained concrete. “How do you know he was trying to scam me?” She took her suitcase from my grasp, then turned back to the man who was slowly making his way in the opposite direction from us. “Hey! Were you trying to scam me?”
The man shrugged. “I do not understand this word scam?”
Did she really expect honesty from a con artist? Evidently, she had because she dug a fist into her hip and glared at him before asking him again.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her through the enclosed garage. “Like he’s going to admit to trying to scam you.”
“Well, he should.”
“You followed a man into a parking deck.”
“Because he said he had a taxi.”
“In the parking deck?” I opened the door that led back into the busy airport and held it open for her. “What taxi driver parks in a deck, Blake?”
She shrugged before barging past me. “I don’t know. I’ve never been to Paris before. How am I supposed to know how their taxi system works?”
I pointed to the overhead signs directing people, in bold letters, toward the taxis, the arrows pointing in the completely opposite direction of the parking deck. “They have signs, Blake.”
She half-huffed, half-mumbled something. The only two words I could make out were supercilious and jackass.
We passed through the automatic doors into the bright-ass early-morning sunshine. I glanced at Blake and jutted my chin toward the line of black cars waiting at the curb. All with a little white TAXI sign affixed to their roofs.
“Okay,” she sighed. “So I was wrong.”
“Admitting it is the first step in recovery.”
She scowled, but when Blake scowled, it looked about as intimidating as a newborn deer. “You’re a dick.”
“You’ve told me at least a thousand times.” I approached a black Peugeot, and the driver popped the trunk.
I took Blake’s luggage from her—because as much as she may not want to believe it, I was a gentleman. Then I placed both our suitcases in the vehicle, slammed the trunk, and climbed into the backseat after her.