Читать книгу First Class Seduction - Anita Bunkley - Страница 9

Though it was six o’clock in the morning, Lori awoke alert and energized despite her late night out. Since she never drank alcohol while on the job, tired feet were usually the only reminders of the fun she’d had the night before. Eager to get on with her day, Lori took a hot shower, applied the minimal makeup that kept her morning routine easy—mascara, blush and a little lip gloss—secured her long black hair into a fancy twist to keep it off her face and then snapped her suitcase closed.

Wearing her navy blue and red GAA uniform, she rolled her flight bag into the elevator and across the hotel lobby, where she dropped her room key into the fast checkout and exited through the sliding-glass doors.

Outside the hotel, a white van was waiting to take the flight crew to the airport. Since Lori was the first to arrive, she settled into a seat in the middle row and stared out the window, fingertips at her lips, her mind returning to the gorgeous guy whose mini-seduction had left her wanting more. After her final turn on the dance floor, she’d looked around the club on her way out, hoping to see him one more time. However, he had vanished as quickly as he’d appeared, like the seagulls that swooped out over the bay and slipped into the swirling clouds.

Tilting her head back against the seat, Lori closed her eyes, slightly uneasy with the thought that she actually hoped to run into her mystery kisser when she returned to Acapulco. Why was her mind so crowded with thoughts of that guy? All he had done was kiss her. Besides, bringing a new man into her life was not on her social agenda. As far as Lori was concerned, a committed relationship would compromise her independence and complicate her fast-paced schedule.

The alarming experience she’d had with her last boyfriend had cured Lori of making impulsive, emotional moves. Devan Parker’s face flashed into Lori’s mind. He was the man who’d cemented her vow never to get tangled up in a serious relationship with someone she barely knew.

Last year, when Lori met Devan in the elevator at the airport parking garage in Houston, she’d smiled at the handsome brother wearing a sharp pinstriped suit when he pushed the Down button for her. At five in the morning, she’d been rushing to check in for work, with a cup of coffee in one hand and her rolling bag handle in the other. He’d been hurrying to catch a flight to Los Angeles.

Devan’s earthy cologne had filled the elevator with an intoxicating scent that pushed Lori’s interest into overdrive. He was the most attractive, polite and sexy-looking man she had met in quite a while, and by the time the elevator reached the terminal, she’d handed him her business card and had taken his.

Three days later, Devan sent her a text message, asking Lori to meet him for lunch at the Italian restaurant inside the Marriott Hotel near the airport. She agreed, and at warp speed, they tumbled headfirst into a relationship that exploded with adventuresome sex, fancy dates at trendy clubs and silly fun days just hanging out in the city. Devan infused Lori’s tightly scheduled life with excitement, and she willingly allowed him to consume every minute of her free time. Falling for Devan had happened so quickly and so easily, she should have known the affair wouldn’t last…or end as smoothly as she’d hoped.

“Hey, early bird,” Phyllis Marshall called out, climbing into the van, followed by Sam and Allen, fellow crew members who were also juggling cups and navy blue flight bags.

“Up and out, that’s me,” Lori joked, mentally closing the door on the past to zero in on the long workday that lay ahead.

“What time did you get back last night?” Phyllis inquired, stowing her bag in the luggage rack at the front of the vehicle before focusing on Lori.

“A little after twelve,” Lori replied, scooting over to make room for Phyllis to sit beside her, while the two male flight attendants settled into seats in the rear.

“I don’t see how you do it,” Phyllis remarked, stifling a yawn. “I went to bed at nine and still, could have used a few more hours in the sack.”

Lori shrugged and raised a brow at Phyllis, who at fifty-one, was the senior flight attendant and self-proclaimed mother hen of the crew. Her salt-and-pepper hair, wise blue eyes and authoritative voice inspired respect and trust. When Phyllis doled out her motherly advice, her much younger crew members usually listened, convinced that she cared about them and would have their backs if things got rough. At her age, and after a long career with GAA, Phyllis knew the business well and was generous in her support.

“Hotel rooms bore me,” Lori responded in her defense. “I can only take them for so long and then I have to get out and check out the local scene. Watching TV and eating room service meals drive me nuts. Dancing relaxes me. It’s like a good workout, only much more fun.”

A flicker of her bright blue eyes was all that Phyllis offered.

“You could have come to the soccer game with me and Sam,” Allen called up from the back of the van. “The fans in this town are absolutely wild. I was beginning to think we might not make it out of the stadium alive when the home team lost. Hell, it was a mob scene in there!”

While the two guys discussed the soccer game they’d attended the night before, Lori turned back to Phyllis. “You should have come. I found a great club on the beach. It had walls of glass and a fabulous view of the ocean. Really a spectacular place. The men here really know how to dance,” Lori said, giving Phyllis a brief overview of her night out on the town, but omitting the fact that her Latin dance partner had kissed her and then disappeared.

Phyllis, who rarely ventured out of her hotel during layovers, made a sound in her throat that told Lori she was not particularly impressed by her coworker’s description of her latest layover adventure.

“You need to be more careful,” Phyllis warned. “American women out alone are targets for all kinds of scams and dangerous schemes. What do you get out of going to those clubs, anyway?”

“A good time,” Lori answered, not particularly worried about Phyllis’s concerns. Lori had chosen a career as a flight attendant so she could travel, meet new people, experience different cultures. Hiding out in fear in a hotel room when she could enjoy one of the most beautiful cities in the world was not her idea of fun. “Besides, I can protect myself,” Lori went on, turning from Phyllis to look straight ahead as the van pulled onto the highway leading to the airport. “I have a black belt in karate, remember?”

“What good is that if some man puts a drug in your drink? Takes you away in his car and you wind up getting raped, beaten or left alone in some strange place?”

Lori’s head whipped around, jaw raised as she shook her head in disbelief. “Really, Phyllis! You need to stop. Nothing like that will ever happen to me.”

“How do you know? It could. Happens all the time. There was a story on Worldwide News last night about a woman in Brazil who…” Phyllis persisted, rattling on about a bizarre tale of drugs, international kidnapping and identity theft that she had seen on TV the night before.

“You’ve been watching too many true-crime programs,” Lori commented with a flip of her hand.

Phyllis made a grunt in response and went on. “Criminals make a lot of money off naive people who don’t pay attention to what’s going on around them. Million-dollar ransoms are common,” she finished, pressing her lips into a hard line to emphasize her point.

“Maybe,” Lori hedged, not wanting to get into a back-and-forth with her coworker over a hypothetical situation. “But I don’t make enough money to be a target for anything other than a spin on the dance floor,” she admitted to Phyllis.

But I sure would love to feel my mystery kisser’s arms around me again, Lori thought, wishing she’d bent her rules at Club Azule and gotten personal with her Latin hunk.