Shame the Devil (Portland Devils #3) - Rosalind James Page 0,46

Guess how Dyma and I flew to Boston? Coach all the way, and we didn’t check any bags, either. If there’d been a fold-down-seat option, those would have been our tickets. I told you, though, I make arrangements for a living.”

“Oh. I guess I didn’t realize what kind of arrangements.” The SUV pulled to a stop next to a non-tiny, streamlined white jet that had definitely cost more to charter than two thousand an hour, the driver climbed out and opened the doors, and Kris said, “Well, let’s go, then. Dyma needs her coffee.” He got out of the high vehicle with the same muscular, loose-limbed grace Jennifer had been watching for the past two days, and she followed, taking his hand for the step down and feeling way too much like Anne Elliot in Persuasion, no matter what she’d just said. Putting her gloved hand into Captain Wentworth’s much larger one to be handed into a carriage, unable to breathe at the contact, the care he was taking of her, and the intensity in his eyes. Not that she’d watched the BBC version of that movie approximately fifty-three times or anything. But now, it felt like her story.

Which it wasn’t. This was really not a big deal. He either sold a lot of farm equipment—he owned a dealership, maybe, though that seemed like a stretch, if he was turning thirty-one, just like Owen owning a ranch at whatever-age-he-was. Or, more likely, he was from a wealthy family, and he and Owen had met at boarding school.

Well, no. Owen at some fancy Eastern boarding school? Andover Academy, maybe? Playing lacrosse? The thought of Owen lumbering down the field with a lacrosse stick in his oversized mitt of a hand made her laugh. Scratch that one.

If Kris’s last name was “Deere,” though, she definitely got it. All of it, including the alcoholic, judgmental father. A wealthy, dysfunctional family? That fit. Whatever the answer, though, it wasn’t actually her business, and it was definitely nothing for her to get excited about. Everything was still exactly the same as before. They’d go to North Dakota for the day, she’d help him all she could, and then she and Dyma would go home feeling like they’d had an adventure. And, just maybe, she’d feel empowered.

Instead of like she’d lost something else. Like, maybe … a possibility.

No. She wasn’t going to think that. She was going to look forward. If you looked behind you, you couldn’t see your path. Which sounded like the Tao but wasn’t. It was hers. She was hanging onto it.

Dyma said, “Mom. We need to get our bags.”

“Nope,” Kris said. “The driver’ll bring them.” He told Chauffeur-Cap Guy, “Thanks, man,” and shook his hand, and if Jennifer hadn’t been watching pretty closely, she’d have missed the bill he slipped in there. Which made her like him even more. For tipping, and for being discreet about it.

Dignity, and letting other people keep it. It was a thing.

The pilot was standing by the folded-down steps of the jet, and Kris paused to shake his hand, too, then said something to him and got an answer. He turned back and told Dyma, “If you want to go on up into the cockpit, Tom here’ll give you a tour around the instruments and answer all your questions.”

Dyma stood stock-still, for once without a smart answer. “You’re kidding.”

“You’ll have to head on back to the passenger compartment for the flight,” the pilot said, “but you’re welcome to sit and watch my pre-flight checks.”

“Yes,” she said, and hopped right up after him with so much bounce in her step, Jennifer had to smile.

“That was nice of you,” she told Kris. “You’ve made her day.”

Kris headed up the steps after them, stopped at the top, and said, “Ah. Coffee. Dyma will be happy about that, though I think Miss Dyma might be high on life. Some snacks here, too. Help yourself.”

A carafe of coffee, warm croissants wrapped in white linen, and a bowl of fruit, to be exact. She let Kris take her coat and hang it up, then grabbed a coffee, went on back, and sat in an extremely comfortable cream leather seat, while Kris set his own cup down on the table between them and took the seat opposite. He said, “I was expecting this to go over bigger, I’ve got to admit. I mean, you don’t have to fall on my neck weeping tears of gratitude for a flight that’ll take about an hour and