Chapter One
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Gate 63. Sydney to Paris. Delayed.
Jill Bowden hurried past the anxious crowd. Wouldn’t it be just her luck for her flight to be delayed, too? That would be the icing on the cake; a fitting finale to a vacation that hadn’t gone according to plan.
Gate 64, on the left. Sydney to Manchester. Flight canceled.
Now that looked bad. A long line of dejected faces snaked out of the departure lounge. What was going on? Jill re-shouldered her backpack and picked up her pace.
Gate 65, Sydney to London. Coming up ahead. Her eyes strained to read the departure board, scanning the faces of passengers for news. All she wanted was to get home. Why, she wasn’t sure. London still didn’t really feel like home, not even after more than a year there, but it was familiar, and familiar could be comforting. She could already picture flopping down on her worn couch, sipping tea, and pretending all this never happened. She would look forward, not back. Start planning her next vacation–a proper vacation, on a beach somewhere in the sun. Her and a good novel.
Her and a good man.
She fought the thought away. It seemed destiny just did not have that in store for her.
Gate 65, at last. Sydney to London, via Dubai. Ten minute delay. Jill felt her facial muscles ease a little. Ten minutes, she could manage. Just sit back and wait. She found a seat, flipped off her sandals, and tried to focus on the people around her instead of the clock. A harried-looking mother with three squirming children headed toward the bathroom; she really looked stressed. Nearby stood a man in flowing desert robes, looking terribly rich and important. Going home to Dubai, where he bred racing camels in a luxurious desert compound.
Jill crumpled her nose and tucked her hair behind her ear. She was doing it again. Making up stories about complete strangers just to pass the time. Pathetic, really, but better than dwelling on the fact that she was traveling alone. Again.
On the right, sat a retired couple burned a painful pink by the Australian sun. Going home to England after visiting their younger daughter–the one who lived on two thousand acres of arid outback with a hunky sheep farmer they didn’t entirely approve of. Beside them, a young backpacker couple shared headphones and giggled, eagerly awaiting new adventures. And beside them—
Wow.
Jill swallowed hard and let her eyes feast.
He was just stepping up to the waiting area. Dark eyes flicked up to the notice board, showing no reaction to the delay. He swung a bulky briefcase off his shoulder in an easy move that hinted of a past on a rugby field—that, or work much grittier than whatever office job he had just come from in those neat slacks and button-down shirt. A rugged hand scraped through fair, short hair. What was it about that combination of blond hair and dark eyes? It melted Jill every time.
He looked like he’d just come from a meeting, opened the top button of his shirt, and dispensed with his tie. If he’d been a little younger, he’d have kept the tie to look professional. A little older and he’d be so used to the thing that he wouldn’t bother taking it off. Thirty-something, just, Jill guessed. The type who looked like a million bucks in just about anything. Or just about nothing.
Jill reined in the image, watching his eyes shift to his cell phone as he began to text.
He was possibly the most gorgeous man she had ever laid eyes on. Fate had put the hunk of all hunks, Adonis himself, on her flight. Jill heaved a deep sigh and let her imagination flutter away from the noise of the departure gate.
A former weight lifter? Swimmer? Water polo player, that was it. Those guys were big, but agile. She imagined the muscles under that suit; imagined him in a bathrobe, reading the morning paper.
Whom was he texting? His gorgeous, perfect girlfriend, or maybe his wife?
Maybe both. Now that would be juicy. Whomever it was, the woman had good taste.
The mother and three children moved past, blocking the view, and Jill leaned left—far left—directly into the person beside her.
“Sorry.” She snapped back upright. Get yourself together, Jill!
She began to make resolutions, as she always did when confronted with a tantalizing fantasy. Like it was