A Mile High

Evernight Publishing

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2013 Bethany-Kris

 
ISBN: 978-1-77130-579-2

Cover
Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

Editor: JC
Chute

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING:
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is
illegal.
 
No part of this book may be
used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a
work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

To D, for eleven years of never once saying,
"You can't."

A
MILE HIGH

Bethany-Kris

Copyright
© 2013

Chapter One

“Olivia, you can’t be serious!” I turned at the
angry voice behind me. My brother Josh, appearing livid as he took in the
hurricane-worthy mess my bedroom had turned into, stared back. “You can’t just up
and go for a week without some kind of notice.”

Like hell I couldn’t. I owned my own business, made
my own hours, and so long as the clients were satisfied and the end-product was
pleasing to the eye, I couldn’t see why I didn’t deserve a vacation.

“Yes, I damned well can,” I muttered. I tossed the
stark white bikini small enough to be considered scraps of string held together
by practically nothing at all, into my luggage and sighed. “Listen—”

“No, you listen,” he interrupted sharply with fingers
pointing at me. The infamous “bitch brow” I was known for made an appearance,
but Josh didn’t seem the least bit fazed by the sight. “We have that contract
due with The Haven, for their Web site, in a month. You still need to finish
the codes on that new blog’s final page. And Sylvia called yesterday, about the
issues with her customers being unable to see their finished orders before they
confirm purchases. We have a lot of work to do right now. This is not the time
for you to get in one of your moods, sis.”

“One of my moods?” I sneered, scoffing. He didn’t
have a fucking clue. I wished he would get one really fast, but instead, I felt
compelled to give it to him myself. “This isn’t just some mood. I have been
doing this for four years, Josh. I work hard, but I have no life and you know I
don’t. I want a week, that’s all, nothing more. I’ll even take my laptop with
me, and work on whatever I can while I’m there. Give me a break. I
need
one.”

His stance softened momentarily. “Could you at least
take twenty freaking minutes to work out whatever is wrong with Sylvia’s pages,
and then maybe fix it if possible?” The familiar green eyes that matched mine
rolled as he grumbled, “She keeps calling every time she loses an order on her Web
site to remind me that once again, it’s still not fixed. I’ve had it up to here
with her, honestly.”

“She pays really well,” I reminded him, trying
lamely to keep the haughty tone out of my voice. I’d warned him, after our
first meeting with that woman, that she would give us nothing but issues. It
was probably she who had done something to her own Web site that ended up
screwing her checkout page beyond her own repair. Generally, clients who allowed
me to manage their Web sites simply sent periodic e-mails on instructions and desired
changes, but not this client. Sighing, I looked at my watch. “I have to be at
the airport in an hour and a half. I’m not sure there’s time for me to fix it
today.”

My brother pulled out all his old tricks: big eyes,
pouting lip, and the nickname. “Liv…
please
.
One more late-night call with her waking us up, and Natalie’s threatened to
move out of the apartment.”

Boohoo
to you,
is what I wanted to say.

His girlfriend could use a swift kick in the ass and
to be sent on her merry way, as far as I was concerned. Useless to the extreme,
lazy on a good day, and far too demanding and controlling of my brother,
Natalie hadn’t exactly met my nicer side yet, not that she ever would. Unless
of course she grew up and started acting like a woman who could take care of
herself and didn’t mooch off the hard-earned money my brother made working for
my Web design company.

“Come on.” Josh’s quiet voice brought me out of my
nasty thoughts. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That,” he said, waving at me. “I say her name and
you get this look on your face like you just smelled something really bad.
She’s decent, Olivia, more than. I know you think because she’s twenty-four,
still hasn’t picked her major, and doesn’t have a part-time job that she isn’t
ever going to do a thing with her life, but give her a chance…for
me
, would you? I kind of love this
girl.”

I eyed him, speculative. Josh didn’t simply throw
around the
love
word like it was
nothing. When he used it, he meant it. “Just kind of, or are you already
picking out a nursery color?”

The scrunched-up look he made had me grinning. It
was almost cute…almost, if he wasn’t making that face in response to the evil
that lived in his home. “I might be making a trip to Illinois next week with
her to visit her family, and while I am there, I possibly might speak to her
father about the prospect of proposing.”

My jaw dropped. “You’ve known her
six
months. And you’ve only lived
together for two!”

The indifferent shrug of his shoulders was careless,
thoughtless, and tactless all rolled into one motion. Josh could be more
impulsive than anyone else I ever knew. “When you know, you know.” I felt my
body snap back at the statement. Those were the exact words our father had used
when he left our mother for a woman he met on the road, after having known her
only a few days. “And I’d like to think that I know now.”

“Don’t,” I warned with narrowing eyes and a cold
attitude. Josh looked away from me, but I couldn’t feel the least bit bad about
my manner. “Damn, give it a few more months or something. Think about where you
want to go in the future. Sit Natalie down and see if she’s figured out the
rest of her life yet, or at the very least if she can possibly decide what she
wants to be when she grows up, if she ever plans on doing just that. Do not
make a choice that serious before you understand the consequences of doing
so.
 
Can you promise me you’ll wait
another couple of months before you go ring shopping, Josh?”

Raking fingers through his light brown hair, he
shrugged. “I think I’m ready.”

The bitch inside me fought to make herself known.
Taking a brief moment to breathe deeply while counting back from ten, I finally
felt calm enough to speak again. “If you have to think about it, you’re not.” He
went to speak and I raised my hand to stop him. “I won’t keep standing here
arguing with you about this. If you want me to deal with that site issue, then
leave me be, but good God, the least you could do is think some more about
this, okay? Just
think
, Josh. You are
more than intelligent enough to do that and understand it’s reasonable,” I
insisted, the cold tone to my voice chilling even me. “You’re only twenty-four,
you have a great job, and you’re well on your way to having an even greater
future. Do not let some cute piece of ass from nowhere, Illinois with her
ridiculous lack of work ethic or give-a-damn, ruin that for you just because
she can take it like an animal.”

Remorse was the first thing I felt after my rant.
Apparently I hadn’t given myself enough time to chill out before giving him advice.
I couldn’t even apologize, shocked at my own lack of tact towards the man with
whom I’d grown up. Being twenty-seven, we were close in age, so our childhood
and most of our teenage years were spent together. But that girl—
Natalie
—there was something about her
that made my blood boil.

Disbelief and anger filled his features. “
Oh
… You’re a spiteful—” Snapping his
mouth closed and seething to stop the name he clearly wanted to call me—one I
would have deserved—Josh glared. “You have no right to assume or say anything
like that.”

“Josh… I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.” It
wasn’t a complete lie. I just hadn’t meant to say it out loud. “Really, I—”

The shake of his head was response enough. My
bedroom door slammed before I fully realized he had left the room. His shout
from my outside hallway as he stomped from my house made my heart ache. “Enjoy
your vacation. Don’t get sunburned. Oh, and before you leave, that cute piece
of ass who takes it like an animal wanted me to tell you that she thinks you
deserve this time off, given how hard you work and everything. And fix that
fucking site!”

“Josh!” Stumbling over the luggage I’d set on the
floor, I attempted to make it to the doorway before he left. “Listen to me,
please.”

The shuddering impact of my front door closing was
all that answered me back.

Chapter
Two

I was three seconds away from banging my head on the
desk of flight check-ins. Once again, with clenched teeth and fists squeezed
tight to my sides, I attempted to listen as the employee behind the desk, with
a tag that said her name was Star, explained to me how there had been a mix-up
with my ticket purchase. In my rush to leave the house to catch my plane in
time, I’d managed to leave my printed itinerary sitting on the desk, so I couldn’t
show her it wasn’t my mistake.

“It was definitely on your end,” she said far too
cheerily. Fingers typed away at her keyboard as she widened her eyes and nodded,
glancing up at a seething, perturbed me again. “Yep, had to have been. Our
systems do not have glitches like that, and if there were one, we would have
found it by now and fixed the problem.”

Exasperated, defeat coursed through me. Still, there
was no way in hell I was about to let this idiot tell me I had been the one to
screw up. “Listen,” I snarled, teeth still clenched and eyes narrowing. Star
looked slightly taken aback, giving me little satisfaction. “I work with
computers for a living. I understand a lot about Web sites, buying and selling
online, and how to check the right goddamned box when purchasing more than you
could ever understand, okay? So this…
issue
…was
not my fault. I do not want a flight to Newfoundland, Canada. I bought a flight
from here to Barbados with a two-hour layover in the Dominican. Figure it out,
but I am
not
going to Newfoundland.” Like
a child not getting their way, my foot hit the cement floor with a thud.

 
“Isn’t it
like, really rainy there all year round or something?”

Star looked up at me from her glasses. “Sometimes
the weather isn’t very welcoming, but this time of year it’s generally pretty
nice.”

With her gaze averted from my face again, I fought
the urge to give her the finger or stick out my tongue childishly. Nothing was supposed
to be this hard. A vacation was intended to be stress-free, enjoyable, and fun.
I was already about to kill somebody––preferably the moron who messed up my
flights and decided sending me to some Canadian island was better than me
flying off to the heat of Barbados.