Tempt (Take It Off) (2 page)

Like
, seriously.

To cover up my
juvenile behavior, I squinted at the name on the license he was still holding up. “Nash Prescott,” I read.

“At your service.”

“You don’t look old enough to be a pilot.”

“You don’t look old enough to travel alone.”

I rolled my eyes.

“I’m twenty-three
. I’ve been flying since I was a teenager. I’ve got more flight hours than you have hair on your head.”

“Doubtful.” I had really thick,
long blond hair.

He cocked his head to the side and studied me. “Anyone ever tell you that you look like Kate Hudson?”

The actress? Daughter of Goldie Hawn. Actually, yes, they had. “Nope.”

He smiled like he knew I was lying.

There was no way I was getting on a plane with him. “I’m sorry you had to come here all the way from… well, from wherever you came.”

“Puerto Rico,” he said, and when he did
, his accent came out full force. It made the place sound exotic and enticing. “I flew here from Puerto Rico.”

“You flew here to pick me up?”

He nodded.

“But why?”

“Our abuelas were great friends.” He explained. “When your family called to arrange for her ashes to be scattered, my abuela offered for me to come and pick you up.”

“So they volunteered you to come here like my family volunteered me to go there.”

He smiled. “I guess both our families are loco.” He used his pointer finger to draw circles around the side of his head.

I giggled. Then I sighed. “
Look, I’m sorry you had to come here. I’ll just go to the ticket counter and get a commercial flight and let you get back to your… whatever it is that you do.”

“Right now my job is to take you to Puerto Rico, where you will stay with my
grandmother and then be escorted to the place where you are to spread these ashes.” He gestured toward the case in his hand.

“I’m supposed to stay with you?” I asked, feeling my eyes bug out of my head.

“Not me. My abuela.”

“Abuela? That’s Spanish for grandmother, right?”

He nodded.

“You don’t live with her?”

He chuckled softly. “I think that would cramp my style.”

Exactly. And why was I still here talking to him? I started to walk away. He stopped me. His hand was like a rope wrapping around my wrist. It was like a handcuff trapping me to a jail cell, a vi
se around my heart.

“
Esperate
,” he said softly. The word literally rolled right off his tongue.

I turned back. You would’ve too.

My eyes locked on his, searching their translucent depths. “I really hope you didn’t just insult me.” Even if he did, I really didn’t care. It was the sexiest insult I’d ever heard.

His smile was lopsided. I thought I might faint.
“I said wait a second.”

I glanced at his hand wrapped around my wrist
, then back up. He saw me looking. He didn’t let go. “There’s no need for another ticket when I can take you.”

I hesitated. What excuse could I give? I couldn’t exactly say
, “I’m sorry, but you are way too sexy for me to have to sit alone with on a plane for any amount of time.” It wasn’t like he drove a couple hours to pick me up. He freaking flew a plane to get me. He was doing it as a favor for his grandmother.

“How do I know you aren’t really a kidnapper?”

“Two reasons,” he said, releasing my arm.

I lifted an eyebrow.

“One,” he said, holding up a finger. “I don’t have to kidnap women. If I want one, I get one.”

I actually believed that. He probably had women lined up at home.

“And two,” he said, flicking up a second finger. “My abuela is Marisol Castillo.”

Again
, his accent was more pronounced when he spoke her name. A name that I recognized. She was indeed my grandmother’s very dear friend.

“Your
abuela is Marisol?”

He produced a picture from the same pocket
where he kept his ID and held it out. It was of my grandmother, Cora, and Marisol. I had seen this same image hanging on her refrigerator practically all my life.

I took the photo out of his hands, staring down at Kiki with tears blurring my vision. I missed her. I missed her so much. “Okay,” I said softly. “I’ll go with you.”

He reached around me with his free hand and took my rolling suitcase. “Let’s go.”

I trailed along behind him like a puppy, mentally telling myself I was going to regret this.

“You can’t be serious,” I said the second we stepped outside.

He glanced over his shoulder. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

A tin can with wings? Yes. A sardine can with the words “death trap” scrawled across the side? You bet. A beauty? Hell to the no.

“I’m not riding in that thing.”

“Why not?” he called, not even bothering to look back this time. He just kept right on strolling, putting one impossibly long leg in front of the other. (Turns out even after I stood up, he was still very tall.)

“That thing isn’t even fit to fly!” I exclaimed
, rushing after him.

“It got me here
, didn’t it?”

Somehow that did not make me feel better.

He kept moving, walking up the tiny set of stairs and into the plane, taking my luggage with him. I wasn’t going up there.

Instead
, I stood at the bottom of the stairs and yelled up. “Hey! I want my stuff back.”

His curly dark head appeared out the door. “Come get it.”

“You little…” I growled and stomped up the stairs.

I walked into the plane, noted my bags sitting in the first seat on the right
, and went toward them. He closed the hatch (or whatever the door on a plane is called) behind me. I stiffened and turned. “Oh no. I’m getting off this death trap.”

“It’s not a death trap.
You can get off when we get to Puerto Rico.”

“Now.”

“There’s soda in the back if you want some.”

“D
o you not hear the words coming out of my mouth?”

“
As soon as I have clearance, we can take off.”

Why did I bother talking? I grabbed up my bags and walked to the door.

Just as I was pulling open the door, the plane’s engine rumbled to life. I shut the door and glanced into the open cockpit. Nash looked over his shoulder at me and grinned. “Better buckle up.”

When the plane started moving
, I found a seat and definitely buckled up. If I was going to die, it would be safely. The plane taxied toward the runway and then stopped. I thought briefly of trying to escape, but then I decided against it. I was already here. Might as well take the ride.

I settled into the seat
, trying not to think about the fact that the plane was so small it only had one row of seats on each side. I tried not to think about the fact there was no flight attendant to give instructions preflight about how to use the dropdown air masks.
Oh crap.
Did this plane even have those?

I pulled some gum out of my bag and popped it into my mouth. The worst part about flying was the ear popping. Gum would hopefully help that.

Everything was fine until we got into the air. This little plane didn’t seem as sturdy as the commercial flights I’d been on. It seemed to teeter through the sky, bumping along, with us inside. Nerves kicked up inside me and I began to dread the rest of my time on this plane.

“Hey!” called a voice from the front.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and moved forward, peeking into the cockpit, my heart racing and my mind spinning theories of him having some weird emergency and needing me to fly the plane.

But he didn’t appear to be in need of help.

He actually looked really relaxed and confident sitting in the pilot’s chair. He had headphones over his ears, but one side was pushed back so it wasn’t covering that ear. My eyes were drawn immediately to the windshield, or rather what was beyond it.

It was sort of like seeing the ocean,
except there was no water and we weren’t on the ground. But there was an endless supply of blue. An endless supply of completely bare and undisturbed landscape dotted with white clouds that looked impossibly soft and much more 3D up here than from the ground. I wondered what it would be like to reach out and touch one, if my fingers would slip right through it like vapor… or if it would have some sort of feel against my skin. Would it be silky and soft? Would it be slightly moist and warm? I knew I would likely never know what it felt like, but being up here made it very easy to imagine.

“Want to help?” Nash called from his seat.

“I don’t know how to fly.”

He motioned for the empty seat beside him. I moved over cautiously, gingerly perching on the edge. He laughed. “Isn’t the view awesome?”

“It really is!”

“Want to steer?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t about to try and steer. I’d probably manage to hit a bird or something.

He lifted his hands off all the controls. “Look! No hands!”

“Stop that!” I yelled, unable to cover up my smile.

“Come here,” he said, motioning with his chin.

I moved around so I was standing right beside him. He hooked me around the waist and pulled, causing me to tumble right into his lap. I gave a little shriek and he laughed. “Put your hands over mine,” he instructed.

I hesitated and then I reached up. Flying a plane was something I never thought I would do. Flying a plane while sitting in the lap of some hot guy? That
thought never even crossed my mind.

I liked it.

I wrapped my hands around his, both of us gripping the controls. “Nice and easy,” he murmured right next to my ear. “She practically drives herself.”

My eyes momentarily fluttered closed. His warm breath brushing across my ear made me feel like I just
had a thirty-minute massage. My body felt heavy and languid and I actually had to make a conscious effort to support my own weight and not give it all to him.

After a few minutes of flying together
, he slipped his hands out from beneath mine and I was left to fly alone. I gave a squeal of excitement. “I’m flying!”

His laugh vibrated my ear and his arms fell loosely around my waist. If I leaned back
, I would be encircled in his body…

The plane jerked a little and his hands came back up over mine. “Whoa,” he said. “Easy.”

“I think I better leave the flying to you.”

I moved off his lap, returning to the vacant seat beside him. We flew in silence for a while
. The scenery mesmerized me.

But then the clouds started to turn a darker color. They were no longer fluffy and white. Instead
, they glowed a sort of electric gray color, and I swore I saw some lightning flashing here and there.

“What’s happening?” I asked him, unease
filling my body.

He was looking out the window with a confused look on his face. “It wasn’t supposed to rain today.”

“Rain?” Were we flying into bad weather?

He nodded. “You should go back and buckle up.”

“Is everything okay?” I needed to know.

“Everything
’s fine.” He assured me, but not before I caught the hesitation in his tone.

I did as he asked, heading back toward my seat. Just as I got there
, we seemed to hit a pocket of turbulence and I fell over in the aisle, bumping my shoulder on the seat. I scrambled back up, sitting down and fumbling to fasten the belt around my waist.

At the moment
, it seemed silly. Like a strip of fabric around my waist was really going to help me if this plane decided to plunge out of the sky. But I left it there anyway, thinking it couldn’t hurt. Plus, in some ways, it was a comfort. It made me feel safer, even if I wasn’t.

After a few minutes
, the plane evened out and the flight grew smooth again. I let out a shaky breath and relaxed my stiffened muscles. I rolled my head to the side and glanced out the tiny oval window and into the sky.

It was dark.

The once-fluffy clouds now looked angry and dirty.

The plane seemed to tilt then and then rapidly righted
once more. My stomach rolled. Turbulence rocked us again, and it felt as if we dropped about ten feet in a span of one second. I swallowed back the panic clawing at my throat.

Everything’s fine.

It’s just a storm.

I repeated that mantra over and over again until I lost track of time. The plane still struggled through the air and Nash didn’t say a word. I didn’t dare ask him what was happening
. I didn’t want to take away any of his concentration.

And then it started to rain. Huge, fat drops of water plastered against the little window and soaked the plane.

Over the sound of the pounding rain, I heard a muffled curse.

That’s when I knew we were in trouble.

I scrabbled with the seatbelt, finally getting it undone, and raced toward the front. I felt like I was in some sort of carnival funhouse—the kind with a tilting floor that made it impossible to walk straight.

“Nash!” I yelled, rushing forward.

“Go back to your seat, Ava,” he yelled, not looking away from the windshield. “I’ve got this under control.”

I admired his confidence. I admired how assured he was. It almost made me feel better. Almost. But then I looked at the sweeping view before us.

It looked like we were flying right into the mouth of some kind of swirling, angry beast. I knew the wind was fierce because of the speed the uber-dark clouds scattering across the sky. The rain still pelted the plane, falling in heavy sheets so fast the tiny windshield wipers could barely keep up.

Blinding white
lightning shot through the sky, lighting up portions of the storm. I understood now why some people said a thunderstorm was really the gods fighting. This was intense and powerful.

“Go sit,” Nash barked.

I did as he asked because I didn’t know what else to do. I’d never in my life felt so helpless than I did right then. It was like seeing a clear future toward imminent death and not being able to do a thing to stop it.

I started to pray. I said every prayer I knew and then I closed my eyes and just begged God to help us.

With every tilt, lurch, and bump, my breathing became a little more shallow. I moved over to the window seat and stared down below us, trying to guess how far the ground really was.

Too far.

And it was all ocean. The dark water stretched as far as I could see. It looked choppy and churned as if there was also a storm raging beneath the surface of the sea.

Even if we survived the plane crashing
, the chances of not drowning were slim. I wasn’t sure which way I would prefer to die. Thinking about it made me feel extremely sick. It was like asking a person if they wanted to be shot or stabbed. The answer was neither.

The answer was I didn’t want to die.

A gust of wind attacked the plane, tossing it up into the air and turning us onto our side. I finally understood the reason for the seatbelt because had I not been wearing it, I would have fallen across the plane and hit the other side.

I sucked in a deep breath
. I couldn’t scream. I was beyond screaming. I was so utterly terrified that my body just hung there like a ragdoll and trembled. When the plane righted, my body jerked in the seat, my head bouncing off the window.

And then we fell out of the sky.

The plane literally took a nosedive toward the ocean.

I no longer had to wonder if this plane had the oxygen masks built into the ceiling because they fell out, one of them dangling in front of me. I stared at it
, numb, knowing I needed to put it on but unable to command my body to move.

Nash appeared, his face pale and his light
-green eyes wild. He stumbled over to me and my eyes snapped up. “Who’s driving the plane!” I demanded, already knowing no one was.

He didn’t say anything
. He just strapped the mask over my face and then turned to go back to the cockpit. I grabbed his hand as oxygen made its way into my lungs.

Our eyes met.

His fingers tightened around mine.

It was the kind of moment that needed no words. We both knew exactly what was happening. We barely knew each other
. We were only connected through our family ties, and now it seemed we might die together.

His face would be the last one I would see.

His skin would be the last skin I felt.

Both our lives would be cut short and we would be left with nothing but a bunch of what ifs.

“I’m going to do everything I can to keep us alive,” he vowed.

I clung to his words after he disappeared. I replayed them over and over in my head. It wasn’t a promise. It wasn’t a guarantee.

It was all I had.

A clap of thunder boomed through the sky and caused me to jump about a mile high in my seat. It was so close and so loud it shook the plane. The hum of the engine sputtered. I heard Nash radioing for help. I heard him begging for someone to answer. No one did.

The tiny plane plummeted, quickly losing altitude, barreling toward the ocean as the storm raged around us. I unhooked my seatbelt, tore the mask from my face, and went for Nash. If I was going to die, I wasn’t going to be alone.