Collapsing into a comfortable armchair that bore no resemblance to the cramped seats on every other flight she’d ever been on, she tried not to let herself look out of the window. But finally she could bear it no more and, turning her head, she glanced down at the tarmac.
It was deserted. The limo was gone.
Swallowing down the sudden small, hard lump of misery in her throat, she sat back and watched numbly as Tom brought her some iced water and a selection of magazines.
‘If you could just put on your seatbelt, Ms Mason, we’ll be taking off in a couple of minutes.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Leaning back, she closed her eyes and listened to the hum of the air conditioning, and then finally she heard the engines start to whine.
‘Is this seat taken?’
A male voice. Deep and very familiar.
But it couldn’t be him—
Her eyes snapped open and her heart began to thump, for there, staring down at her, with something very like a smile tugging at his mouth, was Ram.
She stared up at him in confusion. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I thought you might like some company.’
Company! She frowned. Glancing past him at the window, she could see that they were starting to move forward, and across the cabin Tom and his colleagues were buckling themselves into their seats.
‘I don’t think there’s time,’ she said hurriedly. ‘We’re just about to take off.’
He shrugged. ‘Well, like you said, we do have an awful lot to talk about.’
A trickle of cool air ran down her spine, and she felt a pang of uneasiness.
‘Yes, but not now—’
She broke off as he dropped into the seat beside her.
‘Why not now?’ Sliding his belt across his lap, he stretched out his long legs. ‘Just the two of us on a private jet...’
Pausing, he met her gaze, and the steady intensity of his grey eyes made the blood stop moving in her veins.
‘Surely this is the perfect opportunity!’
CHAPTER SIX
NOLA STARED AT him uncertainly. Beneath the sound of her heartbeat she heard the plane’s wheels starting to rumble across the tarmac. But she barely registered it. Instead, her brain was frantically trying to make sense of his words.
He couldn’t possibly be intending to fly to Scotland with her, so it must be his idea of a joke.
Glancing up into his face, she felt her breath catch.
Except that he didn’t look as if he was joking.
Taking a deep breath, trying to appear calmer than she felt, she forced herself to smile. ‘I couldn’t ask you to do that,’ she said lightly. ‘It’s not as if it’s on your way home.’
His grey gaze rested on her face. ‘But you’re not asking me, are you? Nor am I asking you, as it happens.’
Her face felt stiff with shock and confusion. Slowly she shook her head. ‘But this isn’t what we agreed. You said I could borrow your plane—you didn’t say anything about coming with me.’
He gazed at her blandly. ‘I thought you said we had a lot to talk about.’