“Thank you.”
We move further inside. It’s all golden and bright. There are sleek cream leather seats toward the middle with shiny wood desks. A sofa lines one side. In the back, steps lead into another room of some sort. Not much of it is visible from where we’re standing near the front.
Sitting in one of the seats, a laptop open in front of him, is the man I’ve been warring with for months now: Oliver Nichols.
“Oliver, this is Finley Fox. Finley, this is Oliver Nichols.”
Oliver isn’t quite how I pictured him. I imagined some kind of blond Adonis with a chiseled jawline. Oliver isn’t quite the giant I had worked up in my imagination. He’s more like a swimmer or a runner, sleek and trim, but his presence somehow takes up the whole damn plane anyway. He has dark hair and a probing gaze, and he’s dressed in a navy-blue suit and tie.
Archer and I are a lot less formal. I opted for jeans and layers—a tank top, T-shirt, and jacket—since it will be much warmer on the West Coast.
“Finley.” Oliver nods and shakes my hand, his grip firm but not hard.
“Thank you for your help with all of this,” I tell him.
“It’s not entirely altruistic. I appreciate her work, and I’ve been wanting to meet her for a while now. Make yourselves at home. If you need to use the facilities before takeoff, they’re in the rear.” He gestures behind us to the next room.
I nod. “I’ll do that now.” Curiosity compels me to check out the rest of the plane. This might be my only chance to fly on a private jet, so I’m not missing any opportunities to explore.
I leave my small overnight bag with Archer and make my way to the back of the plane, heading up the two steps and through the doorway into . . . it’s a bedroom. My mouth pops open again. It has a queen-size bed covered in a dark-red comforter that makes me want to fall on top of it and take a nap.
The bathroom is through another narrow door, and I make my way inside, barely holding in my gasp.
This is not your normal airplane bathroom in which your knees hit the door when you sit down and there’s barely room to wipe.
It’s almost as big as my bathroom back home. There’s a full-size shower and tub, all sparkling clean and gleaming white. The counters look like marble. Is that even possible? I knock on the material, frowning.
It’s almost too pretty to pee in.
But I don’t want to dawdle too much, so I finish up my business and make my way back out to the front, where Archer sits on the sofa, talking to the flight attendant.
“Can I get you something to eat or drink? We have a lovely frittata and coffee or mimosas.” The flight attendant is the prettiest man I’ve ever seen. He has a low, soothing voice and an elegant manner that puts me immediately at ease.
“Get me the lobster frittata and coffee with cream. No sugar,” Oliver yells from his seat.
I wince.
“Coffee would be great, Will.” I read the gold-plated name tag on his lapel.
Poor Will stares in Oliver’s direction, offers me a shaky smile and then bolts for the front of the plane to the little kitchen.
“Have you ever been on Oliver’s plane before?” I ask Archer, tugging my jacket off.
He shakes his head. “Never had cause to beg use of it. Hadn’t needed any favors from Oliver before now, not like this.”
“You never told me what was up with the favor thing. You came to the cottages because you owed Oliver, he’s doing this because he owes you . . . and Mason. You said you were calling in a favor. How did Oliver owe you if you already owed him?”
The corner of his mouth tips up. “It’s a thing we do. We all owe each other, so if one of us calls in a favor, we’re duty bound to honor it. There’s no limit, but we can only use them on things that are really important.”
“Why isn’t there a limit?”
He considers the question. “Is there a limit to what you would do or wouldn’t do for any of your family?”
“Of course not.”
He nods. “We don’t have family. We only have each other. So this is something we can do. We don’t really know how to act like actual family. We don’t see each other at holidays. None of us would know what to do with ourselves or even how to initiate something like that. We barely see each other in person. But we can do this. This we understand.”
I glance over my shoulder at Oliver as the plane moves slowly down the runway, preparing for takeoff. He’s opened his laptop, working, ignoring us.