LITMIR.BIZ

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ma’am. You’re in coach.”

      Kate shook her head, smiling. “I’m sorry. That won’t do.” Brett would have to wedge his wide shoulders and long legs into a coach seat with a shoehorn. “There must have been an error with the reservation or something. Is there any way we can upgrade to first class?”

      “Well, yes, of course, ma’am. But the fare is considerably—”

      Kate waved that away. “Here.” She opened her wallet again and pulled out her American Express. “Will that do?”

      The woman nodded. And in moments, she handed over a pair of new boarding passes. “I’m afraid you don’t have much time to get to the gate. Enjoy your flight.”

      Kate smiled. “Thanks.” She tucked her credit card and the tickets into her purse and turned to find Brett already heading her way. He hustled them through the security check where it was obvious he was well-known, and onward to the gate just in time for the boarding call.

      Kate handed over the boarding passes and they walked onto the plane. The smiling, blond flight attendant greeted them, and Kate stepped past her, heading toward their seats. She dumped her tote and purse on Brett’s seat and slid into the one next to the window. Even in the spacious first-class cabin, she knew he’d want the aisle.

      “Kate.”

      She wriggled in the roomy seat and looked up at him. Then at her tote. She plucked her purse out of his seat and tucked it beside her. “My tote will fit in the compartment, won’t it?”

      He sighed. “What did you do?”

      She looked at him. His expression was tight. All signs of humor gone. “You mean the seats? I switched them,” she said easily. “You didn’t really intend to sit back in the sardine section.” A wave of uncertainty hit her. “Or…did you?”

      He didn’t answer her. He turned instead to the blond flight attendant who’d been looking at him like a cat eyeing a bowl of cream. “We need to switch seats out of first class,” he told the woman.

      He was serious. “Brett,” Kate tried to get his attention, but he was seriously ignoring her.

      “I’m sorry, sir,” the blonde answered as if it was an everyday occurrence for someone to turn down first-class seating. “We’re heavy today. All seats booked.”

      “We just gave up coach seats,” he countered.

      She shook her head. “Standby passengers have already been boarded. I assure you, sir, we are full. And you’ll need to take your seat now.”

      Beneath their feet the plane gave a little lurch as if to agree with her words. “I’ll stow that for you.” She took Kate’s tote and to her credit, her smile didn’t dim a watt at Brett’s grimace.

      He sat down beside Kate and fastened his seat belt, then pulled some files from his briefcase before stowing it beneath the seat. Without a word to Kate, he flipped open one of the files and focused on whatever was inside it.

      “Brett—”

      His arm was resting on the armrest between them, and his fingers lifted. Warning.

      She chewed the inside of her lip. Then finally turned and looked out the oval window as the plane backed away from the gate, then smoothly taxied around to join the line of planes awaiting takeoff.

      She wondered for a moment if Brett remembered the time that she’d decided she’d wanted to be a pilot. She’d taken ground school classes before their senior year in high school and everything. Of course, that was back when she’d also thought it would be cool to be an actress, or a firefighter, and a dozen other careers that she’d fantasized about.

      “Did you take your motion sickness stuff?” Brett suddenly asked.

      Her eyes burned. “Before I left the house.” It was already beginning to make her feel drowsy. And it was the motion sickness that she’d learned plagued her only while flying that had put a damper on her teenage enthusiasm for becoming a pilot.

      “Good,” he said flatly. “The last thing we need is you heaving your guts.”

      “Put ever so poetically,” she murmured. She turned in her seat toward him. “Brett, I thought the seating thing was an error. We always traveled in first class.”

      “No, Kate.” His voice was low, his tone flat. “You always did and just took me along for the ride. My clients don’t pay for me to ride around in first class and limousines. They pay me for results.”

      Her lips firmed. “Well, I’m the client this time.”

      “I don’t care if you’re the Queen of England. I have policies and it doesn’t include this. I warned you, princess, not to mess with my job, and already you’re doing it.”

      Her lips parted, incredulous. “Because I didn’t think you’d want to cram yourself into a seat with too little legroom for you to be comfortable?”

      “Open your eyes, Kate. People do it all the time, every day. Including me.”

      “I was thinking of you,” she countered over the sound of the engines revving.

      “No, you weren’t. You were taking over, adjusting the scenario until it suited your fancy, just like you always did.”

      “That’s what you really think?” The plane was gathering speed as it headed down the runway.

      His hard, square jaw tightened. “That’s what I really think.”

      “Then it’s a good thing we never made it down the aisle, isn’t it?”

      He looked back at his paperwork. “Seems to me you did make it down the aisle. With Hamilton Orwell the third.”

      Kate’s stomach dropped as the plane suddenly lifted off the ground, heading sharply into the sky. But it seemed Brett wasn’t through.

      He looked at her, his expression unreadable. “Tell me, Kate. Were you sleeping with the guy who, next to you was supposed to be my best friend, at the same time you were sleeping with me? Or did he really sweep you off your feet into marriage in just those few months after you dumped me?”

      Kate sat back like a shot, speechless.

      “Nah,” he mused. “Now that I think about it, I don’t care.”

      She watched him turn his attention right back to the work spread out in front of him.

      Of course he didn’t care. He hadn’t cared eight years ago. Not enough.

      Her heart had been breaking because she’d finally acknowledged the truth about her standing in Brett’s life. She’d been raised by a dyed-in-the-wool tycoon; a man who’d put his family last and his work first.

      One of the hardest things she’d ever had to do was face the truth that she’d fallen in love with a man whose priorities were a mirror image to her father’s.

      For Brett, it was always work first.

      Everything else, including her, had been last.

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