So we’re cool, right?” Windermere looked at Mathers across the aisle as the plane banked on its final approach for Las Vegas. “I mean, about last night?”
Mathers looked out the window. “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, I guess so.”
“I just don’t want things to be awkward,” she said. “We’re both adults.”
Mathers had been quiet all morning. He’d tried to maneuver her back into bed once she’d come out of the bathroom, but she’d fended off his advances, fled for her own room and a hot shower, where she’d thought about Stevens and Mathers and what awaited in Vegas.
Then she’d met Mathers in the lobby, had spent the cab ride to the airport trying to finagle a couple seats on the first flight to the desert, and by the time she’d talked her way onto a packed US Airways 737, she was too tired to do more than tiptoe around the subject in between futile attempts at napping.
Now, though, as the plane approached Sin City—and Stevens, waiting on the ground—Windermere realized she was going to have to hit Mathers with a heavy dose of real talk.
“You’re a lot of fun, Derek,” she said. “I don’t regret last night. But I’m not looking for much more than what already happened. I don’t want this to impact our work.”
Mathers looked around the plane, jammed full with rowdy bachelor parties and sorority girls. “Or your relationship with Stevens,” he said.
Windermere blinked. “Pardon?”
“It’s obvious you two have a thing going.” Mathers shrugged. “I don’t know, Carla. I think you’re pretty cool. I think we get along.”
“Yeah,” she said. “We do.”
“If last night was it, then that’s fine, I guess. But I like you. I can see us going places. And to be honest, I wouldn’t mind if we did.”
He looked at her, his mouth turned up, but shy, nothing at all like the cocky smirk he’d flashed at her over fondue last night. Windermere tried to hold his gaze. Then she looked away.
Shit, she thought, staring out the window at the casinos on the Strip. This is about to get real goddamn messy.