went to the gym. Despite the beautiful day and the fact that I should’ve been out running, I really wanted to lift some weights. I’m one of those girls that most women hate. I have a hard time gaining weight, no matter how much I eat. I’m a bony stick, rail-thin with a mediocre chest and no hips or muscle tone.
I’d spent the last several months really trying to add some definition to my arms and legs so it didn’t just look like strands of spaghetti were falling out of the arm and leg holes of my clothes, and so far, I was pleased with the results.
I put my headphones in and was busy doing some bench presses with a couple of free weights when a shadow behind my head and a muffled “hello” made me lose track of how many reps I’d done. I tilted my head up only to find an upside-down smiling Jake looking at me.
Sitting up, I pulled out my earbuds. “Oh, hey.”
“We meet again.” He grinned. “But this time as friends. Right, Freya?” There he went again, rolling my name around on his tongue like it was bloody foreplay.
“Right.”
“How’re you?”
I nodded. “I’m okay.” I tipped my water bottle into my mouth and took a sip. “Had a good day back at work. You?”
He shrugged. “Can’t complain. Haven’t started my job yet. Spent most of the afternoon test-driving some trucks with James.”
“Yeah? You buy anything?”
He nodded, and then a big, satisfied smile took over his face, showing off perfectly straight, white teeth. “A motorcycle.”
“Really?” I grabbed my towel and mopped up my face. “That doesn’t sound very safe.”
He shook his head, still grinning. “It’s perfectly safe. I’ve had a bike license since I moved to Edmonton and away from my parents.”
“What do your parents have anything to do with it?” I asked, lying back down and motioning for him to move back so I could start another set.
He backed away and gave me a lifted eyebrow. “They’re overbearing nutjobs. They still don’t know I can ride a bike. You wanna come for a ride sometime?”
I gave him a dubious look. “Uh, never in my life would I be caught dead on one of those death machines.”
“You sound like my mother,” he joked. Just then my phone started to vibrate on my hip. Jake noticed and swiftly took my weights from me so I could answer it.
“Sorry,” I murmured, seeing that it was Stacey and quickly pressing the little green button on the screen. “Hello?”
“Freya?” she panted, out of breath and in a state of panic.
“What’s wrong?”
Jake looked at me with curiosity. I must have appeared scared out of my skin.
“The baby, it’s c-oh.” She growled. “Oh God, it’s coming.”
“But … but it’s early, too early. It’s not due for another three weeks.”
“It’s coming now!”
“Okay … I’m on my way. I’m not sure when the next flight to Edmonton is, but I’ll be on it, okay? Hang in there. Is there anyone that can stay with Connor while you go to the hospital?”
“Noooooo,” she wailed.
“Okay … okay, if your contractions get too close together, call an ambulance, okay? Otherwise, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“They’re still about twelve or so minutes apart. I have some time.”
“All right, good. I’ll call you when I’m booked on a flight.” I hung up. “I—I have to go!” I crammed all my stuff into my gym bag, only to look up and find Jake on his phone.
“Perfect, thanks, bro … An hour? Great. Okay, bye.” He hung up and looked at me. “How soon can you be home, showered and packed?”
“Why?”
“I’ve acquired my brother’s private jet to take us to Edmonton. It can be at the airport within the hour.” My mouth hung open, but nothing came out, so Jake just continued to talk. “If you’re not comfortable riding on my bike, would you mind picking me up on your way?”
“Um, thank you.”
He shrugged. “No worries. Now let’s go.”
I blinked rapidly but composed myself and then followed him out of the gym to the parking lot. “I can’t believe your brother has a jet,” I finally managed to say. “How come you weren’t on it the other day?”
“Someone else was borrowing it.”
“Oh.” The realm of private jets was so out of my field of knowledge or expertise that I had no idea what else to say.
“All right.” He stopped in front of a brand-new shiny motorcycle and pulled a helmet out of his gym bag. “This is me. I’ll see you in about half an hour?”
I nodded. “Sure. See you in a bit.” And then without looking back, I zombie-walked to my car and drove home.
True to his word, we were in the air within an hour or so, cozily tucked into the plush, cream-colored leather seats of Justin’s beautiful private jet, while Jake sat on the edge of his seat rocking back and forth with his eyes bulging out of his head.
“You okay?”
“I hate flying,” he muttered. “Hate it!”
“Do you have your headphones? I don’t mind if you listen to them if it’ll help you.”
He shook his head. “Left them at home, I was in such a rush to pack. I’ll buy some for the flight back.”
“You didn’t have to come with me, you know? I mean, I appreciate that you organized this for me, but,” I shook my head in confusion, “you hate flying.”
He shrugged but then made a face as if that shrug was about ready to send him over the edge. “You’re going to need someone to look after your friend’s little boy while you’re at the hospital with her. Besides, it’s what friends do. And now I can go to my storage locker and bring back some more stuff, not that I have much. Mostly clothes.”
I rolled the words around on my tongue. “What friends do … ”
“We’re friends, right?”
I nodded slowly. “Riiiight.”
He swallowed. “And as much as I’m hating this right now, I promise not to ask you to make out with me. But I do need a distraction. I’m losing my shit.”
“Oh, uh, okay. Do you know if there’s a deck of cards in here? We could play a game.”
He swallowed again, his face having taken on a greenish hue. “Over … over in that cupboard there are board games and stuff.”
I unbuckled my belt and got up to go and check it out, coming back with a crib board and a deck of cards. “So you’ve been on this plane a fair bit then? Even though you hate to fly?”
Taking a sip of his water, he nodded. “Justin and Kendra have been kind enough to take my sister and I on a few trips. It was either give in to my fear and not see the world or suck it up and have some amazing adventures.”
“Where all have you been?”
He shuffled the deck, our conversation proving to be a successful distraction to his fear and nausea. “A few years ago they took us to Utila, a small island off Honduras where we did a bunch of diving, then they took us to Turkey for a month one summer as well as Portugal and to James’s island in Belize.”
“Wow.” I set the pegs in the board. “You’ve been all over the place.”
Nodding absentmindedly, he continued to shuffle. “I love traveling. But what I’d really like to do is fly somewhere and then take a train or bus around to different countries. You see more of the land that way.” He scrunched up his nose. “What is this game anyway?”
“You don’t know how to play cribbage?” I squeaked, surprised that this worldly young man didn’t know how to play such a popular card game.
He shook his head. “Where’d you learn?”
“My dad taught me when I was seven. It was our Friday night ritual. We always ordered pizza, which was a huge treat, and played cribbage.”
“Can you teach me? Is it easy to learn?”
“Do you know how to count?”
He nodded with a sarcastic smile.
I just grinned back at him. “Then I think you’ll be fine.”
“Beginner’s luck!” I scoffed, rolling my eyes and scooping up the cards to shuffle them. Jake took out the pegs and put them back at the beginning.
“Winning four in a row is beginner’s luck?” He chuckled. “I’d say that it’s the student surpassing the master.”
I shot him an irritated glare. “What’d you say you did for work again?”
His smile nearly made me swallow my tongue. “I’m an engineer.”
“So, numbers and math and problem-solving is your thing then?”
“My life,” he affirmed.
“Well, maybe I should go grab the Scrabble board then, because words and letters are my life.”
He chuckled again and raised a sexy eyebrow at me. “Yeah? I’m up for that.”
“Hey there, folks,” the captain boomed over the loudspeaker, “just wanted to let you know that we’re about thirty minutes out of Edmonton and are going to be starting our descent in about five or ten minutes.”
Jakes face went ghostly white.
“Looks like Scrabble will have to wait.” I winced as he stood to put the game away. “You going to be okay?” Just then the plane lurched to the left, causing him to fly across the aisle from where he had stood up to go and put the board away, and then fall right into my lap.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, righting himself. Our eyes locked, and before I knew what I was doing, I reached for his hand and guided him to sit down next to me, lacing our fingers together and giving them a reassuring squeeze.
He looked at me like a lost puppy, smiling hesitantly.
“Just close your eyes, and I’ll tell you when you can open them, okay?” I said slowly, as if trying to coax a kitten out from under the bed. “We’ll be safely on the ground in no time.”
Swallowing, he nodded and then closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the headrest and gripping my hand as if it were a life preserver.
I took this time to look around the inside of the jet. It was lavish and luxurious, with dark wood accents and paneling. I’d noticed before that there was a big bedroom at the rear of the plane as well as a bathroom and I wondered, just for a second, what it’d be like to make love at thirty thousand feet. Had Jake ever done it?
“Hey,” I whispered a short while later, tapping his shoulder with my free hand and squeezing the hand that was laced with mine again. “We’ve landed. It’s okay.”
Over the last thirty or so minutes, Jake hadn’t moved. There had been a bit more turbulence and even then, the only change had been his breathing and his pulse, which I felt beating against my own. He’d also squeezed my hand tighter, darn near cutting off the circulation at one point, but I didn’t complain. We all had unexplainable fears, and I wasn’t about to ridicule him for his.
He popped open the eye closest to me. “All good?”
“All good.” I smiled. “We’re back on good old terra firma.”
He let out a big long exhale and stretched his neck from side to side, the move making long cords stand out, and for some reason I felt a stirring in my belly and my mouth was suddenly sandpaper dry.
He looked at me. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”
When I realized I’d been staring at him with my mouth hanging open, I quickly closed it and gave him a curt nod, which promptly earned me an enormous, knowing grin.
“So.” He yawned, stretching his whole body like a lithe puma, making my knees turn to jelly. “Do you just take a cab to her house?”
I nodded. “Uh, yeah.” I shook the cobwebs out of my brain. “But I need to call work and get Allan to fill in for me.”
“Okay. You call work. I’ll grab our bags. Let’s go.”