Beautiful Secret (Beautiful Bastard #4) (5 page)

I looked up, sharing a brief, confused expression with the flight attendant. “I’ll take grapefruit juice, please.”

With our orders noted, the flight attendant left and Ruby turned to me. Something about her face, the unguarded honesty in her eyes . . . it triggered a tender protectiveness in me I was wholly unaccustomed to.

She blinked away, moving to stare so hard at her tray I was afraid she would crack it through sheer intensity.

“All right?” I asked.

“Just—sorry about that. And yes. I—” She paused and then tried again. “I wasn’t going to order champagne. Did you really think that?”

“Well.” She
had
ordered it, even if only in jest. “No?” I hoped that was the right answer.

“And that whole bomb thing,” she whispered, waving a hand in front of her as if to push the thought away. “I am such an idiot around you.”

“Just me?”

She slumped and I realized how it had sounded.

“No. I . . . that is, I take issue with what you’re saying: I’ve never seen you act like an idiot around me.”

“The elevator?”

Smiling, I conceded this. “Well.”

“And right now?”

This twisted something inside me. “Is there anything I can do?”

She blinked up to my face and gazed at me with a familiar sort of fondness.

And then she blinked, shaking her head once, and it was gone. “I’ll be fine. Just nervous about a trip with the director of planning and
blah blah
.”

Wanting to put her more at ease, I asked, “Where did you do your undergraduate work?”

She took a deep breath, and then turned to face me fully. “UC San Diego.”

“Engineering?”

“Yes. With Emil Santorini.”

I acknowledged this with a small lift of my brow. “He’s tough.”

She grinned. “He’s
amazing
.”

A sharp curl of interest spiked through me. “Only the brilliant ones come out feeling that way.”

“Push through or break,” she said, shrugging as she accepted her orange juice from the flight attendant with a bright smile. “That’s what he said the first week in the lab. He wasn’t wrong. Three of us started in there at the same time. I was the only one still there by Christmas our first year.”

“Why are you in London?” I asked, though I suspected I already knew.

“Hoping to make it into the Civil program. I’m already in the engineering general but haven’t heard from Margaret Sheffield yet whether I’m in her group.”

“She doesn’t decide until just before the term starts. Makes the students completely barking mad, if memory serves.”

“We engineers like our calendars and spreadsheets and plans. Not the most patient bunch, I guess.”

I smiled. “Like I said. Barking mad.”

She pulled the corner of her lip into her mouth and smiled back. “You didn’t study with her.”

“Not officially, but she was more a mentor to me than my own mentor was.”

“How long after you finished did Petersen retire?”

I felt my eyes widen. How much did she know about my old department? About me? “I suspect you already know the answer to that question.”

She sipped her juice and apologized quietly after swallowing. “I knew you were his last student but I guess I was curious to hear how bad it was.”

“It was abysmal,” I admitted. “He was a drunk and more than that—a ruddy awful person. But that was nearly ten years ago. You were a child. How do you know all of this?”

She pursed her lips slightly and I felt my skin flush warm.
Christ
. She was so beautiful.

“One answer,” she started with a small smile, “is that I learned about Maggie Sheffield’s work when I was a sophomore and we toured the Stately building. I grew kind of obsessed with getting to study under her before she retired. When I asked Emil about her, he also shared some of the history of your old department.” Shrugging, she said, “I heard a few stories about Petersen.”

I tilted my head, wondering which ones still floated around.

“He threw a bottle at a student?” she asked.

Ah
. The one story that would never die. “He did, but it wasn’t me. The worst I ever got from him was a verbal berating . . . or ten.”

Ruby nodded, looking relieved.

She’d said
one
answer was this. “And the other answer?” I asked.

She looked out the window for a few breaths before saying, “I joined R-C and found out you’d studied at Oxford, and wondered if you’d been in Maggie’s program. You hadn’t but . . . I learned a bit about you anyway.”

There seemed to be an extra layer to what she was saying, and I thought for a beat I understood the look of fond familiarity she’d given me only a moment before. But then she turned back, wearing a sweetly devious grin. “You’d be amazed how much you can pick up just by paying attention.”

“Enlighten me.”

Sitting up in her seat, she said, “You came over from your position at the London Underground to start up an urban planning division. You went to Cambridge for undergraduate, Oxford for graduate school, and were the youngest executive in the history of the Tube.” Ruby gave me a shy smile. “You nearly moved to New York to work for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority but turned the job down to come to R-C.”

Lifting a brow, I murmured, “Impressive. What else do you know?”

She looked away, blushing further. “You grew up in Leeds. You were a star on the Cambridge football club while you were there.”

Had she looked any of this up last night? Or had she known all of this about me before this trip? And which answer did I want to hear? I suspected I knew which would
make this small thrill in my stomach grow more intense. “What else?”

Hesitating, she said, “You own a Ford Fiesta, which I find endlessly amusing given that you probably make more money than the queen and are known to be a staunch public transportation advocate, so you never use it. An aside? I have no idea how you would even fit in a Ford Fiesta. Also, you’re recently divorced.”

My jaw grew tight as any amusement regarding her research endeavors was quickly extinguished. “One would think that detail wouldn’t be discussed at work, nor available by easy online search.”

“I’m sorry,” Ruby said, wincing, and I watched as she shrank a little more into her seat. “I forget not everyone was raised by two psychologists. We aren’t all open books.”

“I’m tempted to ask how you knew about my divorce, but I suppose the office chatter . . .”

“I think it was all wrapping up when I started so people were talking . . .” She straightened and looked at me with wide, apologetic eyes. “It’s not an ongoing topic, I promise.”

I could only imagine my dark mood at the time Ruby had joined the firm. By that point I was so put off by Portia’s dramatics I’d have happily resided inside a pint. I decided to change the subject. “Do you have siblings, or was it you alone with the shrinks?”

“One brother,” she said and then took a sip of her juice. “What about you?”

“What—you’re telling me you don’t
already know?”

She laughed, but still looked a bit embarrassed. “If I took the time to find that out . . . that might have veered into stalker territory.”

With a little wink, I murmured, “
Might
have.”

She watched me expectantly and as the plane began to accelerate, I noted the way her hands gripped the armrests. She was shaking.

Waffling on to distract her seemed like a rather good idea. “I have nine siblings, actually,” I told her.

She leaned in, jaw dropping. “
Nine?
”

I’d become so accustomed to this reaction that I barely blinked anymore. “Seven sisters and two brothers, with me the second youngest.”

Her brow creased as she thought about this some more. “My house was so quiet and calm. I . . . I can’t even imagine your childhood.”

Laughing, I said, “Trust me, it’s true. You can’t.”

“Eight older siblings,” she said to herself. “I bet at times that felt like having eight parents.”

“Sometimes,” I admitted. “My oldest brother, Daniel, was the peacekeeper,” I told her. “Really, he kept us in line. I think it helped that there were more girls than boys; as a general rule our lot was pretty well-behaved. The brother just older than me, Max, was usually the one pulling pranks, and he got away with it because he was charming. At least that’s how he describes it. I was quiet, and studious. Rather boring, really.”

She grew still for a moment, watching me, and then said,
“Tell me more?”

I leaned my head back against the seat, inhaling deeply, calming. It had been
years
since I’d so casually spoken with a woman other than Portia, a sibling, or the wife of a friend. Her interest was genuine and gave me a sense of confidence I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

“Most of our adventures were taken on together. Forming a brass band. Deciding to write a picture book. Once we painted the side of our house with finger paints.”

“I honestly can’t imagine you with paint on your hands.”

I gave a dramatic shudder and smiled at her delighted laugh. There was something there, some relief in her eyes, just beneath the surface that made me feel quite tender toward her.

I prattled on, completely out of character, but she listened with rapt attention, asking questions about Max, about my sister Rebecca, about our parents. She asked about my life outside of work, and so when I said with a teasing grin that she already knew about the divorce, she asked how my ex-wife and I met. Surprisingly, it didn’t feel strange to tell her how Portia and I met when we were ten, fell in love when we were fourteen, and kissed at sixteen.

I didn’t admit that the magic began to die only three years later, on our wedding day.

“It must be weird to have been with someone for so long and then see it end,” she said quietly, turning to look out the window. “I can’t even imagine.” Her fringe fell over one eye; a small diamond earring decorated the delicate lobe of her ear. When she looked back, she said,
“I’m sorry people were talking about it in the office. It must feel like such an invasion of privacy.”

I looked away, not replying. Every potential response I might give felt too honest.

It’s not that weird, and maybe that’s what is weirdest about it.

I’ve been lonely for a very long time. So why am I acutely aware of it only now?

I never imagined wanting to talk about this again, but here we are. You could ask more
.

But when silence grew, it became awkward. With her attention focused out the window and her body easy and relaxed, however, I registered with relief that it was only awkward for me. The tension from the lift had dissipated, something in her had calmed.

I was surprised to find myself thinking how much I liked being near her.

Eventually, Ruby drifted off to sleep, slowly slanting toward me until her head rested on my shoulder. I turned, telling myself I was glancing out the window, but took the opportunity to inhale the light floral scent of her hair. Up close, her skin was perfect. Pale, with a tiny smattering of freckles across her nose, and a clear, beautiful complexion. Her lips were wet where she’d licked them, eyelashes dark against her cheeks.

In her hand, she held a small Richardson-Corbett
notebook and pen. I eased it from her lax grip and—against my better judgment—was propelled by curiosity to open it to the first page of what appeared to be work notes. Our agenda, some resources for engineering firms and projects in the area, a list of people she would meet in New York, and some bulleted thoughts on how she could use this conference to build her thesis proposal for Margaret Sheffield. I could tell she’d meticulously written down everything Tony had passed along to her.

At the bottom, in her neat penmanship, she’d written

Agenda note # 1: Don’t be an idiot around Niall Stella. Don’t stare, don’t babble, don’t go mute. You can do this. He is human.

Only now did it occur to me that this journal could have been a diary of sorts, rather than a professional ledger. She’d been so anxious to go on a trip with a VP from the firm that she’d written herself up a pep talk.

Easing it back into her grip, I closed my eyes, tilting my head to her as I silently apologized for invading
her
privacy this time.

I dreamt of soft skin resting on my bare chest and kisses tasting of champagne.

I woke to the sound of the flight attendant over the loudspeaker telling us we would soon be making our descent into New York.

My eyes fluttered open, and I immediately winced. A stream of cold, dry air blew straight into my face and an engine seemed to roar in the background. I was awkwardly twisted in my seat, not to mention in desperate need of the restroom, but somehow . . .

I was so comfortable. Whoever I was next to was warm and firm and delicious-smelling, and—

I straightened with a jolt, disentangling from where I’d wrapped myself around Niall Stella’s arm and—
oh, God
—did I have my leg hitched up over his
thigh
?

The elevator was bad enough, and now this?
Oh, God
. Had I kicked a puppy or something in a past life? Why was I being punished?

I carefully disentangled myself from his body and looked around, realizing I had no idea what time it was. The cabin was still dark, and I noted that most people
around us were sleeping, their shades drawn to block out any light. Smoothing my hair, I tried to stretch out my stiff muscles. My neck would be fine, but this bathroom situation would really need to be resolved. Sooner rather than later.

I sat back, ran my sweaty hands over my thighs, and gave myself a moment to take everything in. Yesterday, Niall Stella didn’t know I existed. Today, I’d practically flown to New York in his lap. In twenty-four hours I’d gone from Ruby Miller: Secret Admirer and Semi-Stalker, to Ruby Miller: International Traveling Mate.

Not to mention the fact that if I’d been asleep on him, parts of him had definitely been asleep on me. And well, that was going in my diary
tonight
.