Staying On Top(20)

The beautiful, irritating, mysterious girl across from me shouldn’t have anything to do with my decision, yet she did. She’d been on my mind, in my fantasies, for months, and this gave me the opportunity to spend time with her, get to know her. It made me entertain the ridiculous notion that maybe this entire thing happened so that the universe could force her to get to know me.

It couldn’t stop the insistent burble underneath all of that, the quiet, certain whisper that I couldn’t trust her.

“Sure, we can talk about it.” Blair bent down, her silky chocolate hair spilling over her arm as she reached into her bag. Her fingers smoothed the wrinkles out of a piece of notebook paper. I tried not to imagine how they would feel on my skin, how her hair would tickle my cheeks.

“So, there are five places that have always been my dad’s favorites. Every time he’s asked to see me in the past five or six years, it’s been in one of these places . . . but he’s always had me flown in to a private airport and driven to his house, so it’s hard for me to guess exact locations.”

“And one is in Austria. It’s a big country.”

“I know, but I know what airport I flew in to and how long the ride was to his house.”

“General direction?”

“You know, you really don’t fit the dumb jock image.”

“You say that like you’re disappointed.” I smiled, trying to soften my response. “Do I have a dumb jock image?”

She shrugged, and the pink tinge to her cheeks surprised me. “I don’t really keep up, honestly. I’m not . . . comfortable with the whole idea of notoriety.”

“Is that why things didn’t work out with you and Flynn?”

Blair’s head snapped up, her fingers curling around the edge of the paper. “How do you know about me and Flynn?”

“Is it a secret?” The twisted expression on her face didn’t lessen. “Quinn.”

“Oh. Right.” Her shoulders relaxed. “Anyway, yes, that was one of the reasons things didn’t work out with Flynn. Although I’m not sure what ‘work out means,’ since we’re, like, nineteen years old. We had fun for a while. I didn’t like the idea of the cellulite on my ass being circled in national magazines.”

“I’ve spent a good amount of time staring at your ass, and it looks damn good.”

“Yeah, well, you haven’t seen it naked.”

“I think we could remedy that. I mean, if you’re concerned. I could even photograph it if you want.”

“Anyway, the car in Austria headed south from the airport in Villach, crossed the Slovenian border, and took me to a town in the mountains. It wasn’t too small.” She turned her phone around so I could see the map of the area she’d pulled up. “I’m guessing Jesenice.”

“Wait, so we’re going to Slovenia? Why not fly there, then?”

“Because we can’t take the chance of flying into a smaller airport. It’s easier to get lost in Vienna, and we can drive from there.” As though on cue, a tinny voice announced our flight. Blair pulled her hair up into a bun and grabbed her backpack. “You know, you can still stay here.”

“Nice try, gorgeous.” She flinched at the very honest compliment, which made me smile. I had no idea why it made me smile to cause her discomfort, but it seemed I had more than a few miles to figure it out.





Chapter 6


Blair





Sam’s hot breath blew across my neck, rustling strands of hair that tickled my skin. It felt a little wet, but I couldn’t see well enough to figure out if he was drooling on me and, really, there wasn’t much point in knowing the answer.

I could not believe that he was slumped against me on the last leg of an impossibly long coach flight from Melbourne instead of in Australia where he belonged. This was not part of the plan, even though in the back of my mind it had been a possibility. I figured my surface honesty would have him groveling at my feet, ready to give me any and all required information so that I could fake finding my dad and bringing him to justice.

It made me respect him more that he wouldn’t bite, but the distrust he’d earned by being taken by my father had made him suspicious. It made me unexpectedly sad. Even though dating Sam hadn’t appealed to me for many reasons, his carefree, embracing attitude toward the world had warmed me in St. Moritz. It was rare to find someone who had made it all the way into his twenties—and been successful along the way—who hadn’t acquired a certain amount of cynicism and bitchiness. Myself included.

Sam hadn’t been putting it on, though. He simply lived each moment as though it was its own tiny story, then closed the book and moved on.