Page 19 of The Law of Attraction
They’d made it onto the plane. Maybe things really were going to be fine now.
Not that she’d dare say that out loud.
Chapter Five
“I can get it,” Olivia insisted when Adam tried to help hoist her carry-on into the overhead bin.
He let go of her bag and watched while she stood on her tiptoes and gave a little hop, trying to shove the bag into place. “You sure about that?” he asked with that smirky smile that made her blood boil.
She hated that because she was short, she didn’t have the leverage to maneuver her bag into the overhead like everyone else. She was strong enough to lift it, she just wasn’t tall enough to give it the shove it needed to slide into place. It was always a problem for her when she traveled, but she’d be damned if she’d let Adam think she couldn’t do it herself.
With another vigorous hop, she managed to tip the bag into the overhead, and did a fist pump of victory. “Ha! Suck it, overhead compartment!”
“Well done, Woerner.” Adam shook his head in amusement as he moved down the aisle toward his seat, which was closer to the back of the plane.
“This is me,” Olivia said apologetically to the two people already sitting in her row, and they stood up to let her slide into her window seat. She had no idea how Lamar had managed to get her a window seat at the last minute, but he was a goddamn hero for doing it.
The woman sitting next to her was an older lady who smelled pleasantly of lavender. She smiled at Olivia, but made no move to strike up a conversation, which was perfect. Peace and quiet.
Olivia took out her knitting and crammed her purse under the seat in front of her before settling in to relax and enjoy the flight. It would be nice to have a few hours of solitude. Just her and her knitting and the relaxing white noise of the engines. No one aggravating her or arguing with her or filling her with all these confusing, conflicting feelings.
Sometimes it was hard to remember she disliked Adam. He’d say all these annoying things that pushed her buttons, then turn around and do something considerate or say something that sounded like a compliment. She needed a break from him just to get her head on straight.
“Excuse me,” she heard Adam say, and snapped her head around.
He’d tapped the woman next to Olivia on the shoulder. “I don’t suppose you’d mind trading with me so I could sit next to my girlfriend? I’m only four rows back.” He gifted the woman with a smile that could have melted the Snow Miser’s heart. There was more warmth in that smile than Olivia had known Adam was capable of, and it struck something deep in her chest, like a gong that reverberated through her whole body and left her fingertips tingling.
The woman next to her was ensorcelled by it. “Oh! Of course,” she tittered. And was she actually blushing? Good Christ.
When the man sitting on the aisle unfastened his seat belt to get up and allow them to trade, Olivia started to panic.
“It’s okay,” she told the woman next to her. “You don’t have to move. Really.”
“It’s no trouble,” the woman said as she gathered up her bag. “I wouldn’t want to come between young lovers.” She gave Olivia a wink as she slid out of her seat.
Ew.
“Thank you,” Adam said, giving the woman’s arm a squeeze as she moved past him, and her blush turned a shade deeper.
Double ew.
“Why did you do that?” Olivia hissed as he dropped into the seat beside her.
His face was guileless when he looked at her. “Because I wanted to sit by you.”
She didn’t know how to take that, so she picked up her knitting and looked at it instead of at him. Except her hands didn’t seem to work right. An odd sort of ache had formed in her chest and traveled all the way down to the tips of her fingers, which were tingling with pins and needles and refusing to obey her command to start knitting. It was like she suddenly couldn’t remember how. She’d lost the muscle memory and her fingers were stiff and ungainly, like they’d never held needles before. She was forced to settle for counting the stiches in her current row in order to look busy.
Pull it together.
This was just a regular business trip and they were just two regular coworkers. Why should she be uncomfortable sitting next to Adam?
“Are you uncomfortable sitting next to me?” he asked.
Fuck me dead. She was usually better at hiding her feelings. How was Adam seeing so many things she didn’t want him to see? More importantly—why was he looking at her at all?
He was really looking at her too. Like, so hard it was impossible to pretend otherwise. Those piercing eyes of his were focused on her face like she was a puzzle he was trying to solve.
“I’m not uncomfortable,” she said.
