Crash Landing

“There’s that tone again. You’re mocking me.”

“You are mistaking my jovial nature for mocking.”

“Am I?” Gibb shook his head. The woman was turning him inside out and he couldn’t say why. Sure she was cute and sexy, but so were a million other women. What was it about this one that stoked him and frustrated him and challenged him and made him want to grab her up and kiss her until neither one of them could breathe?

“This is going to be a very long flight, isn’t it?”

“It sure is shaping up that way.”

More silence. This time he wasn’t going to say anything. He could sit here forever and be quiet if need be. Not a word. Not another word was going to pass his lips.

She looked out over the nose of the plane, and with the slightest moments, shifted the plane northward. Underneath her breath she was softly humming, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

“Okay,” he blurted. “You’re right. Maybe I do have a chip on my shoulder.”

“I know.”

Did she have to sound so damn cheerful about it? Gibb clamped his teeth together. Not another word.

“About that chip on your shoulder?” she ventured.

“Yes?”

“It’s due to a sense of inadequacy.”

“Inadequacy? Where are you getting this stuff?”

“Why else would you resent what you are?”

“I don’t resent who I am.”

“Don’t you?”

“Thank you, oh, doctor of psychology.” He wiped his brow. “Okay, I’ll bite.”

“Bite what?”

“The bait.”

“What bait?”

While she might speak English like a native, the idioms seemed to throw her. “You throw out a challenging line like it’s the bait. So here I am, biting it like a fish.”

“Um, all right.”

“What do you mean by the chip on my shoulder is due to a sense of inadequacy?”

Sophia shrugged. She was totally nonchalant. How did one get to be so blasé about everything? “You feel like you don’t deserve your riches.”

Gibb coughed, tugged at his collar. He felt like she’d taken an endoscope and shoved it down his throat and could see everything that was happening inside his gut. Exposed. He felt totally exposed and he didn’t like it, not in the least.

She glanced at him. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” he said tightly and coughed again.

“Sometimes the high altitude—”

“It’s not the altitude.”

“Maybe if you took off your tie.”

“I’m fine.”

Momentarily, she held up both palms, before her beautiful hands settled back down on the yoke. That smile of hers could seriously blind a guy. It was unnatural to be that happy.

Gibb took off his tie, undid the top button of his dress shirt. Instantly, he could breathe better.

She laid an index finger over her lips. “Shh, I promise that I won’t tell anyone if you take off the jacket, too.”

“I’m good.”

“As you wish.”

A long silence began as they passed over blue water and a lot of land. He hadn’t been this knocked off balance since the last time a corporate spy ripped him off.

She was back to humming, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” It ought to be illegal for anyone to be this cheerful.

He stared out the side window, studied lush green ground sliding by. How many times had he flown over a place like this, oblivious to the lives of the people below? “How did you know?”

She startled as if she had forgotten that he was in the plane with her. “Know what?”

“That I wasn’t born wealthy.”

She clicked her tongue. “You work so hard. Too hard.”

“Rich people work hard.”

“Old money knows how to relax, new money scrambles. You scramble like you’re afraid someone will take it all away.”

“Now you sound like a fortune cookie.”

She seemed to take no offense at that. “Maybe. And you spend money heedlessly. I saw you give Stacy that limitless black credit card. She is at the spa every day splurging on treatments with your money. People who are born rich tend to be frugal.”

“That’s a generalization.”

“True.”

“So what if I work hard and spend easily?” Stop being defensive. You don’t owe her an explanation. “I still don’t see how you drew your conclusion.”