Escaping Reality Read Free

Ms.
    Bensen. “Are you sure?
    First class?”
    “That’s right.”
    “How much extra?” I ask, unsure of how much money I have on the
    card I’ve been given, unable to use my personal savings for fear of being
    tracked. I’m not even sure the little bit my extra holiday jobs allowed me
    would cover it.
    “No cost to you,” she assures me, smiling and motioning to my ticket.
    “Let me fix your paperwork so you can hurry along before they seal the
    doors and you still miss your flight.”
    “Yes,” I say quickly. “Thank you.”
    I rush down the walkway to my flight, and despite my relief at scoring
    a seat, the realness of leaving New York punches me in the gut. Everything
    I’ve come to know as my world is here and I haven’t felt this helpless
    since…a long time ago. I can’t think about what happened. I don’t think
    about it. That’s when the nightmares start, and so does the fear. This isn’t
    the time to let the terror control me. I have no idea what I will face in the
    next few hours and days.
    “Welcome aboard,” a flight attendant says cheerfully as I reach the
    plane, and somehow I muster a half-smile before making my way to row
    seven, where there are only two seats. My aisle assignment is empty as
    expected, and—impossibly, after they’ve told me the airline was
    overbooked—the one by the window also appears empty. Hope that I
    might be alone is dashed when I note the bag stored beneath the seat,
    which tells me my companion is nearby. I sigh. It would suit me just fine to
    slip into my leather seat and shut my eyes before whoever it is returns, but
    alas, that’s simply not an option. I have luggage to store and a file to study.
    With a shrug, I let the oversized bag hanging from my shoulder fall
    into my intended seat, then push the handle down on my new roller
    suitcase. Grimacing, I discover the bin above me is full. Apparently nothing
    is going to be easy tonight. Pushing to my toes, I try to adjust some bags to
    make room for mine, and it’s as much a struggle as breathing is right now.
    “Let me help you.”
    The deep, slightly husky male voice has me turning to my left to find
    myself captured in a familiar stare. My heart sputters. It can’t be. But it is.
    I’ve made a fool of myself by gaping at a gorgeous man and he’s here to
    make me pay in buckets of embarrassment. The man from the terminal is
    standing beside me, towering over my five feet three inches by close to a
    foot, and standing so close that I no longer have to guess the color of his
    eyes. They are blue, a piercing aqua blue that is almost green, and they are
    once again focused one hundred percent on me.
    “I…ah…thank you.”
    “My pleasure,” he says, a quirk to his mouth that I am once again
    looking at, along with the dark stubble shadowing his strong jaw along with
    his barely there goatee, which makes me think pirate. The kind that steals a
    girl’s senses and ravishes her body, leaving her incapable of anything but a
    whimper as she watches him walk out the door. Mr. Tall, Dark and
    Potentially Dangerous reaches over me to adjust the compartment, his
    t-shirt stretching over a perfectly sculpted broad chest. I don’t move—me,
    a person who believes wholeheartedly in personal space. I know I should
    and I mean to, but I don’t seem to have control over my legs, let alone
    anything else tonight.
    He glances down at me, still shifting my luggage. “Just this bag?” he
    asks, and there is heat in his eyes. Or maybe amusement. And conquest,
    definitely conquest, which must get old for a man like him.
    The thought is enough to make me step back, probably a bit too
    obviously. “Yes. Thank you.” Arms still stretched over his head, he adjusts
    my bag, muscles flexing, long torso stretching deliciously, and I don’t try to
    look away. Admiring this man keeps me from thinking about the hundreds
    of other people on this flight that could be trouble.
    “We’re all set,” he says, motioning to