Hunted by the Obsessed Don

Chapter 5 Episode 5

“Well, you’re not wrong. Christmas is a hard time, anyway. It was my dad’s favorite holiday. Since he passed, it’s harder to get into the spirit,” I say. “And then, this year, Isabella won’t be with us, either. She was Rob’s fiancé.”

“Was?” Aleks inquires, picking up on the key word.

“She… disappeared,” I admit. “There was a small segment in the news when it happened. But the story faded away pretty quickly. Just not enough evidence to give us any leads.”

“That must have been hard on your family.”

“I’ve never seen Rob that way,” I admit. “It was the first time I was actually scared around him.” I take a deep breath. “He’s obsessed with finding her now. And sometimes, I actually believe he will. When Rob sets his mind on something, he won’t stop until he gets what he wants.”

“We have that in common,” Aleks murmurs.

I want him to move closer, but he remains stubbornly on the far side of the sofa. Might as well be the far side of the moon, if my libido has anything to say about it. His arms are sprawled across the cushions on either side, his biceps doing delicious things to the thin material of his shirt.

Then, suddenly, there’s a buzzing sound. It’s not until Aleks speaks that I realize it’s a doorbell to the room we’re in.

“I do apologize, sir,” the hostess says with a sickly sweet smile as she sticks her head in. “But I just wanted to inform you that your flight is ready to board.”

“Already?” I ask, glancing around for the time. “But we still have—” I stop short when I catch a glimpse of the clock hanging against the back wall. “Oh my God. I didn’t even realize so much time had passed.”

The hostess doesn’t even glance at me. She only has eyes for Aleks. It probably happens all the time. Women flirting with him, propositioning him, offering him things that I don’t even have the capacity to dream up.

It doesn’t matter, goes a little voice in my head. He’s not yours to keep.

But the moment I hear the thought, I feel a piercing sense of disappointment. This is the end of the road for our little rendezvous. After we get on that plane, we’ll be back to being strangers.

I should have put my f*****g phone on silent.

We gather our things in silence and head to the gate. Aleks and I are the last two there. We’re hurried onto the jetway and into the plane, and I realize that I have to move past first class and leave Aleks behind.

“Thanks for keeping me company, Aleks.”

He inclines his head once—and that’s it. That’s the big goodbye.

Which just proves that our encounter meant far more to me than it did to him.

I’m settling into the middle seat on the left hand side of the plane when a young flight attendant approaches me. “Good afternoon, ma’am. Are you Ms. Olivia Lawrence?”

“Um… I am, yeah. Why? Is something wrong? Did I—”

She beams from ear to ear. “Please follow me, ma’am.”

I stare at her in confusion. “I don’t get it. Where are we going?”

“First class?” I say, gaping at her in confusion. “I don’t think so. There’s been some sort of a mistake.”

“No mistake, ma’am,” she says. “Mr. Makarova has requested your presence.”

“Here’s your seat.” The flight attendant gestures to the seat next to mine as Olivia lingers behind her, glancing around nervously.

“Can I get you anything?” the attendant asks. “A drink, perhaps? We have an assortment of wines, beers, spirits, champagne…?”

“Oh, um… no, thank you.” Olivia shuffles around and stares down at her own feet.

The flight attendant is persistent, though. “Something to eat, then? Mixed nuts? Fruit? Perhaps a cheese platter?”

“Uh, maybe later, I think.”

“Certainly, madam,” the attendant says. “If you need anything, just press the ‘Help’ sign next to your seat. It would be my pleasure to assist you.”

Olivia mumbles something incoherent in response. Once the attendant returns to the crew area, she eyes the seat next to me like it’s going to swallow her up the second she sits down.

“Is there a reason you requested my presence?” she asks. She doesn’t sound annoyed. More like… awed. She’s speaking to me like I might be royalty.

“Sit down,” I say, gesturing to the empty seat beside me.

“Aleks, I… I don’t think I can stay up here the entire flight,” she whispers with a glance over her shoulder like the Peasant Removal SWAT team she joked about earlier has been tailing her, ready to pounce as soon as she steps one toe out of line.

“Sit,” I say again. “You’re blocking the path.”

Olivia mumbles another apology to nobody in particular and squeezes close to my armrest, letting a cranky old woman waddle through to the bathroom. Across the aisle, another first-class passenger wearing a mink coat and a nasty expression eyes Olivia venomously over the rim of her glass of champagne like a cheap Cruella de Ville impersonator.

If it were me she was glaring at, I’d tell her to redirect her gaze elsewhere or I’d rip her eyes right out of their sockets.

Olivia, on the other hand, is ever-so-slightly less confrontational. Instead of standing up for herself, she ducks into the seat next to mine.

“I don’t belong here,” she says, still in that cowed whisper.

“That’s the second time today you’ve said that,” I remind her icily. “I don’t want to hear it a third.”

She gulps and stares at me, wondering if I’m serious. I am. She’ll soon learn just how serious. “I just… I mean, I can’t accept this, Aleks. First class is expensive. I can’t afford it.”

“I can. In any case, it didn’t cost me a thing,” I say. “There was an empty seat. I called in a favor.”

I nod. “The pilot’s an old friend of mine.”

She sits back in her seat and stares at me with unfiltered bewilderment. “Who are you?”

Smiling, I pick up my glass of whiskey and take a sip. “I’ll let you decide.”

Before she can figure out how to respond to that, the Fasten Seatbelts light dings on and the pilot launches into his spiel over the intercom. Beneath us, the engines roar to life.

We taxi towards the runway. The attendants move through the aisles and seal off the first class from the rest of the seating. Olivia takes note of all this with pursed lips, but she doesn’t say anything.

Until something occurs to her. She curses and grabs for her phone. “s**t! I forgot to let Mia know that we’re about to take off.”

She types out a quick message and hits send. It doesn’t escape my notice that her hands are trembling hard enough that she can barely type. Her breath comes in shuddering gasps.

“Not usually.” She tosses me a glance that tells me I might be the cause of her sudden anxiety.

I smile and take another sip of my whiskey. “You ought to get yourself a drink. Calm your nerves.”

“I don’t…” she starts to mumble, then corrects herself. “Okay. One drink. But it’s medicine. For my nerves, like you said.”

She’s about to reach for the help button when I stop her. “No need,” I say. “The stewardess has her eyes on us.”

I signal to her to bring us a bottle, and she disappears immediately to do as instructed. Olivia watches the exchange with mild fascination.

When the bright blond woman returns, she puts a sparkling clean wine glass down in front of Olivia, uncorks the bottle, and leaves it for us. The moment she walks away, Olivia looks at me with raised eyebrows.

She examines the label and her eyes widen. “This wine has to be a thousand dollars, at least.”

“You’re off by a couple zeroes,” I say with a pleasant chuckle. “But don’t think about that. Just relax and enjoy it.”

“What makes you think I’m not relaxed?”

I gesture to her stiff posture and her clenched fist. “You mean, aside from everything about you?”

She makes a forceful effort to unclench and melt back into her seat. “I’m just… I’m not used to this kind of thing. First class, expensive wine…” She glances at me out of the corner of her eye. “Handsome strangers who clearly don’t want to tell me too much about themselves.”

“Oh, so you think I’m handsome?”

She tries to cover her blush behind an eye roll. “Please. You know you are.”

I shrug. “I don’t think about it.”

“Riiight,” she scoffs. “You probably assume women are at your beck and call because of your great fashion sense.”

“I always assumed it was my charming personality,” I sigh, feigning disappointment.

“That doesn’t hurt,” she mutters.

I glance over and take the time to really look at her. Her eyes are a deep, rich brown. Warm chocolate, melted amber, shot through with those bolts of green. When she smiles, dimples appear in both cheeks.

I understand the appeal of the girl-next-door quality, in an intellectual sense if nothing else. I just never thought it was a quality I would find appealing.

“How long will you be staying with your family?” I ask. She looks like she needs a few softball questions to relax while the wine does its magic on her.

“Just over the holidays,” she says. “Christmas and New Years’, then I’m flying back on the 2nd.”