Page 1 of At First Flight (Coral Bell Cove #1)

There is something about an airport that invariably ignites my curiosity. The people rushing to get from security to the gate as the last boarding announcement is called. Or a group trying not to miss a connecting flight. Like right now, for instance.

Someone donning a bright, fire-engine-red puffy jacket with matching shoes adjusts the tiny brown-and-black purse-sized dog in their grasp, shouting and pushing their way through the crowd as they rush through the terminal.

With the words spewing from their mouth, you’d think they blamed everyone else for their delay.

Or the family doing their best not to create their own Home Alone moment.

The distraught-looking mom with frizzy hair fluffed around her face like a halo manically taps her small children on their heads as she counts aloud.

All seven kids twirl and fight around her while the dad, or so I assume, stares down at his phone.

If it wasn’t for her jerking his arm as they moved on, I bet he’d have been absorbed by the other zombies controlled by the devices in their hands.

No one pays any mind to their surroundings. Just going from point A to point B.

If I turn toward the squeaking barstool to my right, I see a man clad in an expensive suit, Tom Ford if I have to take a guess, with a tie loose around his neck.

His jacket is precariously draped on the small back of his chair, and a pale marking on his ring finger indicates where a wedding band once rested.

He sips on a cheap double whiskey and flirts with one of the two bartenders.

And if I hadn’t glanced back at just the right moment, I might have missed the one woman hurrying through the terminal. Not walking, but running.

Wearing only a wedding dress.

No luggage. No bag. No jacket. This says a lot since Mother Nature glistened Connecticut with a late March flurry.

Nope. The woman’s only possession seems to be the small wallet, no bigger than a passport, in her hand and the white ball gown she clutches in the other.

Behind her, the skirt flares like a superhero’s cape.

She clutches the leather wallet to her chest, weaving through the crowd with the kind of determination that makes you step aside without thinking.

Even those with their focus elsewhere instinctively move out of her path.

I’ve yet to tear my gaze away, but just as fast as she arrives, she disappears in a bright white flash.

For a second, I’m left staring at the masses as they pass, like someone frozen in time.

The woman has to have been a mirage. A beautiful figment of my imagination.

I didn’t even see her face, but I know the vision of her will haunt me for ages.

Not just the image of her in the white ensemble but also the way she frantically hurried.

The wisps of her golden hair flowed like satin ribbons as they bounced against the fitted lace of her top and the subtle peekaboo of the blue Converse on her feet.

But it was the way I could tell the plane wasn’t what she was rushing toward.

Call it intuition or personal experience, but she was clearly running from something.

Or someone. I felt the same sort of panic when my family’s secrets began unfolding.

She was a hypnotic mystery, and I immediately felt an overwhelming desire to uncover her story.

Maybe that’s the ghost’s endgame. Leave me with one other detail of my life to remain unresolved.

No pretty sailor’s knot to tie up the loose end.

“Well, you don’t see that every day,” the man two stools down from me announces as he turns away from the commotion and faces the bar.

I nod silently. At least now I know I haven’t been the only one to witness the frenzied bride.

On the bar top, my phone buzzes with a new message. I’ve been avoiding the device for the past two hours since I was alerted to a stupid article that ran at an ungodly hour.

World’s Sexiest Billionaire Heir

And guess whose name is in the number one spot?

Normally, I’d ignore these things, but since my best friend, Talon, got hitched, I’d become a flashing beacon on every debutante’s radar. Lucky me. All they want, though, is to look pretty on my arm and get their hand in my wallet.

Life of an heir to a multibillion-dollar company almost as old as the country.

One time, in elementary school, a classmate asked me how much I got for my allowance.

“What’s an allowance?” I’d asked him naively. As the new kid in class, rounds of laughter immediately echoed across the large classroom. To this day, I can still feel their points and stares angled in my direction.

Of course, the giggles immediately stopped when I pulled out my Black AmEx card. The one with my name etched across the front.

Dean J. Harrington

Even at the tender age of seven, I knew that card’s power. Who needs an allowance when you have endless money at your fingertips?

After that day, everyone at my new boarding school wanted to be my friend. At that point, I recognized not just the power but also the status that money held. People cared more about the dollar sign than they did about the person wielding that power.

That’s why I’m leisurely sitting in the middle of an airport bar, tipping the brim of my ball cap lower to hide my face as I shake my almost empty whiskey glass toward the bartender.

Typically, I’d use my family’s personal jet, but my parents currently occupy it as they try to track down my older sister and bail her out of whatever nonsense she’s found herself in.

They were doing a piss-poor job of it, if you ask me, since it was the third time this year they’ve had to go in search of her.

I don’t mind flying commercial, well, first class at least. It’s usually easy to meet a pretty woman and add another eager member to the mile-high club, but I prefer it under better circumstances.

While I wait, a striking redhead across the bar eyes me hungrily, and I grace her with my signature smirk beneath my cap’s shadow. The one that usually cements any potential hookup I set my sights on. Ghost girl is taking a back seat to my favorite pastime—meaningless sex.

Swirling the remains of the amber liquid in my glass, I allow my gaze to trail down her bare legs, barely encapsulated by a navy blue pencil skirt.

I peg her as a CEO or business president of some sort.

She has that air about her. The kind that means she’s used to giving orders all day and would welcome a submissive reprieve.

I bring my glass to my mouth and watch in fascination as she licks her lips while slowly releasing the top button of her green blouse. The top of her breasts swells behind the V as if playing a game of peekaboo with me.

As the freckle-faced server rushes to fill my tawny drink again, I say, “You see that woman across the way with the red hair? Please allow her to order a drink on my tab.”

“Of course, sir. Is there anything else?”

“No, just close my tab.”

“Yes, sir.”

A minute later, he spins back around as he sets the check in front of me. Blindly, I sign the receipt he holds out on a bill folder. The redhead tosses her clear drink in a well-practiced swallow. My silent invitation from earlier is still clearly in her eager mind.

“Thanks, Tommy,” I say, reading the man’s name tag. Turning my attention to the woman, I tilt my head toward the busy walkway and head toward the closest bathrooms, knowing full well that the woman will be hot on my heels.

Unlike most passengers scurrying through the airport, I travel with only my phone and wallet.

In most cases, I can buy anything I need at my next stop.

This time, though, I’m traveling to a five-star resort in the Scottish countryside.

I’ll have two weeks’ worth of clothes waiting for me when I arrive, courtesy of my family’s assistant.

Franc is one of the hardest working men I know, especially after years of witnessing the jobs my parents put the harried man through.

Yet he’s never taken a vacation, even when he suffered a mild heart attack.

The nurses fussed at him for being on his phone within an hour of his surgery.

The man is relentless and good at his job.

He's been more of a father to me than the one I share a last name with.

Thinking of my father, I rub anxiously at my chest. My family has always been significant to me, even if I haven’t felt mildly important to them, but the recent news I received a couple of years ago shook me more than the volcano that took out Pompeii.

Inside, my own explosion bubbles to the surface.

Walking faster than my usual saunter in an effort to clear my head, I twist my hat backward and slip open the door to an oversized companion bathroom to wait for my guest.

The moment she stumbles into the room, her luggage falls to the side, and she reaches up to cup my cheeks, sealing her lips against mine.

While I appreciate the no-nonsense greed of her kiss, I’m struck by the oddest sensation.

These were not the lips I wanted to be kissing, the hips I wanted to grab, or the hair I wanted to fist. No, that all belongs to a faceless woman I saw for a split second.

Someone I know nothing about and could possibly never see again but is in the forefront of my mind.

“Fuck,” I say, gently pushing the woman away. My nose crinkles, and my lips sneer. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”

The room’s temperature plummets until I feel like I’ve been transported to the southernmost tip of the planet.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s not you… it’s me.” I recite the line, hating how it tastes in my mouth but knowing it is the most truthful explanation. I can’t very well tell her that a mirage of a woman from minutes ago is the reason. Or that the moment the redhead’s lips touched mine, it immediately felt wrong.