Page 25 of Rebellious Hearts

With this ambiance and Hannah and Susanne catering to my every whim, I could lose myself in the treat this was and almost forget about Ben completely.

Almost.

7

BEN

The flight to Harborview was only two and a half hours, but it was the longest flight of my life. I had to look atherall the time.

And it was a fucking nightmare because looking at Sofia was incredible. She was a sight to behold, with those mercury gray eyes and olive skin—an exotic beauty.

And she was here to babysit me.

I was torn because half of me didn’t want her here, and half of mereallywanted her here. In ways I wasn’t supposed to want her now that we were working together.

But the more I told myself Ididn’twant her, the more I did. Something about forbidden fruit. And the fact that I’d tasted that fruit a couple of nights ago… and then some.

When we finally landed, I was first off the plane. Screw being a gentleman, I had to get out of there before I said or did something stupid.

The air hostesses greeted me with their empty smiles.

When I looked over my shoulder after disembarking, Hannah and Susanne were talking to Sofia, and their smiles were a lotmore genuine. They liked her. She knew their names. She talked to them like they were friends.

That just pissed me off. I didn’t know why—it just did.

When she stepped down from the plane, her eyes were bright.

“Do you have the same air hostesses every time you fly?”

“I don’t know.”

She frowned. “What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’?”

I shrugged. “I tell them I want to fly, they make it happen.” I was being gruff with her, but I had to keep her at arm’s length.

“Oh. They’re really nice if you get to know them.”

“Why would I want to get to know them?”

God, I sounded like a complete asshole. It wasn’t completely untrue, though. I didn’t notice if the staff were the same people or different ones every time I traveled. There were jobs to do and someone had to do it. I paid them to do their jobs, and if they did it, there were no problems.

“Susanne, the dark-haired one? She had twins a short while ago,” Sofia said as we walked to the car. “Can you imagine having to deal with twins? I can’t imagine handling one child, but two!”

I snorted. “I don’t really think about children.”

“I guess it’s not part of your job description,” she said dryly.

I grunted, and we climbed into the car that would take us to the hotel.

I turned my attention to the window, hoping that it would stop Sofia from talking to me.

Ignoring her wasn’t that easy, though. The moment the door shut behind her, her scent filled the car. It wasn’t the kind of scent most of the girls I knew wore. It was something very subtle, very feminine. And verySofia.

Natural.

Intoxicating.

I flashed on the night we spent together, on peeling her clothes off her delicious body.