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  Grayson shook his head. “That’s per month.”

  Numbers multiplied in Halle’s head. She felt dizzy. It would come to ten times what she was currently earning by the end of a year.

  I can’t say no to this, she realized.

  No matter how arrogant it was of Grayson to act as though he had a right to pull her away from her job, no matter how irritating she found him…it wasn’t the kind of money she could walk away from.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

  “You’ll do it?”

  “I’m probably crazy, but yes.”

  He nodded. “I have a meeting to get to right now,” he said, “but I’m flying out to Rio de Janeiro in three days, so we can begin then. Will that give you enough time to make the necessary arrangements?”

  “I guess it’ll have to,” she said.

  He took a business card out of his pocket and handed it to her. “You can reach me at this number if you have any questions,” he said. “And the address of the hangar is written on the back.”

  She turned it over. Sure enough, he’d written an address in black pen on the back of the card.

  He was so sure I was going to say yes that he went ahead and wrote his address down for me. He must have done this when we were still on the plane.

  She couldn’t even be mad about it. After all, she had said yes to him. He had been completely right to think that she would.

  Grayson stood up and drained his drink. “Enjoy your bad martini,” he said, smiling. “I look forward to working with you.”

  She watched as he picked up his briefcase and left the bar, merging easily into the concourse foot traffic with the casual assurance of a man who expects other people to get out of his way.

  Of course he expects that. That’s the kind of guy he is. I can tell already.

  “Halle!”

  Dina had come over to her table and slid into the seat that Grayson had just vacated. She stared at Halle, her eyes as wide as saucers. “What was that all about? Was he asking you out or something?”

  “No,” Halle said. She still felt a bit shell-shocked. “He was offering me a job, actually.”

  “What?”

  “I know,” Halle said. “Believe me, I was surprised too.” And she gave her friend a quick rundown of the conversation that had taken place between herself and Grayson.

  “But you’re not taking it, are you?” Dina said. “You don’t even know this guy. Besides, he sounds obnoxious.”

  “I think I have to,” Halle said. “It’s a lot more money, Dina. And I don’t mean to sound greedy, but…well, you know my dad’s been struggling since Mom died. He’s on a single income now, and he’s having trouble paying the mortgage. He’s been thinking about selling the house. If I take this job, it could make all the difference in the world for him.”

  “But, Halle,” Dina said, frowning. “Do you really want to take a job as a private flight attendant? I mean, what do you even know about this guy? You haven’t screened him or anything. And he wants you to go out of the country with him?”

  “It’s Grayson Bloom, Dina,” Halle said. “He’s the guy who owns the Bloom Resort chain.”

  “So what?”

  “So if I go missing and don’t come back, you can always report him to the police. And he’ll know that. He knows he can’t do anything to me. He’s too public a figure.”

  Dina sighed. “I don’t know, Halle.”

  “I can’t let my dad sell his house,” Halle said. “It would break his heart. That’s the house where he lived with my mom. He hasn’t been doing so great since she died. I really can’t let him give up the one part of her he has left.”

  “You’re a good daughter,” Dina said. “And I get it. Really, I do.” She shook her head. “Maybe I’m just bummed that we’re not going to be working together anymore. You know how some of the other flight attendants drive me insane.”

  “You’ll have to text me every single day and let me know what’s going on with them,” Halle said. “Believe it or not, I’m actually going to miss this job.”

  “Oh, you will not,” Dina said, grinning. “You expect me to believe you’re going to miss the low pay, the stupid uniform, the domestic flights? This man has you flying to Rio on your very first day. You’re going to have a blast.”

  “It will be nice to see a little more of the world,” Halle agreed, relieved that her friend seemed to be getting on board. “But what I’m hoping for most of all is a little more time off. He can’t possibly travel as frequently as we have to working this job. Maybe I’ll be able to stay at home more. See my dad.”

  “Maybe you’ll be able to relaunch your dating profile,” Dina said with a wicked grin.

  Halle laughed. “No, I think we can agree that that was an epic disaster,” she said. “I had no idea how many terrible men were out there. The one good thing that came out of that whole online dating debacle was that it cured me of wishing I had time to date.”

  “Aw, don’t give up on love,” Dina said. “There are still good men out there. What about Jason?”

  “Jason was the last good one, and you snatched him up.” Halle said with a grin. She liked her friend’s long-time boyfriend. He was cute, and he treated Dina like a queen.

  The waiter came back with Halle’s martini, this time with some cracked ice in it.

  “Is that paid for?” Halle asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. The gentleman you were with paid for the drinks.”

  Halle nodded. “You can throw it out,” she said. “And bring me a Bloody Mary, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “You sure do change your mind a lot,” the waiter commented.

  “I do not,” Halle countered. “I never wanted a martini at all.”

  “I’ll take it,” Dina said, holding out a hand. “As long as it’s paid for, why let it go to waste?”

  The waiter shrugged and handed it to her, then disappeared to get Halle’s Bloody Mary.

  Dina raised her glass. “To Grayson Bloom,” she said. “I hope he turns out to be a good employer.”

  Halle nodded. She was hoping the same thing.

  Chapter 3

  Halle

  Halle stepped out of the taxi and onto the tarmac at the private airstrip. She looked around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Grayson. She had no idea where she was supposed to go now that she was here.

  Actually, the whole day had been a lot of guesswork. She’d run into her first difficulty when she’d realized she had no idea what Grayson wanted her to wear for this job. She had worked for a couple of different airlines in her life, and there had always been a very strict uniform. She couldn’t imagine that he’d be pleased to see her in jeans and a T-shirt—but what did he want her to wear?

  She’d settled on a navy pencil skirt, a white button-down shirt, and a yellow neckerchief. It mimicked the general look of her flight attendant uniforms, she thought, but it was a little more casual. She’d added sheer tights and comfortable flats. A lot of airlines required flight attendants to wear heels, but Halle decided that until she was told that it was a requirement at this job, she wouldn’t do it. She certainly wasn’t going to be the one to establish that expectation.

  Now, standing on the hot tarmac and looking around, she was glad she’d chosen comfortable shoes. Would she have to walk around, looking for someone to ask about Grayson’s whereabouts?

  Worse yet, what if he had forgotten his offer to her? It didn’t seem likely—but on the other hand, she didn’t know him well at all.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have done this. I quit my job for this—

  “Hey, Halle!”

  She turned. Grayson was jogging toward her. He was wearing an expensive-looking tracksuit and aviator sunglasses, and his broad grin revealed his white, even teeth.

  “You made it,” he said, coming to a stop beside her. “I was a little worried.”

  “Worried? How come?”

  “Oh, you know,” he said. “We haven’t spoken since that day at the airport, and you didn’t exactly seem sure of your decision to come and work for me then. I thought you might have changed your mind.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well…nope. Here I am.”

  “Good. You made the right decision.” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “Come on board the plane, and I’ll show you around.”

  “This is your plane?” It was bigger than she had expected. She had served on commercial airliners smaller than this one.

  “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” Grayson said. “Come on, come inside. You’ve got to be shown around. And we have wheels-up in thirty minutes.”

  He glanced at her. “We’ll have to get you some more appropriate shoes for future flights,” he added. “Those will do for today, but going forward, something a little more ladylike, I think. Remind me to get your shoe size, and I’ll have something ordered for you.”

  Before Halle had a chance to argue, or to try to negotiate for her footwear of choice, she was being ushered up the steps and onto the plane.

  The inside was magnificent. They walked into a cream-colored lounge area featuring several armchairs and a loveseat along the walls. A flat-screen TV was mounted at the front of the room.

  “This is where I show movies,” Grayson explained. “Of course, you’ll need to learn how to operate the TV so that you can put things on for me when I request them, but that’s something we can focus on later. Now, through here—” he opened a door at the back of the lounge— “is my conference room. I also use this space as an office. The phone in the flight attendant’s compartment connects to this phone here, so I’ll be able to reach you if I need you while I’m working.”

  “The flight attendant’s compartment?” Halle asked.

  “Ah, yes, of course you’ll want to se
e that,” Grayson said. He led her back through the lounge to the front of the plane and opened a door, this one considerably narrower than the door that had led into his office.

  The flight attendant’s compartment was just barely large enough to contain the small cot inside. There was a built-in sink and a phone mounted on the wall. Compared to the rest of Grayson’s jet, it wasn’t very luxurious at all.

  But that wasn’t the comparison Halle was making. She was thinking about the seats she had had to endure on commercial flights, the little bucket chairs that folded down from the walls and had harnesses for her to strap herself in.

  I have my own room here. I could take off my shoes while he’s busy in his office. I could lie down on this bed. I could even take a nap.

  It seemed too good to be true.

  Of course, she had expected that working for Grayson would be nice. The salary certainly was. And he might have annoyed her on the flight to La Vega, but he’d said himself that that had only been about testing her ability to do her job well.

  She went into the cabin and sat down on the little bed.

  “What are you doing?” Grayson asked her.

  She looked up at him. “I’m just checking out the bed,” she said. “It’s nice.”

  “You’re on the job right now,” he said firmly. “You’re supposed to be acquainting yourself with the features of this plane. If you feel you don’t have enough to do—”

  “No, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to give the impression that I was taking a break. I just wanted to see what the mattress was like.”

  “That can wait until later,” Grayson said. “Come. You haven’t seen the master suite yet.”

  Wondering why she would need to see the master suite, Halle followed him back through the conference room and through another door.

  Grayson’s bedroom was the largest room on the plane. There was another TV in here, this one slightly smaller than the one in the lounge, and there was also a minibar and a jacuzzi. It was all organized around a large, soft-looking bed.

  “This phone connects to yours as well,” Grayson said, pointing it out.

  “Will you need to call me from here?” Halle asked curiously.

  “Of course I will,” Grayson said. “What if I want my breakfast brought to me in bed?”

  “Oh…of course,” Halle said, a bit taken aback.

  “I thought you’d been a flight attendant for ten years,” Grayson said, eyeing her critically.

  “I have!” Halle said. “But never on a private plane.”

  “Still, you seemed to know all about customer service when we spoke at the airport,” he said. “I thought you understood the importance of prioritizing your passengers’ comfort.”

  Halle was irritated. What was she supposed to do, read his mind? She couldn’t have known that breakfast in bed would be one of his expectations of her. No one had ever asked her for that before. And it wasn’t as if she was arguing or refusing to do it. Was he really this upset that she simply needed to be told?

  She did her best to shake it off. There would be growing pains at any new job. It was to be expected. Soon enough, they would fall into a rhythm with one another, and these problems would fall by the wayside.

  “We’d better take our seats,” Grayson said. “The plane will be taking off momentarily.”

  They made their way back into the lounge. Halle looked around for a utilitarian seat that seemed as though it had been designed for flight crew. When she saw nothing like that, she sank into one of the armchairs.

  Grayson stared at her. “What are you doing?”

  “Um…sitting down?” she said. “The plane’s going to take off. I have to be in a seat.”

  Outside, she heard the plane’s engine rev up as if in confirmation of what she had said.

  “You don’t sit there,” Grayson said. He spoke as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Your seat is over there.”

  He was pointing to a chair against the same wall where the TV was mounted. Halle understood—this was the one seat in the room that didn’t face the TV, and if this plane had been full of guests, Grayson wouldn’t have wanted one of them to end up there. It made sense now that she thought about it.

  He didn’t have to be rude about it, though.

  She took the seat he’d directed her too. Grayson sat down facing her, and the plane began to taxi.

  Halle enjoyed the takeoff. She had always liked the feeling of leaving the ground behind. It was one of the primary reasons she’d become a flight attendant to begin with. But it was even more enjoyable on Grayson’s plane. For one thing, there was no prolonged wait on the runway, waiting for their turn to take off. They were able to go right away. Halle wondered whether it was just the fact that the private airstrip held so many fewer planes, or if perhaps Grayson was given some kind of special priority when he wanted to go somewhere. At this point, nothing would have surprised her.

  The ride was also much smoother than what she was used to. The plane lifted into the air with hardly a bump or a jolt. Was that due to the pilot’s expertise? She realized, suddenly, that she hadn’t met the person flying the plane. That was unusual. When she’d worked for commercial airlines, she had always been introduced to the pilot before takeoff.

  “Will I have an opportunity to meet the pilot?” she asked Grayson.

  He frowned. “What do you need to do that for?”

  “It’s just standard,” she said. “I’ve never worked a flight without meeting the pilot.”

  “If that was something you wanted to do, you really should have thought about it before takeoff,” he said critically. “Maybe there will be time after we land, but he’s busy now. I won’t have you interrupting him.”

  “I wasn’t going to—” She cut herself off. There was nothing to be gained by arguing. “Don’t worry,” she amended. “I won’t approach the cockpit during the flight. That was one of the first things I learned when I was training to become a flight attendant. You don’t go into the cockpit unless it’s really necessary.”

  “At least you know something,” Grayson said.

  Halle frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean? I know how to do my job, Grayson.”

  He shrugged. “There have been a few missteps today. Not to worry. I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it before long.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Take that thing off your neck, will you? I like a plainer appearance.”

  “But you want me to wear high heels?”

  “Glad you’re taking notes,” he said. He closed his eyes. “I’m going to grab a quick nap. You’ll wake me up in an hour for lunch?”

  “If that’s what you’d like,” she said. “Is lunch…being prepared somewhere? Or am I supposed to make it?”

  “There are meals in the galley at the front of the plane,” he said. “I think I’d like a steak sandwich and chips. And a pickle. That sounds perfect.”

  “All right,” Halle said with a shrug. “I’ll wake you in an hour, then.”

  She stood and went to the front of the plane. Sure enough, there was a galley there. Like her room, it was small compared with the rest of this plane’s trappings, but still much larger than any galley she had ever seen in the air.

  She got out the ingredients for his lunch, thinking she might as well get started on putting it together.

  One thing was clear, after the last hour. He might have finished testing her, but he wasn’t going to be any easier as a boss than he had been as a passenger when she had been working commercially.

  He showed me what I could expect from him. I guess I can’t complain now.

  Chapter 4

  Grayson

  I thought she would know better than to show up to work dressed like she was going to a party.

  Grayson didn’t want to be too critical of Halle. After all, it was only her first day. But he just couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t feeling a little disappointed by her performance so far.

  The outfit had only been the start of it. Of course, he knew that he hadn’t told her what she should wear. But he’d seen her on his flight from San Diego, and she had looked perfectly respectable then. Professional shoes, and no silly little scarf around her neck.