“And if you really want me to be direct about your body.” I give her a once-over, clearly checking her out. “It’s banging. You should start showing it off. These sweatpants are atrocious, though.”
Finally, a relaxed laugh echoes from Stevie’s mouth and into my ears. It sounds nice.
“But for real, do you shop at the thrift store or something?” I yank at the tattered fabric on her leg that might fall apart if I pull too hard.
Stevie quickly looks down at her outfit, if you want to call it that. “Yes,” she states without hesitation.
“We don’t pay you enough? I can do something about that.”
“No,” she laughs. “I just like buying secondhand.”
Now that, I don’t get. Granted, I have a tailor who custom-makes half of my clothes, and the other half is designer, but used? No, thank you.
“Do you shop at Louis Vuitton, Prada, and Tom Ford?” she asks.
“Yes.”
Stevie laughs. “I know. I was kidding. I can tell you only wear designer. You’re a pretty one, Evan Zanders.” She adds a condescending pat on my chest.
“Aw, sweetheart. You think I’m pretty?”
She playfully rolls her eyes. “Stop calling me ‘sweetheart.’”
“Never.”
Her soft gaze locks with mine, both of us silent but unwilling to tear our eyes off one another.
After a beat, Stevie starts walking backward, heading off in the direction she was going before I chased her down, but she still faces me. “You know, Zanders. Now that you mention it, you guys don’t pay me enough. I think a raise is in order.”
I keep my lips pressed together in a hard line, trying to hold back my smile, but she got me there. I really walked my ass right into that trap. “You gonna start being nice to me on the airplane if I do that for you?”
She takes a moment, cocking her head in contemplation as she continues to walk away from me. “Doubtful.”
The smile is out. I can’t really hold it back any longer.
“You gonna start being nice to me and stop being a needy little fucker with that call light?” she asks with a knowing grin.
“Fuck no. You may as well put your running shoes on next flight. I’m gonna be running your ass up and down that aisle for me.”
I can hear her laugh all the way from here, though she’s already halfway down the block. “I’ll be sure to stretch before you work me!” she calls out, turning away from me.
Granted, she didn’t intend for that to come off sexual, but now all I can think about is working her in a different way and how much fun I’d have throwing around that curvy body. Stretching or not, she still wouldn’t be able to walk properly the next day.
Not to be a creep, but I watch Stevie until she gets to her destination the next block over. And I do so simply because Chicago’s crime rate is out of this world. It has nothing to do with the way her ass moves or her hips sway behind those god-awful sweatpants that really need to be thrown in the garbage.
9
ZANDERS
“Did you see today’s headline?” Maddison puts his phone right in front of my face.
The tabloid reads, “Evan Zanders, new week—new woman.” And below that is a giant photo of me leaving the arena last night with the chick I invited to my game.
“You gonna tell them that you had a cab waiting for her outside your building, and she never even made it inside? And that instead of taking her upstairs, you came over to our place so you could read your niece a bedtime story?”
“Let them believe what they want to believe.”
“You mean, let them believe what Rich wants them to believe,” Maddison retorts.
“I just have to play the game until the end of the season. Rich thinks that Chicago won’t re-sign me without the bad-guy-doesn’t-care-about-anyone-other-than-himself persona, so I gotta keep playing into it.”
“Yeah, sure. Because Chicago won’t re-sign you for being the best defenseman on the team and one of the best in the league, and they’re definitely not going to re-sign you for being a Norris Trophy finalist three of the last four seasons.” Maddison’s voice drips with sarcasm. “They’re for sure only going to re-sign you if you continue to pull an astronomical amount of pussy.”
“With how much money is on the line, it’s not worth the risk to find out otherwise.”
Without thinking or needing absolutely anything, my hand darts up, pushing the flight attendant’s call light. The ding radiates throughout the cabin as the blue light shines above my head.
“Zee, leave her the fuck alone.” Maddison shakes his head. “We land in Nashville in fifteen minutes, and you haven’t stopped pushing that button all flight.”
“I can’t. I promised myself I would make Stevie’s job a living hell this season. I can’t back out on a promise.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Zee, you are the most unapologetic and blunt person I know, but you’re lying to yourself if you think you keep pressing that damn call button because you want to make her life harder.”
“Why else would I be?”
Maddison’s head falls back on the headrest with a condescending laugh. “Since when did you become so dense, dude? You want to sleep with her. It’s fucking obvious.”
Well, shit. Yeah, I know that, but I was hoping I was a bit more subtle about it.
I realized it last week after I ran into Stevie outside the elevator in Maddison’s apartment building. Regardless of how tattered and worn her sweatpants were, I couldn’t stop imagining peeling them off her then burying my head between her legs.
Our flirty banter quickly straightened out my confusion. Her attitude and resistance to me are no longer teetering on the side of frustrating. It’s all intrigue and need at this point.
When Maddison’s private penthouse elevator got fixed, but I continued to use the public one in hopes that maybe the curly-haired flight attendant would run into me again, that’s when I knew my plan for this season had changed. It’s no longer about teaching her a lesson and reminding her of who she works for. It was about getting her to like me and hopefully getting her to want to sleep with me too.
But it would be more suspicious if I didn’t make her life on board a living hell, so I’ve continued to do just that all flight. Plus, I don’t shit where I eat, which I’ve been trying to remind myself. So, fucking my flight attendant isn’t really an option, regardless of how much I’ve been thinking about it.
“What now?” Stevie asks in frustration as she presses the light above my head to turn it off.
Yeah, Evan. What now?
I don’t need a single fucking thing, but it’s like that light has been a magnet, and I can’t keep myself from pressing it, knowing that every time I do, a sexy flight attendant with a bit of an attitude gets delivered to me.
“Um...” I stumble. “I want...” Think. Of. Something. You idiot. “I want—”
“He wants to sleep with you,” Maddison chimes in from the seat next to me.
Actually, I want to smack my best friend in the back of the head and tell him to shut the fuck up, but we aren’t in middle school, and that’d make things too obvious.