Page 18 of Mr. Fixer Upper
He glanced in her direction. She was huddled against the window, and he couldn’t tell if she was giving him extra space for his big frame or if she was trying to avoid any accidental physical contact.
She yawned and closed the book she’d been paging through.
“A little light reading?” he asked, tapping the book in her lap.
She pinched the bridge of her nose between her eyes and held up the book. “Homework,” she said by way of an explanation.
It was a thick psychology tome on the narcissism epidemic in America.
“Homework for what?” he asked, studying the cover.
Paige flipped the book around and tapped the jacket photo of the author. “My mother.”
Gannon snatched the book from her and studied the picture. He could see the resemblance especially around the eyes and the jaw line that Paige shared with Dr. Leslie St. James. Of course, Dr. St. James looked as though she’d never wear a pair of holey jeans like her daughter or be caught without her hair done and subtle makeup on.
“Wow.”
“If you think that’s impressive,” Paige said, pulling her phone out of the seatback pocket and flipping through her photos. “This is my sister.”
She showed him a screen shot of a younger woman, nearly a carbon copy version of her mother in a white coat staring unsmilingly at the camera.
“Another Dr. St. James?”
“My sister, Lisa. She’s doing a neurosurgery residency at Sloane Kettering.
“How often do you get the ‘why are you wasting your time with this’—”
“Drivel, garbage, pandering,” Paige filled in, and he felt immediately offended on her behalf.
“Do they have any idea how hard you work?”
“I sit around off camera getting wanna be starlets coffee. Meanwhile, my sister is saving lives, and my mother is freeing people from behavioral patterns that have afflicted them for lifetimes.”
“You don’t buy that crock of shit, do you?”
She smiled at him. A real one, and it warmed him from the inside out.
He’d noticed from day one that she was gorgeous in the girl-next-door way. Her big, denim blue eyes framed by thick lashes, her high cheekbones and their light dusting of freckles highlighted the delicate hollows beneath. And he was enjoying the up-close view.
“I don’t buy it entirely,” she admitted.
“So why are you wasting your time with us drivellers?”
She went quiet on him, and he could feel her withdrawing on him. “Oh, no, princess. No shutting me out. What you whisper in my ear on this plane stays here. Besides, I told you about my nonni.”
She sighed, and he knew he was close to winning.
He pressed his luck. “How about this? You can tell me, and I will have no outward reaction whatsoever.”
He had her. “You won’t ask any questions? Make any inappropriate comments?”
“When have I made any inappropriate comments?”
“I don’t know? Maybe when you called me ‘princess’ at my job for the last year.”
Gannon took her hand and traced an x over his heart. “Cross my heart.”
She studied him. And Gannon watched those cool blue eyes calculated the risk as her hand held steady over the thrum of his heart. She tried to tug it away, but he held fast.
