Filed To Story: The Things We Leave Unfinished Novel Free
“Sure. As soon as she answers the question.” Jameson looked her dead in the eye.
A nagging little feeling told her that he’d always be this forthright. It also told her not to let go.
“Scarlett,” Constance urged.
“I’m sorry, what was the question?” Had he asked another while she was distracted by staring? Her cheeks caught fire.
“Will you please let me take you to dinner?” Jameson asked again. “Not tonight, since I’ll be flying. But some night this week?”
Her lips parted. She hadn’t agreed to a date since the war began.
“I’m quite sorry, but I don’t see men like you socially,” she managed to croak out.
Constance let loose a sigh of frustration strong enough to change the weather.
“Men like me?” Jameson questioned with a tease in his tone. “Americans?”
“Of course not.” She scoffed. “I mean, not that I’ve ever been asked by an American, naturally.”
“Naturally.” And that grin was back, wobbling her knees again. He really was too handsome for his own good.
“I mean pilots.” She nodded toward the wings on his uniform. “I don’t see pilots.” Out of every job in the Royal Air Force, pilots were the most nomadic in regard to where they slept, and geography wasn’t the least of it. They also had a tendency to die with a frequency she couldn’t stomach.
“Shame.” He clicked his tongue.
She tugged on her luggage, and he released it.
“It is most assuredly my loss,” she professed, the words ringing true in her own ears. She shouldn’t go. That didn’t mean she didn’t want to. Longing resonated through her like a church bell, hitting hard and loud, only to come again in softer echoes the longer she stood there looking up at him.
Was every American as handsome as he was? Surely not.
“No, I mean it’s a shame that I’ll have to resign. I do love to fly.” A corner of Jameson’s mouth quirked a little higher. “Wonder if they need more officers over at Sector Command?”
The other pilot scoffed. “Stop flirting-we’re going to be late.”
Scarlett arched a singular eyebrow at Jameson.
“Let me take you to dinner,” he asked again, this time softer.
“Stanton, we really have to go. We’re already late.”
“Give me a second here, Donaldson. Come on, Scarlett, live a little.” Those eyes of his stayed locked on hers, unraveling her defenses.
“You really are insistent,” she accused, straightening her spine.
“It’s one of my finer qualities.”
“It hardly argues that I should acquaint myself with your less-than-finer ones,” she muttered.
“You’ll like those, too.” He winked.
Oh, lord. That single action nearly wiped out any and all reasoning she had left. She snapped her mouth shut to keep from sputtering and prayed the flaming heat in her cheeks didn’t give her away. “You’re honestly going to stand there until I agree to go to dinner with you?”
He seemed to ponder that for a second, and she fought the urge to lean closer to him. “Well, you’re still standing here, too, so I figure you might actually want to have dinner with me.”
She did, damn him. She wanted to see him smile again, but she might not survive that little wink twice.
“Stanton!” Donaldson shouted.
Jameson watched her like she was a play and he couldn’t wait to see what happened next.
“Well, if you’re not, then fine, I’ll go-” Constance started, stepping forward and jarring Scarlett out of her staring contest.
“I’ll go to dinner with you,” Scarlett blurted, mentally cursing her sister’s gleeful little smirk.
“Are you going to make me turn in my wings first?” He smiled, and her stomach filled with another zing of electricity.
“Would you?” she challenged.
His head tilted to the side. “If it got me a dinner with you…I just might.”
“Stanton, get in the bloody car!”
“You’d better go,” she urged, stifling a grin.
“For now,” he agreed, his eyes dancing as he backed away. “But I’ll be seeing you, Scarlett.” He flashed her another smile and disappeared into the car.
They pulled away a heartbeat later, vanishing down the road toward the airfield.
“Thank you for the help, dear sister.” She rolled her eyes at Constance as they headed into the hut.
“You’re quite welcome,” Constance answered unabashedly.
“You’re supposed to be the shy one, remember?”
“Well, it had appeared that you had taken my role for the moment, so I assumed yours. It’s rather fun to be the bold, outspoken one,” she mused, smiling over her shoulder as she waltzed through the door.
Scarlett scoffed but followed her conniving little matchmaker of a sister.
I’ll be seeing you, Scarlett. Trouble, indeed…if he survived tonight’s patrol flights. Her chest tightened at the all-too-real possibility that he wouldn’t. Cardiff had been bombed last week, and patrols were becoming increasingly dangerous with the Nazis’ advance. This vise of worry was the precise reason she had a no-pilots rule, but there wasn’t much she could do but head to work and wait to find out if she would ever see Jameson again.
July 1940
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.