Everything But Perfect (2 page)

Cheyanne swallowed the hard lump
in her throat and tried to acknowledge her mistake. She was quite adamant he
could not possibly be angry with her. Perhaps another attempt at being nice,
tongue in cheek, would smooth out his ruffled feathers. It certainly could not
hurt.

“I really am sorry,” she said.

“I really don’t care.”

What? Not even a facial twitch to
warn her of something like that? Maybe he could not understand much of her
English. If so, she could not speak Benghazi, even after four years of living
among the natives.

He then grumbled, “And you should
be sorry.” His jaw clenched harder than before, he crossed his arms over his
massive chest, and then scrunched down in his seat. Ten seconds later, his
eyelids closed, and she heard the distinct rumble of gentle snoring.

You should be sorry?

Why, of all the nerve…

These words stewed in her brain
for the next ten minutes; marinated into incomprehensible limitations.

It was not her fault that her
head had found a comfortable pillow. Well, it was, but that was a moot point.
One can’t plan something like controlling the body, if so dead tired a bomb
could have gone off, and she wouldn’t have heard it. Jeez! He acted as if she
had made it a life goal to board this train just to piss him off. Did he
purposely forget she’d fallen asleep well before he took the seat next to her?
She was damn certain it had been empty when closing her eyes.

Dealing with a man who could not
accept an apology was now topping her list of things to avoid. That, and
venomous snakebites, of which she had dealt with just last month and survived.
She tugged her large duffel out from under her legs, placed it on her lap,
hoping against hope he could allow her out of her seat. The insufferable man
never moved an inch. His eyes closed, his breathing slowed…Dear God, had he
truly fallen asleep?

She highly doubted anyone could
fall asleep
that
fast. The adrenaline of too much testosterone alone
should have kept him awake, for months to come.

Clearing her throat, to no avail,
he still would not budge.

There was only one solution to an
enormous problem. She glanced back to see if anyone was in the seat behind her,
found no one, and smiling, climbed over the seat to step out into the aisle,
unharmed. Curious onlookers were giving her doubt to be lady-like after a stunt
like that. Nevertheless, she headed for the dining car with nary a glance back.

Famished, she ordered then waited
for her food. Moments later, an Egyptian waiter brought out curried goat,
steamed bell peppers and rice, accompanied with a glass of wine.

Cheyanne dove into her meal with
little regard for propriety. Over the course of four long years, her crew had
lived on tins and dehydrated meals. An oddity was fresh fruit and vegetables.

Her mouth watered in anticipation
to every bite put near her lips. Swallowing most without breathing, she would
have licked the plate clean, had others not been watching her. There were so
many dark eyes curious to her every move.

Not once was she acknowledgeable
that someone was watching her as if she were a spoilt child standing too close
to an unsupervised candy dish, from just two tables away.

****

Amusement reached the shadowed
features of cheeks covered in a day’s worth of stubble, as Mitch Lavede waited
with coffee in hand until certain she would order nothing further. He rose from
his seat and headed directly to her table. Perhaps to repent his earlier sins?
Then again, perhaps not. After all, the day was still young. He had plenty of
time to make the most of it, and sin like hell if needed.

She pushed away her plate and
leaned back against the well-worn upholstery, her heavy sigh bringing a smile
to his face.

“Don’t tell me you’re not
ordering dessert?” he said, startling her.

She visibly jumped, her clouded
gaze raised to his. “Excuse me?”

Mitch had no trouble looking at
her, as she seemingly had trouble looking at him. Rather, he looked her over,
head to toe. He stopped on certain points of interest, and then continued,
undaunted.

He had to push himself to make
conversation with her, when he’d rather be taking her back to his sleeping car
and using his time wisely. Women on trains in foreign countries were into doing
wild and crazy things on the other side of the world; the farther away from
home, the crazier.

He sat down and introduced
himself. When he wanted something, he always took the lead in order to get it,
brazen or not.

“Mitch Lavede…and you are?”

“Not interested.”

Her words said this, but her eyes
could not back up the lie.

“I am not asking you on a date. I
only asked what your name is.”

Spit and venom came quickly to
mind. That, and how much fun she would be under the sheets, given the chance.

“My name…is none of your damn
business.” She hurriedly rose from her seat, severing off an easy conversation
with an English-speaking woman.

Mitch smiled.
Prickly brittle
.
These words came to mind, too. Damn, they would definitely describe her to a
‘T’. Half porcupine, half part thin glass—ticking her off, and the quills come
out. Push her too hard, she easily breaks. He dealt with far worse than a mere
wisp of contradiction over the last two months.

If she wanted nothing to do with
him, he had ways of changing her mind. Women bend to his will every time.

She grabbed her duffel, mad as a
hornet with its stinger bent the wrong way, and stormed out of the dining car.
She forgot to pay for her meal. She halted, stood tall, squared her shoulders,
and then turned back around. It looked as if killing her to come back to him.

Mitch rose from the table before
she reached it, withdrew his wallet, and tossed a few bills on the white cloth.
Women also complicated a well-run, well-ordered life. Substantially they ruin a
good thing, making it fall apart at the seams. Although tempting to the eyes,
and definitely to the loins, she was a complication he needed to avoid. He
turned and walked away before she had time to react to his good deed.

Once inside his sleeping car, he
tugged off the sweaty shirt on his back, and donned a dry T-shirt. He brushed
his hair with his fingers for lack of remembering a comb. Never again would he
do such a mundane task as to check on the progress of a building. If, indeed
there was a next time, and somehow, dammit, there always was a next time in
this business.

He would have done so this time
around, had it not been for complete boredom to what his life was turning into—endless
nightclubs, endless setups with easy women, monotonous corporate meetings,
followed by extremely monotonous after-meeting parties, just to wine and dine
the elite. He was sick of it all. He felt stagnant, for lack of a better word.
He needed something different to occupy his mind.

Now that he could take a step
back and look at the last few months of his life, his smile came quick. Not
only had he been away far longer, and traveled farther than intended, he
discovered shoddy work that was intolerable and downright dangerous. If his
name was going on a building, it had better be perfect. Lavede Enterprises was
synonymous with superior. Everything, but perfect.

Nonetheless, twelve of his men
quit. He wasn’t a hard ass, yet they seemed to think so. One man, God it was not
funny even in remembrance, was run over by an incompetent truck driver. The
man’s funeral took a bit longer than necessary and the investigation into the
accident even longer, but such was life. Sometimes brakes on vehicles failed.

Mitch demanded perfection. Sometimes
it was just best to agree life sucked when things went wrong.

His thoughts ran back to the woman
on this train. She wasn’t perfect, in fact, the exact opposite, but she could easily
be molded by the right man. His frown came quick to this. He was definitely not
the right man for such an arduous job.

Long legs stuffed into faded blue
jeans, her hair piled high, her pink T-shirt so damn cute…had she not used him
as a pillow he might have been civil to her. She’d been a veritable sleeping
beauty in the fantasy of life. It was only after she opened her eyes, looked at
him strangely, almost reaching into his soul, that his life had gone back to a
living hell.

No one was to get to his soul.
Not even a creative woman in a foreign country.

He had been content enough, as
only a man can be, when able to watch such a rare beauty sleep away her day.
She’d drifted in and out of her dreams, perhaps nightmares. He wasn’t certain
which. Her innocent face alive toward the end, she had unknowingly reached into
his lap. Her warm fingers then dug sharp nails into his inner thigh, and God
help him, it was all he could do to hold it together.

He hadn’t been touched there in
quite some time. Work, and certainly women surrounding that work, left little
room for the enjoyment of the flesh other than a few chaste kisses, and the
assorted hand jobs. Women were like oil and water, tar and feathers to him.
Separately, they had very specific uses. Together they never mixed, and
eventually backfire in his face, almost on cue.

No matter how enchanting she was,
he was sure she would ricochet throughout his system, until something broke—something
irreparable.

He’d been captivated by her hazel
eyes, that’s all. Work was his life, and vice versa. This more than paid off,
in a good way. He was wealthy, supposedly attractive, and certainly available.
Thirty-six, he drove too fast, ate too richly, had no ties to bind him to one
place, and never answered things he had no desire to waste his breath on…before
today.

Hell, there was always a first to
fall the fool. On this trip alone, Mitch was finding there were many firsts,
most of those pretty awful. Like how long a dead body could wait in stifling
heat without decomposing. Or how long it took to hire back workers hell bent on
making life miserable. Equally, how many tries it took to get another to
understand his words. Had he really asked one of his employees if he should go
to work in a dress? Not,
what is the address?
as intended.

He shook off another useless
daydream and sat down on the bed. He would find out her name if it was the last
thing he did, just to appease his conscience.

Leaning back, he let the feel of
the train lull his thoughts. After all, she now owed him money for her meal,
and he always collected on a debt.

He reached for the novel tucked
inside his suitcase and found his bookmark, intent on spending the remaining
hours reading. For the time being, he just wanted to forget he was still stuck in
Africa.

Chapter Two

Unaware of the length remaining
until Cairo, Cheyanne stood up in hopes of finding a porter. She ran smack dab
into Mitch, the last person on earth she wished to see again.

“Looking for me?” he mockingly accused.

“I highly doubt I would stoop
that low,” she mumbled under her breath. “I can’t seem to help myself,” she then
said smugly, giving him a toothy grin.

The man’s hot breath suddenly caressed
her ear as he leaned near it. “Once in Cairo, you will never have to see me
again, sweetheart.” Giving her a lazy grin to eat away at the very core of her being,
he added, “Perhaps you find my irresistible charms too much for your delicate
sensitivities.”

Ugh
. Trying hard not to let him ruin
the rest of her day, she quickly rummaged through her duffel to pay him back
for her meal. Now was as good as any to dispose of an association with this man.

“You needn’t bother,” he said.

Her head rose. “Bother with what?”
If she could not get this over with, she doubted she would have the courage to
speak civil to him at any other time. She was still fuming over a man who could
not properly accept an apology. Nevertheless, there was something about him
drawing her in, making her think and react abnormally.

“Consider it a gift for my unruly
behavior of earlier.” His mocha eyes then darkened and narrowed in on her.

Was he actually apologizing to
her for being a rude ass? Did the earth tip off its axis?

“I don’t want to owe you,” she
said, as a full grin put meaning behind these words. She would rather die than
owe this man for her meal.

Somehow, her smiling at him triggered
the muscles in his jaw to twitch. He had yet to release his grip on her wrist
and it was getting painful. He was hurting her, yet did not seem to notice. The
fierceness of his grip drew her eyes down to her wrist.

No matter how good looking, or
how much the human body wanted contact with another of the opposite sex, sound
advice was to heed to the warning of ‘stranger danger’. “Please let go?” She nodded
at her wrist, expecting he’d cooperate.

He did drop her wrist, but he
would not apologize for this latest incident.

Large red fingerprints surrounded
her tender flesh. For it, a temper possessed from little on was about to
explode. “Think of your buying my meal as payment for this,” she ground out,
holding her wrist in his face.

His eyes roamed over the bruising
marks, but he spoke nothing of it.

As the train began to slow, Cheyanne
thrown off-balance, she fell into the seat next to her. He offered not one bit
of help to her. He did bend down to her level to whisper in her ear again.

“They match the claw marks on my
inner thigh from your fingernails, sweetheart. Consider that, when you want to
rip a man to shreds by mere words.”

Heat flooded her face as she
realized what he meant—exactly. The humiliation was a definite presence clouding
her thoughts.

Not only had she used his
shoulder for a pillow, she used his leg for the buried treasure always out of
her reach.

Oh God!

****

Mitch picked up his leather case
on the sidewalk and headed into the hotel. He was certainly in no mood to waste
time sweating in this heat. A man in need of a cool drink and cool bath, he stepped
inside, was shown to a room, and tossing his things on the bed, headed to the
bathroom.

One more day in this godforsaken
place of dust and desert and hauntingly mysterious women, his fears were turning
swiftly toward whichever came first to kill him, he would accept.

****

Six hundred seventy million
people in Africa and she could not get away from just one? The sooner she was
in New York, the better.

Shamefully ignoring his tiresome staring
from across the room, she tried in vain to find something far more interesting
inside the restaurant than him. Nothing captured her attention.

A swift wave of regret hit her
hard. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Why would it bother her so much to
have him staying in the same hotel, then , disappear from the restaurant the
moment she turns her head—when earlier, wishing him to find a painful demise at
the end of a long rope.

She set the long stem glass down,
very carefully, her fingers betraying her, the glass almost tipping over. God,
how awful the feeling of reproach was.

Glancing at the bruising around
her wrist reminded her of how his gentle touch had turned on her. He’d done her
an injustice—perhaps a favor, in hindsight. Had he not caused her body harm,
she might have pursued his seemingly interest in her. At present, her life was
too complicated to entertain the thought of an interesting man.

The waiter brought her food, but
she no longer had an appetite. Her stomach tied in knots; she had less than ten
minutes to make a dreaded phone call that was going to make her day go from bad
to incredibly worse.

She paid for her meal, and then
went back to her room. Dialing out from Cairo to New York was a complicated
feat, umpteenth billion numbers to push and international calling dreadful on
this side of the world.

Breathing between the wait was
much harder.

After several minutes of static
Egyptian and gibberish, she finally reached a recognizable voice on the other
end.

“Ribbons’ Residence, Rosa
speaking.”

Cheyanne took a deep breath and
spoke past the lump in her throat. “Rosa, it’s me, little Rose.”

There was no mistaking the
audible gasp on the other end, before a rapid burst of Spanish came through the
earpiece.

“Is it really you?” Rosa said in perfect
English.

“It’s really me, Rosa.”

A slow trickle of unwanted
moisture filled Cheyanne’s eyes and quickly spilled. After a few minutes of
small talk, and more static, Rosa informed her that her parents were not home,
in fact, at an opera, and they would not be back until very late, well past
Rosa’s bedtime.

Cheyanne glanced at her watch. Of
course, the time was much different in New York than it was here. She tried in
vain to get Rosa to have one of the Ribbons’ drivers pick her up at the airport
upon arrival. This quest ended in a dead end, too.

Nevertheless, if there was a
will, there must be a way. She would have to hail a cab once there. This
prospect made her ill. She would, at most arrive in New York during rush hour;
a devil of a time for finding an empty cab.

She said a tearful goodbye, then
drifted off to sleep.

Eight hours later, the bluest of
oceans far below her airplane seat, she downed the rest of her glass of brandy
in one fell swoop, choking in the process. She never liked flying. The more she
could deaden the fear with alcohol, the better.

Her eyes clouded over from
unchecked tears. She raised her gaze to see if anyone was in the lavatory, and
discovered mocha orbs staring at her from the seat behind.

Of all the…

Even on an airplane, she could not
seem to avoid him.

His mouth was tilted, as though
he found her amusing. Even more, that he had been enjoying the view for quite
some time.

All breath, perhaps all sense knocked
out of her by his sardonic smile, Cheyanne ground the backs of her teeth,
hoping to surpass her mutiny. She rose from her seat, aiming for the lavatory.
She was not going to be anyone’s fourteen-hour amusement, thirty-thousand feet
in the air.

She reached the tiny cubicle and
locked the door. The man’s smile had gotten the better of her. Her knees
buckled, she death-gripped the small sink, and could barely look in the mirror.
Damn the man!
He’s on the same flight?
Certainly, she could survive a
few more hours trapped in his company. It was not as though he was going to sit
in the seat next to her, and dare she say it, give her the chance to touch him
again. Heaven forbid
that
should happen.

She closed her eyes to all these
lies.

Straightening, her eyes reopen
and her chin held high, she clicked the lock and stepped out—only to come within
inches of his muscular frame. He still found her amusing.

“What is so damn funny to you?”
she said sharply. Regrettably, she could not control her misguided tongue. “Are
you stalking me?”

“It would seem so, wouldn’t it?”
he dared say.

His nearness nearly knocked her
over. For reasons she did not understand, he chose to push on her last raw
nerve and destroy what little confidence she had left to face New York.

The incredible scent of his
cologne lingered in her brain, hitting her hard.

“But,” he continued, “I don’t
stalk women. I’m on this plane for business…not for pleasure, as you are.”

If he hadn’t said this in a
sneering way, or ran the gauntlet of her body with his eyes, she might have
believed him. Dammit! She was not flying around the world for personal
amusement. Hard at work, and recently summoned home, what right did he have to
judge her life?

“My god, you are quite the
arrogant bastard, aren’t you? I can’t say it was a pleasure ever to meet you.”

Flinching for the briefest of
moment, he took two steps from her obvious disapproval of his nearness. “Nor
can I say our meeting twice as all that pleasurable. Sadly, your type does seem
to swarm men like me.”

“My
type
?”

She expected a frown. What she
got was a toothy grin.

“Yes. Spoilt little rich girl
trapped among the wolves. Did you have a nice shopping trip in Paris,
sweetheart? Daddy footing the bill for you?”

She wanted to mouth ‘Fuck You’
but held her tongue. She was not about to get in a row with a man just met,
even if he was goading her into it. He would get his comeuppance eventually.
She, however, was not going to be the one to do it on an airplane surrounded by
strangers.