Full Circle (6 page)

Perhaps because it had never seemed
important. Or maybe because she’d never seen him spend this kind of
money in one pop. The limo ride was one thing, but chartering a
private jet went beyond extravagant, especially since he seemed too
familiar with how things were done for this to be the first time
he’d traveled with his own personal flight crew.

Mark helped load the last of their bags then
turned toward her with a smile.

One month with him felt like both a lifetime
and a blink. In some ways, the time had blown by, and in others, it
passed at a snail’s pace.

“You ready?” Mark took her hand.

She took comfort in the warmth his touch
provided. “Given I have no idea where we’re going and haven’t flown
in years, I suppose I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Come on.” He tugged her toward the jet.
“Paradise awaits.”

Paradise? They had to fly over an ocean to
get there? Her heart suddenly froze. “Wait! My passport. I
don’t—”

“Taken care of.”

“But . . .” The last she
remembered, her passport was in her files at home. She didn’t carry
it with her everywhere she went.

Mark swept her toward him, his gaze
reassuring and confident as he curled his hand around her neck and
ran the pad of his thumb over her cheek. “Don’t worry. I have
it.”

Relaxing, she sighed. “You do?”

He nodded and dipped down for a tender,
chaste kiss. “I’ve taken care of everything.”

Taking another deep breath, she nodded then
glanced from the limo to the jet. She should have known he wouldn’t
forget her passport. After all, this was Mark. “You’ve thought of
everything, haven’t you?”

“Every last detail.” The way he said it sent
a ripple of awareness through her blood. Maybe it was the brief
pause before he answered, or the quiet way he let the words flow
smoothly from his mouth, or perhaps the way the skin around his
eyes pinched then softened, but something about this trip was
different.

Mark never did anything without a reason.
She’d learned that during their sex lessons two summers ago. Every
move Mark made had a purpose. And while this was their one-month
anniversary, she had a feeling there was more to this trip than
just that.

With a frosty wind biting her ears and nose,
she followed him up the steps to the jet and was greeted by a
pretty, dark-haired flight attendant dressed in a flattering grey
suit. The gold tag pinned over her right breast read “Janie.”

“Good evening,” Janie said, waving her
forward.

“Hi.” Karma looked from her to the interior
of the cabin. There were only four seats—all upholstered in
cream-colored leather like the seats in the limo—and each wide
enough to comfortably fit a three-hundred-pound defensive
lineman.

Janie gestured inside. “Please make
yourselves comfortable. We’ll be departing shortly.”

Mark ushered her toward the two seats on the
left, where they sat facing one another.

She glanced around at the light interior. Not
only were the seats cream, but the walls were, too. And every
panel, every cabinet, and even the ceiling of the cabin was trimmed
in gold. The plush leather was a far cry from the uncomfortable,
cramped, vomit-hued fabric seats she remembered from her last
airplane trip.

This was how the rich and famous traveled,
not the everyday common citizen.

“Have you ever flown on a private jet?” Mark
crossed his ankle over his knee, eyeing her.

“No. Have you?” But she already knew the
answer. And wasn’t it apropos that Mark would prefer to travel this
way than on a crowded commercial jet? If you had money and means,
why settle for less than the best? And it was becoming clearer by
the second he had both.

His expression remained even, not giving much
away. “When I was a kid, my parents chartered private jets to fly
to dance competitions. I traveled quite a bit with them.”

So, lots of experience flying on private
jets. Noted.

Mark hadn’t told her much about his parents.
She knew they were professional dancers, instructors, and
choreographers, but that was about it.

“Did they win a lot of competitions?”

“Almost every one they went to. They were
unbeatable in their day. Now they mostly choreograph and teach,
although they still dance in exhibitions, even at their age.” He
smiled fondly as he glanced absently—maybe even a little
forlornly—out the window.

The pilot announced they were preparing for
takeoff as she wondered about his reaction. Did he miss
dancing?

“Why didn’t you follow in their footsteps?”
Usually, children professionally followed their parents in families
as prestigious as Mark’s. At least, that’s how it seemed to Karma.
You only had to look at football to see the family legacies at
work. The Mannings, the Longs, the Montanas. Typically, like father
like son. So, how had Mark come to denounce dancing and turn toward
business instead, especially when it appeared he still felt a pang
of longing to cut a rug?

He fastened himself into his seat with a
tense shrug. “Dancing just wasn’t in the cards for me.”

“There has to be more to it than that.” He’d
told her that when he was a kid, he’d practically lived in the
studio, as well as on the competition circuit with his parents.
With all that exposure, it was surprising he hadn’t followed in
their well-placed footsteps.

Mark looked out the window, the line of his
brow tight. “I was good. I trained with them and could have
competed if I’d wanted to. But then . . .”

This had to do with Carol. The reason he had
walked away from dancing had to do with her, didn’t it? Maybe not
entirely, but somehow Carol had been the one to clinch the deal and
force him off the dance floor for good.

As the jet taxied toward the runway, he
tapped his fingers restlessly on his armrests. “For a while I
thought I might pursue dancing, but I was never as good as my
parents. I knew competing would only be marginally successful for
me. So I turned my attention toward earning my business degree. My
grandfather was an Italian immigrant who built a fortune as a
successful Chicago businessman. His success allowed my mother to
follow her dreams of becoming a professional dancer. Between his
money and her talent, as well as my dad’s, they’ve built quite an
empire, drawing the best dancers from all over the world.”

“Like Carol?”

His gaze darted to hers then flicked away as
he cleared his throat. “Yes. Like Carol.”

“Is she why you stopped dancing?” She might
as well get the notion out there.

He cleared his throat again and shifted as if
he couldn’t get comfortable. Karma knew she was pushing her luck by
bringing up Carol. But he never talked about her, even though Karma
could tell his ex still haunted his thoughts, even if only
occasionally.

If they were going to have a future together,
Mark needed to purge that woman from his mind sooner rather than
later. Going forward without doing so was like trying to slog
through knee-deep mud. It could be done, but it took a lot of work
and left you completely drained. Karma didn’t want to have to work
that hard at trying to overcome Mark’s memories of Carol, and she
shouldn’t have to. No woman should have to compete with her man’s
past girlfriends, and sometimes that’s how Karma felt. Like Carol
was still right there, getting in the way.

Seeming a bit flustered, Mark gave a tight
shake of his head. “No, she’s not the reason why I stopped
dancing.” His earnest gaze met hers. “Not entirely.”

“What do you mean?”

“I knew before she . . .” He
paused and pursed his lips as if the words had locked up in his
throat. Then he sighed and started again. “I knew before
she . . .
left me
 . . . that
dancing wasn’t my future. I had decided I wanted to follow after my
grandfather and build a business.”

Karma heard something unspoken hanging beyond
his words. “But . . . ?”

He heaved a deep sigh. “But I thought I could
still dance as a hobby.” He rubbed his palm over the lower half of
his face. “And I thought Carol and I would take over the studio
someday. That my parents’ empire would become
our
empire.
That I would use my business education to manage the business into
the next generation and somehow find a way to still participate as
a performer or at least an instructor.”

It sounded like he was admitting the truth
not just to her for the first time, but also to himself. As if he’d
forced himself not to remember the plans and dreams he’d made when
he and Carol were together.

“You know,” he said with an uneasy sigh, “I
don’t want to talk about this now. I don’t want this trip to be
about what happened in the past.” His gaze faltered as his eyebrows
ticked inward, making it seem as if that was exactly what this trip
was about and he just didn’t want to admit it. “I want it to be
about us. You. Me. Our future. You’re what’s important to me now.
What happened eight years ago isn’t significant, anymore, Karma.
You are.”

But the hard lines of his face remained, and
his mouth formed a taut, straight line, and she wondered what he
wasn’t telling her. Clearly, what had happened eight years ago was
more significant than he wanted to admit.

“You’re my life now, Karma, and I want this
trip to solidify that.”

She wanted to believe him, but it was obvious
he was hiding something. He said the past was insignificant, but
that was a lie. With Mark, the past was everything. The past had
kept him from committing to her the first time around. It had
nearly destroyed any chance they would be together. And it was
still affecting him and their relationship now.

The voice in the back of her head warned that
Carol wasn’t gone. Not just yet. Carol was still there, filling the
tiny gaps where her and Mark’s souls hadn’t fully melded together,
yet. In fact, Carol was the reason
why
their souls weren’t
yet completely one. Until Mark expelled her from his system for
good, Carol would always be there. A third party in what Karma
wanted to be an exclusive relationship.

Mark told her he loved her. His actions
reinforced his words. But there was still one small door in his
mind she wasn’t allowed to enter, and every so often she found
herself on the outside with no way in. Not often, but once in a
while Mark seemed to be on the other side of that door, his mind
briefly consumed by whatever fear and pain Carol had planted inside
him.

Karma wanted to break that door down, pull
Carol out of Mark’s memories, and take her rightful place in
all
aspects of his life. She wanted to protect Mark from
what Carol had done to him, but she knew she couldn’t. Only Mark
could pull himself free of his ex’s hold. All Karma could do was
wait for him to wrestle himself away from his demons.

But for now, on what she was sure Mark
intended to be a romantic getaway, she wouldn’t push. Mark would
deal with his past when he was ready.

She just hoped she wouldn’t have to wait too
long.

Chapter 3

Peace is the result of retraining your mind to
process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.

-Wayne Dyer

One overnight flight and one refueling stop in Miami
later, Karma gazed out the window at the lightening morning sky as
she sipped from a mug of tea and wiped sleep from her eyes. She
hadn’t slept much. Partly because of where she was, and partly
because of Mark.

She smiled to herself about what they’d done
to each other last night.

The jet had a bed in back.

A giant, round bed.

A bed she and Mark had put to good use to
induct her into the Mile High Club.

She couldn’t really say the sex was any
better up here than on land. Then again, sex with Mark was always
great, so did it really matter?

Her smile tightened then faded as she
recalled afterward, though. When they’d been cuddling the way they
always did after sex.

Their playtime had actually started where she
was sitting now, in the public area of the cabin in the plush
leather seats, only a few feet from the galley where Janie had
disappeared and shut the door after taking away their dinner
dishes.

A few minutes later, Mark had enticed her
into a sexy game of temptation, seeing who could coerce the other
to leave his or her chair first. She’d won, but it had taken
removing her blouse and her bra to coax him from his seat.

God, what had she been thinking?

“I can’t believe you got me to undress out
there,” she had said while lying in bed with him, his arms around
her. “Janie could have walked in on us.” She glanced over her
shoulder to see he’d closed his eyes.

He snuggled closer and kissed the back of her
shoulder. “I instructed her not to interrupt us after dinner.”

Of course he’d instructed her not to
interrupt them. He’d already set the stage, right? He had probably
prepared this whole scene days ago.

She shifted and turned to face him, head
supported on her arm. “Don’t you ever do anything
spontaneously?”

He rolled to his back and pulled her free arm
over his stomach, lacing his fingers around hers. “I like planning
things.”

“I bet you’d like spontaneity, too, if you’d
just give it a try.”

“Probably.” He grinned, let go of her hand,
then tucked her hair behind her ear.

Her palm rested on his pec, and she combed
her fingertips through his chest hair. “Then why do you plan
everything?”

He shrugged. “Maybe I like being in control.”
His gaze never left hers.

“If you recall, you enjoyed when I
blindfolded you that time at your apartment in Chicago. You weren’t
in control then.”

The corners of his mouth curled
introspectively, as if he were fondly remembering that night and
what she’d done to him. What they’d done to each other.