Jennifer Morey - Front Page Affair

He crumbled the picture of Serena and tossed it to a trash can near a thick concrete column. He made the hole. “A son. Aiden. He’s six.” That was a topic he could discuss all night.

Arizona glanced from the trash can to him. What he could only call a grimace crossed her expression.

“I don’t want any pictures of my ex in my wallet,” he explained.

The hint of a smile began to push up her mouth. “I’m the youngest of eight. Everyone but me got to hold babies growing up.”

So, it wasn’t throwing out the picture of Aiden’s mother that bothered her. “Never been exposed to children, huh?”

“They’re little aliens who poop and scream and don’t stop wiggling.”

“Most women love kids.” They moved up in the line toward the jet bridge. Wasn’t it a natural instinct for women to nurture? In the office he often saw groups of them hovering around newborns, cooing and coddling.

“I’m not most women.”

“You don’t want kids of your own some day?”

Arizona’s eyes popped in appall. “Oh, God. No.” She shuddered, her bare shoulders shaking a little.

Well, wasn’t this an interesting highlight. Arizona Ivy couldn’t stand kids. It reflected badly on her, and he welcomed the barrier. “What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re on another planet?”

Although her sarcasm was obvious, he took the message literally. He had a son. She didn’t like kids. It would never work out for them. Good to know right from the start.

“They’re just kids,” he said. “Innocent. A clean palatte ready to absorb information and grow up to be an adult...just like you.”

“Great. Introduce me when they’re adults.”

He chuckled. “What happens when you encounter them?” He’d love to see that some day.

“I find an excuse to leave the room.”

“Don’t you mean planet?” She could be a science project. What made some women gush over babies and others turn cold?

She sighed, no longer joking. “I guess I don’t relate to them.”

“They’re kids.” Nobody was supposed to relate. Not on the same level.

“They’re loud and obnoxious.”

“Kid. Not adult.”

“Right.”

Braden shook his head. She really didn’t get it. “You’re missing out on a big part of life.”

“Yeah? What’s that? Exhaustion that leads to unhappiness and lack of sex?”

“No. The moments you remember for a lifetime. The words they say and how they say them. The questions they ask. The first time they tell you they love you.”

Feeling her watch him, he realized he was smiling fondly, thinking of Aiden.

“I can live without all that.”

“Right, because you have a serious career to go after.” And sex.

He wished that thought hadn’t entered his head.

“Which is precisely why I prefer other women to do the childbearing.” She walked forward, hauling her carry-on.

Braden felt better and better about her going along. Whatever had transpired when she’d bumped into him at Lincoln’s house, it was brief and over now. He could concentrate on finding his sister and not worry about Arizona attracting him into bed. Best to avoid any chance of getting her pregnant and forcing her to become one of those childbearing women.

* * *

Sitting next to Braden in first class, Arizona was thankful for the spacious seating. His lean body was far enough away to prevent contact. Contact was dangerous with him. He may inflame her physically, but he’d failed the intellectual test. Flawed, to be sure. Son. Recently divorced. That was plenty to convince her he wasn’t her type. Especially the kid part. A shudder wracked her shoulders. And it wasn’t all from revulsion. She couldn’t stop thinking about the look on his face when he talked about Aiden.

Beside her, Braden noticed, his perceptive eyes cynical.

Opening her People magazine, she tried to pay attention to that. Braden’s presence was too strong.

She watched him remove his laptop and survey the cabin of the plane at the same time, as though expecting the driver of the BMW to pop out of nowhere. He was as vigilant as Lincoln. As fearless, too. The combination of nerd and superhero was a curious mix.

“What do you do, anyway?” Lincoln had never told her.

“I’m an engineer for Hamilton Corporation.” As though on cue, he pulled out a pair of reading glasses and opened his laptop. Arizona watched him for a bit, disconcerted over the unbelievable comparison to her fiancé. Tall, handsome and an engineer for a high-tech corporation.

She kept that to herself. “What kind of engineer?”

He turned from his laptop screen, green eyes behind the anti-reflective lenses of his glasses. Still handsome.

“Advanced technology for the military. Countermeasure equipment. That sort of thing.”

Vague reply. “Oh.” She nodded through her discomfort. “Design and development?”

“Most of it’s classified.”

Her fiancé had worked in research. Top secret clearance, just as she was sure Braden had. She struggled to minimize the coincidence.

Then something dawned on her. “Do you think it’s possible there’s a link between what you do and your sister’s disappearance?”

He turned with a lifted brow. Clearly, he doubted that.

“You do weapons designs for the military,” she explained further. “Your sister was a freight forwarder accused of shipping weapons to a prohibited country.”

“Where’s the link? She didn’t get the weapons from my company.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very. The arms her company exported weren’t ours.”

His defensive response spoke loudly of his conviction, but it seemed forced. He refused to consider his sister could have been involved in anything sinister. In this case, Arizona agreed. It didn’t seem likely that his job had anything to do with the accusations that had ruined his sister’s reputation. The coincidence was unnerving, though.

A baby cried from somewhere in the back of the plane. The whine of jet engines and airflow muffled voices and the movement of flight attendants.

“Were you curious about my job because you were fishing for a connection or did something else prompt you?” he asked.

Prompt her? What had prompted her? She registered his reading glasses.

“I could tell you were—” a nerd, she almost said “—a college graduate.”

He stared at her. “A college graduate?”

“Yeah. You know, the office type.” His big chest and arms challenged her claim. So did the amusement in his eyes, entirely too...she’d rather not allow the word into her head.

“You could tell that by looking at me?”

She took in his stubble and the green of his captivating eyes. “Well, there are some deterring factors, but yes. I could tell.”

“Deterring factors?”

Never one to shy away from confrontation, she let propriety drop. “You have this masculine look about you, and yet you wear Gucci loafers and smudged reading glasses. It’s like Louis Vuitton clashing with Aeropostale.”

“Stereotyping, are you?” He removed his glasses and wiped them with his soft shirt.

Another non-office thing to do. Who wiped their glasses on their shirt? She smiled with an exhaled laugh.

“While we’re on the subject, I agree with your brother. You don’t seem like the international reporter type.”

She was having too much fun to be insulted. “You think I’m much more suited for tabloids?”

“It’s just an observation. Sort of like the one you made about me.”

Smart-ass. “Hey, I’m not the one who wears smudged glasses.”

“No, but you write entertainment news and are the subject of entertainment news, like what you’re reading about in that magazine.” He gestured toward the People magazine in her lap. “An interesting dichotomy, don’t you think?”