Lori Wilde - Crash Landing

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Prejudiced against yourself?”

What kind of question was that? He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “No.”

“You weren’t born into money,” she said.

How had she guessed? He raised his chin. “What makes you assume that?”

“That chip sitting on your shoulder.”

“I don’t have a chip—” Shut up. Don’t argue with her. It doesn’t matter.

“Were you?” she asked. “Born rich?”

“No,” he admitted.

“So you are a self-made man.”

“There’s that tone again. You’re mocking me.”

“You are mistaking my jovial nature for mocking.”

“Am I?” Gibb shook his head. The woman was turning him inside out and he couldn’t say why. Sure she was cute and sexy, but so were a million other women. What was it about this one that stoked him and frustrated him and challenged him and made him want to grab her up and kiss her until neither one of them could breathe?

“This is going to be a very long flight, isn’t it?”

“It sure is shaping up that way.”

More silence. This time he wasn’t going to say anything. He could sit here forever and be quiet if need be. Not a word. Not another word was going to pass his lips.

She looked out over the nose of the plane, and with the slightest moments, shifted the plane northward. Underneath her breath she was softly humming, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

“Okay,” he blurted. “You’re right. Maybe I do have a chip on my shoulder.”

“I know.”

Did she have to sound so damn cheerful about it? Gibb clamped his teeth together. Not another word.

“About that chip on your shoulder?” she ventured.

“Yes?”

“It’s due to a sense of inadequacy.”

“Inadequacy? Where are you getting this stuff?”

“Why else would you resent what you are?”

“I don’t resent who I am.”

“Don’t you?”

“Thank you, oh, doctor of psychology.” He wiped his brow. “Okay, I’ll bite.”

“Bite what?”

“The bait.”

“What bait?”

While she might speak English like a native, the idioms seemed to throw her. “You throw out a challenging line like it’s the bait. So here I am, biting it like a fish.”

“Um, all right.”

“What do you mean by the chip on my shoulder is due to a sense of inadequacy?”

Sophia shrugged. She was totally nonchalant. How did one get to be so blasé about everything? “You feel like you don’t deserve your riches.”

Gibb coughed, tugged at his collar. He felt like she’d taken an endoscope and shoved it down his throat and could see everything that was happening inside his gut. Exposed. He felt totally exposed and he didn’t like it, not in the least.

She glanced at him. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” he said tightly and coughed again.

“Sometimes the high altitude—”

“It’s not the altitude.”

“Maybe if you took off your tie.”

“I’m fine.”

Momentarily, she held up both palms, before her beautiful hands settled back down on the yoke. That smile of hers could seriously blind a guy. It was unnatural to be that happy.

Gibb took off his tie, undid the top button of his dress shirt. Instantly, he could breathe better.

She laid an index finger over her lips. “Shh, I promise that I won’t tell anyone if you take off the jacket, too.”

“I’m good.”

“As you wish.”

A long silence began as they passed over blue water and a lot of land. He hadn’t been this knocked off balance since the last time a corporate spy ripped him off.

She was back to humming, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” It ought to be illegal for anyone to be this cheerful.

He stared out the side window, studied lush green ground sliding by. How many times had he flown over a place like this, oblivious to the lives of the people below? “How did you know?”

She startled as if she had forgotten that he was in the plane with her. “Know what?”

“That I wasn’t born wealthy.”

She clicked her tongue. “You work so hard. Too hard.”

“Rich people work hard.”

“Old money knows how to relax, new money scrambles. You scramble like you’re afraid someone will take it all away.”

“Now you sound like a fortune cookie.”

She seemed to take no offense at that. “Maybe. And you spend money heedlessly. I saw you give Stacy that limitless black credit card. She is at the spa every day splurging on treatments with your money. People who are born rich tend to be frugal.”

“That’s a generalization.”

“True.”

“So what if I work hard and spend easily?” Stop being defensive. You don’t owe her an explanation. “I still don’t see how you drew your conclusion.”

“In two weeks time you never took off the suits.”

He ran a hand over the sleeve of his silk Armani.

“Not once.”

“I took them off to go to bed.”

“But not when people could see you. I had to ask myself why. Why does this handsome, successful man drive himself so hard? He’s supposed to be on vacation and he never takes off the suit. What is he so afraid of?” She paused. “And then it hit me.”

“What did?”

“You never felt loved for who you were.”

Goose bumps spread over his arms at the same time the hairs on the nape of his neck lifted. He tried to laugh, but he just exhaled harshly.

“So you drove yourself hard in order to get recognition. Status became everything.”

His throat worked, but no words came out.

“You became adept at charming others. You adopted whatever image worked. It’s why you wear expensive suits—status, attention getting, uniform of the wealthy.”

Gibb’s mouth dropped open. How did she know!

“You came to feel that it was not okay to be who you really were, that in order to be loved, you had to take on the feelings and identity of those whose love you wished to win.”

He wanted to deny it. He felt the need to contradict her, but he was so floored that he simply couldn’t find the words.

“Deep down inside,” she went on, “you believe that no matter how much success you achieve you’ll always be a failure. You feel like a fraud.”

He planned to say, “Hell, no, you’re crazy, you’re nuts,” but instead Gibb simply nodded and said, “Empty.”

“This friend of yours that you’re flying to see. The one you want to stop from getting married. He’s known you a long time?”

“Yeah.” Gibb grunted.

“Before you were rich.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He’s the only one who knows who you really are, isn’t he?”

Was the woman some kind of psychic or just perceptive as hell? “How…how can you possibly know this?”

She met his gaze. “Why, it’s written all over you. Anyone who bothers to look past the suit can see it.”

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