Free The Scenic Route by Devan Sipher Page B

a southern European accent.
    â€œOnly bad ones,” she responded.
    His eyes crinkled in an appealing way when he smiled. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t say why. Until the flight attendant brought him his drink.
    â€œHere you are, Chef Gil.”
    Carlos Gil had restaurants in Miami and Madrid. Several years back, Naomi had applied for a job as a sous chef at Sevilla, one of his first restaurants in Miami. She hadn’t even gotten an interview. But Gil would have to be much older than he looked. Though his thick hair was salt-and-pepper, his unlined brow and ruddy complexion didn’t suggest a man in his fifties.
    â€œCan I buy you a drink?” he asked Naomi, quickly adding, “To make up for, how you say, attack of allergy.”
    â€œNo, thank you,” she demurred.
    â€œSalud,”
he said before downing his entire cocktail.
    Naomi watched with mild concern. She didn’t want to have todeal with a drunken Spanish chef for the long flight cross-country. “You might want to pace yourself, cowboy. It’s a long flight.”
    â€œThen is good I sit next to a tall glass of water,” he said. Naomi blushed. “I hate to fly,” he said. “I have, how you say, fear when you fly?”
    â€œFear of flying?” Naomi suggested.
    â€œI thought there was a word.”
    â€œNot that I know of.” Was there? She wasn’t sure. She also wasn’t sure if he was flirting or just making conversation. Well, she was mostly sure, but she wasn’t sure if she should encourage him or, if she did, what her motives were. She wanted to tell him she was a pastry chef, but she was afraid it would look like she was angling for a job. And maybe she was.
    â€œOh,” he said, falling silent. He opened his black buttery leather carry-on and took out a paperback book. Something thick and Spanish.
    Naomi’s opportunity had passed. She looked back out the window; the topography below was now a parade of sawtooth sienna slopes. She’d have a good story for the guys in the kitchen, how she’d met the trendsetting Carlos Gil and shut him down in less than five minutes. It was a winning weekend all the way around.
    â€œDo I really look like a cowboy?” Carlos asked.
    â€œI didn’t mean it like that,” Naomi said, turning quickly around.
    â€œMy grandfather was a cowboy.
Vaquero
. In Andalucía. He was very good with a lasso. This is how he catch my grandmother.”
    â€œHow do you know she wasn’t waiting to be caught?” Naomi asked.
    â€œÂ¡Salud!”
he exclaimed, tossing back the dregs of his drink. “Señorita,” he said, calling out to the attendant. “Another gin and tonic.”
    â€œMaybe I’ll join you,” Naomi said, “if the offer’s still good.” After all, it was a long flight. She could spend it crying over Austin Gittleman. Or she could choose to do something else.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    T here was a man’s head buried between Mandy’s legs, and she was trying to remember the man’s name.
    She was tied to an antique four-poster bed that wouldn’t have been out of place in
Martha Stewart Living
. Though the Velcro straps would have been.
    The man adjusted the straps, hoisting her legs higher off the bed before returning his attention to her nether region, sliding the side of his thick forearm against her and pressing it deep like a freighter ship plying an undulating sea. Mandy wouldn’t have minded if he kept doing that, for the next week.
    But eventually he switched things up, burrowing with his knuckles and then with his tongue. She wanted to call out his name, but she was afraid she’d say the wrong one. She seemed to remember the name Hal. But she wasn’t sure. So she had been calling him “Baby,” and now he was calling
her
“Baby.” (Well, not at the precise moment, because he was otherwise engaged.) Mandy usually disliked being called