Love on Landing by Heather Thurmeier Read Free Book Online

thought it would. Maybe he'd been wrong about Tali after all.
    "I'm sorry about yesterday," he said. "I shouldn't have called you those names. I wasn't being fair to you."
    "Thanks." She smiled at him, and took a sip of her drink. "But you were at least halfway fair. I am spoiled, but I do try my best not to act like a brat. You happened to catch me on a really bad day and I kind of took my frustration out on you. So I'm sorry, too."
    "If you don't mind my asking, what happened yesterday that made it so bad?"
    She set her food down beside her on the bench and took a long sip of her mocha. He watched little lines appear on her forehead as he waited for her to respond.
    "Sorry. It's none of my business. I shouldn't have asked." He took another bite of crepe, trying to fill the silence with sounds of eating.
    He didn't like to see this new expression on her face. He didn't want her to have to talk about whatever had happened that caused her such obvious pain.
    "No it's okay. I need to talk about what happened. I need to deal with everything." She sucked in a deep breath. "I came on this trip alone because I needed to get away from the Meadow for a while."
    The Meadow was an elite, gated neighborhood in upstate New York where Tali had lived her whole life. Exactly the kind of place a blue-collar pilot like Gavin would never be welcomed. No, outsiders were never encouraged to become part of the community. Well, maybe someone like Donald Trump would find the welcoming committee on his front doorstep, but no one else ever would.
    "What happened?" What could cause her so much pain she would run away all by herself to a foreign country last minute? He'd only been given a few hours' notice before their flight. Just long enough to secure their clearance and submit paperwork for the flight.
    "My boyfriend broke up with me."
    "Is that all?" He chuckled a little despite his concern for her. A little break up with the boyfriend-du-jour hardly seemed worth this kind of reaction.
    "And then I saw him making out with a close friend a couple of hours later."
    "Ouch." Okay, maybe that was a little more painful than he'd originally thought. "Sorry to hear that. Are you sure they were really making out and it wasn't some misunderstanding?"
    Tali looked down at her coffee, staring at it so long he wondered if she'd heard his last question. "It wasn't a misunderstanding." She shook her head. "Nope. On the flight, right before I found you at the controls and we—spoke—I went online and found out he's now engaged to my former friend."
    "So definitely no misunderstanding." He shook his head. The tears from the day before finally made sense—she'd lost not only a boyfriend, but also a friend. That was rough for anyone. And he'd been a total jerk to her.
    Good one, jackass.
    "Nope. Not unless 'engaged' suddenly has a new meaning I'm not aware of."
    He sighed. "I'm sorry. Now I really wish I hadn't been such a jerk to you yesterday."
    "Really, it's okay. I shouldn't have been a—let's call it even and start over, okay?" She peeked up at him, her eyes clearly asking to move on and leave their brief past in the past where it belonged. How could he deny her one little courtesy after learning what she'd just been through?
    He nodded. "Sounds good."
    Starting over did sound good. The more time he spent around her, the more he wanted to get to know her. Maybe she wasn't exactly the person he thought she was at first glance. Maybe there was more to this girl than he realized.
    "Are you done with your manly crepe and mocha yet? 'Cause I still need to hit Louis Vuitton and find a kickass pair of boots before we call it a day. Oh and I need to stop at this little boutique to pick up some clothes for my little cousins. They look so adorable in matching outfits." She stood and threw her empty containers in the trash. "I can't remember the last time my credit card had this much fun in one day."
    He sighed. She really was something else. Maybe he was wrong about