Passion Abroad – A Billionaire Romance Novel

Chapter 10

To say that Erica was excited as she and Daniel left Caracas for Athens, would have been a gross understatement. The truth was that she was ecstatic. She could not wait to be in a new place…with Daniel. She suddenly wanted to pinch herself. Every time she thought about how happy she was with him, she wanted to pinch herself. She didn’t like the fact that she liked him a bit too much.

“What about him drives me so damn wild?” she wondered as she looked at a sleeping Daniel. They were a couple of hours away from Athens and after almost thirteen hours of flying, Daniel had given into his primal need and snoozed off. “What about him is so different? What makes me so crazy and so scared of having him in my life?” She was not sure about anything anymore.

Actually, what she was feeling was what her sister would define as ‘being in love’. She shook her head at the thought. All she knew was the fact that she was confused…a lot. She reached for the iPad she had stashed in the seat pocket and sighed. She needed to get everything she was feeling out. And the best way she knew how, the only way she knew how was to write. She needed to write.

For years, that was the only thing she could do that could actually ensure that she kept herself sane. She sighed when she remembered her detachable keyboard was in the luggage compartment above. She unbuckled her seatbelt and stood up slowly, careful not to wake Daniel. She pulled her bag from the luggage compartment before she got her keyboard. She put the bag back in the compartment and sat down wondering how she would start her entry. She looked at Daniel again as she sat down and sighed. “Just like journalism club back in college. Just put your thoughts down,” she thought as she opened a new document. She looked at the screen and attached the keyboard making a small computer from the two gadgets. “Just put down your thoughts. My thoughts…what do I think about Daniel Reese?” She was now drumming her fingers against the sides of her screen.

Two weeks ago, I met the one good man who… She stopped and read the line she had just typed.

“That just sounds corny,” she thought as she erased it. She didn’t know whether to be real or poetic. She wanted to express the confusion she felt. The crazy weird things she had going in her head, in her heart. She was just about to begin typing when a flight attendant passed by checking if everyone had their seatbelts on. She had been too engrossed in what she was doing that she had not noticed the seatbelt signal come on. She quickly buckled herself in and sighed. She found herself picturing the office back when she was doing mediation. She would tell her clients to look at each other and speak from the heart. Maybe that was exactly what she needed to do. Look at Daniel and speak from the heart. She turned and looked at Daniel. She could not help but smile when she looked at him. He had beautiful long eyelashes that made her conclude that he would father some beautiful girls someday. The three stray hairs that usually fell out of place shielding his eyes were at it again. She looked at him and suddenly, it all dawned on her, what she wanted to say.

They say that all good men are either married or gay. Well, as it turns out, I may have just met the one good man who isn’t married, gay or held down by anyone. He is a gentleman and he is good looking and I know, the one question I should be asking myself is what is wrong with him? Right? Well, I have been asking myself the same question for the last two weeks. Every time I look at him I feel like there is something I am missing, something I am not seeing. Or is it that I am too infatuated with his perfect gentlemanly personality that I cannot see what is right in front of me?

She looked at Daniel again and smiled.

Or is it that the universe is finally giving me something rather than taking something away? I could very well be falling for him and I don’t even realize it or I realize it and I am afraid of what I might be getting myself into? Eli was the same at first. Sweet, nice and loving and then he suddenly became this lying, cheating bas*ard. I gave him everything. My heart, my love, my all and he swung sh*t at me. I’m scared of giving into what I am feeling. What if I give into everything and then I end up in the same position I was in with Eli? What if I admit that I have feelings for him and he hurts me? I can’t…I can’t take another heart break.

She didn’t know how she had gone from writing about Daniel and how he made her happy to Daniel and his potential to hurt her. She couldn’t let this happen. Not again. She looked at him and slipped her hand into his making him stir a little. She leaned back against the seat and rolled her head to the side as his eyelids fluttered open.

“Hey there,” he said in a low voice. She smiled at him.

“Hey,” she said in a whisper. “Sleep okay?”

“As well as I could manage,” he said with a smile. He turned on the plane navigation and smiled. “We’re almost there,” he said as he looked out the window. She nodded and turned off her iPad before she detached the keyboard and stashed it in the seat pocket. “What? The in-flight entertainment wasn’t good enough?” he asked.

“Kind of. I just needed to make a journal entry,” she said.

“You journal?” he asked raising an eyebrow at her. “What is that supposed to mean? You made it sound like it was such a big idea. In a bad way,” she frowned.

He shook his head and straightened his back against the seat.

“No, what I meant was that you…you don’t look like the kind to journal. You look like a shooting range kind of person.”

“There is a lot you are yet to find out about me,” she said. “But you are not so far off as far as the shooting range is concerned.”

Daniel’s eyes lit up.

“So I was right about that? You like guns?”

“Actually Emily is more of the shooting range kind of girl. She actually has a gun collection…beats me why she needs a collection of firearms,” she said.

Daniel raised an eyebrow. “You are kidding right? I mean you are familiar with the second amendment, right?”

“Yes I am but she has a collection. Almost three,” she said matter of factly making Daniel laugh. “What? What’s so funny?” she asked as he looked at him.

“Well, when you said collection, I was picturing something like this,” he said as he reached for his phone from his pocket. She waited as he scrolled through the pictures to show her a photo of a room literally lined with firearms.

“Whoa,” Erica said under her breath. “Why the hell would you even need so many of these anyway?” she asked as she looked at the guns.

“Well, I like to consider myself an enthusiast really. See that?” he asked as he pointed at one of the firearms on the wall. It looked old school. If she didn’t know any better she would have thought it to have been used in the civil war. “That’s a 73 Cal pistol. It was used in the American Civil War,” he said. She smiled in satisfaction. At least she was not completely oblivious as far as firearms were concerned.

“That’s definitely a beaut. I can say that for sure,” she said as she double tapped on the screen to enlarge the photo.

“I’ll make a gun enthusiast out of you, Hayes,” he said as he looked into her eyes.

“I have been dodging my sister on that for most of my adult life. I’m not sure how successful you are going to be in that,” she said just as the captain announced over the system that the passengers should prepare for landing.

“I don’t know about that,” he said with a smile. “If you had told me a month ago that I would be traveling the world with a woman who would take my heart captive, I would have most probably laughed in your face. So you coming to see the other side of firearms like I do is definitely a possibility,” he said as he lifted the window blind as per the flight regulations.

She looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Take your heart captive?”

“Really? Out of all that, that’s all you got?”

“I can’t help it if some words you speak totally catch me off guard,” she shrugged. “You almost sound like an actor on some Shakespearean play or something.”    

He looked at her and took one of her hands in his.

“Guess that’s the effect you have on me,” he said before he looked out the window. “Say hello to Greece,” he said with a smile.

She looked out the window and a smile played on her lips. The perfect blue of the water and the white of the buildings was more than enough to send a warm tingle down her spine.