Melanie's head was spinning.
She took a deep breath to steady herself.
"How do you do?" She said.
Alex Drummond Jr. let out a belly laugh that almost knocked her down.
"Where did you get this one, Mitch?" He said.
Mitch looked very uncomfortable for a change and even though Mr. Hot Young Billionaire Alex Drummond was putting her off balance, it was a real pleasure to see Mitch squirm. Normally he was always so cocksure, but next to Alex Drummond, he was very far from being the alpha male in the room. He nervously brushed his sandy brown hair out of his eyes.
"Melanie is really an excellent employee." He said with an awkward formality that brought a quite smile to her face.
Eat it two-timer. She thought.
"Is she coming on the flight with us?"
What? So this is why they had pulled her from the Los Angeles to Columbus, Ohio route: to be a personal flight attendant to Mr. Alex Drummond Jr.
"Apparently so." Mitch said. He seemed so unsure of himself in his boss's presence that Melanie hardly recognized him. "I just got the news myself about fifteen minutes ago."
"Well, I for one couldn't be more pleased." The tall billionaire smiled charmingly. "Aren't I glad I was nice to you now? Imagine if I'd been rude and then it turned out I am in your hands for the next nine hours en route to Tahiti."
Melanie couldn't hide her smile now. She had a lot of flight time behind her and had been all over the world in the last six years, but rarely had her itineraries taken her to the exotic islands of the South Pacific. She had always dreamed of visiting Tahiti ever since she had seen Gauguin's famous pictures in one of her mother's big color art books as a little girl.
"Have you been to Tahiti before?" He asked as though he were talking about a neighborhood diner down the block.
"No, I haven't." Melanie tried to sound calm but inwardly she was exulting in the opportunity. "I've always wanted to go though."
"You're going to love it." He said. "I go there all time to just get away and leave the world behind." It somehow didn't sound like bragging when he said it. Obviously for someone as rich as him, it was perfectly normal to fly regularly to somewhere as outrageously expensive and exotic as Tahiti.
Alex turned to the groveling Mitch again.
"Is her schedule clear for the next ten days?" He asked.
Her heart sank. She needed to work all the routes and she could to have a hope of making that payment to her mother's nursing home. Then she had counted on working part-time shifts on her days off at a diner near to where she lived to make up as much of the shortfall as she could. But now she would be stuck. To make matters even worse her roommate had moved out leaving her high and dry with the rent this month and she didn't even have money to cover this month's rent as it was.