My head throbbed now, causing me to flinch back when she ran up and reached for my head. “Don’t,” I said, more roughly than I’d intended, especially when I saw the hurt in her face. I grabbed her wrist and continued. “Not because I don’t want you invading my space. My head hurts. I don’t want it touched.”
“Oh,” she said, relaxing, and pulled a couple of tissues from between her breasts. “How about if I dab up the blood running down your cheek? I won’t come near the cut. What happened to you?”
I let her dab at my face, flinching when she got close to the wound. “My head hit the dash. I’m sure it looks worse than it is.”
“You’d better see a doctor anyway.”
“Perhaps.”
5:43 a.m.
Fell asleep last night writing up the day’s adventures. No time to add to it now. Must remember to pick up the story later.
Paulina Rostakova’s Adventures
JULY 24
6:22 p.m.
Room 28 of local motel somewhere in Wyoming
Well! So much has happened in the last couple of days. I haven’t had time to write it all down, but I’m going to catch up now while I’m waiting for Dixon.
The most interesting was the day that Dixon and I got together in his hotel room (the second day of the race) when I was all sorts of conflicted. Not for myself, but for him. He said it wasn’t a problem, us being all itch-scratchy with each other, but I can’t help but wonder if he’s one of those men who holds on to grieving to protect themselves from ever being hurt again.
I wanted to talk to him about that, but we had to get down to the dinner that night, so instead I dashed across the hall into my room and took a shower. I was late to the dinner and could see that Dixon was busy with other people, so I sat with Melody. Louise and two of the Italian team joined us almost immediately.
“How did your first day go?” Luca asked when Louise stopped hogging all the conversation. “You had the flat tire, yes?”
“It was a bit hairy because I was worried the bolts would come off, but fine otherwise.”
“Hairy?” he asked, his face screwing up.
“Sorry. In that circumstance it means difficult. How did your day go before your engine crisis?”
He shrugged. “Carlo, he wants to drive all the time, but he is bad at it. Francesco misses his wife, and talks to her on the phone the whole day. Me, I don’t like driving the old car, but it is part of the day, so I do it.”
“Sounds like there are personality clashes in more than just our car,” I said, my eyes on Louise where she was leaning over while talking to Carlo, giving him the opportunity to see down her sleeveless shirt. “We did have some excitement when Roger told us about a gas station holdup. We lit out after the robbers and caught up with them, but they ditched their car and bolted before we could get to them. It was all very thrilling, if slightly anticlimactic at the end.”
“Ah, yes, I heard about that. Carlo, he says that the TV star will leave the show because it wasn’t him that ran the robbers off the road, but Fra and I don’t think he will leave. He likes that camera much, that one.”
“Fra?” I asked; then it clicked. “Oh, Francesco. I’m kind of in your camp on that—he’s like someone else I could mention, and very caught up with who has the maximum exposure on camera.”
I refrained from looking at Louise, who was, at this moment, scanning the room to see if anyone had a live camera (they didn’t).
“It is so. You have a husband?”
I was a bit startled by the change of subject. “No, I don’t.”
“Boyfriend? Girlfriend?”
I hesitated for a couple of seconds. “No boyfriend or girlfriend.”
“Good.” He flashed extremely white teeth at me in abroad smile. “We go to bed, then? I like the ladies with plumpness.”
I sat up straight, sucking in my gut as I did so, then immediately released it, because I’d be damned if I let some man’s idea of what women should look like matter to me. “I beg your pardon?” I said stiffly.
He made a gesture in the breast region. “Plumpness. Is not the word? I like women with bodies like in the paintings of Raphael, yes?”
