“Is that… a problem for you?” Rhys asked a moment later, and Maisie realized she’d been too busy unaccountably exalting to give him any response.
“No! No, not at all,” she said quickly – and really, it wasn’t. Well, perhaps that was because she really didn’t know what itmeant. Perhaps there was some reason why it should be, and Rhys just hadn’t gotten around to telling her yet.
Maybe I should have thought of this before I invited him on a holiday with me…
“Uh, no,” she said again. “I guess I just… thought I’d dreamed it or something. But uh, no. No problem.”
If anything, it’s exciting.
She’d always known about her weakness for complicated men, even though it usually went against all her better judgment. She’d known this about herself ever since her first crush, way back at ten years of age, on the boy down the road named Norris Moreton who had collected snails and bugs and put them in a terrarium in order to ‘observe their ways’. Everyone else had thought he wascapital W Weird, but Maisie had found him charming.
Well, Maisie thought, at least with Rhys she didn’t have to worry about his bug collection escaping all over his bedroom.
Probably.
God. I am in so much trouble over this guy,she thought, as she watched him from the corner of her eye, the dawn light slipping through the loose, light brown curls of his hair.
But, she supposed, she’d only made her own life harder by deciding the best thing she could do was ask him to come on holidays with her. The questiondidremain, however:Why did he say yes?
“Which terminal do you need?” The taxi driver had turned down his morning talk radio for long enough to shout the question over his shoulder.
“Terminal Three,” Rhys replied smoothly.
Well, I’m glad someone knows what’s going on.
The taxi rolled to a stop and Maisie pulled out her ill-gotten credit card in a kind of daze, marveling at its sparkly gold color. She’d never had a fancy credit card before, and its shimmeringsurface almost seemed to screamBe profligate with me. Use me to acquire all your heart’s desires.
No!she told herself hurriedly. She didn’t want to get a taste for the high life that she wouldn’t be able to maintain after this little fairy-tale interlude.
And this is probably not the world’s most squeaky-clean card,she quickly added.
The lifestyles of the rich and famous weren’t really for her, anyway. She just wanted a nice holiday. Maybe a little bit of a splurge on some fruity drinks and a kayaking trip.
… Okay, and maybe some clothes. Like, any clothes. She thought mournfully of her carefully-packed suitcase, still sitting there in her apartment. It hadn’t made sense to try to get back there, given the early flight and how much sleep she’dthoughtshe was going to get, but itdidleave her in the situation she was in now, which was that she was heading into the airport in her day-old kangaroo-patterned scrubs without so much as a jacket in her possession, let alone a suitcase full of holiday essentials.
Do I stink? Oh God, I bet I stink.
She sniffed surreptitiously at her armpits as they hurried into the terminal, feeling hyper-aware of Rhys at her side, and tried to determine just how bad the situation was. There were a multitude of factors to consider.
Pro: She hadn’t actually gone to work, so she didn’t have to worry about being covered in a shift’s worth of bodily fluids.
Con: She’d ended up covered in Rhys’s bodily fluids.
Not like that!
… Sadly.
Pro: She’d gotten caught in the rain, so it was like the scrubs had gone through the wash. Kind of.
Close enough.
She decided not to interrogate herself too much further on the matter. Rhys hadn’t recoiled in horror from her stench, soshe was probably okay.He, of course, smeltfantastic, despite everything that had happened yesterday – just the right amount of manliness to be pleasant. Not that she was sniffing him. If she just happened to be in his general… zone, then it was hardly her fault if she could smell him, was it?
Still, it was a bit awkward all up. She was used to wandering around in public in her scrubs, but being at the airport made it weird… though the lack of any kind of luggage was what really tipped it over the edge into being unnerving. She felt almost naked, or like security were going to tackle her to the ground for suspicious behavior.
Rhys’s grim silence really wasn’t helping matters, either! She couldn’t get a read on what he was thinking at all, and it was making her go quiet with nerves in return.
Was she really about to go on a beach holiday with the hot griffin hunk of her dreams, a tied tongue, and no clothes?
