Her shoulders rotated beneath his light touch. “Fine. But not because I’m unhinged. I assure you my hinges are all present and accounted for. I’m only acting how anyone would act under these circumstances.”
Nate found that debatable. But instead of arguing, he led her to the customer service counter. Great. Same Ms. Doing My Best employee from the other day.
“Hi, Vivi. We’re here to inquire about the status of my lost luggage,” Nate said when they approached the counter.
“Some veryimportantlost luggage,” McKenna said, elbowing in front of him.
“I’ve got this,” Nate murmured, sliding his foot in front of her.
“If you’ve got this, then you wouldn’t have lost this in the first place,” she murmured, wedging her hip against his.
“Need I remind you this wasn’t my fault,” he said, a little less murmur this time.
“Well, it certainly wasn’tmyfault,” McKenna said without a hint of murmur.
“You hid a ring in my pants after I specifically told you not to, so...”
“Excuse me, but this is the customer service desk, not the lovers’ spat desk,” Vivi said. “If you have a customer-related issue, step forward. If not, go away.”
McKenna stepped forward. “We need to know the status of his missing luggage. Have you found it or not?”
“And for the record,” Nate added, “that was acasual acquaintancespat. We are nothing remotely close to being lovers.”
“Ew, gross, never,” said McKenna.
“Not sure we needed the ‘Ew, gross,’ to make a point there,” said Nate.
“Just don’t want you getting ideas,” said McKenna.
“Says the woman constantly trying to kiss me,” said Nate, giving Vivi aCan you believe this girl?look.
“Can we just focus on the luggage? Where is it? What’s the update?” McKenna waved a hand at Vivi.
“Ma’am,” said Vivi in the tone of voice that suggested she was two seconds away from calling something stronger than a Code Hot Potato, “as I’ve already stated to yourcasual acquaintancehere on multiple occasions, if we’d located his missing luggage, we wouldn’t keep it a secret. He’d be the first to know.”
“See?” Nate grabbed McKenna’s hand. “They’re still working on it. Let’s go.” Nate started to turn, but McKenna tugged her hand free.
“How exactly are you working on it? I’ve heard the first twenty-four hours are critical when it comes to missing luggage, and now it’s been—” She glanced at her watch. “Close to seventy-two. What sort of protocol are you following?”
“Same protocol we always follow in this situation,” said Vivi. “First, we put together a group of volunteers to do a grid search. Then we have them spread out about twenty feet apart from each other with lanterns and tell them to start walking until they discover something.”
“Really?” McKenna said.
“No! It’s luggage, not a missing child. Go home. We’ll call you if we ever track it down.”
“If? I’m sorry,if?”
Nate wrapped an arm around McKenna’s waist, tugging her toward the exit. “There’s nothing else we can do. That’s just how it is, okay?”
“Easy for you to say.” McKenna twisted and jabbed him in the chest with her pointer finger. “Not your family’s legacy that went missing, is it?”
“Ma’am, we do not allow jabbing inside the walls of our airport.”
“Hey, I had something valuable inside that luggage too,” said Nate as he poked McKenna in the shoulder. “Something I’d be crushed to lose.”
“No poking either, sir.”
“Why couldn’t you have just moved away from the bench?” McKenna jabbed his chest.
