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Kenny was just getting ready to slam-dunk the little brat when a harried-looking woman came rushing up. “Thank you, Emma dear, for watching them for me. Reggie, Penelope, were you good for Miss Wells-Finch?”
“Perfect angels,” Lady Emma replied, her tone so sincere that Kenny choked on the sour apple Jelly Belly that had been lurking in the corner of his mouth.
Lady Emma ended up pounding him on the back. Unfortunately, she pounded like she pumped hands, and he swore to God he felt a rib crack. When he got his breath back, the Children of the Damned had disappeared, along with their mother.
“Well . . .” Lady Emma smiled at him. “Here we are.”
Kenny felt dizzy. Part of it might have been his busted rib, but most of it was trying to get his mind to make the connection between all that upper crust British cheer and a face that should have a streetlight shining down on it.
While Kenny was recovering, Emma made an assessment of her own. As the headmistress of St. Gertrude’s School for Girls for the past two years, in addition to having been a teacher there, as well as a St. Gert’s student from the time she was six, she had grown accustomed to sizing people up quickly. It only took her a moment to conclude that this All-American cowboy was exactly what she needed—a man with more good looks than character.
Crisp black hair curled from beneath the brim of a biscuit-colored Stetson that looked so at home on his head it might have been permanently attached. His navy T-shirt, printed with a Cadillac logo, displayed a more than respectable chest, and faded jeans molded to narrow hips and legs that were both lean and muscular. She noted the hand-tooled cowboy boots. They were nicely broken in, but she wasn’t surprised to see that they didn’t seem to have come close to a load of manure. He had a thin blade of a nose, strong cheekbones, a well-formed mouth, and straight white teeth. And his eyes. The color of wild hyacinths and marsh violets. Outrageous for a man to have eyes like that.
Her cursory inspection also told her everything she needed to know about his character. She saw indolence in his slouching posture, arrogance in the angle of his head, and the flicker of something unmistakably carnal in those half-lidded marsh violet eyes.
She repressed a small shiver. “Let’s be off, then, Mr. Traveler. You’re a bit late, aren’t you? I do hope no one has taken my luggage.” She extended her carry-all for him to take, but she hit his chest instead. The Times fell out, along with the new biography of Sam Houston she’d been reading, and one of the chocolate bars her hips didn’t need, but which she enjoyed nonetheless.
She bent to pick everything up just as he took a step forward. Her straw brim bumped his knee, and her hat flew off to join th
e pile on the floor.
She set it back over her unruly curls. “Sorry.” She wasn’t normally clumsy, but she’d been so distracted by her troubles lately that her best friend, Penelope Briggs, told her she was in imminent danger of turning into one of those “dotty, dear things” so beloved by British mystery writers.
The idea of becoming a “dotty, dear thing” when she was barely thirty depressed her unbearably, so she didn’t let herself think about it. Besides, if everything went according to plan, that worry would disappear.
He didn’t help collect her possessions, nor did he offer to take her carry-all when she was done, but how much initiative could one expect from a man who had been born so physically blessed?
“Let’s be off, then.” She pointed the proper direction with her rolled umbrella.
She had nearly reached the end of the gate area before she realized he wasn’t following her. She turned to see what was wrong.
He was staring at her extended brolly. It was a perfectly ordinary brolly, and she couldn’t imagine why he seemed so mesmerized by it. Maybe he was more slow-witted than she’d originally thought.
“You . . . uh . . . always point the direction like that?” he asked.
She glanced down at her floral brolly and wondered what on earth he was talking about. “We need to go to luggage claim,” she explained patiently, jiggling the handle just a bit for emphasis.
“I know that.”
“Well, then?”
He developed a slightly dazed look. “Never mind.”
Once he began to move, she set off. Her gauzy skirt swirled around her legs, and a lock of hair blew across her cheek. She probably should have taken a few minutes to tidy up a bit before she’d got off the plane, but she’d been so busy entertaining the children who were seated across from her that she hadn’t thought of it.
“Mr. Traveler, it occurs to me . . .” She realized she was talking to herself.
She stopped, looked back, and spotted him gazing into the window of a souvenir shop. She stood patiently tapping her foot while she waited for him to join her.
He continued to stare into the window.
With a sigh, she marched back to join him. “Is something wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“We need to get my luggage.”
He looked up. “I was thinking I might like a new key chain.”
