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A huge man in a skycap uniform stood there, blocking my path.
“Mr. Williams,” the new agent said. “I’m Miss Davina Perth. Would you like to take Mrs. Williams to a private room?”
CHAPTER8
Mandy
Everything seemed to happen at the same time. Somehow, maybe as a way to distract myself, I noticed that Heather Franklin had turned her attention to me and the skycap… that her eyes had gone wide… that she had started to get up, not to run away in solidarity with me but in order to take her husband’s hand and to let him lead her away.
All the while as I watched the Franklins, my own body responded to my fight-or-flight impulse. I tried to dodge around the enormous skycap and make my break for it.
I heard Rick say, with regret in his voice, “I think that’s probably a good idea.”
I felt the iron-bar arms of the skycap catch me, and I thought,This guy is just as strong as Rick.Which said a lot, because my husband could lift a lawn mower onto a truck as if it weighed nothing. Rick’s muscles weren’t really showy—but the sight of him with his shirt off took my breath away.
Why the hell am I thinking about Rick’s body when I should be thinking about the guy who’s just picked me up and started to carry me in the same direction the Franklins are going?
“You can’t!” I yelled, forgetting to care about making a scene. “Put me… put…”
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” said the man’s gravelly voice in my ear. “I’ll put you down if you tell me you want to walk where your husband tells you to go.”
“You… you can’t!” I tried again.
Rick had stood up.
“Dee,” he said, “I can. They can. Let’s go to the private room.”
I struggled against the grip of the skycap, another image of Rick’s bare chest flashing through my mind. My body went suddenly slack as I realized that part of me wanted it to be my husband carrying me toward the row of doors at the side of the lounge. I didn’t wantnotto be taken there by force; in my mind, Rick himself manhandled me like a sack of potatoes.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
“I’ll walk!” I hissed.
The skycap stopped moving and put me on my feet. Miss Haddon had opened a door for the Franklins. John and Heather walked side by side toward it, his hand—to my horror—on her bottom, as if to remind her what would happen in the special room.
Miss Perth, the new agent who had asked Rick if he wanted to take me to a private room, had almost reached another of the doors. She had her ID card out, extending it toward the lock. The red light on the lock went green.
The skycap had taken a step back. Rick came up beside me.
“Go ahead, Dee,” he said, his voice grave. I turned my face over my shoulder to look at him, desperate to communicate but utterly unable to put into words any of the troubling thoughts and feelings roiling inside my head. I felt my brow crease hard as I took my lower lip between my teeth.
Rick put his hand on my backside. I took a little gasping breath at the sensation. Blood rushed into my cheeks. I turned back to the doors so he wouldn’t see my blush, though I knew how futile that effort must be. The door of the Franklins’ private room closed behind them, leaving Miss Haddon outside. I saw her turn to survey the rest of the lounge, where the remaining two couples had clearly decided to ignore what had befallen Mrs. Heather Franklin and Mrs. Amanda Williams.
Miss Perth had opened the door. My feet started walking toward it, because though my knees felt terribly wobbly, my body seemed to have recognized that the only bearable course open to me involved getting out of sight of the other couples as quickly as possible.
“Mr. Williams, do you want Bill here’s help in the room?” the agent inquired.
“No, thanks,” Rick said. “I can handle it.”
“Oh, God,” I whispered, as I took the remaining steps, my husband’s hand still on my bottom, giving me the same humiliating reminder John Franklin had given his young wife.
This can’t be happening.
“There’s a call button in the room just in case,” Miss Perth said. “You’ve got half an hour before your flight’s called, so you probably don’t want to lose track of time. We’ll buzz you on the intercom when that’s down to fifteen minutes.”
Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I stepped inside the little room. When I saw how it was furnished, my heart rate rose and my breathing sped up, panting inhalations coming in and out of my lips so quickly that I thought I might hyperventilate.
A queen-sized bed. A rail-back chair. A sink with a mirrored medicine cabinet over it.
