In a few minutes they would be sitting in a cab—or maybe he had an extraordinary car—but either way, they would be laughing about her introduction to the city. She could picture those firm, sensual lips tilted with laughter, the dark eyes sparking, and that picture made a very improper shiver run up and down her spine.
She craned her neck to see, but the crowds had swallowed up both Jamie and the thief making off with her suitcase.
Seconds ticked by, and then minutes.
Finally, she saw Jamie coming back through the crowds toward her. She leaped to her feet but her relief at seeing the only face she knew in all of New York was short-lived.
His hands were empty and there was a look like thunder on his handsome face. He was breathing hard.
Reality collided with fantasy. As he approached her, he loosened his tie with one hand, and held his phone to his ear with the other. Obviously he was talking to the police or airport security.
It occurred to Jessica that instead of mooning about, making up stories, she should have been calling the authorities. They could have been setting up traps at the exits, watching security cameras...
Except her phone was in her purse.
He ended his call as he came back to her. “I’m sorry,” he said, running an agitated hand through the multicolored gray silk of his hair. “He’s obviously very skilled at this. The Artful Dodger. I couldn’t catch him. I lost him in the crowds. He probably has some favorite getaway route, and some little hole he ducks into.”
She could feel the tiniest prick of impending tears behind her eyes. She would not be a country bumpkin in front of this super sophisticated suave man. She would not! But the enormity of what had happened was hitting her. Hard.
It wasn’t an adventure. It was a catastrophe. Trust her to mix the two things up!
“I called the police,” Jamie said, his voice soothing, despite the anger on his face. “Unfortunately, there are nearly two hundred claims a day of baggage theft at this airport.”
“Two hundred thefts a day?” she gasped. So much for a team of people scanning the exits and the security cameras in search of her stolen items.
“Most of the stuff is grabbed from the luggage carousels, but there’s been quite a sophisticated ring operating lately. Teams. One distracts, one grabs the goods.”
He lifted an elegant shoulder in apology.
“In Timber Falls,” she said, “we probably don’t have two dozen thefts in a whole year. I’ve had two shoplifting incidents in the four years that I’ve had had my bookstore. Poor Mrs. Webber, who was getting dementia, and Sonny McGill, a teenage boy who had been going through a rebel-without-a-cause phase.”
She realized she was babbling nervously. She realized she had probably revealed all kinds of things about her life that he would find quaint and amusing.
On the other hand, maybe she didn’t have to say a word to reveal secrets about herself. The theft team had obviously targeted her as hopelessly small-town from the minute she had come out those doors.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. The genuine distress in his voice made the cold, hard reality of what she was dealing with intensify.
“Did they peg me as naive?” she asked softly.
“Hey, don’t say that as if it’s somehow your fault you were robbed. Honestly, I feel as if I should have twigged in on Debbie’s over-the-top performance.” He turned his attention back to his phone. “As I suspected. No Gidgets Widgets Convention in New York this weekend.” He scowled as he scrolled. “No Gidgets Widgets, period.”
“Too bad you didn’t keep the business card,” she said forlornly.
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Fingerprints.”
“Uh, yeah, I somehow doubt this crime would have rated fingerprinting. Sorry. Apparently, we can file a police report online, though. And we need to get your credit cards looked after. Your phone plan canceled.”
We. Because she no longer had a computer. It felt somehow insulting that the crime that had been committed against her did not even warrant a face-to-face visit with authorities. His suggestions for dealing with practicalities made her face the grim truth of the matter.
“I’m not getting my things back, am I?”
He looked uncomfortable. “Um—
The prick of tears intensified behind her eyes. “I don’t have my phone,” she stammered. “And no cash. No clothes.”
It occurred to her that her reliance on this formidable specimen of a man, a person she barely knew, and her potential boss, was 100 percent.
It was shocking, and yet her mind insisted on itemizing things of no importance at all.
No makeup. No perfume. No favorite shampoo. No pink frosted nail polish. No novel to escape into.
She glanced one more time at the Customs and Immigration door she had exited from. Even if she could go back through there, she needed proper documentation to go anywhere.
“My passport,” she whispered. “How am I going to get home? How do I go about replacing it?”
Jessica realized she was trapped in New York City. With Jamie Gilbert-Cooper.
Such a dreadful, dreadful mistake to come here.
Just like her ill-advised adventure to Copenhagen.
The noise and activity around her seemed to rise up to almost unbearable levels: the intercom warning people not to leave their luggage unattended, a shout of laughter, the constant hum of busy people moving.
Jessica suddenly longed for the comfort of Timber Falls: for her charming bookstore on Main Street, and for her little cottage in her mom
