âI should have known that a guy like you wouldnât be my date. I donât know where my head was.â Scarlett looked at Luke and shook her head.
Now, what was that supposed to mean?
She stood up before he could ask. âListen, I am really sorry about messing things up here. Take me back to the island and Iâll get out of your hair. You can track down your real contact and get back to your mission.â
âUhâ¦Scarlett, I really donât know how to tell you this but, see, you went through security with me. You might not be my contact, but you are my fiancée. At least for the next three days. I absolutely cannot let you walk out of here.â
How could she have lost her sisterâs wedding dress?
Scarlett Hanson closed her eyes, willing herself not to leap across the customer service counter of AirMexico airlines and throttle the petite brunette airline representative in her cute light blue uniform and pigtails, typing a description of Scarlettâs lost âsuitcaseâ into her computer.
âItâs not in a suitcase,â Scarlett repeated. âItâs a black, zippered hanging bag, with a pink ribbon on the handle, and please, please, my sister will kill me if you canât find it.â Scarlett spread her sweaty hands on the cool smooth counter, aware of the line forming behind her. The rest of the passengers on Flight 2137 had already cleared customs, the officers at the customs desks now resuming conversations with their colleagues while the next bunch of tourists from the icy north herded through passport control. Beyond the glass doors, she spotted palm trees and cabbies in Hawaiian shirts, shorts and flip-flops, peddling freedom.
âContents?â
âItâs a wedding dress!â Oh, she hadnât meant to yell, but thatâs what sixteen hours of travel on nothing more than a bag of peanuts and a Diet Coke did. It didnât help that sheâd had about six hoursâ notice before that to block out vacation time at her temp agency, pack, pick up her sisterâs dressâas well as her maid-of-honor dressâfrom a Nicollet Mall boutique in Minneapolis and catch her flight.
She just needed to calm down. Everything was going to be just fine. Hadnât her flight made it out before the storms across the nation had grounded other flights? If that wasnât divine providenceâallowing her to make it onto the overbooked connection in Houstonâthen she didnât know what was.
See, just because she felt as if God had forgotten her didnât mean it was true. He did care about her, and she didnât have to be a high-maintenance, high-stress, center-of-the-world diva like Bridgett to prove it.
Although, having her sisterâs dress suddenly appear might prove Godâs attention to the details.
âAre you sure the bag isnât listed on the manifest?â She wanted to bang her head on the counter. Why hadnât she carried her sisterâs dress on the plane instead of checking it?
Or better, why hadnât Scarlett just let her sisterâs frantic phone call go to voice mail two days ago?
Maybe because, after the fiasco at the engagement party, she just wanted to make things right.
Scarlettâs feet had begun to sweat in her Uggs. She should have left her ski jacket in the parking garage at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. Please let her have remembered her swimsuitâalthough knowing Bridgett, the bride wouldnât have scheduled beach time. Just lots of itâs-all-about-Bridgett time.
Scarlett shed the jacket and shoved it into the expandable pocket of her carry-on bag.
âOh, I found it!â Pigtails peered at the screen, squinting. âItâsâoh, noâ¦â
Scarlett gripped the counter, leaning forward, hoping for a glimpse of the screen. âWhatâs âoh, noâ?â
âItâs inâ¦Detroit.â
Detroit. Of course it was.
Maybe it wasnât too late to catch a return flight back to the States.
âWe can have it here by tomorrow, probably, Saturday at the latest.â
âSheâs getting married Saturday morning.â