Headed for Trouble - By Suzanne Brockmann Page 0,82

love with their partners—partners who’d recently left for a war zone.

And that meant that Sam’s team’s major skill sets were eating, pooping, crying, and/or trying not to cry or otherwise appear worried so as not to frighten the super-short team members.

Of course, none of the short people were fooled by the badly hidden stress levels. Certainly not Emma, who was looking pale and was watching Sam glumly with those eyes that reminded him a little too much of her father.

Max had tried to hook up with Alyssa back when Sam was married to his first wife, Mary Lou, and … Or maybe it was Alyssa who’d tried to hook up with Max back when Max was trying desperately to keep his distance from Gina because she was nearly twenty years his junior.

It had all been a screaming charlie-foxtrot, and even though Sam had had no right to be jealous, considering he had been married to another woman at the time, seeing Max reminded him of that time of pain. And the fact that mini-Maxine here was the spitting image of her father was vaguely disturbing.

Yeah. This was going to be one long month—not counting the next apparently-destined-to-be-insanely-grueling twenty-four hours of ongoing travel.

“He said our flight’s been canceled due to …” Gina, who was possibly even paler than her daughter, repeated the heavily accented words uttered by the heavily accented man behind the World Airlines counter.

But it was Robin who understood the last part. “Weather,” he inserted. “The incoming flight from Tunisia’s been canceled—and that’s the plane we were supposed to leave on, so our flight’s been canceled, too. The next flight to Athens isn’t until … When?”

Gina leaned toward the counterman, her expression echoing Robin’s dismay. “I’m sorry, did you just say Thursday?”

It was Monday. Late Monday—almost Tuesday, but still, sadly, Monday.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Robin’s voice went up an octave.

In Sam’s arms, Ash started to cry. He may not have understood all of the words, but he clearly got the tone. “Shhh,” Sam soothed him, automatically starting to rock. “We’re okay. It’s okay, Little Bit. We’ll figure this out.”

Meanwhile, Robin was getting taller, looming over the airline representative. “Oh, no,” he said. “No, no. No.” He was an actor, and was usually low-key, but in times of stress he was capable of going big with the drama. “Thursday? No. No, no. We’ll take your next flight. Tonight. To anywhere.”

“Pakistan,” the man said. To give him credit, he was trying to be helpful. But he was mostly clueless.

“Except there.”

“Libya?”

Gina made a guttural sound of intense pain. “Or there,” Robin said.

“Tomorrow morning,” the man told them in the lilting accent that Sam was starting to be able to understand, “we have a flight to Roma. At … six-oh-five.”

That was only seven hours away. And Rome was marginally closer to Athens. Sam spoke up. “We’ll take it.”

“But … alas, my friends, only two seats are available.”

Of course. “Please find the next flight with the number of seats that we need.” Sam forced himself to be patient and to not jump over the counter and look at the computer monitor himself.

“Two-seventeen P.M.,” the man said but his triumph quickly faded. “But, oh, that takes you back to London.”

“London works,” Robin said. He looked from Gina to Sam. “I was there just a few months ago. I know a great hotel where they’ll upgrade us to the presidential suite. I mean, if it’s not occupied. We can take a few days to decompress, take showers please God, get some sleep and some real food, and then, when we’re human again, we can get a direct flight to Athens.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Sam said.

“But we’ll need to get our luggage now,” Gina chimed in, “and the name of a safe hotel near this airport, where we can spend the night.”

Sam shook his head. “I know it’s not ideal,” he told her, “but it’s best if we just hunkered down—”

Gina was already shaking her head.

Sam lowered his voice, leaned toward her. “Gina, I know it’s not going to be easy to—”

“Oh, God.” Gina pivoted and thrust Mikey at Robin. “Take him, take him, take him. Emma, stay with Robin and Sam!”

As they all watched—Counterman was wide-eyed, too—Gina bolted for the ladies’ room. Halfway there, she realized she wasn’t going to make it, so she veered toward a trash can and …

A group of about a half a dozen monks had been walking serenely past, but now they all did a very sharp about-face