Jane and Austen by Stephanie Fowers Read Free Book Online Page B

and tried to wrestle Mary’s plastic-covered bag from my hand. “No,” I said. “You lost out on the opportunity to be a gentleman. Now it’s my turn . . .”
    “To be a gentleman?”
    “At least my mother raised one.”
    “Give me the bags.” He sounded stern this time.
    No, I was a strong, independent woman, and I didn’t need a man who didn’t need me. “Austen, if you really want to help, you can . . . guard the front desk. Help me out by taking keys.”
    “You mean be your assistant?”
    “If it isn’t too lowly? Being the slave of a slave?”
    I dropped the bags and my fingers fumbled behind me until they found the doorknob. Though he guffawed, he also looked torn. He had just told Taylor that he had more important things to do than to help me, except I happened to know that he wanted to steal me off to the beach instead. I tottered through the door into the hallway, hoping it didn’t look like the handles from the luggage were digging holes into my hands. Austen retreated to the counter, taking one last backwards glance at me and shaking his head in frustration. I planned to leave him there all day if I could swing it.
    Dragging the bags through the hallway to the backdoor, I readjusted them in my hands. There was no golf cart in sight and I’d have to take them through two courtyards to get them to Mary’s and Bertie’s bungalows. After the first two steps, I ran into an archway. I grunted and scrambled past it only to knock my shoulder against the rough stucco wall of the Rosing’s house. I blindly felt my way through the first courtyard, running into anything hard I could find so that by the time I reached the first bungalow, I was aching and out of breath. I dropped the luggage onto the steps, hearing Mary’s complaints inside the Uppercross. Her door was open in the back and she was shouting over to Bertie whether the former runway model liked it or not.
    “It is freezing in my place.” Mary gave a loud sniff. “My nose is cold. Feel it.”
    “I’d rather not,” was Bertie’s clipped reply.
    I stretched out my fingers to get some feeling back in them and hauled up the luggage again, staggering over the shared patio of the two bungalows.
    “Oh, there you are.” Bertie stepped from her door, the bright sunlight outside making her silhouette look like a paper doll turned sidewise. Mary also came out, wiping at her nose with a wilted tissue—her nose wasn’t dripping at all. I dropped Mary’s plastic-covered bag off first in her living room. She eagerly ripped off the plastic from it, searching through the contents until she found a thermometer. “I’m sure I have a temperature. My brain is burning up!”
    Mary was making a war zone out of the Uppercross Bungalow by taking out a ton of plastic bags from her suitcase and throwing them around the room. “I can’t afford waterproof luggage,” she said. “I’m sure Taylor’s husband will give her such things after they’re married. He’s rich. I won’t mind taking a cruise with them if they paid for it,” her voice came in huffs through her exertions as she spread the plastic bags over her bed and searched around the mattress perimeter with shaking hands. “You don’t have bedbugs, do you? Horrible bloodsucking things—I saw a documentary. It would just be my luck to get them.”
    I edged past her to Bertie’s place in the Southerton Bungalow and dropped the designer luggage onto the plush carpet. Bertie didn’t spare them a glance. She crossed her arms like the crossbones on a pirate flag. “My cutie needs some exercise. Please take her, J.”
    J?
    Before I knew it, the scrawny, white teddy bear was in my hands, and Bertie had slammed her door behind me. The puppy was smaller than my hand and wore a red-and-white-striped onesie. What was I going to do with the little rat-bear? She licked my arm with a tiny pink tongue, and my heart melted. I could always add her to the collection of stuffed animals in Mister’s kitty