Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) by Blair Bancroft Read Free Book Online Page B

Arendsens, whom I’d never met, but Arlan Trevellyan, slithering owner of Personal Genie, one of Fantascapes’ rivals. He’s based in Toronto, and if I jumped to instant conclusions about what he was doing in Cuzco, it was no one’s fault but his.
    Arlan saw me and dashed over, oozing a greeting. “Laine, darling, imagine meeting you here!” He embraced me in a cloud of sickeningly sweet men’s cologne. I gritted my teeth and oozed right back. Arlan is a smarmy type, who, I suspect, swings AC-DC. If you don’t know him well, it’s easy to miss that he has the instincts of a piranha and the ethics of an inside trader. I was willing to bet he was guilty of swinging the bolas in some kind of a twisted joke that had come a trifle closer to me than planned . Hey, Laine, welcome to Cuzco!
    Light dawned. Arlan was likely responsible for the Arendsens’ troubles, from the airplane in Nazca to the canceled permit for the Inca Trail. He denied it, of course.
    He’d heard about the Arendsen’s problems, he admitted, unctuously sympathetic. I wanted to drop-kick him all the way to the bar. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t fit the Fantascapes image. I returned his false smile with a smirk of my own, as if I knew something he didn’t, and enjoyed his puzzled frown as I waved bye-bye. For a man who seems to be such a dim bulb, I’d often wondered how Arlan could think up so many ways to cause trouble.
    A half hour later I joined Max and Hildy Arendsen in the hotel dining room. My lingering headache was more likely the result of my brain’s whirling speculations than Cuzco’s elevated position on the Andes plateau. I was Laine Halliday, on-site rep for Fantascapes, and I would grovel and smile and grovel as much as it took to smooth the ragged edges of Arendsen’s trip and nudge them back into the world where dreams were fulfilled. To do so, I was even authorized to offer what I considered a shockingly large refund. But Dad had decreed, and I’d comply. Glitches were not allowed, and the Arendsens had been beset by two of them.
    Wait ’til Dad heard about the cancellation. And the bolas . I’d like to keep the thunk-splat to myself, but professional had been drummed into me for years, which meant I didn’t hold back what might be important information from the Boss. Still . . . Dad was so overprotective that twenty-seven-years-old or not, I’d likely be grounded ’til the next millennium. And who knew, besides me and the guy who threw it? It wasn’t as if he’d meant to kill me . . .
    Max and Hildy Arendsen were typical Fantascapes clients. He, a self-made multi-millionaire—the manufacturer of pipe in every size and shape, as I recalled; she, the woman he’d married on the way up. No trophy wife, but a solid salt-of-the-earth mid-Westerner who had hired us to arrange her husband’s dream trip for a fiftieth birthday present. All she knew about the Nazca lines was that there were people who thought E.T.s made them. And to Hildy Arendsen, Machu Picchu was as fictional as Shangri-la. But that’s what Max wanted to see, and that’s what Max was going to get. Even if she had to suffer through every boring, incomprehensible minute of it.
    Hildy had contacted us through our web site, with all details handled by phone, mostly by Karen, my mother. Mom’s the one who suggested adding the Inca Trail. So Hildy had gulped, and said, “Hey, why not?”
    And now here they were, far from home, depending on me to come through with their fantasy, as planned. The maitre d’ pulled out a chair for me, bowed himself away. Max was what you’d expect of a successful exec. Bright, confidant, attractive. And in his case, well-built, even if his salt and pepper hair was thinning a bit on top. (A thorough physical was a requirement before we book our clients on a four-day walk that includes a pass at 14,000 feet.) Hildy, though, was a surprise. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this nicely put-together package that looked