My Favorite Souvenir(42)
“I don’t know. I guess I’m starting to know you. We’ve spent every waking minute together for days.”
“Can you stay here with me for a bit?”
He didn’t immediately answer. “Yeah. Of course. I’ll stay on the floor.”
“No. This bed is big enough. We’re both adults. We can handle it.”
As soon as he laid next to me, I started to feel like something was brewing. Given how close we’d come to kissing earlier, that was a safe assumption. As much as I needed him here in order to be able to sleep, I knew if I slept next to him I would end up in his arms. And then he would end up inside me.
I flipped around so my head faced the foot of the bed. If I turned my head now, I only saw his big feet. Since I was short and my legs didn’t reach the top of the bed, the only thing he’d see if he turned his head to kiss me was an empty space.
? ? ?
The following morning, Milo and I got dressed in our respective rooms and prepared to hit the road.
It seemed Wyatt was a late sleeper, because he was nowhere to be found when we ventured downstairs.
“I say we grab coffee and breakfast on the road and skip it here. At this rate, it’ll be noon by the time we get out of this place.”
“Yeah. That’s a good idea,” I agreed.
We were just about to head out when Milo’s expression changed. He bent down to pick something up off the carpet. “Holy shit.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a piece of hair. But it’s the same color as yours.”
I approached to examine it. That wasn’t just a random piece of hair. It was my hair.
Milo raced to the set of apothecary drawers where Wyatt had kept the Shirley Temple hair sample. He opened every drawer and searched through various Ziploc bags.
He finally lifted one and said, “Bingo.”
It was labeled, Jessica Rabbit and had yesterday’s date on it. Apparently, Wyatt must have thought I resembled that fictional redhead from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
“I think I know who entered your room last night.”
Frantically, I ran my fingers through my hair in search of the spot where strands were missing. It wasn’t a very big chunk so I might never figure it out.
Milo put the bag of my hair in his pocket as we rushed out of the house together.
He started the car, and we took off down the road.
As he drove, he lifted the baggie from his jacket pocket. “I guess we have our souvenir from Bumford.”
Chapter 14
* * *
Hazel
“Hazel, I’m so sorry!”
My face scrunched up. No name had come up on my cellphone’s caller ID, so I wasn’t even positive who was apologizing.
“Felicity?”
“Yes.”
“What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
I’d taken over behind the wheel for a few hours so Milo could grab a nap. Apparently, once he’d joined me in my bed last night, he’d had trouble falling back asleep. He’d been out cold in the passenger seat for about a half hour now. But he blinked his eyes open and looked over at me on the phone.
“I’m in the hospital,” Felicity said.
“The hospital? What happened?”
Seeing the look of concern on Milo’s face, I covered the phone and whispered, “It’s my friend back home. I’m going to pull over to talk to her. I don’t like driving and talking on the phone.” I put my blinker on and moved into the right lane.
“I’m so sorry to bother you on your trip,” Felicity said. “But I had a car accident.”
“Oh no. Are you alright?”
“I’m okay now. It happened last night. Some jerk blew a stop sign and hit the passenger side of my car. My Toyota took the brunt of the impact, but, unfortunately, I took the brunt of the airbag. My husband is always telling me I sit too close to the steering wheel and it’s dangerous. But I’m so short that it’s hard to sit too far back. Well, turns out he was right, and I should have tried harder. I fractured my neck and broke my wrist—all from the airbag.”
After getting off at the next exit, I pulled over to the side of the road and put the car into park. “Oh my God! A broken neck!”
“The doctors said I’m lucky I’m not paralyzed.”
“Wow, Felicity. I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“But I feel awful. Even though I’ll probably only be in the hospital another night or two for observation, between my neck being in a collar for who knows how long and my right wrist being in a cast, there’s no way I’m going to be able to cover the upcoming shoots for you. I feel terrible about it.”
“Of course you can’t. Don’t even think about it. That should be the furthest thing from your mind right now. What’s important is that you’re okay, and you get the proper rest and treatment you need. I’m so sorry this happened.”
“Thank you. But listen, yet another doctor just walked in, so I have to run.”
“Go. Good luck. I’ll call and check on you in a day or two. I hope everything goes well.”
When I hung up, Milo was looking at me, waiting to be filled in. I shook my head. “That was my friend Felicity. She was in car accident and fractured her neck and wrist.”