Just My Luck (Escape to New Zealand #5)

by Rosalind James

  “I can’t help it. I don’t see why people have the right to take kids like that out in public and make everyone else uncomfortable. They should get a babysitter or something, don’t you think?”

  “No,” she said, stepping out from the circle of his arms. “I don’t. Maybe you just shouldn’t look, if it bothers you.”

  “Well,” he said with his best smile, “I guess I’ll just look at you. You look pretty good.” He took her hand, turned her to face him, then bent down and kissed her. “Still got that focus?” he asked. “I need you at a hundred percent. You can do that for me, can’t you?”

  “Yes. I said I would, and actually, I’m looking forward to it. The chance to take a real break, think about what I want to do next.”

  “Recharge your batteries, get a better attitude so you can go back and grab that promotion,” he suggested.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I guess.”

  Welcome to Paradise--Chapter 3

  Mira gave a final tug to her dress, checked that all her buttons were fastened one last time before following Scott into the hotel ballroom twenty minutes later. Two rows of chairs sat unoccupied save for one middle-aged couple, talking intently together. Several other people were standing around, looking at the cameramen, the twisting cables attached to huge light setups. Somehow, it made it all seem real. They hadn’t even started yet, and they were already being filmed.

  Mira smiled at a tall, broad, older African-American man who moved forward, his kind expression a contrast to his powerful body. “Hi,” he said. “Another brave soul taking the plunge, I see. Stanley Douglas.”

  “Mira Walker.” She offered a hand that he accepted, pressing it gently and quickly before releasing it. Clearly a man who knew his own strength, and was used to harnessing it. “And Scott Mitchell,” she added.

  “My son Calvin,” Stanley said, gesturing to a smaller, much leaner version of himself standing nearby, his expression less amiable than his father’s.

  “The token Black men,” Calvin said. “It’s just us and the Latinas, I guess.” He nodded to two women talking to an older couple nearby. “Minority Number Two.”

  “You think the four of us are the only people of color who applied?” his father asked. “And yet they selected us, us four individuals. Nobody’s asking you to represent your race, just like nobody’s asking Mira here to represent hers.”

  “Pop,” Calvin sighed. “You don’t really believe that.”

  “That’s how I choose to look at my time here,” his father corrected him. “I can’t be fussing about what anyone else thinks.”

  “Have you met the others?” Mira asked, uncomfortable with the topic.

  “Yeah.” Calvin raised his voice a bit, caught the eye of the woman and girl to his left. “Lupe and Maria-Elena Garcia, do I have it right? I’m trying to remember names.”

  “That’s right,” the woman said, coming forward to meet Mira and Scott. “I’m Lupe, and this is Maria-Elena, my daughter. I’m so excited,” she said, patting her considerable chest with her hand and laughing a bit at herself. “I can’t believe they chose us. I didn’t think we had a shot.”

  “Demographics,” Calvin began, then subsided at a warning glance from his father.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Mira heard Scott mutter. Turned to see what had incurred his displeasure now, and felt her breath catch.

  It was the two men from the coffee shop. She could see the moment when they caught sight of Scott, clearly surprised and not any more pleased than he was. Her own sudden shortness of breath had nothing to do with the potential awkwardness of the situation. Something about the dark, slightly tough look of them seemed to go straight to her . . . heart.

  “Who are they, do you know? Because they are, like, totally smokin’,” Maria-Elena said, sounding a bit breathless herself, brown eyes wide in her plump, pretty face.

  “And way too old for you,” her mother said.

  “Mommm,” Maria-Elena protested. They are not.”

  “They’ve got to be thirty, at least. Too old,” her mother repeated, to the accompaniment of an exasperated sigh and an eye-roll from her daughter.

  A door at the front of the room opened, interrupting whatever would have come next. Mira recognized the man who came through it instantly. Cliff Talmadge, the show’s host. Just as blond and surfer-handsome as she recalled him, and with a magnetism about him that drew the eye, but smaller than he appeared on television.

  “Hi, everyone,” Cliff said to the faces that quickly turned his way. “If you’ll take a seat, we’ll get started.”

  Scott steered Mira to the opposite side of the rows of chairs from the dark-haired men, next to the middle-aged couple who’d remained firmly planted there as the others had mingled.

  “Looks like we’re mostly here,” Cliff said, looking around. “Go see if you can round up the last two, would you?” he asked a young man hovering nearby who seemed to be some sort of production assistant. “Never mind. Here they come now.”

  Everyone turned to look behind them. The two young women certainly made an entrance. Blonde, tanned, and thin, they immediately made Mira feel frumpy. No question why these two had been chosen. They looked around, seeming not in the least discomfited at being the last to arrive, and immediately made a beeline toward the two dark-haired men, giving an almost identical flick to their hair as they took their seats.

  “So, now that we’re all here,” Cliff went on smoothly, “Welcome to America Alive: 1885.” A smattering of applause greeted his pronouncement. “We’re here to take you back into the nineteenth century. With a couple small differences. Because of course, they didn’t have these guys around then.” He gestured to the two cameramen, one of whom was filming him, the other with his lens pointed towards the group on the chairs. “Let me introduce Mike and Danny, our lead cameramen. They’re going to be your shadows, together with some other guys you’ll meet as we go along. I know it feels strange now, but trust me, within a few days you’ll have forgotten all about them. That’s their job, to be invisible. But anything you don’t want them to see . . . Well, you’d better not do it.”

  A nervous laugh or two, a murmured burst of conversation at that one. Cliff began to speak again, broke off at a hand raised in the audience by the man sitting next to Scott. “Yes?”

  “I’m sure I speak for all of us,” the man said, “when I ask why we were selected in groups of two. That’s never happened on America Alive before, as you know. I believe we’re all curious. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind enlightening us now.”

  “Ah,” Cliff answered good-humoredly. “That’d be telling, wouldn’t it? We’ve got to keep you guessing a little, and the audience too, now that we’re into our fifth season.”

  “When will we find out?” Scott asked abruptly, almost interrupting Cliff. “How we’re going to be divided, or whatever it is that you’re not telling us? How the game is going to be set up?”

  “We’ll get into all that later,” Cliff promised. “Right now, let’s have you get to know each other a bit. Maybe you two would like to start,” he said to the man who’d spoken first. “Just tell us your names, a few words about where you’re from and what you do, why you came on the show. Besides the million dollars, of course,” he added to another laugh.

  “Martin Deveraux,” the man, thin and fortyish, said.

  “And Arlene Filippi,” the heavier dark-haired woman next to him cut in. “We’re from Boston,” she went on. “We’re keenly interested in the negative impact that modern technology has on personal relationships and family dynamics. In fact, we’ve set up our own home as a technology-free zone, and we try to keep our children’s life simple too. No TV, no video games, no iPods,” she said proudly. “When we heard about this show, we felt it was the perfect chance to truly experience life as our great-grandparents lived it, and to model that simpler lifestyle for the rest of the country.”

  Mira heard a snort, and turned to her right to catch the devilishly dancing eye of
the man sitting beside her. He raised his eyebrows comically, and she had to fight the urge to giggle. But it was their turn now, and Scott was speaking.

  “I’m Scott Mitchell,” he said. “And this is my girlfriend, Grace Walker.”

  “Mira, actually,” she broke in. “I prefer Mira.”

  “I’m an attorney in Seattle,” Scott went on, “and . . . Mira,” he added after a pregnant pause, “works for a management consulting firm. I came on the show because I enjoy a challenge. And by that, I mean I enjoy winning. I’ll just warn everyone now,” he went on with a jocularity that, Mira thought with an inward squirm, probably didn’t deceive anybody, “that I’m a pretty fierce competitor, in and out of the courtroom. I’m in it to win it.”

  The introductions went on. The couple next to them were brother and sister, it turned out, Rachel and Kevin. Lupe and Maria-Elena, Stanley and Calvin, she’d already met. The blondes, Chelsea and Melody, were former college roommates (“sorority sisters, betcha anything,” Kevin murmured beside her, forcing her to suppress another giggle), and were currently “breaking into acting” in Los Angeles. And then the two dark-haired men. Mira leaned forward to get a better look as the taller one spoke.

  “Alec and Gabe Kincaid,” he said easily. “Brothers. Twin brothers, actually. San Francisco Bay Area, these days. I’m a computer geek. And Dr. McDreamy here,” he said, slapping his brother on the shoulder, “is the real deal. A real live doctor. Anybody want to break a leg or have a baby out here, Gabe’s your boy.”

  That had her sitting back in her seat with a thump. And the blondes leaning in a little closer as Gabe put up a hand in protest.

  “I’m not here as a doctor,” he said. “Let’s get that clear right up front. My malpractice insurer would kill me if I started doing anything medical out there. I’m sure there’s help standing by.” He gave Cliff a quick glance that was answered with a nod. “You get a blister, I’ll take a look. Anything worse, call for help.”

  Mira was still readjusting when the final couple began to introduce themselves, but looked up in surprise as she heard the woman give their names. Hank and Zara. Hank and Zara Carrington, to be exact. Wow. Her mouth formed the word as she exchanged a wide-eyed glance with her friendly neighbor.

  Although she hadn’t yet been born during their heyday, Mira had grown up listening to the sound of Hank and Zara’s smoothly intertwined voices on the folk rock albums her mother loved. She hadn’t recognized them by sight, of course. The photos on her mother’s CDs must have been taken thirty-five or forty years earlier. Zara’s trademark long hair shone silver now, pulled back from her thin face in a braid nearly as long as Mira’s own. Beaded silver earrings drew attention to a long, graceful neck, and her body still looked lean and strong. Her face might be more weathered than it had been in her heyday, but her dark eyes shone with the same luminous glow, the nose and chin still faced the world with determination, and the laugh lines at the corners of her mouth gave mute evidence of her habitual outlook.

  Hank’s face was equally lived-in. No plastic surgery for either of those too, Mira thought, and liked them the better for it. He was lean and gray as well, his features large and not handsome, but he shared the same sharpness of eye and quirk to the corners of his mouth as his wife and longtime partner. Mira hoped that, however this show was going to be arranged, she’d get to spend some time with the two of them. Because that looked like it would be a lot of fun. And who knows, they might even sing.

  “And now that we’ve done the hard part,” Cliff said after the introductions were complete, “we’re going to take a fifteen-minute break to sort out some logistics here, and give you all a little more opportunity to chat. Coffee’s over on the side wall, and I strongly advise you to take advantage of it while you can. Because your life is about to get a whole lot tougher.” He disappeared through his door again, and the group stood, headed in the general direction of the coffeepot, broke into little groups.

  “Hank and Zara. Well, that’s pretty thrilling,” Mira’s neighbor Kevin said as they stood and waited for their turn at the coffee. Scott, she saw, was chatting to their other neighbors, the Zero Technology People, as she’d privately dubbed them. “I do love me my celebrities.”

  “I’m so excited,” Mira confessed, “I’ll probably do something embarrassing like ask them for their autograph. I grew up on their songs.”

  “Probably best not to say that,” Kevin’s sister Rachel laughed behind him. “That wouldn’t be too diplomatic. But by the way, what’s the deal on the name thing?”

  “What name thing?”

  “Yours. You renamed yourself, and your boyfriend doesn’t like it? Or what?”

  “Oh. No big deal. My name’s Almira,” she said, looking around to make sure Scott wasn’t watching before adding a generous dollop of half & half to the coffee she had just poured. She turned, discovering with a start that Alec and Gabe were standing directly behind her. Only realized she was tilting her coffee cup when she felt the fiery touch of the hot liquid hitting her hand, running down her dress. She exclaimed in distress, hastily transferred her cup to the other hand and shook her right hand in the air to rid it of the scalding liquid. What an idiot. What was she, sixteen? And her dress was pale yellow. Pale yellow with brown splotches, now. That was attractive.

  “You OK?” Alec asked her with concern. “Burn yourself?” He handed his own cup to his brother and took her hand in his, patted it dry with a napkin.

  “I’m fine,” she said, fully embarrassed now. “Just clumsy. I’m all right.”

  “Sure?” he persisted, still holding her hand.

  “Positive,” she said with a nervous laugh. “It just startled me.”

  “You were explaining your name,” Alec said. “Or should I say, your dual personality.” His brother stood by, his dark gaze intent on her, and she felt more awkward than ever.

  “Your name,” Alec prompted, finally letting go of her hand.

  “Oh.” She shrugged. “They’re both my names. Almira Grace. I go by Mira, normally.”

  “Almira. Princess,” Alec said. “In Arabic. Perfect.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked in surprise. “It’s not exactly a common name. It was my great-grandmother’s. Old-fashioned, I know.”

  “I know many things,” he said portentously. “Many useless things,” he added with a charmingly sweet smile that, Mira thought, he’d used before. And often. “But they come in handy sometimes.”

  “Well, Scott doesn’t like Mira much. And he doesn’t like Almira at all. So he calls me Grace instead.”

  “He refuses to call you by your name?” Rachel said in disbelief. “That’s not good, huh, Kevin?”

  “I’d call that a major relationship red flag,” Kevin agreed. “Mr. Wrong—Here’s Your Sign. And I should know. Because, honey, I’m the world’s expert at dating Mr. Wrong.” He struck a camp attitude, hand on hip, that had Mira laughing guiltily despite his cataloging of Scott.

  “And there he goes, flinging himself out of the 1885 closet,” Rachel said, putting a muscular arm around her brother and giving him a squeeze. “Ready or not, here he comes. Can’t keep a good man down.”

  “I can’t imagine that’s going to be a problem here, though,” Mira said. “Not in this day and age.” She looked at Alec and Gabe, who gave almost identical shrugs. Wow. They really were twins.

  Kevin looked at her in amusement. “You haven’t been around the block too many times, have you? I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a problem for somebody. But it’s their problem.”

  The brothers turned away as the women Mira was already thinking of as “the blondes” approached. Rachel looked after them, then turned to Mira with a grin on her friendly face, surrounded by a riot of curly brown hair as exuberant as her personality. “They’ve covered all the bases, haven’t they?” she asked. “You’ve got your hot girls, your hot boys—” She nodded at the Kincaid brothers. “They outdid themselves there. Twins. Yum. Imagine the possibilities.”
She sighed with satisfaction. “Fun times. Anyway. Your gay guy, your African-American and Hispanic contestants, your minor celebrities, your obnoxious know-it-all couple . . .”

  “And the couple you’re hoping will break up onscreen,” Kevin added.

  “Who’s that?” Mira asked suspiciously.

  “That would be you,” he answered. “That’s why you’re on the show. Because he is such a tool. There has to be somebody we all love to hate, and honey, I can already tell you’re with him. That body language. Like he just can’t wait to step up and show us all how it’s done. And ‘I’m in it to win it?’ Classic.”

  “Come on. He isn’t always like that,” she said defensively. “OK, that was kind of . . .”

  “Arrogant?” Kevin asked. “Indicative of jerkitude?”

  “Kevin,” Rachel scolded. “Stop it. You trying to make enemies already? That’s her boyfriend.”

  “He’s nervous, that’s all,” Mira said. “Most of the time, he’s a really nice guy.”

  “We’ll all see soon enough,” Kevin said, clearly unconvinced. “Reality shows are all about those stress points. That’s what I love about them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Theory time,” Rachel said with a grin at Mira. “Don’t worry. You get used to it.”

  “How much reality TV have you watched?” Kevin asked Mira, ignoring his sister.

  “Not that much,” Mira admitted. “An episode here and there. Survivor, The Amazing Race, this one. In the hotel room at night, when there isn’t much on.”

  “Why did you come on the show, if you’re not a fan? Never mind, I can already guess. Boyfriend’s idea, and you went along with it.”

  “It may have been his idea initially, but I wanted to do it too.” Had surprised herself, in fact. It hadn’t been the money. She’d just wanted to know if she could do it, if she could make it through something so tough. She’d never been camping, never participated in team sports. But somehow, she’d thought she might be able to do this.

  “Kevin,” Rachel chided, “quit being bitchy.”