The Perils of Paulie (A Matchmaker in Wonderland) Read online

  “I like the twirl, too. What about this?” She shifted forward a little when she sank down on me.

  My eyes rolled back in my head, and despite my attempts to put them back where they belonged, they stayed there happily, as I enjoyed the sensations she was sending firing out to all points on my body.

  “I’ll take it that the groan is a good sign. Wait. There’s something else I want to try . . .” She leaned to the back and with one hand took my balls and gave them a gentle squeeze.

  I damn near came off the bed at that.

  I sat bolt upright, my hands on her luscious thighs, and demanded, “Don’t ever stop doing that!”

  She laughed—she actually laughed. “I’m glad you like it.”

  “Now I know that women are truly the superior sex, because it’s all I can do to keep my autonomous functions like breathing and my heartbeat going, and here you are not only laughing and coming up with inventive and incredibly arousing things to do to my poor man’s body, but you can also talk in actual sentences and not just grunt noises of rapturous pleasure like I am doing.”

  “You’re actually talking now, you know,” she said, her breath hitching when I took her breasts in my hand and lay down again, bringing her with me. “Oh man, that’s really good at this angle. Dixon, I hope you’re not going to be long, because I’m about ready to blow up into a thousand orgasm pieces.”

  “Now,” I said, reverting to what I thought of as single-syllable caveman words. I thrust upward into her, my hips working overtime. “Do it now.”

  “If you insist . . .” She did another twist and arched her back over me, her inner muscles trembling and tightening around me in waves that pushed me into my own orgasm.

  One of the things I like best about Paulie is how she smiles after we’ve had sex. It’s not a grin, or even a happy-go-lucky greeting . . . It’s the lazy, exhausted smile of a woman who has been pleasured from the tips of her adorable toes to the top of her head. She smiled now, her body draped across mine as if she was a toga, one that was custom-made for me.

  I stroked her back, my own body feeling like it was made of lead. The thought flitted through my head that now would be the perfect moment to come clean about Rose.

  “Erm,” I said after a couple of minutes to catch my breath and let my heart stop racing.

  “I know,” she said, stretching languidly and sliding off me to curl up at my side, one of her legs still across mine. “It was very erm, wasn’t it? Although I swear I’m going to walk funny tomorrow after two times in one night.” She yawned and snuggled tighter against me.

  “I might do so as well,” I said, shifting my arm so it wouldn’t go to sleep under her. Sleep pulled at me with tiny but persistent fingers, urging me to fall fully into its grasp, but I felt the need to be honest with Paulie. “Not to take anything away from what we just did, there’s something I wanted to tell you.”

  “OK. Tell away.”

  I looked up at the ceiling, trying to decide how best to put it. “You know, of course, that I was engaged to be married when I was in my early twenties.”

  “Yup.”

  “Rose was a few years older than me, divorced, and ready to settle down. I assumed I was as well, because I fell in love with her while I was in university. She was the daughter of one of my professors, and I thought she was the most glamorous woman I’d ever met.”

  “Mmm.” Paulie shifted slightly, her breath warm on my shoulder.

  “She suggested we get married, and I reckoned that was a good idea. I’ve never been like Rupert—interested in a number of women—and Rose was, after all, more worldly than me. So we announced our engagement and set a date for the following year. Almost immediately after that, I realized I’d made a mistake. What I’d thought was a worldly woman was one who wanted absolute control over me, what I did, what I wore, who I saw. When I thought she was settled and centered, I didn’t realize she was simply set in her ways and unwilling to compromise. We started fighting, at first over silly things, but she would never let anything go. The arguments increased and became more serious. I actually suggested that we put off the wedding while we sought couple’s counseling to work out our issues—she refused, saying that we were two intelligent people, and if we couldn’t work things out by ourselves, then no one could help us. This went on for months. I was miserable. I think now she was just as unhappy as I was, but for some reason she clung tight to the wedding as a point of salvation.”

  Paulie murmured something unintelligible.

  I stroked her arm, feeling a sense of comfort from her nearness despite the bad memories. “Four months before the wedding, I decided to break things off. I knew it would be the best thing for both of us, but before I could do so, Rose was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Quite an aggressive cancer. Naturally, I couldn’t leave her then. She became a different woman—distant and cold and bitter. I could understand it; after all, she’d just been given a death sentence. I stayed with her to the end, but by that time she was telling me daily how much she hated me.”

  The room fell silent. My heart ached at the memory of that dark time. “I know it was the cancer and harsh drugs talking, but it still hurt. Around others, she was fine—calm and collected, and saying she was ready to face her end. But when we were alone, she was simply . . . cruel.”

  My throat closed up a little. I gave a cough to loosen it up.

  “I didn’t tell anyone how she had changed. I didn’t want them thinking of her being so hateful. I didn’t want to remember her that way. We did have some good times, after all. And of course, all of this meant that everyone—my family, her family, my friends—all believed I was deeply grieving her loss. I couldn’t tell them the truth. But I can tell you, because I know that you will understand.”

  I waited for her to say that she wholly and completely understood why I did what I did, and that she thought it was damned nice of me to keep Rose’s memory positive despite what I’d gone through, and many other suitably nice things, but Paulie was silent.

  Horribly, wrenchingly silent.

  “You don’t . . . understand?” I asked at last, rising slightly on one elbow to peer into her face.

  She was sound asleep, her mouth open slightly, a tiny little puddle of drool forming on my arm.

  I’d sexed her into sleep. There was something satisfying about that, even if my soul baring had been so uncaptivating that it had put her to sleep. I closed her mouth, wiped up the drool with the pillowcase, and rolled her over onto her side, spooning behind her. She murmured something and wiggled backward into me.

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow,” I said, allowing myself to sink downward into sleep. “I’ll explain it all then, and you will stop worrying that I’m pining for a woman I haven’t loved for a very long time.”

  The following day (today), was hectic, to be sure . . . Ah. There is Paulie, at last. I will resume this at a later time.

  Paulina Rostakova’s Adventures

  JULY 27

  4:42 a.m.

  San Francisco, California, hotel room

  I can’t sleep. Stupid body not being able to get rest when it needs it. Yesterday was . . . hoo, baby. I can’t remember a worse day in a long time. But I’m foreshadowing again. Let’s go back to the beginning of the “hoo, baby” bit, which was yesterday morning.

  “Did you hear?” Melody asked when I rolled out of my room in Salt Lake City (which didn’t get used, thanks to Dixon being the Irresistible Mr. Sexy Pants), deposited my luggage with the crew, and with the great big wads of veil in hand toddled out to the Thomas Flyer. Melody paused and added, “That’s a very pretty dress.”

  “Thank you.” I did a pirouette to make the sky blue skirt, which was heavily pleated, swirl out. A coat cut in what the wardrobe ladies described as military style hit me at midhip, while the blouse underneath was a pretty pale cream embroidered with matching blue flowers. They had
tried to convince me to wear the stiff collar similar to the sort that the men wore, but I felt like I was being strangled in it, so I had been given a wide lace choker to wear instead. I plunked the hat on my head and began to wind the veil around it. “Did I hear what?”

  “Hmm?” Melody looked down at her plain navy blue walking skirt, white shirt with stiff collar and tie, and knee-length coat with black piping. “I don’t know why the wardrobe people thought I needed to dress in such a utilitarian style. I understand I’m supposed to be the bluestocking, but really, would it hurt my image to have a pretty embroidered blouse like you have?”

  “You’re smaller than me, but if you like, I can lend it to you to wear another day. Maybe under a jacket it wouldn’t look too big on you,” I offered generously, feeling quite the stylish Edwardian lady as I climbed into the passenger seat.

  “No, that’s all right.” She got behind the steering wheel and started up the car, nodding when a frazzled-looking crew member came over to tell her we were going third today. “I’ll stick with what they made up for me. After all, I don’t mind being the studious and serious member of the team . . . which is odd, considering that now it’s just you and me.”

  “Yeah. It’s so quiet here.” I glanced at the dash cam and gave it a toothy grin. “What were you asking me about?”

  “Oh!” She turned to face me, clearly excited. “We’ve lost more people!”

  “Lost more? You mean people left the show?”

  “Yes! The Ravishing Romeos’ car wouldn’t start this morning, and when Graham went to look at it, he said the whole engine had been corroded by some sort of acid. There’s no way to repair it, and they can’t replace it easily since the engines were custom-made to fit in the old cars.”

  “Holy crapballs! Someone sabotaged them? Is Graham sure it was sabotage and not just . . . I don’t know . . . some sort of engine meltdown?”

  “It was sabotage.” Melody shifted us into gear when someone waved us forward. Ahead, just taking off, was the car with Dixon and the possibly nefarious Anton (I really needed to have a talk with him to find out once and for all if he was in my father’s employment). Following them were the German ladies, and behind us, just getting into their Daimler, were Melody’s parents. Bringing up the rear was the other English team.

  “Who would do that?”

  “I don’t know, but Dad told me that Roger is in a state of panic because we are going to be responsible for guarding the cars once we leave the U.S.” She gave me a significant look.

  “We’ll take turns doing four-hour watches,” I said immediately.

  “That’s what I was thinking. It’ll mean for broken sleep, but that’s better than losing the race because someone decided to take out our Flyer.” She patted the dashboard, looking somewhat embarrassed at the gesture, but it was one I wholeheartedly understood. I was becoming very fond of our car. Other than a few minor troubles—and a tendency to blow out tires with a frequency that meant I was getting very proficient at changing them—the Flyer was a pleasure to ride around in. Driving was still a bit of a struggle, but even that was becoming easier now that we knew the car’s ways.

  “You do have to wonder what we will be able to do that the crew watching the cars couldn’t do,” I said as we moved up a spot. The German ladies were waiting for their cue to start. “If someone managed to destroy a whole engine while the cars were under the production team’s eyes, how are we supposed to keep our Flyer safe?”

  “I don’t know, but we can’t be any worse than the guy who was supposed to watch the cars overnight. Oh, there’s Roger.”

  Roger burst out of the motel and dashed over to consult with the starter before having a brief word with the German ladies. He stepped back as they rolled off, then gestured for us to pull up.

  “You heard, I expect?” he asked us when Melody came to a stop. The starter made a note on our timesheet and handed it back to Melody. “It’s terrible—terrible. I can’t imagine who has it in for me now. It’s always something! Every production, there’s always someone who wants me to fail.”

  Melody and I murmured platitudes.

  “Not that it’ll stop, but I wanted to warn you ladies to be extra-special careful about the car. Don’t leave it alone for a moment unless a member of the production team is around to watch it.” He clutched the car door with fervor. “We spent too much money on these cars to have them destroyed willy-nilly.”

  “It sounds like it was a targeted attack,” Melody said gently. “Corrosive materials don’t just happen to find themselves on engines.”

  “Have you checked into the background of everyone here?” I asked, and immediately realized how awful that sounded. “That is, the new people. Like Anton what’s-his-name?”

  “Anton?” Roger’s face went blank for a couple of seconds. “Why do you mention him?”

  “Well, he is the newest member of the group. I believe someone said that he was supposed to be in the race to begin with but couldn’t do it?”

  “Eh? Oh, yes.” Roger pulled out his phone, sighed heavily, and put it up to his ear. “I have to take this. Yes, Sheriff? Did you find out anything?”

  “Why did you mention Anton?” Melody asked when Roger walked off quickly. “Do you know something about him?”

  “No, that’s just it.” I hesitated for a moment, then gave her a brief rundown on my father’s habit of insisting I have a bodyguard with me. “And I think that since I outed Boris, my father’s normal flunky, he found someone else, and that someone is Anton.”

  “But he couldn’t be, not if he was originally lined up to race,” Melody said.

  I was silent for a few minutes while she got the car going, and we pulled out of the parking lot to the street leading to the interstate highway. “That’s why I was trying to pump Roger for information,” I said loudly over the sound of the wind and engine.

  “Sounds fairly implausible to me,” she yelled back. “I can’t believe anyone in the race would do something so heinous. It has to be a madman who heard about us and wanted to do something to give us grief.”

  “It could be. This country certainly has its crackpots.”

  I mulled over the issue for the next few hours, wanting to talk about it to Dixon but hesitant to spend what little time we had together talking about something so frustrating. Plus, I had a sneaking suspicion that it made me sound overly paranoid. What if Anton wasn’t working with Dad? Then I would be the crackpot.

  The hours passed swiftly as we drove the last U.S. stretch. We chatted periodically, much more relaxed than we had been with Louise, and although we both had to drive more each day, it was worth the tired shoulders and arms to have her negative personality elsewhere.

  At one point we stopped for a quick lunch, only to see the German ladies outside a restaurant with the camera crew and Roger. A few people had gathered around them, so, hesitating to intrude on what was obviously their time to be filmed attracting attention from the locals, we drove on a block to find another place to stop and get a sandwich.

  “Gives us time to get ahead of them,” Melody said as we bolted our lunch and hit the road again. “Not that it matters at this stage, but once we hit Kazakhstan, all bets are off.”

  “What’s all this about Kazakhstan? Are we definitely not going to China, then?” I asked, tying my veil in a jaunty bow under my chin. Today’s hat was a smaller-brimmed straw boater, but it had enough lift in the wind to keep trying to escape from my head.

  “No, didn’t you hear last night at the meeting?”

  I thought of the night before. Dixon and I hadn’t made it to the daily meeting, instead having a wonderful time in his room. “Um . . . no, we . . . I . . . missed it.”

  She grinned. “I’d make a comment, but I think I know from experience just how well a reality show romance can turn out.”

  “Well, it’s not like Dixon and I are going to
get married like your dad and Tessa did,” I said, waving away that idea. “We’re just . . . enjoying ourselves.”

  “That’s the goal of life, isn’t it?” she said simply. “Roger said that he simply couldn’t get all the visas he needed, and permission for part of the trip through China was still under negotiation, so he decided to scrap that whole bit of the race and start us off in Almaty instead.”

  “That’s the big town in Kazakhstan?”

  “One of the two. Astana is the capital, but we’ll fly with the cars to Almaty and then head off on our own.” She grinned at me. “It’s going to be quite the adventure.”

  “I can’t wait!” I said, doing a little fist pump. “Adventure is my middle name! Well, not really, but it should have been.”

  It was approaching eight p.m. by the time we made it into San Francisco, to a hotel on the outskirts by the airport. Given the late hour, we were pleased to see that we were the first ones in, even though at that point it didn’t matter.

  “Let’s keep this up, though,” Melody said as we got out of the car. I noticed there were only two members of the crew about, and no cameras. Usually one of the camera teams was on hand to record everyone coming in, frequently catching us peeling off our goggles to expose two clean patches in faces made dirty by road dust.

  “Where is everyone?” Melody asked the person checking us in.

  “Accident,” he said tersely, and waved us forward to the parking area where the cars would be kept until they were put on the chartered cargo plane.

  “Oh no! Not another accident like the French team, I hope?”

  “Is it serious?” Melody asked at the same time.

  “Don’t know.” He shrugged. “Roger is at the hospital now with one of the brothers.”

  “Brothers?” My blood ran cold as I dug through my bag for my cell phone. “Not Dixon and Rupert?”

  “That’s it.” He waved us on again. “Get parked. We have to clean up the cars, have Graham go over them for any problems, and get them to the airport so they can be loaded into the containers.”