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

Roger consulted a clipboard. “I believe that’s it. You all know the rules, and I know you will adhere faithfully to them while providing exciting scenarios for our viewers. Remember: you don’t race just for your own satisfaction, but for the millions of people who will be cheering you on over the other racers.”

  Everyone other than the Essex team and Roger were now watching Melody with worried glances.

  “I believe that’s all I have. Good luck, stay safe, and remember to save your interesting bits of conversation for the cameras! Are there any questions?”

  Melody swayed again, staggered forward a couple of feet, and vomited all over Roger’s shoes.

  He looked up while she was still retching, doubled over with her hands on her knees. He pinned Tessa back with a look that should, by rights, have stripped the hair from her head. “You told her to do that, didn’t you? You told her how you spewed all over my shoes the first day we met, and she decided to duplicate that event, didn’t she?”

  “Of course not. Don’t be stupid,” Tessa snapped, and rushed forward with Max. “She’s sick! She has food poisoning!”

  Melody wretched several times more, then collapsed, her face drained of all color and her flesh moist and clammy.

  Paulie offered her services as someone who’d had numerous first aid courses, but there wasn’t much she could do other than suggest that Melody see a doctor. After an urgent discussion with the translator and the hotel people, Max finally arranged for medical aid to check Melody out. They took her away to the hospital a short while later.

  Max and Tessa followed the ambulance in Roger’s car, while one of the production assistants drove the Ducal car after them.

  “You come with us,” Roger yelled from the passenger seat of the car, gesturing at the second film team. “Tabby and Sam can go with the other two. I just hope to hell that they don’t get too far ahead, or Max and Tessa will never catch up . . .”

  Ah. Paulie is done with her bath. I’ll finish up another time.

  Paulina Rostakova’s Adventures

  JULY 31

  5:51 a.m.

  Astana, Kazakhstan, motel room with my new hunky teammate and make-believe husband

  Man alive, what a start to my first experience abroad yesterday was! As if the horror of finding Dixon’s car missing wasn’t enough, Melody ending up at the hospital was just icing on an abysmal day. Luckily, once Melody was taken care of, things started improving, although I didn’t have confirmation of that until a few minutes ago when I got Tessa’s texts.

  July 31

  From: Tessa

  Melody recovering at last. Stomach pumped last night when she went into shock. Doctors say it wasn’t food poisoning. Something eels. Could be real poison.

  July 31

  To: Tessa

  Holy crapballs! Poison eels? I didn’t see them at the lunch, but wasn’t seeing much but my pretend husband.

  July 31

  From: Tessa

  Eels are electric, not poison. At least I think they are. Let me ask Max.

  July 31

  From: Tessa

  Yes, eels are electric.

  July 31

  To: Tessa

  Then why did Melody eat one? I didn’t see anyone else have them.

  July 31

  From: Tessa

  She didn’t. Oh, I see. Typo in earlier message. No eels. Poison, though, of some sort. Roger on his way to you.

  July 31

  To: Tessa

  I hope to arrest the Esses, because clearly they are the ones behind all of this!

  July 31

  From: Tessa

  Don’t think so. Doctors tested food we ate, and nothing in there, but couldn’t find bottle of water she was thinking.

  July 31

  From: Tessa

  DRINKING.

  July 31

  From: Tessa

  Max and I are staying here. Good luck with race. We’re hoping you win. Don’t eat or drink around anyone but Dixon!

  I texted back a long message full of thanks, regrets that they were leaving the race, and hopes that Melody would recover quickly now that her stomach was empty. Then, after a moment’s thought, I sent another message.

  July 31

  To: Roger

  If you still deny the Esses are trying to wipe out the competition after they quite clearly poisoned Melody, you’re delusional.

  He didn’t reply. Telling, that. I think . . . oh hell. Dixon’s awake. More later.

  AUGUST 1

  11:53 p.m.

  Petropavlovsk

  I had to stop writing yesterday morning because Dixon woke up with me texting Tessa and Roger, and then . . . Well, let me tell it properly.

  “What are you doing?” Dixon said when I’d just completed my text to Roger. He rolled over with a yawn and delightfully tousled hair.

  “I just told Roger he was delusional. Oooh, sexy stubble is sexy.” I gave a little wiggle and stroked a finger down his bristly cheek.

  “Is there a reason you said that, or was it just a morning impulse?” he asked, looking sleepy and handsome and so sexy I wanted to bite him.

  So I did.

  “And now you’re eating my arm?” he commented when I started nibbling on his shoulder and moved over to his neck. “Either you’re starving or you woke up in an extremely good mood.”

  I slid my hand down his belly to where his penis was standing at attention, waiting patiently for me to turn my attention to it. “I think we both did.”

  “Any morning where I wake up with your delicious legs twined about mine is going to be a good one,” he murmured, his voice still rough with sleep.

  It was a roughness that made me shiver with anticipation, and as I pushed him onto his back I remembered something we’d said when we’d tumbled into bed the night before. “We didn’t have a wedding night, Dixon. Do you think a wedding morning will suffice?”

  His hands slid around my hips to my butt, his mouth doing amazing things to a breast. “I think that would work quite nicely.”

  “I swear,” I said, swinging my leg over his body to straddle him and arching my back so he could have full access to everything he wanted to touch. “I swear you make little fires start up in my girl parts. Tiny little fires. Itsy-bitsy ones that combine to make everything down there burn.”

  He paused in the act of tormenting a breast, looking up at me with a cocked eyebrow. “That sounds . . . uncomfortable.”

  “What does?” I asked, busy with a mental image of me riding Dixon like a bucking bronco.

  “Burning genitals. You don’t think . . . This is awkward, and I hope you forgive me for asking, but you don’t think you have . . . you know . . . something down there to cause the burning?”

  I stopped imagining me riding him while slapping a cowboy hat on his flanks and whooping with joy, and looked down at him. He looked concerned. “Did you just ask me if I have an STD?”

  “Well . . .” Embarrassment crawled over his face. “You said you were burning in your female bits, and—”

  “I said you make me feel like I have little fires in there, not that I have a burning crotch!” I said, pinching his nipples. “Sheesh, Dixon!”

  “I apologize,” he said quickly. “I just wanted to make sure that if you were having a burning sensation in those spots, you received medical treatment—”

  “I do not,” I said loudly, breathing heavily through my nose, “have anything in my crotch but a desire for your crotch to come visiting, although I have to admit that at this moment my crotch is having second thoughts.”

  He pulled me up so that his penis slid along my sensitive, STD-free parts. “What can I do to make your crotch forgive me?”

  “Well . . .” I said slowly, considering my options. I leaned down to nip his lower lip. “Perhaps some gentle words of apology, along with
well-placed touches and one or two twirls with your tongue would ease things along—oh, bloody hell.”

  We both looked at Dixon’s phone, which had gone off with an alarm we’d set the night before. It buzzed along with blasting “The Imperial March” from Star Wars.

  Dixon reached for the phone and turned off the alarm. He gave me a long look. “We should get up. It’s six.”

  I nodded.

  “We said we’d get up faithfully every morning at six, no matter what we were in the middle of.” He looked at my breasts, his eyes hungrily considering them. “No matter what.”

  “We should get up,” I said, wiggling in such a way that he moaned and dug his fingers into my hips. “We can’t let the Esses get ahead of us. God knows what sort of traps they’ll set for us if they get the jump, and I know they couldn’t have been very far behind us last night.”

  “That is sound thinking,” he said, nodding, but his fingers moved around my front and dived downward, touching me in all those aching parts of me that so desperately wanted us to ignore the alarm and get down to business.

  I leaned forward again to kiss him. “How fast can you be?”

  “You mean at sex?” His brow wrinkled. He glanced at the phone, then obviously did some mental calculations. “Ten minutes. We can have ten minutes if we don’t eat or take showers.”

  “Deal,” I said, kissing him, and instantly slid downward to take his penis in my hands.

  He looked startled. “Do we have time—”

  “You get two minutes. Then I get two minutes. That leaves six for general shenanigans with my burning crotch. Sound good?”

  “Sounds . . . glarm!” He grabbed the sheets with both hands when I put both hands on him and swirled my tongue around what I knew was sensitive flesh. He started to babble in another tongue while I allowed hands and mouth and even my breasts to go to town on him, all of which made me feel wonderfully powerful and filled with the feminine knowledge that men were putty in our hands (and mouth and breasts).

  Then Dixon called time, and I was suddenly on my back with my legs over his shoulders and his whiskery cheeks rubbing on the inside of my thighs. His fingers did a delightful dance of their own, and by the time he bent to kiss intimate parts, I was doing my own babbling. “I’m putty, too! I’m putty, too!”

  He looked up and cocked an eyebrow. “You’re what?”

  “Ignore me—my brain is talking straight through my mouth without checking with me first,” I said, feeling as if I was a top that had been wound to the breaking point. “Hurry! There are only six minutes left. You used extra time on me.”

  “It was worth it,” he said with a knowing grin, and crawled over me, his mouth kissing and nibbling a path upward.

  I wrapped my legs around him and tried to pull him exactly where I wanted, but he resisted—damn him.

  “Condom?” he asked, ignoring the demands of my legs. “Do we have time for me to find one?”

  “Screw the condom!” I almost shouted, desperate now to have all my tingling bits sated as only he could sate them.

  “I’d make a rude joke about that comment, but there’s simply no time for it.” And with that, he slid into me, and all my intimate muscles threw up their hands in joy and shimmied around him in a time-honored dance of utter happiness.

  His hips seemed to have their own dance going on, and we moved together in an intense, if not technically perfect, unison. Fortunately for us both, it didn’t take but a few minutes before Dixon’s movements lost all grace and I began to thrash my limbs around in a desperate attempt to urge him on faster.

  “Well,” I said a few minutes later, exhausted, sweaty, and pleasured to the tips of my toenails, “that was a hell of a thing, wasn’t it?”

  “It was.” Dixon panted, rolling off me. He looked like he’d just run a marathon. “I can’t wait to do it again. That is, I can wait, because I think it would kill me to do it again without proper rest, a couple of solid meals, and a truck full of vitamins, but my anticipation of our next quickie is sky-high right now.”

  “Kind of makes you a fan of doing it fast, huh?” I got out of bed and hurried to the bathroom, where I had a superfast wash at the basin before pulling on my undergarments. “Can you do up my corset, please?”

  Dixon was brushing his teeth. “I can, but it will mean I don’t have time to shave.”

  “I like your stubble. I’d rather have it than no corset, because I don’t think I can fit into my dress without it.”

  And so it was that seven minutes later we arrived at our car (which we’d placed in a secure parking lot with an overnight attendant), I in a dashing blue-and-white-striped skirt, red vest, and lacy white shirt with navy bolero jacket, and Dixon in a gray suit and a pair of red goggles. “I was saving these for photographic situations,” he said, donning them and striking a pose so I could take a picture with my phone. “They’re quite dashing, aren’t they?”

  “They’re something—that’s for darned sure,” I agreed, and turned to face the car. That’s when I saw it.

  “Hey. Where are all our tires?” I pointed to the rear of the car. We’d already gone through about half of our spare tire stock, and Roger, having seen the writing on the wall while we were midway across the U.S., had ordered new ones to be waiting for us in Astana when we arrived. I did a count. “There are only seven here, and there should be eleven—five on the side and six on the back.”

  “They didn’t fall off, did they?” Dixon asked, and we spent a few minutes searching the garage, but didn’t find anything.

  The attendant had no idea what had happened to the missing tires, saying he had just come on duty. He made a call, however, and managed to find the man who had been on duty overnight, and eventually wormed out a story that there had indeed been someone seen around the car during the night, but as the garage man had scared him off, and there was no visible sign of damage, he hadn’t bothered to report it.

  “It’s the Esses,” I told Dixon as we returned to the car and gave it a quick once-over to make sure that there was no sabotage. A half hour later than we had planned, we prepared to depart. “I just know it was them. They probably tried to take all our tires knowing full well that the Flyer goes through them like candy but got scared off before they could take more than four.”

  “I’ll text Roger,” Dixon offered. “I doubt if it will do any good, but perhaps he can order more tires to meet us somewhere in Russia. You can take the first stint of driving, and then we will alternate, all right?”

  I gathered my own goggles (I only had white ones, since they matched my veiling), my hat, and my veil, and got into the Thomas Flyer. “Suits me.”

  He consulted his watch and made a note on the official logbook. Technically, we didn’t need to record our arrival and departure times now that we were in the free-for-all section of the race, but Dixon thought it would be a nice inclusion in our journals.

  We left Astana and headed northwest to Petropavlovsk, a town almost four hundred miles away. We passed a lot of land that reminded me of the Midwest—vast steppes of wheat and other grains, grand stretches of farmland, and even grander forests of what looked to be white birch trees. The road was pretty good, although we had hit a couple of patches where repairs were being made. During one of those patches, the stoppage was long enough that Tabby and Sam caught up to us.

  “You were behind us?” Dixon asked when Tabby came forward from their car. We were all stopped, watching some big dump trucks maneuver loads of gravel and road-surfacing materials. “Dare I hope that means the Essex car is back there?”

  “Lord, those goggles! You look like a cross between a comic book character and a steampunk adventurer. You may, in fact, dare hope. We all decided that since there are just two of you now, we’d each take a car and follow you. The Essex car should be rolling up soon with Roger and camera crew in tow. In fact, I believe that’s them.” Tab
by pointed to the rear of the line of about sixty cars. I stood up on the seat and shaded my hand to see. Sure enough, the Essex car was in view at the end.

  “Crapballs,” I said, sitting down behind the wheel again. “But at least we know they aren’t ahead of us.”

  “True,” Dixon said, and proceeded to chat with Tabby about what the roads ahead in Siberia would be like. We’d had a warning that some of the roads were in a less-thanadmirable state, but didn’t know if that was just gossip by the Kazaks or a true indicator of potential trouble.

  The road delay ended up costing us almost an hour, but with the Essex car so far back in the queue, we figured we had at least a ten-minute jump on them.

  “Get ready for some fast driving,” I called back to Tabby when the cars ahead of us started coming to life, indicating the holdup was about ended. “Because I’m going to floor it!”

  “Will do,” she shouted, and gave us a thumbs-up.

  I adjusted my goggles, tied my hat on with a jaunty bow made up of the veil, and grinned at Dixon. “Ready for some high adventure?”

  “So long as it doesn’t involve car crashes, food poisoning, drunk drivers, or any of the other events that have befallen the race, yes.” Dixon settled back in the seat. “Drive on, Macduff.”

  It was a long day, but we eventually made it to Petropavlovsk. Tabby and Sam were with us the whole way and filmed during a breakdown that we didn’t diagnose. We ended up sitting on the edge of a vast wheat field, eating the sandwiches that Tabby had fetched and enjoying a little time sitting in the sun and chatting.

  Until the end of the picnic, when the Essex team drove past with their camera car following. Roger pulled over to see what was the matter with the Thomas Flyer.

  “She conked out and wouldn’t start,” Dixon told Graham, who rode with Roger. Dixon gestured at the car’s engine, which we’d exposed by folding back the hood. “We thought it might be the radiator, so we’ve let it cool for about twenty minutes.”

  “That was damned nice of the Esses to stop and see how we were doing,” I said loudly, stomping over to the car. “We could have been in serious trouble for all they knew, but nooo, off they go without so much as a glance back at us.”