Paulina Rostakova’s Adventures
JULY 30
7:11 p.m.
Astana, Kazakhstan, hotel room
Taking the opportunity to write this while Dixon snoozes. Poor guy, he was up all night guarding the car, not letting me take a turn like we’d agreed to do.
Crap. I shouldn’t have written that there. Now it’s out of order. OK. Starting over.
We arrived in Kazakhstan with what I’m coming to think of as the standard amount of issues, or as Roger calls it, “The damned curse that someone has placed on me, and if I find out who has done it, I’ll string him or her up by his respective balls!”
I would have giggled at the “his or her” part of his conversation, but at the time I was too worried about Dixon being kicked out of the race . . . dammit! I did it again. Gah! Starting over again again.
The flight from San Francisco to Kazakhstan took almost a day to complete, even with a charter flight carrying just the remaining racers and crew, our luggage, and the cars in the hold. The problem was that once we got to Almaty, bleary-eyed and groggy from being on a plane for so long, the containers holding the cars in the cargo section were minus one.
“So this is Eurasia,” I said to Dixon, huddled into my jacket and shivering. It was about five a.m. when we arrived, and thankfully Roger didn’t make us get into period clothing for the arrival.
“It’s not very Asian looking, is it?” Dixon asked with a yawn. “I wonder if there’s any tea to be had.”
“Ha.” I nudged him with my elbow. He gave me a curious glance. “Tea? Asia? We’re in Asia, the biggest tea consumers in the world. I think. Maybe. If not, they have to be close to it.”
“Ah.” He gave me a pitying look and went off to a table set up with a coffeepot to see if he could scrounge a cup of tea.
We were all gathered in a small glass-walled room evidently set aside for folks arriving on international charter flights, having just handed over our passports and visas, Roger speaking with the interpreter who had met our flight. Through the glass, we could see the plane on the tarmac, the handlers busy moving the containers off the plane. I watched them idly, trying to sort through my impressions of my arrival on not just a continent new to me, but one halfway around the world from my father.
I frowned when the baggage handlers pulled the last of our bags from the cargo hold and drove it off to what I assumed were customs. I looked back at the large cargo containers, counting them, then turned to face the room behind me.
“Um,” I said to no one in particular.
Sitting on a row of molded plastic seats, Melody and her parents hunkered together, talking softly to one another. Beyond them the two remaining Esses chatted with Anton, who wore a sheepskin hat that looked like some architect’s idea of a modern take on an opera house. Roger, two of the production assistants, and Graham were talking to the interpreter and a couple of officials who were idly flipping through our passports.
“Uh . . .” I cleared my throat loudly. “Hello? People? Where’s the fourth car?”
It took a minute for my words to filter through to everyone’s consciousness. Dixon was the first to glance over at me, then out the window, a Styrofoam cup of tea in his hand.
I waved a hand at the window. “Three containers. There are four teams, right? Suffragettes, Esses, Englishmen, and the Duke . . . did someone drop out and I didn’t hear about it?”
There was a moment of complete silence; then all hell broke loose as everyone leaped up and ran to the window, all talking at once. Roger swore loudly and profanely, then, with the interpreter in his grasp, bolted for the tarmac. The two airport officials called after him and took off on his heels. The rest of us clustered at the windows, watching while Roger danced around the cargo containers, his hands gesturing wildly until one of the airline people hurried out and began unlocking the containers.
“What do you think happened?” I asked Dixon.
“I don’t know. Perhaps they haven’t unloaded the fourth car yet.”
“Maybe.” I frowned, leaning into him to say softly, “I have a bad feeling about this, though.”
“Bad how?”
“Bad as in I think Roger may be partially right. I think someone has cursed the race. Oh, don’t look at me like I’m a talking potato—I meant cursed in the sense that someone is deliberately causing problems to the race and racers.” I couldn’t help but slide a look down the windows to where the two Esses were talking with Anton and Max.
“Hmm.” Dixon looked thoughtful. “Perhaps I should speak to Roger—”
“About the Esses? Yeah . . . uh . . . I might have done that last night after you went to bed.”
He turned to give me a look filled with disbelief. “You did? Why?”
“Because you were almost killed! Or you could have been killed, and I wanted Roger to stop the Esses before they struck again.”
He was silent for a moment. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this in light of the fact that right now my brother is flying home to England with his leg in a cast, but I don’t think the accident yesterday was intentional. You didn’t see Sanders’s face when he climbed into the car and it started rolling forward. Not to mention the fact that I doubt if he’d put his own partner—one of them—in such danger. Even if we do credit the Essex team with the most nefarious of motives, it seems counterproductive to take out one of their own.”
“Yeah, that bothers me about the whole thing, too, but maybe that part was the accident, and they really intended on slamming into your car to disable you guys or it, or both.”
He didn’t have a chance to respond before Roger turned on the tarmac and bolted for the building, the airport people once again trailing after him.
“Oh dear,” Tessa said, moving toward us. “This doesn’t look good, does it?”
“It doesn’t appear the fourth car is in the plane, no,” Dixon answered. I had the worst urge to snuggle into him for comfort and warmth, or even just to hold his hand, but there were too many people around us.
Not, I mused to myself, that there were many people left who hadn’t seen Dixon naked in my hotel room, but I was determined to try to maintain some form of decorum.
“What’s going to happen?” Melody asked, coming over with her dad. “There are only three cars? What does that mean for the race?”
“Unfortunately,” Max said, rubbing his jaw, “I believe it means that someone won’t be continuing.”
We all looked at one another, then as a group turned to look at where the Esses were still talking with Anton.
“I know who I’d like to see get voted off the island,” I said darkly, glancing quickly at the slight bruising still visible on Dixon’s face.
“You heard the rumors, too, then?” Tessa asked, her voice dropping to an intimate level. “Tabby said that there are rumors they deliberately sabotaged the French team’s car with acid and ran over Rupert in an attempt to break the team up.”
“Tessa,” Max said in a stern tone that was belied by the look of adoration he cast her way. She flashed him an equally adoring look. “That’s just a rumor, and an unfounded one at that.”
“Not so unfounded,” Dixon said, and quickly explained his experience with the Esses in New York City.
“Holy moly,” Tessa said, her eyes on the other British team. “Do you think they’re picking off the teams one by one? What are they going to do to us? Max, we have to talk to Roger. This has to end!”
“I highly doubt the Essex team is sabotaging everyone else,” Max said in what I thought of as an annoyingly calm tone. “You have to keep in mind how excitable Roger is and take everything he says with a grain of salt.”
“It was Dixon who told us what the Esses team said, not Roger,” Melody pointed out.
“Regardless, Roger is prone to making drama out of every little thing. I agree the race has been fraught with unfortunate accidents, but much of that is perfectly normal, given the state of the cars we’re using.”
“Roger was right the last time he said the production was being sabotaged,” Tessa said firmly, glaring at the Esses. “I see no reason to discount him now.”
I slid a glance toward Dixon. He was frowning in thought. “Do you think that—” I started to say, but stopped when Roger and some airport officials burst into the room. Roger’s fringe stood on end as if he’d stuck his finger into a light socket.
“My friends,” he said, looking horribly frazzled. “Terrible news. As best we can figure it out, it appears that one of the containers bearing the Engaging Englishmen’s car has been loaded onto a cargo plane that was sent to China.”
“What?” I exclaimed at the same time the others started hurtling questions and comments at Roger.
Dixon looked stunned.
“I know, you have a hundred questions as to how this could have happened, and unfortunately I have no answers. Somehow, the original manifest—the one to China—was placed on the car instead of the correct one to Kazakhstan.” Roger held up his hands until everyone shut up. “The car was put into a container but it didn’t make it onto the plane. Regrettably, this means that although Anton and Dixon are perfectly capable of carrying on the race, they have no vehicle.”
A stunned silence fell on us all. I scooted closer to Dixon and, damning circumspection, took his hand, giving his fingers a supportive squeeze.
“I’m sorry, Dixon. I’m sorry, Anton. I’m afraid this means that you are both out of the race.”
“No!” a voice shrieked out, and I was startled to find it belonged to me. I’d also marched forward to stand in front of Roger, my hand still in Dixon’s, which meant he was hauled along with me. “You can’t do that! It’s not fair! Get them another car.”
The look Roger settled on me was filled with pity and exasperation. “I would if I could, darling, but unfortunately running antique cars capable of traveling from here to Paris are nonexistent.”
“You don’t know!” I argued.
“It’s all right, Paulie,” Dixon said quietly, tugging me back to his side. “It’s an unfortunate circumstance, nothing more.”
“Like hell it’s an unfortunate circumstance!” I turned to face him to make my case, but beyond his shoulder I saw the two Esses watching, their faces identical masks of concern. I pointed and demanded, “It’s their fault! They did this! They should be the ones to pay by giving up their car to Dixon and Anton.”
“Us?” Stephen looked shocked, his hand touching his chest as if he couldn’t believe my accusation. “My dear, I assure you that we had nothing to do with the loss of the Engaging team car.”
“Bullshit,” I snapped.
“There’s nothing I can do,” Roger said, spreading his hands wide. “I’m truly sorry, but they must have an appropriate car, and there is none to be had.”
“How long would it take to get the car flown in from China?” Melody asked, earning from me a look of approval.
“You see?” I said in an undertone, for Dixon’s ears only. “She’s not giving up on you any more than I am.”
“It’s not a matter of giving up,” he answered softly. “I’m only being realistic, Paulie. If I have no car, I can’t race.”
“That means you’d go home, and we . . .” I searched his eyes, hoping to see the same warm emotion that was growing in me every day we were together.
“Yes, I know.” His expression was as bleak as his eyes.
Roger replied to Melody’s question, “Too long, given how long their government stalled on giving us information about sending the cars to Beijing.”
“Dixon can ride with us,” I said, pointing at Melody. “You don’t mind, do you, Melody? Excellent. It’s all settled. Dixon can join our team, and Anton . . . Anton can go with the Esses.” I would have been perfectly happy to leave Anton behind, but I had grudgingly decided that, until I had proof he was working for my father, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt.
Although I still kept my eye on him. Right now he looked placidly undisturbed, as if this had nothing to do with him.
“He can’t do that,” Roger said, shaking his head at Dixon. “Your car is a suffragettes’ car. He is not a suffragette.”
“No, but there were men supporters,” Melody said quickly.
“That’s right—I read about them just before I flew to New York.” I nodded my continued approval of Melody’s thought processes. “The husbands of a lot of the suffragettes also supported the cause.”
“He is not a husband of a suffragette—” Roger stopped dead in the middle of his sentence, his eyes widening and his mouth forming a little O.
“Oooh,” Tessa said on a long breath, and looked at Max. He looked confused. She elbowed him. “Your Grace.”
“What? Oh.” Max’s eyebrows rose. “That might do it.”
“What? What would do what?” I asked.
“Excellent idea,” Melody said, smiling at Roger.
“What is?” Dixon asked, his brow furrowed.
“You know we did a reality show for Roger, right?” Tessa asked, tapping Max on the chest. “Max and I? He played a Victorian duke—who really was one of Max’s ancestors—and I was his American wife. The show was a huge hit, and viewers ate us up with a spoon and asked for seconds. So if Dixon . . .”
She let the sentence trail off, looking expectantly at both Melody and me.
“If Dixon what?” I asked. Then it struck me, with an almost physical blow. I turned my gaze onto Dixon, who had evidently arrived at the thought well before me. He looked wary, and hesitant, and aroused, all at the same time.
“Not many men could pull off that expression,” I told him quietly while Melody announced what a good idea it was. “But you do it in spades.”
“I feel like I was hit upside the head with the De Dion,” he admitted.
“The question is,” Roger said excitedly, “which lady will Dixon marry?”
I stood up straight and glared at Roger. “Excuse me?”
“Well,” he said with a wave of his hand, “I thought he might like to have a choice.”
“Of course he has a choice. He has all the choices in the world,” I said airily. “There is no pressure, none whatsoever.”
To my intense discomfort, Dixon was silent for at least a minute. “You are talking about a pretend marriage, are you not?” he finally asked, gesturing toward Tessa and Max. “The same they had on their show?”
“Yeees,” Roger said slowly, an odd light in his eyes. He pulled at an earlobe while he clearly thought the idea over. “Although the viewers would go crazy for . . . Kim!”
One of the production assistants who had traveled with us snapped to attention and bustled over with her clipboard. “Yes, sir?”
“Find me someone to officiate a wedding. Not a real officiant, one of those crackpot people who belong to weird religions. Dixon’s brother is one of them, but we couldn’t get him here fast enough.”
She grabbed the interpreter and began grilling him.
“Wait. What? You want us to have a wedding? A real wedding?” I blinked fast, my insides squirreling around. “I’m not sure . . . I don’t think . . . I mean, I like Dixon a lot—”
“We do not want a real wedding,” Dixon said smoothly, cutting across my incoherent babble. “Not even for your show, Roger.”
A little spike of pain bit deep inside me. I looked at Dixon from under my eyelashes, knowing full well how he felt on the subject of weddings. He’d never had the one he had wanted, and now here he was going to have to pretend to be married to me. Did I really want to put him through that? Did I want to risk whatever our tenuous relationship was just for the sake of the show?
I would leave it up to Dixon, I decided, and accordingly took him by the arm, pulling him to a corner of the room while telling Roger, “Give us a couple of minutes.”
“I know what you’re going to say,” Dixon announced when we were cloistered from the rest of the group. “You don’t want to get married, least of all to me, and I want to reassure you that I’m of the same mind.”
Now that hurt. I had to swallow back the pain, remembering that he was grieving a lost love. “I can honestly say that marriage isn’t uppermost in my mind,” I said after a moment’s thought. “But a pretend one—one that is just for the show—is something different, don’t you think? I mean, it’s not at all the same thing as what you and your late fiancée planned, so it’s not like you’re betraying her memory.”
He looked like he wanted to be sick. “No, of course not. You are completely different from Rose. And as for the wedding we didn’t have . . . I tried to tell you the other night about that . . .”
“It’s decided, then,” Roger announced, clapping his hands and calling us back. “Dixon, Paulie, we’ll film an impromptu wedding just as soon as the officiant arrives, no later than noon. That will put us three hours behind schedule, but it can’t be helped, and the resulting excitement around the show should do wonders for ratings. I’ll do a brief on-camera piece explaining that you and Dixon fell in love during the race across the States and that you decided to marry before another day passed.”
“That seems rather deceptive,” I commented, returning to the group with Dixon. “I don’t like lying, and saying flat out that we’re madly in love is doing just that.”
“You are spending your nights together,” Roger said dryly. “I assume there is some form of affection between you.”
I blushed like mad, while Dixon looked mildly furi-ous.
“Our relationship is no one’s business, certainly not yours,” he said stiffly.
“On the contrary, it’s very much my business when it affects the show, as you will have noticed in article fifteen of the contract you signed,” Roger said tersely, then lightened up to add, “It’s all a moot point, isn’t it? Whether or not you two are in love, you are fond of each other, and that’s all we need for the cameras. Kim! Are you done finding the officiant? We must consult with the hotel venue to see if we can conscript one of their ballrooms for the wedding. Let’s look lively, people! We have less than four hours to plan and film this wedding . . .”
Dixon and I stared at each other as Roger swept the production team, interpreter, and airport officials before him, casting orders hither and thither.
“Congratulations, I think,” Melody said with a wry smile, and stuck out her hand for Dixon to shake. “Welcome to Team Suffragette.”
“Thank you,” he said, clearly a bit overwhelmed. I stopped him when he was about to follow the others out to claim the cars and drive to the hotel, where we would have a few hours to get into costume before the next stage of the race began.
“Dixon, if this makes you uncomfortable, we can simply tell Roger no. There must be some other way we can keep you in the race. Maybe you and Anton can both ride with the Esses . . .”
“Do you not want to do it?” he asked, hesitation in his eyes when he put his hand over mine. “It’s playacting, true, but if it seems a bit too real to you—”
“No, I don’t mind it at all. Are you kidding? It means we don’t have to keep sneaking into each other’s rooms at night and worrying that people will notice us. I am concerned about you.”
“Don’t be—I’m fine,” he reassured me, and, heeding a call from Graham, hurried out to get a fast lesson in driving the Thomas Flyer.
“Did you ever think you’d be dressing for your Edwardian wedding in Kazakhstan?” Melody asked almost an hour later when she helped me into what I thought of as the hard-core corset, the one that lifted my boobs almost up to my chin and that was needed to wear my best gown, one that was a lovely silver gauze and lace over a periwinkle velvet undergown. The skirt part of the dress fell away in gentle ripples and a two-foot train bedecked with tiny little silver embroidered knots. The bodice was ruched, presenting the girls in a way that was extremely flattering. My shoulders were bare, but there was a pair of long white gloves that went to my biceps, with about a million buttons each.
“No,” I answered, working on the buttons on one of the gloves. “But then, I never thought I’d be in Kazakhstan in the first place. Did you get the top hooked up?”
“Yes.” Melody patted my back and stood with her head tipped to consider my reflection in the hotel mirror. “I swear the wardrobe people love you. That dress is gorgeous. You look every inch the bride of 1908.”
“Whereas I feel like an aggravated woman of the twenty-first century. I just know the Esses had something to do with the loss of Dixon’s car.”
She adjusted the pleated collar that prettily framed her head and brushed a hand down her best dress, which was a dark navy with faint green stripes, decorated with a beaded black braid. “I don’t see how they could do that, to be honest.”
“Me either, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t do it.” I glanced at the clock. “I guess we’d better get going. No, leave the plaid dress out. I’ll want that to drive in, since this corset will kill me if I have to wear it for more than an hour or two.”
She smirked. “I’m telling you—you should have been the bluestocking. This rational corset has improved my posture to no end.”
“No one likes a smug suffragette,” I told her, pointing a gloved finger at her. “Let’s go, maid of honor, and get this wedding over so we can be on our way and leave the others in our dust.”
She laughed, and we walked arm in arm to the small conference room that Roger was able to convince the hotel to let us use for filming.
I was feeling strangely elated even though the wedding was wholly pretend. There’s just something about being dressed to the nines and going to meet a handsome, sexy man to make a girl feel pretty damned special.