As Temple daydreamed, Matt Devine, a superior fiancé, although newly minted, used his superior height to peer ahead. Almost any adult’s height was superior to Temple’s, but Matt was a shade under six feet.
“We’ve lucked out for a Saturday,” he said. “I’ve seen lines four people wide snaking all the way over the bridge areas to the initial security checkpoints.”
Temple’s answer was a groan. Her carry-on was almost half her five-foot-zero size. Its chic leopard-skin-print exterior harbored twenty pounds of purse pussycat, Midnight Louie by name and furry anchor by weight and composition.
She’d insisted on toting the twenty-pound cat in his fancy new five-pound state-of-the art carrier. “Or what good are workout sessions at the gym?” she answered Matt when he attempted, repeatedly, to tote the load that was Louie.
And Temple had insisted Louie accompany them to see how he liked Chicago. Also, the Palmer House Hilton accepted pets under seventy-five pounds, so Louie was a lightweight when it came to hotel privileges.
“I can carry that.” Matt again reached to claim the carrier’s wide shoulder strap like the gentleman he was.
Temple shrugged his hand away. “You’ve got three bags to wrangle, and don’t forget we have to strip to go through the security point.”
“I do this routine three times a month. I’m not about to forget doing the gray rubber-tub tango.”
“I bet doffing wearing apparel for the security check is a real showstopper now that you’ve been on Dancing With the Celebs.”
“It was your idea for me to do that downright risky show, remember?”
“And look what it got you? A knife attack followed by a fast-track samba toward your own network TV talk show.”
“We’ll see what happens in Chicago.” Matt frowned at the large leopard-skin-print bag Temple wouldn’t surrender. “What about Louie going through security?” he asked. “Did you look into that?”
“Time crunch,” Temple said. “I know he can go through, I just don’t know how.”
A discontented yowl emerged from the bag.
They were shuffling through in a tight zigzag pattern of lanes that put every ear in its neighbor’s projection range.
“Is that a cat in there?” A woman several spaces ahead of them was momentarily their closest neighbor.
She peered through the mesh with interest. With her steel gray cap of hair and many frown lines, she looked more like your terrorizing high school physical education instructor than the average passenger.
Temple fanned a protective hand over the bag, her left hand, thus flashing her ruby-and-diamond engagement ring. Their interrogator raised an unplucked eyebrow at the bling.
“Cats are allowed on planes if ticketed,” Temple said.
“Well, you are in luck. I’m an off-duty preboard screening officer. I deal with pets all the time. Usually the pet is removed from the carrier, and then the passenger carries the pet through the walk-through metal detector.”
The bag erupted with urgent movement. Apparently Midnight Louie objected to metal detectors.
The woman wasn’t fazed. “Cat, huh? They tend to be the bad boys of airport security personnel. If you have any concerns about your cat getting squirmy, just tell the person at the front position that you’d prefer to go into the private search room and take your cat out there because he may try to escape. My, that would be no exaggeration. Just how big is your cat? It looks like he’s fighting a wolverine in there.”
It felt that way too. Matt was ready once again to relieve her of Louie’s carrier and the woman’s frown made a very rumpled rug out of her forehead. Would Louie’s natural boyish energies make him a purrson of interest to security personnel?
Their instant advisor’s frown relaxed.
“Sometimes they fail to tell trainees this, but we do this all the time. Put your other bags through on the conveyor belt. Another screener will take your carrier with your cat inside, meeting you after you walk through the metal detector. Once you and your bags have cleared, you’ll go into the private search room with your pet in the carrier. There you can safely take out the cat, and the carrier will be hand-searched.”
Temple wasn’t sure that Louie would put up with any hand-searching, even if it was only of his carrier. Now she frowned.
“The last thing we screeners want is a loose cat in the airport,” the expert noted, “so the private search room is always available for pets, and also for passengers, for that matter. Good luck!”
Movement in the line whisked their advisor away.
Matt looked relieved. “Good to have a plan. I’ll pass the carrier over to the screener, though. I think that operation requires some height and upper body strength. You’ll only have to play the ‘little woman’ for a couple minutes, promise.”
“I guess it’s good that Louie knows he can count on you in a crunch as well as me.” Temple conceded.
Midnight Louie’s lonesome wail was either agreement or dismay, but only he would ever know for sure. Travelers behind their party were already buzzing and sighing about a forthcoming slowdown due to animal transport.
Now Temple knew how people traveling with kids felt.
* * *
Thirty-eight thousand feet in the air and six hours later, Louie dozed as Temple gazed out the semi-smeared airplane window, knocking off photo shots faster than a gangster mowing down rivals.
“I can’t believe it,” she told Matt when she leaned back to take a break. “This city is monstrous. It’s the Nessie of Lake Michigan. Manhattan is just a garter snake in comparison. I can’t believe how massive the buildings look.”
“That’s because you’ve never flown over Chicago before,” Matt said.
“True. And this is only my second time in first class,” she added in a lower tone, not wanting the presumed elite all around them to take her for a hick.
Matt thought for an instant, then gave a tight nod without comment.
Darn, Temple thought, he’s figured out my “first time” in first class was when Max and I left Minneapolis for Las Vegas. That was not a good place to leave your current fiancé, picturing another guy in his place, in this case an actual airplane seat.
Being a practiced publicist by trade, Temple immediately switched into distraction mode, peering at the leopard-skin-print bag jammed under the seat ahead. This was one occasion when being five-feet-zero tall paid off. The capacious bag wasn’t crowding her foot room at all.
“I bet I’m the only person in first class with a purse-pooch bag.” Temple whispered to Matt, “And look. Isn’t that a network news correspondent two seats ahead across the aisle?”
A cabin attendant cruised by checking seat belts. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Devine,” she murmured at Matt.
Luckily, today’s “stewardesses” weren’t the man-pleasing bombshells of yesteryear, at least from Temple’s point of view. This pleasant, almost plump woman was old enough to be Matt’s mother, but that didn’t stop her from sopping up his blond good looks. Temple eyed her as she moved away.
“That’s right,” she told Matt in another whisper, “you’re a regular on this flight route from all of your Amanda Show appearances. Why would the producers fly you in on a family visit?”
“My booking agent—you remember my mentioning Tony Valentine?—explained it to me way back when. As long as I’m a current ‘on-air personality,’ even off and on, there’s no such thing as my flying to Chicago without it being ‘business.’ That’s why we’re being put up at the Palmer House Hilton. As long as I’m a candidate for a new talk show, I’ll be treated like a prince.”
“I can do ‘princess,’ but maybe our getting married will hurt your career?”