Airhead

I also realized I had nothing to clean it up with.

‘Oh my God. I’m so sorry,’ I apologized to the doorman, who’d been standing a few yards away, flagging down a cab for another resident.

He looked at me with an expression of bewildered amusement.

‘Miss Howard,’ he said, ‘I’ll take care of it, like always.’

Oh my God. Nikki Howard’s doormen clean up after her dog for her? How totally embarrassing. I could feel myself blushing. A detached part of me realized that it was interesting that Nikki Howard blushed so easily.

But most of me just continued to be mortified. Also hideously uncomfortable, because of what had just gone on back in the lobby.

‘Really, um,’ I said. ‘It’s OK. If you just have a plastic bag, or something, I’ll clean it up.’

‘That’s not necessary, Miss Howard,’ the doorman said, now looking at me as if he thought I’d lost my mind. Apparently Nikki Howard never offered to clean up after her own dog. ‘It’s me, Karl. I’ll take care of it.’

I wanted to die. I said, ‘Well, OK, Karl. I’m really sorry. Look, I hate to ask, but I, um, have to go. Can you make sure Cosy gets back to the loft?’ No way was I going back into that lobby and facing Justin again.

Karl nodded and went to scoop up the little dog –

Who took one look at me and began to wail.

Not just whine. Not just bark. But howl. Like a tiny coyote. With a bouffant hairdo.

What was her problem now?

Karl was all too happy to answer that question for me.

‘She misses you,’ Karl said all jovially. But there was an undercurrent of seriousness in his voice. ‘She did this the whole time you were gone last month.’

Oh my God. I was a horrible person. I had abandoned my dog for more than a month.

Then I remembered: she wasn’t my dog.

And I wasn’t a horrible person either. Karl didn’t know that the reason Cosabella had been abandoned was because her real owner was — I’m pretty sure — dead. Well… in a way. Unless Lulu was right about the whole spirit-transfer thing. Which I was pretty sure she wasn’t. Because such a thing wasn’t physically possibly.

‘Cosy’ I hurried back to the doorman and took the little dog from his hands. Instantly she stopped crying and tried to bury herself inside my jacket.

‘Cosy’ I whispered to her, my heart melting all over again. ‘I can’t take you. You don’t really belong to me. And I’m going back to the hospital. They don’t let dogs in the hospital. Remember?’

But the dog just smiled up at me from inside my jacket, panting happily, her tail thumping against me.

And I knew in that instant that I was taking Cosy with me, come hell or high water. Whatever that expression meant.

Yeah. My life wasn’t getting unduly complicated or anything.

It was kind of ironic that, just as I was thinking this, Justin Bay appeared, looking a

‘Is this about that ring?’ he leaned down to ask me in a low voice. We were standing on Center Street, a one-way street that was still busy enough that I could barely hear him above the traffic noise. ‘The one I gave Lulu? Because it didn’t mean anything, baby. I only did it to throw her off the scent, because she was getting suspicious about us. You can’t honestly be holding that ring against me—’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I told him. Which was the truth. ‘And I really have to go now —’

His face twisted with emotion.

And the next thing I knew, he had hold of both my arms and was hauling me towards him to lower his lips over mine.

My second kiss in the past twelve hours was even more devastating than the first one. I could feel this one all the way down to my toes, which instantly curled inside my Skechers.

I used to always snort derisively when I got to the parts in Frida’s romance novels where the dukes snatched up the poor but spunky heroines and moulded their bodies against the front of their waistcoats or whatever. I always thought to myself, as the heroines’ bodies went limp in response, ‘Yeah, right. Like that ever happens.’

Imagine my surprise when my own body — or, I guess I should say, Nikki Howard’s body — went limp in response to Justin Bay’s kiss, right there on Center Street, in front of Karl the doorman, a string of taxis waiting for the lights to turn, a million pigeons and everyone else who might have been looking. I nearly dropped Cosabella — who was getting smushed between us anyway — I was so shocked.

Was this normal? Was this how bodies were supposed to react when getting kissed — especially by guys who were practically strangers to me (aside from a passing familiarity due to the pages of gossip magazines)? Or were Justin Bay and Brandon Stark just phenomenally good kissers? Because this kissing thing — seriously, I could totally get into it. Kissing rocked. I was loving the kissing thing. I mean, obviously it was wrong — so wrong — to be kissing Nikki Howard’s best friend’s boyfriend behind her best friend’s back and especially behind Nikki Howard’s boyfriend’s back.

Not to mention the fact that, truthfully, I didn’t even like either of these guys. I mean, I still had a monster crush on my own best friend, back home. If he had been the one bending my body back there on Center Street, I swear to God, there probably would have been an explosion or something.

Which was why I knew I couldn’t let this kissing business continue, however much Nikki’s body might have wanted it to. What if Christopher came strolling up (for whatever unlikely reason) and saw me with Justin Bay’s tongue rammed down my throat? He hates Justin Bay for what he did to ruin the Journeyquest movie with his terrible acting.

And OK, he wouldn’t necessarily know it was me and not Nikki Howard.

But that’s beside the point.

And what about Lulu? Supposing Lulu woke up and looked out of the window and saw us? True, Lulu had kidnapped me. But she had done it out of the goodness of her heart.

It was kind of hard to say anything though, withJustin’s mouth on mine. Awesome as this felt, it just couldn’t go on. It took every ounce of determination I had to wrench my lips from his and say, ‘Um, please stop—’

‘You know this is what you want,’ Justin said in a thick voice — really! Just like the dukes in Frida’s books! — keeping an iron grip on my arms.

The thing was, he was totally right. I did want it. Did I ever. But I wasn’t going to be boneheaded enough to say that.

‘No,’ I said weakly instead, ‘I don’t. It’s wrong.’

‘That’s not what you said in Paris,’ Justin reminded me.

‘Um,’ I said, keeping my still throbby mouth carefully averted from his in case he tried to persuade me some more. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been to Paris. Please let go —’

A second later, much to my surprise, he did let go. But not because I’d asked him to. He’d let go because Gabriel Luna, of all people, appeared as if from nowhere and yanked him forcefully off me.

‘I believe the young lady asked you to release her,’ Gabriel said to Justin in his crisp British accent.

Whoa! This was getting more and more like one of Frida’s romance novels every minute! In a totally excellent way.

‘Who the hell,’ Justin asked, checking his leather jacket for dents where Gabriel had manhandled it, ‘do you think you are?’

‘A friend of Nikki’s,’ Gabriel said woodenly in response. An FON! Gabriel Luna had just called himself an FON!

To me, Gabriel asked, in a much warmer, concerned tone, ‘Are you all right, Nikki?’

I nodded, absently stroking Cosabella, who hadn’t taken too kindly to being squashed against me, and was growling at Justin with all the ferocity of a nine-pound Rottweiler.

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Just worried about — you know. Who might have seen us.’

I meant Christopher — and Lulu — of course. But this caused Justin to look all around quickly, as if realizing for the first time that we were actually standing on a fairly busy street corner. Not once did he glance in the direction of the wide floor-to-ceiling windows above us, though. The cad! Or was scoundrel the right word? I’d have to check one of Frida’s books.