its bounds. Stepping around a polite Japanese couple, she tapped the laggard briskly on the shoulder, lowering her naturally throaty voice an extra notch.
‘Hey, mate, she’s asking you to put your luggage onto the weighing machine.’
‘What?’ The man turned his head and his body followed, straightening with an uncoordinated jerk that caused him to almost fall over his laptop. Colour streaked across his high cheekbones as Rosalind snickered.
He was younger than his fussy mannerisms had led her to expect—about her own age, Rosalind guessed. His dark olive skin was unlined, and as he raked back his fine, straight hair with well-kept fingers he revealed an exaggerated widow’s peak bisecting a smooth, deep brow. His face was narrow, his steeply slanting dark eyebrows peaking to sharp commas just beyond the outer corners of his eyes, giving his expression a strikingly devilish cast. However, the look in his dark brown eyes was anything but satanic. They were wildly dilated, watching with blank consternation as Rosalind snatched up one of his bags and plonked it onto the platform.
‘She can’t process you until you weigh your luggage,’ Roz told him, her own eyes shooting impatient green sparks at him from under the brim of her hat as he made no attempt to follow her example. He was certainly slow on the uptake. If it hadn’t been for that computer she would have thought he was two bricks short of a load. Or maybe he was simply foreign, and didn’t understand what was being asked of him.
He cleared his throat. ‘Uh...I didn’t think weight mattered for first-class passengers...’ he murmured vaguely, his mild New Zealand accent immediately shattering her theory.
Rosalind’s impatience drained away to be replaced by amused condescension. He was obviously a complete greenhorn.
‘The airline still has to know what total weight the plane is carrying,’ she pointed out. ‘If you’re packing elephants with your underwear they might have to shed a few economy passengers to accommodate your eccentricity.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he muttered, not a glimmer of a smile touching his narrow mouth. She might have known he’d have no sense of humour. He continued to stare at her with the glazed abstraction of a man whose brain was temporarily otherwise engaged. To Rosalind, used to provoking sharp male awareness of her femininity, his lack of reaction was further proof of the effectiveness of her simple disguise. There were quite a few Shakespearian heroines who disguised themselves as boys, and Rosalind had played most of them with great gusto. She knew that gender confusion was largely a matter of body language.
She hooked her thumbs through the belt-loops of her jeans and widened her stance. ‘Well?’
He blinked warily at her challenge. His lashes were surprisingly thick, veiling a subtle shift in his expression. ‘Well what?’ he asked guardedly, his fingers clenching convulsively around the blue travel folder he carried in his left hand.
His white-knuckled tension indicated that he was braced for some sort of scene. Did he think she was angling for a tip? Rosalind rolled her eyes and picked up his other suitcase. It was hefty enough to make her grunt, but her lithe body had the strength demanded by her profession and after staggering slightly she heaved it onto the platform next to the lighter bag.
‘It was supposed to be a joke about the elephants,’ she commented, panting slightly as she stepped back, tilting her chin to look up at him. ‘What have you got in there, anyway?’
‘Uh...books,’ he said, still in that same thready voice adrift with uncertainty.
It figured. Her gaze swept the empty floor around his immaculately shod feet and a mischievous impulse prompted her to stoop for the case between his polished shoes.
At last she got an unequivocal reaction. ‘No! Not my computer!’ he exploded, grabbing it up and cradling it protectively against his chest like a baby. ‘I’m carrying it on with me.’
So he could move faster than snail’s pace when he wanted to! Rosalind grinned and tipped him a mocking salute on the brim of her hat.
‘So it’s just the two cases going through, then, is it, Mr James?’ asked the airline employee with marked patience.
He didn’t turn his head, seemingly hypnotised by Rosalind’s cocky grin. ‘Uh, well, I think...’
‘He means yes,’ Roz supplied firmly. She began to suspect that his air of muddled confusion presaged a man on the verge of panic. Perhaps the poor lamb was afraid of flying and was trying to put off the evil moment.
‘Mr James? May I see your passport now, sir?’
‘Passport?’
Rosalind decided it would be quicker for everyone if she took charge of the bewildered Mr James.
‘You have remembered to bring it with you, haven’t you?’ she demanded, stepping up beside him at the desk. ‘Is it in here?’
She plucked the blue folder out of the hand clamping the laptop to his chest and flicked it open to see an impressive wad of US traveller’s cheques tucked behind the clear plastic pocket. He made a choked sound of protest and she gave him a chiding look to reassure him that she wasn’t a thief. In the other side of the pocket was a slim dark blue cover stamped with the New Zealand coat of arms. She extracted it and, adroitly avoiding his belated attempt to snatch it back, presented it across the desk.
‘Do you have any preference for seating?’ she asked him, pushing the travel folder back into his hand as the woman leafed through his passport.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, his dark eyes flicking over her face in that irritatingly unfocused way, as if he still couldn’t quite believe that she was helping him.
‘You know—front seat, back seat, nearest the emergency door...that kind of thing?’ she clarified.
‘Emergency door?’ he echoed, with a swift frown.
The frown had the decidedly odd effect of slanting his wicked eyebrows even more satanically without raising a ruffle on the angelically pure forehead. She wondered idly whether his personality contained as many contradictions as his face. He was actually rather good-looking in a limp-around-the-edges kind of way. At least a woman wouldn’t need to fear being dominated by the force of his personality!
‘Look, don’t you worry about it, chum. Just leave everything to me.’ She gave up trying to involve him in the decision-making process and negotiated his boarding pass without further consultation, thrusting his departure card and returned passport at him as the formalities were completed and nudging him away from the desk so that the Japanese couple could take his place.
‘Well, go on, then,’ she said to him, when he seemed inclined to hover inconveniently. ‘You can toddle off to the departure lounge now.’
He didn’t appear to recognise a brush-off when he heard one. ‘Um, I thought I might wait for you... we could have a drink together—or something...’ He trailed off vaguely, flapping his free hand in the air.
Or something? Rosalind studied him with sudden suspicion. Had he guessed that she was a woman, or did he think he was issuing an invitation to a pretty youth? Maybe that little-boy-lost helplessness was a sexual rather than psychological signal. Either way it was up to her to disabuse him.
‘I wasn’t trying to pick you up,’ she said flatly. ‘I helped you out because I felt sorry for
