Chapter One #2
“Yes, and she’ll pay, believe me,” Imogen said grimly, trying to forget the recent memory of landing on grass thanks to what had been billed as a luxury flight with scenic bonuses galore.
The only scenic bonus she’d been interested in had been getting off that puddle jumper and onto something with more than four seats.
Pristine Maxwell had started and sold an alarming number of businesses in her short corporate career, but her current interest was travel.
Imogen wasn’t sure she hadn’t decided on that just so she could send her siblings on horrible trips.
“What did you do to her this time?”
“Who knows?” Imogen asked carelessly. “And if I knew, which I’m not saying I do, I don’t want to think about it.
I’d rather think about my revenge for the fifty-three-hour trip I’ve just enjoyed.
I’m planning on repaying her by posting on all possible social media platforms unflattering pictures of her wearing braces.
Then I’ll unfriend her. She’ll be crushed, I’m sure. ”
“And you’ll be out of the country where she can’t kill you.”
Imogen smiled. “See? Things are looking up already.”
Tilly laughed. “Absolutely. Now, what can I get you to enjoy with your revenge?”
“I need coffee,” Imogen said. “And chocolate. Preferably together, but at this point, I’d take either in any form I can get them, thank you.”
“I’ll see what I can come up with on the train.”
Imogen paused and looked at her seriously. “This trading places thing is very strange. If I weren’t so tired, I’d feel worse about it, I promise.”
“Life changes,” Tilly said, shrugging.
Imogen wasn’t sure how to even begin to respond to that, so she put it off for later.
Tilly was right, of course, but that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable.
But what could she do? She hadn’t considered for a nanosecond turning down her current job opportunity.
If Tilly was committed to being a part of the moviemaking process, Imogen was past obsessed.
She had wanted to live in the world of filmmaking for as long as she could remember.
She’d tried to distract herself with university and grad school degrees that had gotten her parents’ notice mostly off her, but her true calling had been singing a Siren’s song to her the entire time.
When the chance to be a grunt on a real, live movie set had come along thanks to a roommate breaking her leg—such a shame and fortunately something she’d had nothing to do with—she had ditched her PhD program without a backward glance and jumped without hesitation onto the dream train.
Her parents had been appalled and her siblings speechless. She’d been thrilled.
That job had turned into other jobs as grunts on other shoots, opportunities to cement a reputation as a dependable, creative sort of gal to have around. All part of her master plan to eventually nudge some good old boy out of the director’s chair and plant her own backside there.
She couldn’t blow her current gig, no matter how jet-lagged she might have been.
“Let’s get ourselves seats, then I’ll find us something to drink.”
Imogen nodded, then let Tilly take one of her suitcases, leaving her with the one that hadn’t vomited its contents all over unsuspecting Londoners. She followed Tilly onto the train, trusting it was the right one.
She paused at one point only because there was no possible way to get past the foot that was extended into the aisle.
The stiletto adorning that foot was something even her functioning suitcase would have suffered from an encounter with.
She frowned. That hadn’t come out right in her head and she half feared she’d said it aloud.
She was going to post braces pictures and anything else she could dig up on her phone when she had a decent connection and the mental wherewithal to make use of it. Prissy would pay dearly.
“Excuse me,” she said, trying not to slur her words.
The owner of that foot pulled it back into her own space. “Not to worry.”
Well, she wasn’t worrying, though maybe she should have been.
She wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t looking—blearily, of course—at some species of nobility.
She didn’t suppose royalty traveled in regular train cars, but what did she know?
If ever there had been a passenger out of place on a regular old train, it was that woman there who simply dripped class and elegance.
Imogen suppressed the urge to try to resurrect her own appearance.
She couldn’t remember when she’d last brushed her teeth or combed her hair. Probably better not to think about it.
She managed to shuffle past the stunning Audrey Hepburn lookalike, shove her suitcase where Tilly told her to, then collapse into a seat. She was thrilled to leave the rest of the details to someone far more awake than she.
She leaned her head back against the seat and considered whether or not she deserved to be as wasted as she felt.
She had, at her father’s insistence, trusted her sister to get her a good deal on her flight.
That had been her first and last mistake.
She had taken off from Denver and landed at Heathrow.
That she’d visited a dozen different airports and enjoyed little hops in planes better suited to dusting crops than carrying passengers and their luggage was perhaps beside the point.
Her older sister had known exactly what this job meant to her and how badly she needed not to look like an idiot at any time during its execution. It was payback, pure and simple.
She had hoped one of her other three siblings would have been the target of Prissy’s ire over that recent summer barbeque incident where they hadn’t intended to leave Prissy behind with the folks and half a dozen children under the age of four. Without a car. Or a wallet.
It hadn’t even been her own idea. She might have been the one to enjoy it the most, but who could blame her?
She and Prissy were a mere eleven months apart and she had her own list of insults to be irritated over.
Quietly, of course, but she was beginning to think that maybe she was past the quiet stage.
The truth was, she had been so surprised to be included on the instigating side of familial shenanigans instead of being the target of them, she’d gone along without pausing to think what Prissy might do to her after the fact. She should have known travel would be involved somehow.
Well, that was behind her for the moment, behind her with half a dozen other things she didn’t want to think about.
Her immediate future was mapped out very clearly, her job description was unambiguous, and she had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a name for herself.
If that weren’t enough, she had four months in Scotland and England to look forward to. What wasn’t to love about that?
She yawned and decided she would give staying awake one more try.
The sooner she got past the time change, the better.
She would have made small talk, but Tilly wasn’t back yet.
Perhaps that was for the best. There was something about being on a train pulling out of an historic station in London that called for something more than idle conversation.
She stared out the window at the endless number of flats and houses and tiny backyards and let herself wonder about who lived there, what they did to feed their families, if they wished they lived somewhere else.
It was something she did wherever she traveled, mostly because imagining herself in someone else’s life had been a great escape from her own.
It was the reason she’d first fallen in love with movies.
And once she’d realized that movies were a great escape to simply watch, she’d wondered what it would be like to actually make one.
She’d saved her allowance, cleverly hiding it behind cleaning supplies her siblings wouldn’t have lowered themselves to use even if death had loomed, then bought herself the cheapest video camera she’d been able to afford.
Her world had changed the moment she’d first pushed the on button.
The rest of the story was probably no more interesting than the flights of fancy any other teenager with a crazy family took, but it had been her life and she’d discovered for herself not just a way to make it bearable, but make it wonderful.
With any luck, all the exercising of her imagination she had done over the years would come in handy when she was a famous filmmaker.
In time, the sway of the train and the charm of the British countryside was so comforting and peaceful, she found herself closing her eyes to better enjoy the first. And once her eyes were closed, it seemed a shame to waste all that rocking without using it as a reason to nap.
She leaned her head against the wall and felt reality slipping away.
* * *
She woke an indeterminate amount of time later. She realized her face was adhered to the glass of the window only because it hurt to pull it away. She managed to unstick her eyes long enough to look at Tilly and mumble a few coherent words.
“Where are we?”
“An hour or so out of Edinburgh,” Tilly said. “Close enough for another nap if you like.”
“I’ll never sleep tonight if I don’t pull it together now,” Imogen said, rubbing her eyes. She wished she had something else pithy to say, but she was too tired for pithy.
“Your coffee’s cold,” Tilly said. “Sorry about that.”