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knocked earlier, right?
    It wasn’t Jones. Unfortunately, there was a part of me disappointed by that fact. Apparently, I’d become a masochist since arriving in Australia. Go figure.
    Instead of Raphael Jones, a short man with no hair, a paunch and a porn-star moustache covering his upper lip stood on my threshold, and on his right, a grinning Heather.
    “Maci,” Heather gushed, wrapping her fingers around my right wrist in what I assume was meant to be a friendly form of contact. “You didn’t tell me your luggage got lost by Qantas. You should have told me it was lost. Anyways, you didn’t tell me so I almost told Mr. Reuben here—is that right?” She cast the bald man beside her a dubious look. “Is it Mr. Reuben? I thought that’s what you’d said.” With a smile at the nodding man, she turned her kilowatt enthusiasm back to me. “Anyway, I almost told him to go away. We get all sorts of weirdoes trying to get into the campus houses. I’m not sure what they think they’ll find, a bunch of us girls all having pillow fights in our undies maybe? Not that you’re a weirdo, Mr. Reuben. You’re not a weirdo, are you?”
    For a frozen moment, silence reigned. I waited for Mr. Reuben to say something. Mr. Reuben didn’t say anything . He appeared too shell shocked by Heather to utter a word. For her part, Heather studied him with what may have been suspicious anticipation or enthusiastic joy. Honestly, she looked like a Beagle puppy that couldn’t decide if it wanted to play, bay or grab the hem of your pants and shake it about.
    Silence stretched.
    And then Heather laughed. “Of course you’re not. You work for Qantas.”
    At the word Qantas, something clicked inside my jet-lagged, med-deprived, sleep-deprived, dignity-deprived brain.
    Qantas. Luggage.
    I shot Mr. Reuben’s feet a look and sure enough, there was my suitcase in the same condition as the last time I’d seen it. No broken zipper, no clothes or Victoria’s Secret undergarments poking out the sides. Just my suitcase—a shiny silver super-light hard-shell thing Mom had bought for me as a celebratory gift when I’d won the Australia study trip. Undamaged. Intact. Here.
    “We located your luggage,” a gruff male voice I assumed belonged to Mr. Reuben said. “It had been incorrectly placed with the luggage from First Class.”
    I lifted my stare from my shiny suitcase to the balding man beside Heather.
    His responding smile was contrite. “On behalf of Qantas Australia, may I extend my sincere apologies for any inconvenience this error has caused you.”
    Before I could say a word, he shot Heather a fearful sideways look. “Can I leave now? Alone, I mean? Without you walking me out?”
    Heather gave him a toothy smirk, and for the first time since meeting her, I suspected what you saw definitely wasn’t what you got. Heather was something else altogether behind the perky, almost ditzy front. Hmmm. Color me intrigued.
    “Of course you can go, Mr. Reuben,” she said, patting him on the forearm. “But don’t you think you should get Maci to sign that clipboard in your hand first?”
    I suppressed a laugh. She had the poor guy completely frazzled.
    With a grimace—one nowhere near as sexy as Raphael Jones’s earlier grimace, I can tell you that—Mr. Reuben held said clipboard out to me, withdrawing a blue pen from his shirt pocket as he did so. “Just sign at the cross,” he mumbled.
    Giving Heather a small smile, I took the offered pen with my right hand—the one not shaking, thank God—and signed my name in the appropriate place.
    “Thanks, Miss Rowling.” Mr. Reuben retrieved his pen and tucked the clipboard under his arm. “Miss Renner,” he said with a harried nod at Heather.
    Then he was gone, damn near scurrying along the corridor away from us both.
    I gave up trying to hold back my giggle.
    Heather grinned at me. “Did he seem scared to you? Why do you think he was scared?” Devilish delight danced in her eyes.