“And I keep telling you,” the woman huffed, “that nothing gets claimed without a claim ticket, young lady.”
“You don’t understand, I need that crate,” Jessi said urgently.
“I understand perfectly,” the fifty-something, ash-blonde replied, without a flicker of emotion on her Botox-smoothed face, but with an unmistakable sneer in her voice. “You want to collect something for which you have no claim ticket. How would you feel if I permitted someone else to claim your package with no claim ticket? How could we hope to control our packages at all if we permitted such unauthorized claimings to occur? That’s why, young lady, we give claim tickets in the first place. One ticket retrieves one corresponding package. You may file a missing claim ticket claim, if you wish.”
“How long will it take me to get my package if I file a missing claim ticket claim?”
“Processing a missing claim ticket claim can take several weeks to several months.”
Jessi was not pessimistic by nature, but she could have sworn a note of smug satisfaction had just entered the woman’s voice, and she suddenly had no doubt any claim she filed would lean toward the several months mark. For whatever reason, the woman didn’t like her and didn’t want to help her.
And without the mirror, Jessi was doomed. She had a whopping forty-two dollars and seventeen cents in her purse. Oh, sure, she had a credit card, but the moment she used it Lucan would know exactly where she was. She needed the bottomless bank account of Cian MacKeltar’s deep, sexy, magical voice.
One way or another, she had to get the mirror back. And it was pretty clear that this woman had no intention of facilitating things. Some people were problem-solvers and some people were problem-compounders. This woman was a Compounder with a capital C.
Jessi muttered a nearly inaudible thank you and turned hurriedly away before she said something she’d regret.
Sighing, she shifted her backpack to her other sore shoulder, trudged back down the long hallway, out into the main part of the airport, and slumped wearily into a hard plastic chair.
She glanced at her watch, slipped it from her wrist, and moved the hour hand forward six hours. It was a little after nine in the morning, Edinburgh time.
Well, she consoled herself, the bright side of things is that he’ll definitely be able to come out now, if I can just get to him. It had been over twenty-four hours in both time zones since she’d he’d last been free and, drat it all, she actually missed the domineering barbarian. Missed his annoying testosterone overload, missed knowing that any minute now he might give her one of those kisses that vacuumed her brain out through her ear and turned her into a vapid little sex-kitten.
Leaning back in the torture-chamber of a chair, she rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Flight 412 leaving Edinburgh for London will depart . . .” a woman’s lilting voice spoke brightly from the speaker above her.
Leaving Edinburgh. She was in Scotland! The fabulous, five-thousand-year-old stone furniture of Skara Brae was near. The incredible Rosslyn Chapel was a mere eight miles from Edinburgh. The ruins of Dunnottar and countless other ancient treasures loomed just beyond the airport doors.
And she was beginning to think she might never make it that far. Her connecting flight from Paris had landed five hours ago.
And she’d been trying to get her hands on the mirror ever since.
It had taken her nearly an hour just to find the idiotic Special Items Claim Pickup Office.
It hadn’t been anywhere near baggage, as she’d expected, but down a long hallway, tucked back in the rear of the airport, accessible only through a window that opened onto a long counter built into the wall. It had been so deserted that she’d not believed she was in the right place until she’d glimpsed the tiny handwritten sign perched on the corner of the desk. It seemed almost as if they wanted to keep the unclaimed items. Maybe, she thought cynically, they auctioned them off to employees or something when their time was up.
There wasn’t even an exterior door into the office; apparently staff gained access some other way.
If there’s no name on the crate, where will it go when it arrives in Edinburgh? Cian had asked, prior to compelling the airline employees to crate and ship it.
It would have to go to unclaimed baggage. She couldn’t imagine it going anywhere else. Without a name or a return shipping address, they certainly couldn’t send it back. She’d learned that lesson herself, trying to get rid of the crate. She also knew that airports were required to hold items, even unmarked ones, for a certain number of days. She’d lost her luggage once, between home in Maine and school in Chicago, and by the time it had resurfaced, there’d not been a single identifying tag on it.