Peony Street Read Online Free

paparazzi on a merry chase through the most fashionable clubs at night. Claire was usually given the smallest hotel room available to share with another staff member. Renting this flat had been a last ditch effort by her boss to convince her to sign up for another tour of duty, as in, “see what you’ll be missing?”
    “This is the most expensive piece of real estate you or I will ever have slept upon,” she told the dog. “It’s all downhill from here.”
    The bath goods store manager had agreed to ship Claire’s boxes of belongings to the U.S., so Claire carried them down one by one and then paid for shipping.
    The cab driver who picked her up in front of the Church Street flat was talkative and nosy, so Claire filled him in on her troubles with the estate agent as he drove her to their office. He waited for her to drop the key and then conveyed her in the direction of Heathrow. Due to a car accident traffic was snarled, and for the full ten minutes it took the cab to convey her one block she considered abandoning it for the underground. She also considered the four-inch heels she was wearing, the overloaded carry-on bag and Miss MacGuffin’s travel case, and decided against it.
    Her smart phone played “The Wicked Witch of the West” theme from The Wizard of Oz, which meant her ex-boss was finally calling. She knew Sloan had been invited to an engagement party for the royal couple that was to take place that evening and was probably in a vicious panic. Claire decided it would not help her nerves to hear that ominous tune play over and over all evening so she turned off her phone.
    She took a deep breath and resigned herself to the inevitable Sloan Merryweather temper tantrum. There was no telling what that woman would do next. Claire prayed that Sloan’s personal assistant Tuppy had not betrayed her. Otherwise Sloan might have her thug lawyer waiting at Heathrow.
    “La, la, la,” she said.
    “What’s that, love?” the cab driver asked.
    “Nothing,” Claire said, “just talking to myself.”
    “You’ll want to watch that,” he said, smiling at her in the rear view mirror. “There’s some will think you’re a nutter.”
    She hadn’t realized she’d said it out loud.
    Just as she feared, after an agonizingly slow cab ride she reached Heathrow after her flight had departed. Although she felt like collapsing into a sobbing heap in the middle of the concourse, she knew that looking panicked or upset in an airport could mean a one-way ticket to a security hold and a body cavity search. She was able to maintain her composure as she purchased a new ticket for a 7:00 p.m. GMT flight. She kept herself together all the way to the gate of the next available flight. There she realized she’d left her smart phone in the cab. The tears she’d felt welling up all morning threatened to spill over, so she looked up and blinked hard to force them back.
    ‘Not now,’ she sternly reprimanded herself. ‘This is not a safe place to fall apart.’
    She dug her long nails into her palms until the pain distracted her.
    ‘La, la, la,’ she said under her breath. ‘Let’s just get through this.’
    Claire’s phone was her life line. It not only kept her world organized, it was her primary means of communication with her friends, colleagues, and family. Upon waking in the middle of the night on an airplane or in a hotel room, she often had trouble remembering which country she was leaving, going to, or was in, but as long as her phone was nearby she felt securely tethered to the earth.
    She took some deep breaths and willed herself to be calm lest someone suspect she was sad about some terrorist act she might be planning. She reminded herself that all was not lost. She still had her carry-on bag (in which she’d stowed her handbag), Miss MacGuffin’s carrier, her passport, and a new ticket.
    To pass the time she bought some magazines and tabloids which all featured stories about her former employer. She rolled her