The Au Pairs (The Au Pairs 1)

"Sorry. This bus is fully booked. You'll have to go standby on the next. But I doubt you'll get on. It's July Fourth weekend!"

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"Omigod. Are you serious? I'm not going to be able to get on?" "Not without a reservation, you're not."

"But--but---I didn't know... ."

"Step aside, miss," the bus madam said rudely.

"You don't understand! I'll be late for my job, and it's really, really important I get to East Hampton by five. Please?"

"Can't help you. Try tomorrow."

Mara moved numbly to the side, shell-shocked. She had been on the road since six o'clock in the morning and now this! It was just like Kevin Perry to forget to mention the reservation policy on the Jitney. He just assumed that like everyone in New York, Mara would know the drill.

"Please--is there any way?" she asked, inching back to the front.

"I told you, miss, you'll have to STAND ASIDE!"

"Excuse me! What's the holdup?" asked an elegant woman in an oversized straw hat, holding a tiny lapdog in her handbag.

"No reservation," the grouchy clipboard-nazi said, pointing to Mara.

"I didn't know. I really need to get on this bus or I'll be late for my job," Mara explained, her eyes welling up.

"Fine, fine, fine." The woman sighed loudly behind her sunglasses. "You can take Muffy's seat as long as you hold him," she said in a martyr's tone.

"Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!" Mara said as the lady deposited her dog and its carrier in her arms.

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Harried and still a little upset, Mara was finally allowed to climb aboard the bus and take a seat. She squeezed in next to her benefactor, who promptly put on a frilly eye mask and fell asleep as the bus pulled away.

Mara looked out the window at the receding New York skyline. In Queens they passed Shea Stadium, festooned with American flags and patriotic bunting. An hour went by. Traffic on the freeway was brutal. Mara pressed her nose against the glass, counting the aboveground pools that sprouted in every backyard once they hit Long Island proper.

It reminded her of Sturbridge. She should really call Jim to try and work things out. She didn't like leaving things the way they had, and she hated to think of anyone being mad at her. Just as she was wondering whether she could try him again, her phone began to ring.

The slumbering silence was suddenly broken by a wheezy DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DUM, DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DUM. The digitized opening bars of "Sweet Child of Mine."

"Cell phone!" hissed her seatmate, lifting her eye mask. "Who's got the cell phone?"

"Turn it off! Turn it off!" demanded a pinched-looking girl a few years older than Mara, looking up from her knitting.

"The noise! The noise!" quavered a bald middle-aged man holding up the latest Harry Potter novel.

Mara frantically began searching for her tiny phone inside her overstuffed backpack. A cantankerous voice thundered from the

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front seat. "No cell phones allowed! Will you please turn that off?" Everyone craned their necks to see who had broken the most august law on the Hampton Jitney. Fifty pairs of irritated, sleep- rumpled eyes glared in Mara's direction. The clipboard-wielding bus madam who'd already given Mara grief for getting on the bus without a reservation gestured angrily. "You there!"

"Sorry! Sorry! I didn't know!" Mara said, fumbling with her phone. "Hello???" She brushed her long brown bangs off her face with a hurried sweep.

"Mar! It's me! Hey, I--"

"Jim! I can't talk now!" she said, snapping the phone shut and cutting him off in mid-protest.

The long-haired Chihuahua in her arms stared her down with an indignant look on its pointy face.