12 Hours In Paradise Read Free Page B

right now the answer will be different if I have to invite them to my house, especially if my mom and dad and Chester are there.”
    He pretended to study the article very carefully, moving his finger back and forth as though searching for an answer. A thirty-something couple bumped up against me in a crush to pass the island we’d created by stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. The man had a blond mullet and was dressed in the type of business suit my father would wear to work, complete with necktie; but instead of long pants he wore long shorts. The woman was sealed into a really tight and extremely short black dress with a steeply plunging neckline and massively enormous boobs. Her heels must have been five inches. She towered over the man.
    “Excyooz,” the man said in some kind of a foreign accent. I watched their backs disappear into the crowd as Arash poured over the newspaper clipping supposedly searching for clues, his brow furrowed in concentration.
    “There’s nothing here that prohibits you from going out to dinner with this guest instead of dining with him or her in the privacy of your home.” He pronounced privacy with a short i .
    “Then I’d like to go out to dinner with you,” I announced proudly.
    He furrowed his brow again and looked down at the article before looking back up at me.
    “I’m afraid that’s not allowed,” he said sadly. “Oh, how I wish it were.”
    “Anybody, then…what if they’re dead?”
    “Especially if they’re dead,” he exclaimed brightly.
    “Then I guess I’d like to go out to dinner with Laura Ingalls Wilder.”
    “Do I know this lady?”
    “I don’t believe you’ve met.”
    “Can you please introduce us?”
    “Laura, I’d like you to meet my friend, Arash, although some people just call him Bright Arrow. Arash, I’d like you to meet Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote The Little House on the Prairie series, which occupied most of my life beginning in fifth grade when I first discovered her until about seventh grade when I moved on.”
    “I’m so sorry, Miss Wilder. My friend…Dorothy. Well, she didn’t mean to be rude when she said she moved on. You understand?”
    “Of course she understands. She’s Laura Ingalls Wilder.”
    “Then maybe you can share with me why she would make such an interesting dinner companion,” he said. He leaned over and whispered in my ear, “It might make her feel a little better, considering that she now knows you lost interest in her after the seventh grade.”
    His breath in my ear raised goose bumps on the back of my neck. His lips so close to me made me momentarily forget we were only two strangers just kidding around for an hour. Vacationers.
    “Well…well…” I gathered my composure. “Where I live in Reno is in an area just outside the city that’s kind of still country and wild. I like to imagine what it was like for people who lived a long time ago before there was electricity and highways and Internet and cars. Sometimes I ride my horse up in the hills and imagine I’m living back then. Nothing but me and my horse and—”
    “Your horse?”
    “Yes, my horse.”
    “Are you telling me you have a horse?”
    “Yes. It’s not that unusual where I live to have a horse.”
    “We’re talking about the four-legged beast with a tail and furry matter that grows from its neck?”
    “Its mane.”
    “And this beast carries you on its back?”
    “Yes, I ride my horse.”
    “Just a minute.” Arash pulled me out of the flow of foot traffic to the entrance of a jewelry store where an armed guard stood at attention. The guard glanced at us irritably but relaxed when he realized we weren’t a threat. He went back to studying the river of passersby.
    “What?”
    Arash gently gathered a handful of hair on the side of my head and began a clumsy attempt at a braid.
    “What are you doing?”
    “I’m just trying to imagine you as you must look when you’re riding your horse. Surely your hair must hang in two