Read Online Fly Me to the Moon by Alyson Noël - Free Book Online

manuscript.
Great, as if I don’t have enough to be freaked about,
I thought, going through my small carry-on bag for the third time and rechecking every single nook and cranny.
    Thanks to that major tropical storm, I’d spent the last five days in rainy Puerto Rico, holed up in the hotel, watching pay-per-view with Clay and Jennifer, winning then losing fifty dollars in blackjack at the hotel casino, acting friendly toward Michael and Aimee when I inadvertently ran into them in the lobby, and watching the red portions of my face peel and fade to a nice, raw pink.
    And it wasn’t until we got to the airport that I realized I’d only left out enough kitty chow to cover the three days I thought I’d be gone and not the five that I actually was.
    “Kat is going to kill me!” I’d told Clay while helping him set up the galley.
    Due to the recent spate of weather-related flight cancellations, all the seats were full. So if I wanted to get home I had no choice but to sit on the jump seat. And if I was going to ride in the galley.well then, I felt like I had to help out, if only a little.
    “You didn’t leave out an extra bowl, just in case?” he asked, slamming a bag of ice onto the galley floor over and over again until it broke into smaller, more serviceable chunks.
    “It didn’t even occur to me,” I admitted. “Believe me, animals and children are not safe with me. I don’t even possess the minimum amount of nurturing skills required to take care of others.” I opened a bag of napkins that advertised a software company (yet another sign of how Atlas was totally selling out), and shoved them into a caddy.
    “What are you talking about? Of course you’re nurturing; you’re a flight attendant! Which also makes you a nurse, a psychologist, a babysitter, a janitor, a dietician, a bartender, a cocktail waitress, a veterinarian, a life coach, a bomb stopper, a crime fighter, a cockpit protector, a luggage lifter, a hash slinger, a magician, a mind reader, a global positioning system, a weather controller, and a human shield. It’s like we have superpowers! Think about it: We transport thousands of people a day, feeding and watering them while we’re at it!” he said, getting up from the floor and carefully pouring the newly broken ice chunks into a plastic serving drawer.
    “Believe me, the only reason I feed and water anyone is because it’s my job, and I’ll get fired if I don’t. And now Kat’s gonna fire me as her friend, when she gets home from Greece and finds three starved kitties in her kitchen. Besides,” I whispered, shutting the door of the beverage cart and peeking down the aisle, “after six years of this, I don’t even like most people anymore.”
    “Hailey, please.” He’d rolled his eyes. “None of us do.” Then, shaking his head, he’d charged down the aisle intent on stopping someone from cracking the overhead bin with their oversized bag.
     
    And now, with the contents of my carry-on spilled across the galley floor, the fact of my missing manuscript was something I could no longer deny. And it wasn’t just that it was my only copy that hadme so upset (sure I’d backed it up to disk, years ago, but I no longer knew where that was either), but more the idea of where it might be and who might be reading it that had me all bothered.
    Let’s see, if I retrace my steps, then the last time I saw it was . . . Think, Hailey! When I was sitting in first class, drinking champagne . . . right before that awful gate agent made me move . . . then there was that really cute guy . . . Oh my God, what if
he
read it! If he read it, I will
die!
Seriously. But wait. Wouldn’t he just hand it over to the crew? And since I’d just spent the last five days with them, I know that didn’t happen, so it must have fallen between the seat cushions. “Which means it would have been found during the security check in Puerto Rico and then promptly thrown out after scanning it for terrorist