IT WAS LONELY

For a little while, they both chuckled, but Alora was unflappable. 'Kylie it's time to have a good time, at the airport, doctor's orders —purchase some condoms.'

Kylie smiled and waved as she climbed into her car and drove to the hair salon.

Alora was one of her favorite people in the world

In addition, Miguel. 

 But...

what she hadn't told her best friend was that, as much as it could work for Alora, she didn't want Miguel to be hers.

She didn't want to be the one who asked what was for dinner every night, but she also didn't want to be the one who came home from work and said, "Hi, honey, I'm home."

Even so, there wasn't enough time to consider everything.

 She parked her car behind the church, grabbed her luggage, and dashed to the hairdresser's. 

She pushed on the door, but it didn't open, so she scowled until she noticed the 'Closed' sign.

'George, don't you do this to me...'

He never forgot about her appointment, and Kylie had been quite particular about the time she wanted to see when she first saw him on Monday.

George was well aware that she had an aircraft to catch and would be pressed for time. 

 'Breathe,' Kylie mumbled as she accepted that no amount of rattling the door was going to make George suddenly appear. 

 She reminded herself that it was just a hair appointment. At the hotel, there would be a hairdresser.

However, her presentation was at nine a.m., and she'd planned to relax with a leisurely breakfast in her room before that.

It was also Thomas' birthday the next day.

She had no intention of crying over a canceled hair appointment.

As she drove to the airport, Kylie wasn't sobbing over it.

Instead, she wished the boot was stuffed with presents and wrapping paper, and she was on herway to get a birthday cake...

 Why was it so difficult?

 So, because she couldn't get her thick curly hair smoothed into long, shiny, straight hair, she went to the airport and bought some hair serum and gel, checked her luggage, and flew through with plenty of time to spare.

She went to the restroom and did the best she could with her hair, resolving to straighten it tonight and again in the morning, but for now she knotted it back and left.

 She sat down and flipped through her presentation on her tablet. 

It was about palliative care and it's role in the emergency room, and she understood everything there was to know about it. 

She had spent hours researching, and all of her precise notes and patient studies had now been reduced to a single speech.

 What happens after that?

 Exams.

 Then what?

 Kylie exhaled deeply.

Her professional life paralleled her home remodeling. 

 Kylie had glanced at the purple carpet and the purple tiles that would take an eternity to remove the day she moved here. 

It had seemed strange, even impossible, that she would ever get there, but here she was, with only a bedroom and a garden away from completion.

 She had, through high school, always wanted to be a surgeon yet as a medical student she had stepped in the emergency department and had been quickly ushered into Resus to take care and observe the treatment of a patient who had just come in.

 A cyclist had lain in there unconscious with a massive head injury. Kylie had watched in silent awe as the whole staff had brought her dire condition under control. Her heart, that stopped beating, had been restarted. Her airway had been secured and the seizures that had then started to rack her body had been halted with drugs.

 She had been sure at first that she would die and yet she had made it to the theatre and then on to Intensive care.

 She had followed her up and found out a week later that she had been transferred to a ward. she had gone in to see her, expecting what, she hadn't known. Certainly not a young lady sitting up in bed, smiling and talking with her boyfriend, who was sitting by her side.

 She should be dead, Kylie had thought, though, of course she didn't say that. Instead, she'd chatted to her for a few minutes, unable to truly comprehend that here she was, not just alive but laughing and living.

 Emergency medicine had become her passion right there and then. Yes, at twenty years old she had known she was a long way off being as skilled as the staff who had attended the cyclist that day.

 Slowly she had got there, though.

 And now here she was, coming to the top of her game.

 So why the restlessness?

 kylie glanced up at the board and rolled her eyes when she saw that her flight was delayed, and decided to wonder around the shops.

 Oh, there was Alora's dress!

 She was sure that it was, though looking at the price tag, not quite sure enough to buy it without checking, so she took a photo and fired quick text to her friend.

 Is this it?

 It was, and Alora promised to love her forever and forgive any stuffed horses she might bring home for the twins if Kylie would buy it for her.

 She bought some duty - free perfume too, as well as her favourite lip gloss and ... no—no condoms.

 Finally the plane was boarding and kylie, along her purchases, was on her way.

 She didn't read through her talk again. She dozed most of the way, trying to drown out the sound of overexcited children and their parents. As they disembarked she almost forgot the dress but luckily she grabbed it at the last minute.

 Very luckily, as it turned out.

 Having spent hours watching on empty baggage carousel, seeing the shutters go down on all the airport shops and filling in numerous forms, she was doing her level best to hold it together as she climbed out of the taxi and walked into hotel. It was close to midnight.

 Her luggage was lost, her hair was a joke.

 And tomorrow, at nine, she had to deliver the most important presentation of her life.

KYLIE WOKE BEFORE her breakfast was delivered and lay there.

 She remembered a day ten years ago and wished, how she wished, that there was a nine- 

year- old waiting to open his birthday presents and to sing 'Happy Birthday' to.

 It was a hard picture to paint and each year it got harder.

 No, she didn't miss Jamal and the perfect world they had been building. She missed, On Thomas's behalf, all that he had been denied.

 She couldn't afford to cry, especially given the fact she had no make-up with her and so headed to the bathroom to set to work with the little she had.

 With her heavy-duty hair straighteners neatly packed in her lost luggage, she was very grateful for the hair serum she had bought and applied a lot of it in an attempt to tame her long, wild curly hair. 

 When her breakfast was delivered she walked out onto the balcony and tried to calm herself with the spectacular view of the Mediterranean. It was just after seven but already the air was warm. The coffee was hot and strong and kylie had tried to focus on her speech. It will be fine, she told herself, refusing to fall apart because she didn't have the perfect, perfect gale grey suit and the pale ballet pumps in the softest smoothest leather to wear.

 They were here to hear her words, Kylie reminded herself.

 Yet she couldn't quite convince herself that it didn't matter what she wore or how she looked.

 Neutral

 That was how she always tried to appear.

 There was nothing neutral about her today, she thought as she slipped on Alora's dress.

 Her rather ample bust was accentuated by the lace, the halter-neck showed far too much of her brown back—the tan was from the painting the window frames on her last last lot of days off, rather than lying on the beach. Her hair she tied back with the little white band that came with the shower cap in the bathroom and then she covered it with a thick strand of black hair.

 A squirt of duty-free perfume, slick of lip gloss and she would simply have to do it herself.

 Yet, she thought, having tied up her espadrilles, as she stood and looked in the mirror, while never in a million years would she have chosen this outfit for anything related to work, she liked how she looked. She wouldn't even have chosen anything it for anything out of work either. Generally she was in jeans or short or jeans when sorting out the renovations. Yes, she liked how she looked today. It reminded her of how she had looked before she had...

Kylie halted herself right there.

 She simply could not afford the luxury of breaking down.

 Tonight, Kylie told herself, Tonight she would order room service and a bottle of wine and reminisce.

 Today, she had to get on.

 She had one last flick through her notes and then she headed out to register for the conference also to check if everything was in place for her talk.

 She was just putting her swipe card in her bag when the elevator doors opened and she looked up to an empty lift, bar one occupant.

 Bar one was tall, unshaven with grey eyes and his dark hair was a touch too long yet he looked effortlessly smart in dark pants and a white shirt. all this she noted as she stood there and briefly wondered if she just let this lift go.

 For some bizarre reason that seemed far easier than stepping in.

 'Buenos dias,' Bar one said, and then frowned on her indecision as to whether or not to enter.

 'Buenos dias,' Kylie replied, gave him a smile and stepped in. The floor number for the function rooms had already been pressed and as she glanced to the side and down, anywhere other than his eyes, she noted he too was an owner of the softest buttery leather shoes. 

 His luggage clearly hadn't been lost.

 And neither was he wearing socks.

 Three, Kylie thought as his cologne met her nostrils and she found herself doing a very quick audit as to the number of garments that would remain on his lovely body once he'd kicked off those shoes. 

 Talk about thinking like a man!

 She blamed Alora, of course. It was her fault for putting such ideas in her head, Kylie decided as he lift opened at the next floor and unfortunately no one got in.

 He said something else in Spanish and Kylie shook her head. 'Actually, Buenos dias is as far as my Spanish goes.

 'Oh,' He said. 'I thought you were local.' 

 His accent was English and he had just delivered a compliment indeed, because the locals, Kylie had worked out during her prolonged time at the airport last night, were a pretty stunning lot.

 Nope.' She shook her head.

 The lift doors opened and he wished her a good day as he went to step out.

 'And you,' she offered. He's handsome, she thought.

 'Sadly not,' he replied, and nodded to the gathering crowd outside the elevators. 'I'm working.'

 'So am I,' she said, and he stood there a little taken aback as he let her out first.

 Oh!

 Ken had thought she was on her way to some... Well, he'd had no idea really where she might have been on her way to but talk about a sight for sore eyes.

 She had a very, very, very nice back, he decided as he followed her over to the registration desk, where there was a small line up.

 A very tense back, he noted as she reached into her bag and pulled out her phone.

 'I'm Ken.....'