Free Little Miss Red by Robin Palmer

between us on 12B. “I’m just going to keep him here until our other seatmate arrives.”
    “Actually, my boyfriend was 12B, but he’s not coming because he has chicken pox,” I explained before sneezing.
And because he pushed the pause button,
I thought to myself. Maybe I’d tell Harriet about that later. Because she was old, I bet she had some wisdom she could share with me.
    “Oh heavens. I’m so sorry to hear that, but maybe that means Lord Byron is in luck,” she chuckled.
    I sneezed again.
    “You’re not allergic to cats, are you?” Harriet asked.
    “Uh huh,” I got out before sneezing again.
    She fished around in her handbag and pulled out a boxof pills and handed it to me. “Here, take one of these,” she said.
    “What is it?” I asked suspiciously.
    “Benadryl. It’ll stop you from sneezing.”
    I made sure to read the entire box—especially the CAUTION! paragraph—to make sure it didn’t say anything like, “Do not take if you recently drank a Frappuccino,” or something along those lines. A person could never be too careful. As I pushed one of the pills out of the foil wrapper and washed it down with my bottle of water, Lord Byron’s meowing got louder and louder.
    Harriet sniffed. “Do you smell fish?”
    “Uh…no,” I said nervously. I was glad my carry-on was in the overhead compartment and not underneath my seat, or else Lord Byron
really
would’ve been yowling.
    A few minutes later I dozed off, thanks to the Benadryl—that is, until I was awoken by the arrival of the new tenant of 12B. Not only was he the hottest guy I had ever seen in person, but as I stood up to let him get to his seat, our arms touched and I immediately knew we were soul mates.
    After he was settled and I was wracking my brain for something flirty to say, he reached for my book. “
Propelled by Passion
,” he read. “Is this any good?”
    I shrugged, hoping my face wasn’t too red. “I don’t know. I just grabbed it off the shelf in the terminal bookstore so I’d have something to read.”
    “But it says here that it’s an ‘advance reading copy’ and it isn’t coming out until June,” he replied.
    I grabbed the book back and shoved it in my purse. “Really? How weird.”
    “Can I see it for one more sec?” he asked.
    I fished it back out and handed it to him.
    “He looks kind of familiar to me,” he said, squinting. Omigod—I had no idea a squint could be so
sexy
. “Wait a minute—we kind of look alike, don’t you think?”
    I pretended to examine the cover as if I hadn’t spent hours already doing so. I hoped there weren’t smudge marks from where I had kissed it. “I don’t know…maybe a little.”
    He turned to me all excited. “Hey, do you think it’s true when they say that everyone has a twin?”
    “You mean a doppelgänger?” piped up Harriet.
    The two of us turned to her. I was so busy falling in love that I had nearly forgotten all about Harriet and Lord Byron, even though he was now yowling at full volume. I guess that’s what Devon had meant when she said that the world fell away when she met Dante.
    The Hot Guy sat up straight. “What’s a doppelgänger, ma’am?” he asked, all polite.
    He was nice to old people! I
loved
that. “Yeah. What’s a doppelgänger?” I echoed. I loved that we didn’t know the same words.
    “Well, literally translated from the German, it means‘double-goer,’” Harriet explained. “Someone who acts the exact same way as you.” She paused and leaned in. “But they’re usually somewhat…
evil
.”
    “Huh,” said Hot Guy. “So am I his evil twin, or is he mine?” he joked, winking at me.
    “Oh, you can’t be evil,” I assured him.
    “I can’t?” he asked playfully, giving me a wolfish smile. “How do you know?”
    I blushed.
Because you’re way too cute? Because you’re nice to little old ladies?
I wanted to say. “I don’t know. It’s just…a feeling I have,” I said in what I hoped was a throaty voice