[hutchibk]

Vivian was a ball of confusion... too much happening at once. A startling deja vu that was revealing itself to be very real, a strange man with a strangely familiar voice from her recent royal past answering her sister's cell phone, and a randy and drunken boy-toy trying to feel her up - all while speeding down the interstate at what felt like 150 mph. She had to make sense of it all and the first thing she knew she had to do was get out of the car. She pushed Tai away to cries of "oh, come on baby, don't be like that..." and frantically pushed the button to speak to the limo driver. Driver answered and Vivian screamed "Pull over, please, pull over now, I need to get out of here!" The driver exited the highway and pulled into a parking lot.

Vivian wrestled with Tai, telling him "Now is not the time, baby" gathered herself and stormed out of the car. She made her way to the front of the hotel they had pulled up to, and plopped on a bench with her head in her hands. Her mind was spinning. Her thoughts were like a ping pong ball on acid. Her heart was racing. She could not believe how insane her life had become. The spiral of events over the last year. And for Danny to now be missing. He was the one constant in her life. He was her anchor. He was her sympatico. Her secret soul-mate...

She knew she had to keep moving. She hated Boston and was only there at the invitation of the son of the owner of the Celtics. She didn't even want to go to the game at first fearing she might encounter Kobe Bryant again, and it had been years since she was able to put that fiasco behind her... the mess he created and how he ruined her ex-best friend's life. Or did he? She never could figure out the truth about all that, but none-the-less, she didn't want to run into him again.

"Are you all right Miss O'McIntyre?"

"Huh?" Vivian looked up to see who in the world could possibly know who she was?

"Your boyfriend is in the bar, and he asked me to check on you..."

Vivian then recognized the man speaking to her as Kenny, the valet at the Hotel Grande Regal where she was staying. Then suddenly it all became clearer. The limo driver had let them out in the parking lot at her hotel. What a stroke of luck... Tai was in the bar continuing his habitual party and had latched onto a group of 19 year old girls who were in town on their way to a summer graduation trip called "drinking our way across Europe."

Vivian scurried to the elevator and made her way to her room. Realizing that she might be able to catch a last minute red-eye flight to somewhere, she quickly packed her bags and called the front desk.

"I need a taxi to the airport, please tell Kenny I'll be right down, and tell him to keep it on the down low!"

"No problem Miss O'McIntyre. Where are you heading? Back to London? Is Prince Stuart alright? Is there something wrong?"

"Wherever a plane will take me at this hour, I just need to go... go somewhere... anywhere but here...anywhere but London... I think Saint Tropez...oh, I don't know, please, just a taxi..."