I could do with a double shot of Jack right now.
With this plan of action, I already feel more in charge. I’ll deal with this as best I can and wave her off tomorrow morning. It might be my screw-up, but it’s a screw-up I can fix. I’ll just need to think it through once this female distraction is no longer in my headspace and in full view.
As she reaches the bottom of the stairs, I hold the external door open for her. She glances at me and with an ugh stomps outside.
Meh. Manners might not count in Miami, but Aunt May knows how to skin anything from a rabbit to a moose and I don’t want to be hung up on one of her bad boy hooks. Not now that I’m back in town with the aim of never breaking Aunt May’s heart again.
I follow Georgiana’s firm stride and pert butt to the visitors’ parking and it’s clearly her red hatchback rental next to my truck. This is a perfect summary of the situation. Man truck, made for Vermont. Woman cruiser, made for Miami. With my luck, she’s going to get stuck on the farm roads with that little maggot of a vehicle and will need to stay an extra day unless I haul her out.
At our respective cars, we stop. My hand itches to open her door for her and close it once she’s behind the wheel.
Georgiana hitches her eyebrows and gives me a foul look. “Where to?”
“Me, you follow. Stop, en route. One.” With that I cave in and pluck open her door.
She rolls her eyes at me with an exasperated sigh and mutters as she clambers in, “Yoda sending telegrams. Gotta love it.”
As I round my car and get in, I blow out a deep breath. I pep-talk myself into keeping my cool for another hour or two, until I can escape to my room, lock the door, block her out, and, in peace, think how I’m going to manage this situation.
We pull out one after the other and I lead the way to the main road into Ashleigh Lake. I keep an eye on Georgiana Wess in my rearview mirror. That’s a good place to have her, behind me, fading into the distance, and soon to be forgotten.
Get rid of her, I will.
4
GEORGIANA
This is a warped reality if ever there was one. That conversation in Hunter’s office and Raiden’s Yoda talk make me feel as if I’ve slipped into some type of alternate universe. I’m all for guys being Star Wars fans, but Raiden takes it to the next level. A little voice inside my head snickers that I should stick around, this is about to get more interesting.
We drive past the beautiful Ashleigh Lake welcome sign, but there’s no time to stop now. Raiden is on a mission, and I bet he’d lose me in traffic if he could. Little shit indeed. If he thinks he’s going to shake me off that easily, he hasn’t met the new Georgiana Wess yet. I’m putting up a fight for this, and given my current state of mind, it isn’t going to be a pretty fight. Nope, the claws are all out.
Even if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll nail the bastard for trying to get rid of me on sight. Sexist asshole. It might not be great for team spirit or atmosphere at work, but I’d take it any day over Veronique Wess’s bitchy commands and scathing critique, should I return home with my tail between my legs. In fact, I should thank Mom for inadvertently preparing me for this all my life.
On the outskirts of Ashleigh Lake, houses start to appear, hidden behind big trees in even bigger yards. This America is very different from my America, where there’re many new-builds, canals, and golf courses with swampy stretches between them, hacienda-style houses, palm trees and banyans slowly spreading themselves wide.
The streets fill up and become busier, but before we can hit the center of town, the road bottlenecks where a pond has split off from the much bigger lake. For a moment, I catch my breath at the view—maples, lush and green, line the edge of the pond and the road into the town. A cycle path runs parallel with the road under the scattered light of the tree canopy, and in the distance, three church steeples reach into the sky. It’s picture perfect and I recognize the spot from the plethora of Ashleigh Lake photos I’ve found on the internet.
The road gets busier once we’ve passed the lake, but the town planners of yore didn’t mess this up. Seemingly ageless maples dot the main street, and the storefronts are quaint and somewhat quirky, with the bold, bright colors of products in the shop windows setting off the traditional brick red of the buildings. Pedestrians idle along, licking ice creams and enjoying the blissfully beautiful summer day.
I nearly miss it when the douche in front of me indicates that he’s turning left, and I accelerate to keep up. A few hundred yards off the main road, he pulls into the parking lot of Al’s Grocer, a modern building that, in comparison with the rest of the town, is a total eyesore.
I park next to him and am still gathering my purse when Raiden is at my window. “A minute only, I need.”
Then he’s gone, rushing towards the entrance with long strides.
I open my door and get out, because one thing is certain, I’m not following any instructions from Master Yoda here.
“That’s a Logan,” a man’s voice croaks, “and I’ll be damned if that ain’t Raiden Logan. A man now and looking just like his da, too. Unless my eyes are foolin’ me.”
A few meters from Al’s entrance, there’s the type I usually give a very wide berth to. Bearded, drab, and tired looking, with all his worldly possessions in a cart next to him. Someone down on their luck like this, I decide, has to be a very rare sight in Vermont with its cold winters.
Raiden slows his stride and walks up to the man where he slouches against the shop window.
“Bob! Still here? No aliens yet?”
“Ha! Aliens. They’re coming for sure. Where did you get abducted to?” The man groans and tries to stand, but Raiden goes down on his haunches and clasps the man’s hand in both of his.
“Thirteen years to the day almost that you took the tractor to ol’ Chester Arthur’s statue. You know it took them most of a year to fix that mess you got the ol’ man into.”