A feeling I’m not accustomed to settles over me as Rhett pulls out of Elijah’s drive. He brought a car trailer with him, and we’re going to tow my car back to his garage.
I sit in the back seat, staring at the landscape out the window. It is kind of nice out here. Quiet. I’ve always been a city girl. Small towns make me twitchy, as do the majority of people who live in them.
But my obvious wrong assessment of Elijah has me thinking that maybe I judged this place too quickly. I mean, I love McKenna and Myrtle. I wonder if she still speaks to her mother after naming her that? Myrtle, I mean. What an awful name. I shudder.
See? That’s what people in small towns do: they give their children godawful names like Myrtle. I’ve been trying to think up a cute nickname for her since she started working for me on the blog. No luck yet, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something eventually.
Reagan turns in her seat next to Rhett in the front. Wrapping her arms around the headrest, she stares at me expectantly.
I pretend not to notice.
She clears her throat.
I look at my nails like they’re the most interesting thing ever.
That makes her huff. “So, what’s the go with that Elijah guy? He’s so into you. Even I could tell. Now that’s saying something.”
Rhett snorts. “What gave it away, honey? The way he didn’t take his eyes off her the whole time we were there, or them sucking face when we arrived?”
My shoulder lifts in a small shrug. It’s an attempt to play it off. But nothing about the last twenty-four hours was normal. Not for me, at least. “He’s just a guy who helped a stranded stranger out. I didn’t know that kind of hospitality even existed anymore. He and his brothers took me in like it was no big deal. They let me use their phone, watch their TV, eat their food. Then, when I had an endo episode, they took care of me. Who does that? It’s weird, right?”
Reagan blinks at me, dumbfounded. “You had a flare-up and they didn’t freak out? I freaked out the first few times, remember? Hell, even now, I just want to bundle you up and take you to the nearest hospital.”
Rhett pulls the truck off the road then backs it up to my car. Reagan and I don’t offer to help him; we’d just get in the way.
I nod at her. “I know, right? I’m on day eight today, so things have settled right down and it’s almost over. But the stress of my car dying, then thinking I was going to be mugged by a dirty farmer and kept in his crusty sex dungeon—it just set everything off.”
“I get that. But what’d they do when you went all pale and glassy-eyed?”
Shuffling around, I make myself more comfortable on the hard bench seat. “It’s a little fuzzy. I’m pretty sure Elijah carried me to his bed. His brother, Asher, has heat packs that he got for me, and then they gave me my pills. I remember trying to tell them it was no big deal and them not believing me. Next thing I knew, I was waking up next to the devil’s mistress and copping a hoof to the vulva.”
The look of complete and utter horror on Reagan’s face reflects my feelings on the matter perfectly.
“No,” she gasps. “Not that gorgeous little one that was following us around on the farm tour? She wouldn’t. She was so sweet.”
My snort is involuntary and loud. “You have no idea. I felt sorry for her for, like, twenty minutes because she’s an orphan and Elijah has been bottle-feeding her since she was born. But then she knocked me on my arse in the paddock. She’s got it out for me, I tell you.”
Rhett climbs back in the cab with us and starts laughing, his shoulders shaking violently as he loses his shit. “A llama has it out for you? A baby one, at that. Do you even hear yourself?”
I cross my arms over my chest defensively. “When you’ve taken a hoof to your favourite body part, then we can talk.”
My phone chimes with an incoming text, and I reach for my bag, rummaging around until I find it. Juda lent me a power-bank thing to charge it up on the drive home. I agreed to drop it in to McKenna for him next time I’m in town.
When the screen comes to life, I see it’s a text from Elijah. My smile is instant. I can’t swipe my finger across the screen fast enough.
ELIJAH: Travel safe. Let me know how you go with your car.
I deflate. How underwhelming. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was more than I got. My reply is concise.
CHARLOTTE: I will. Thank you for your hospitality.
A moment later, my phone chirps again. I didn’t think he would reply.
ELIJAH: Is it bad of me to be thankful for your car breaking down?
I grin and punch out a response.
CHARLOTTE: Maybe a little. But I’m glad it happened too.
I can’t stop thinking about her.
When I close my eyes, it’s her I see. Red hair splayed over my pillows as she sleeps. Her beautiful hazel eyes and the kaleidoscope of colours within them. Her brilliant smile when I kissed her in the paddock. The glare she wore whenever Delilah got too close.
She is under my skin, and I don’t know if it’s because of all the shit Juda’s been putting in my head or … No, I know it’s not that. It’s all her.
I want Charlotte. I just have to figure out how to get her.