Snow Jam (9 page)

"As me?"

Wry face, mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. "Sorry, hon. But you do keep people at arm's length."

Or farther. "OK," I said and was quiet again and like a good friend, she let me be quiet and when the time spun out, she got up and washed some dishes until I said, "But I can't stop thinking about him. I've been able to stop thinking about all of them the minute it went south," I said, referring to the last four years since college and the four years
of
college and the two years before that in high school when I was dating. There wasn't one boyfriend from the last ten years of them who adhered to my heart or brain a second after the breakup. So what the hell.

I said just that.

Sunny looked at me with infinite patience and pity, both, and said, "Maybe this one matters, My."

After that she did something more useful than making me think.

She went and asked Kurt about Rick.

Our four days went fast. We went out for meals, sometimes with Kurt and the twins and sometimes by ourselves. We made plans for what we'd do when I got moved and we were only a couple hours apart. We strolled through bookstores and parks and went running and talked long into the night and nothing had changed between us. Staying up until the wee hours because the twins were restless or because we were talking, it made no difference.

Good friends are like that.

I didn't dwell on Rick. He hadn't called and wasn't going to call, that was clear, and that was fine. He'd been an aberration in my life, a short and strange one that had left me feeling stronger rather than confused, clingy, needy, lonely or brokenhearted. Relationships weren't what I was looking for right now, so the fact that he wasn't offering (wasn't doing anything where I was concerned) was fine.

Last day of my visit was warm enough to stand around in the direct sunlight with a heavy sweater and a cup of coffee cradled between otherwise chilly hands. Sunny found me in the back yard staring at all the twins' toys and baby swings and the ground where Kurt meant to put up a greenhouse.

"Whatcha thinking?" she asked, trying to bump her shoulder into mine. I'm five-six. She's five-nothing. She bumped my arm.

"Just looking forward," I said. I'd gotten the job. All the other stuff came next, transferring bank accounts and mailing addresses, new ISPs and cell carriers and when to disconnect what and connect the other so I wasn't paying for things where I wasn't living and wasn't living in the dark ages where I was living.

Despite the packing and moving and driving and so on to come, I was excited. Happy. The job would be interesting. The department would be largely mine, reaching out to new businesses and existing that wanted to expand, meeting with support businesses that come in behind primary businesses. My boss would be in the communications division of the economic development authority, my job would include getting out of the office routinely to meet with new prospects who might want to move their companies to Georgia and, better still, Hanlin.

Even the end of the visit with Sunny was OK. I'd be back within six weeks at the outside. We'd be living a couple hours apart. Everything was ahead of me. Nothing behind me.

Except maybe something I hadn't wanted and wasn't offered.

Sunny looked up at me like she was judging something, then pointed to the patio furniture. "Sit," she said.

"Not really that warm out here."

"Sit anyway." She lit the patio heater and a warm glow enveloped us. "OK, now that's awesome. I've never seen those outside restaurant decks. I want one that makes it stop snowing where I am." I watched her expectantly.

"Right. I'll get right on that.
Meanwhile
." She searched my face. Feeling blank, I said, "What?"

Sunny plunged. "I talked to Kurt last night." Then she stopped.

I gave her a goofy smile. "Good for you. He is your husband."

"Shut up." It's hard to take instructions from a tiny bubbly sprite. But I shut up.

Sunny took a breath. "I talked to him about Rick." Then she gave me the weird teeth bared thing she'd always done when she was waiting to see if I was mad at her.

Being mad at her didn't even occur to me. I leaned forward. "And?"

"I knew it!" she said happily.

"Fine, fine, I'm at least curious. What did he say?'

She instantly sobered. "That Rick was married."

My heart did a weird dropkick and twist that left me breathless.

"No!" Sunny said, waving her hands at me like she could erase the effect of her words. "No, no, not now!"

"Um, what?" Even with the heater thing on half of me was still getting chilled.

"He's not married now. He was."

I can see why he isn't anymore
, I thought, but didn't say. There was something else. Something she hadn't said yet.

"Mya, his first wife killed herself."

I sat back fast, as if I could get away from her words.

He'd gotten home late from work one night. They still lived in Nashville at the time, and his star had been rising in advertising agencies that worked with country music stars. Victoria had been going through a bad patch in her life. She was a graphic artist, and on the side she did her own work, and she had a lot of depression, but he'd thought they'd gotten a handle on it. Her latest meds had been working. She'd been better. Right up until the moment she wasn't.

He'd found her, apparently sleeping, but she'd overdosed and he was home late. Too late.

"He doesn't get close to people anymore," Sunny said. "He pushes people away." She was carefully not looking at me. "He doesn't trust easily. He builds walls. If someone gets too close, he fights them off."

She didn't say
Remind you of anyone?
But then, she didn't have to.

We went running the evening of my last day of visit. It had been a quiet day. The twins had an appointment with their pediatrician Sunny couldn't reschedule. I'd had some time alone to work out what she'd said.

Once we were on the trail near her house and moving, she said, "So what's the plan?"

"Go home, pack, wait for Hanlin to tell me when to show up." I was only a little concerned that I hadn't heard from them since they'd hired me.

"Is it weird they haven't contacted you yet?" Sunny asked.

"No," I said resolutely. But it was.

"Have you thought about the other thing?" she persisted.

"No," I said resolutely. Might as well. She'd get the truth out of me.

"Yes you have. Probably nonstop. What are you going to do?"

Go back in time and avoid the Snow Jam.
Everything would be so much simpler.

"Nothing," I said.

She stumbled over nothing in the path. "Oh, come on, Mya. Really?"

I sped up a little, hoping to make her too breathless to talk. Apparently she'd been running regularly. I hadn't. She won. I slowed to a walk.

"It was chance. It was one night. It happened and it's over. He's not my type, maybe
–
" forestalling the inevitable objection
–
"Because he's so much like me. I know the woman can call the man in today's world but the way we left it
–
"

"The way you snuck out?"

I ducked my head, blushing. "Sunny, if he wanted anything to do with me, he would have called."

We finished the run, though not the conversation, and I went home to Vegas to pack.

The call came from Hanlin, but not the one I was waiting for. It was Jared, bearer of all official news, good and bad, and they weren't canceling on having hired me.

They were postponing. By at least four months.

I went to work for some temp agencies and bided my time. Sunny and I had midnight teas by phone. Jenna moved in with me to save both of us rent money. She'd keep the apartment when I moved.

March, April and May passed and one day in early June I got a call from Jared again. "We've hired a new communications director. That's been part of the hold up. Then our admin quit and moved out of state, so we've been scrambling around. Since we still had part time from your predecessor, seemed easier to get you started when the dust settled."

Fine. Not like I myself had been growing dusty. And then he asked the important question. "When can you start?"

I spent a week finishing packing and changing things over to Jenna's name, which was so much simpler than turning off in one place and on in the other. I'd rented a studio apartment in Hanlin to tide me over until I found something good and saw what the cost of living really was. (I'm in economic development
–
I know how
every
economy claims a reasonable cost of living and how many lie.)

Finally I got in my car in the blazing desert heat and drove basically across the country until I got to Georgia, spent one night with Sunny during which I had the chance to thank Kurt for the Rick info, and struck out for my new studio on Sunday morning. On Monday I got to work early, met the new admin executive assistant, Reggie, who still seemed lost, and she showed me to my office, where I was lost.

"You've already met most of the team," she said brightly. She was tall and lanky with a wild crop of springy salt and pepper curls. "There's a meeting at ten in the conference room, so whoever you haven't met, you can then."

I caught her before she escaped. I had an office and a computer which turned out to want passwords I didn't have yet and I had a window to look out of and some files to look at, but I had nothing to do.

"Just make yourself at home," she said in the bright voice of someone who, benignly or not, doesn't care what you do. "You don't have to be on point the instant you get here. Oh, and Rick wanted to see you."

I blinked. I hadn't slept well the night before but surely I'd misheard her.

"Who?"

"Oh, right. Since you were here last. Rick is our new communications director." And she was gone. How I was supposed to see this Rick was a mystery, as she'd left me no directions, but that was OK as long as I was wrong, wrong, wrong about what I was imagining.

I got acquainted with my office and waited for someone to tell me how to find Rick, and who he was. When no one came I left my office feeling like I should leave breadcrumbs to guide me back, but the municipal building wasn't huge. Hanlin wasn't huge.

There was nobody out in the halls, and the administrative assistant wasn't at her desk in the front where she doubled as receptionist. Fine. I could do this myself. I went up and down halls that branched off the central reception area. Most people had names on their office doors, though I doubted the accuracy of these nameplates, as the person in the office marked Bert Tomlinson had long blond hair and was wearing a pink skirt and high heels.

I didn't find a listing for a Rick; I found an office suite marked communications. Made sense, getting the word out about the municipality is critical in economic development. I'd be working a lot with the communications department and
–

Rick Barnes. He'd just walked back into the main office with a phone in one hand and a file in the other. His hair was a little longer, curling on his collar, his eyes bright, and everything I remembered
–
cheekbones, jaw, forearms, pecs
–
all still beautiful. I made a noise and he stopped short, starting at me like he'd seen a ghost.

"Hi," I said with stunning stupidity.

He didn't even manage that. "What are you doing here?"

That annoyed me.
I've left Las Vegas and come to stalk you.
"What the hell do you think? I told you I was applying for an economic development job in Hanlin. How many did you think there were?"

"No," he said clearly, as if it might work some kind of magic. "They hired a Michelle Powers."

I waved. "That's me."

"No," he said again, clearly stuck. "Your name is Mya."

I gave him a curious tight smile that felt wrong. "Also me," I said. "Mya's a nickname."

"Mya's a nickname? Why didn't you tell me that?" He looked almost angry, just like I was starting to feel. Two can play at feeling stalked.

"You didn't tell me you were applying for this job?" I demanded. "You barely told me anything about your job, just that you worked
in advertising.
"

"I did. I still do. That's what the communications position
is
. It came open two months ago. I applied and I got in about thirty days ago. Why didn't you tell me Mya is a nickname?"

I sighed. "When should I have done that? While you were being rude or while we were having dinner? Over Scrabble? Or while running around in the snow while trees fell? Maybe afterward in the shower when
–
"