Sideways

by Lisa Hughey

  After all, she had bigger problems than some random hot guy being annoyed with her. Besides, she’d never see him again.

  When the waitress brought the sandwich filling back, without the bread, she asked Tracy, “Are you from Colebury?”

  “No, just visiting.”

  “Huh, you look familiar.”

  Good thing she was just passing through. Otherwise, she’d need a disguise.

  3

  Tracy

  A sudden swell of exhaustion rolled over her.

  The adrenaline let down hit hard. She’d been running on fumes and anxiety for most of the day. She settled up her bill with the waitress and yawned. “Is there a hotel close by?”

  She doubted there was a Four Seasons nearby, but maybe a Hilton or Hyatt. She could book a suite and take a nice long soak in a jacuzzi tub.

  “The Three Bears Motor Lodge is just down the road.”

  Motor Lodge? Tracy tried to keep a smiling countenance but apparently she didn’t quite conceal her grimace.

  “Probably not up to your standards, Princess,” hot guy interrupted in a biting tone.

  Great. Now the hot guy was calling her princess. And the move along was implied.

  All she wanted to do was get online and figure out what the hell happened with her app. But she had to be careful about disguising her identity. “Anything is fine,” she said firmly.

  The waitress wandered away.

  “There’re plenty of chain hotels in Burlington.” His dismissive attitude rankled.

  She smiled as sweetly as she could. “And how far away is that?”

  “About forty-five minutes.”

  Her exhaustion was suddenly overwhelming. There was no way she could drive nearly an hour. “Can you tell me where to find the motor lodge?”

  He raised a brow at her.

  She fought the urge to snap at him.

  “Follow the road and it will be on your right.”

  “Thank you,” she said politely in her most haughty voice, projecting that political calm that had carried her through some of the most painful episodes of her life.

  She’d literally trained her whole life to be as likable as possible. But right now, she wanted with an unexpected fierceness to clap back at him. It was completely irrational. She pushed the feeling aside. Thayers were always polite. Always. Everyone was a potential constituent or donor.

  As she skimmed her gaze over his worn jeans and tight Henley, she doubted he was a donor, but appearances could be deceiving.

  Again she thought that something about him looked familiar. Where did she know him from? She tilted her head and studied him objectively. Or tried to. He was seriously gorgeous and the scruff (a total no-no in her world) was incredibly weirdly appealing. The dark hair dusting the lower half of his face accented his mouth, which was surprisingly lush for a man.

  “Memorizing details for a lineup?”

  She jolted. She’d been unaccountably rude, but she wasn’t about to apologize. She didn’t feel the need to be nice. No one here knew her. That innate politeness and charm that she’d exuded her entire life had deserted her. “How long has it been since you quit smoking?”

  He jerked back, and his eyes, a gorgeous dappled brown, widened. “A year,” he muttered.

  “It never gets easier.”

  “You used to smoke?”

  No. But she’d coached her dad through quitting at least three times. And he had told her that every day he wished for a cigarette. “Family experience.”

  At that his gaze softened. “Family is everything.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  She’d spent her adult life protecting her family. Which was why she needed to stay hidden and concentrate on what went wrong with the app and how she’d been outed. She’d really like to speak to her dad or her brother to get an update.

  Time for her to go. She’d stay at the motor lodge tonight and then move to Burlington tomorrow.

  “You know I have this friend who makes…” She paused, checked herself. “Who recommends that you try this product.” She rattled off Duke’s cravings remedy. “He is convinced that if you substitute your habit with something else it will help you avoid the things that challenge your addictions.”

  He grimaced, as if the words were pulled from him with agonizing slowness, and said, “Thanks for the advice.”

  Colt

  Humidity smothered the air like a physical presence looming in the background. His thoughts were particularly heavy as Colt returned to the tiny cabin he called home these days.

  The encounter with the wealthy woman had left him dissatisfied and unsettled. Or maybe that was the conversation with Audrey and Phoebe. Or maybe it was that moment when he’d almost ordered a drink.

  He pulled a hoe from the ramshackle shed next to the one-room cabin. The cabin wasn’t much larger than the shed but the small, isolated space had been his refuge over the past year. He headed to the garden plot that he’d planted out of sheer boredom in the spring. Tending to the small strip of land had brought him an unexpected peace. The cardinals and blue jays and squirrels, little buggers, had been stealing his cherry tomatoes.

  He’d picked up some netting at the tractor supply store to protect the fruit from the woodland animals trying to eat all his produce. He grabbed the netting and slung it over the tall plants, cursing as the black net tangled in the leaves. He wondered how much good it would actually do.

  The rows of fall squash were coming along. His tomato plants were six feet tall. He’d begun to harvest the cucumbers and zucchini. He’d have to see if Phoebe wanted his zuchs, maybe to use in a daily special, otherwise they were going to go bad. Or maybe he could donate them to the local food bank. The squash reminded him of his signature vegetarian dish of roasted squash with sun-dried tomatoes, sliced cherry tomatoes, house-made burrata, and a hearty pesto.

  He’d been particularly proud of his inventive vegetable sides, learning early from his mother the value of veggies with every meal.

  Colt took stock of the rest of the rows of produce. The bunnies from the woods were ravaging his peppers.

  He hadn’t really thought through having a garden. Now he had all this produce and nothing to do with it. The nasturtium flowers, happy droopy blooms in yellow and orange, had kept away the cabbage worms and he had an explosion of zucchini.

  He plucked some basil and inhaled the anise-like scent, bringing back memories of his zucchini fritters with a pesto aioli. His stomach rumbled.

  Growing up in Connecticut his mother had a garden. The mouth-watering scent of fresh tomatoes, onions, spicy peppers, and coriander filling the air when she canned her Molho à Campanha, homemade salsa, was still a seminal childhood memory. His first memories of cooking were olfactory. Food was a sensory experience. Smell, taste, and touch were all important, but the first sense used to experience the food was the sense of smell.

  He had all the ingredients to make her recipe. Tomatoes, peppers, coriander, vinegar, and oil.

  But he didn’t have a stockpot to skin the tomatoes. Which was exactly the way he wanted it.

  He refused to be sorry and acknowledged the irony of being a master chef without a pot.

  Colt propped the hoe against the shed, leaving the basket of vegetables on the miniscule porch so they didn’t mock him with their presence in his kitchen, and went inside the cabin. He wasn’t about to start cooking again.

  No matter who asked him.

  Cooking and addiction and bad behavior and fame were inextricably tied up in each other. He knew it was illogical, but he feared that if he went in the kitchen again, if he began seeking out fame again, he would fall back into old patterns.

  How many times today had he reached for his pack of cigarettes?

  Too many to count.

  That brought him full circle to the woman at the Speakeasy. And whatever she’d been doing in Colebury.

  He’d been unexpectedly attracted to her trim curves and smiling face. His body had stirred with an intere
st in sex that he hadn’t had in over a year. The rich girl shouldn’t have even tripped his libido. But she had popped into his mind often over the past few hours.

  He forced the memory of her unexpectedly cheery countenance and light trilling laugh from his mind. After all, he’d never see her again.

  Tracy

  Tracy rolled over and peered at the bedside clock blearily.

  It was eight a.m. She had trouble sleeping last night. Something—a pack of wild dogs?— had been howling in the middle of the night. The sharp yips had been terrifying.

  She’d called the front desk because it sounded like someone was being murdered.

  “That’s coyotes.” Mrs. Beasley, the owner, had laughed and hung up on her.

  Coyotes?

  They sounded horrible. And scary. And ravenous. And Tracy wasn’t sure she wanted to leave the motel.

  She got ready for her day and packed up so she could head into Burlington and find a larger chain hotel, preferably one with a restaurant attached and maybe a spa.

  She stopped in the office. “Um, Mrs. Beasley?”

  The old woman pretended she didn’t hear Tracy. Except she knew she had. Because she spied on her every time she came or went from the little one-room cabin with décor leftover from the 1950s, to put her bags in her rental. Tracy was moving super slow because she was really dragging from stress and lack of sleep.

  “Coffee?” she nearly whimpered.

  “Machine in your room.”

  But it was weak, inexpensive coffee. Even if she brewed the entire packet for one cup it wouldn’t be strong enough.

  Tracy smiled with determination and said sweetly, “I like really strong coffee.”

  “The Busy Bean is the closest.”

  So she was going to have to drag her tired butt to a coffee shop. She couldn’t wait to get to civilization. “I don’t suppose you have a workout center?” Usually she started her day with a run on the treadmill or a Zumba class.

  “Around here we just take a walk,” Mrs. Beasley said.

  Take a walk. “Outside?”

  “Where else would we walk? The river is nice this time of year.”

  No treadmill apparently. Tracy kept her mouth shut and smiled politely. She wouldn’t be here long.

  There was a little toaster oven in the tiny kitchenette in her room. But she had no ingredients and no cooking ability. Tracy hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday. “Food?”

  The answers were no, no, and no.

  No room service. No Uber Eats this far out in the country. No delivery, except maybe the pizza place but they didn’t do breakfast. Sob.

  This morning had been a rude awakening. Thank goodness she wouldn’t need to adjust to life in the country. This little town and the motor lodge were just a blip on her travel itinerary.

  After checking out of the Three Bears, she headed to the Busy Bean, praying their coffee was stronger than the institutional stuff in her motel room.

  The little bell over the door jingled as she entered. The line moved slowly and she took in the antique mismatched tables and upholstered chairs in dark colors and animal prints. The jam-packed shop emitted a comfortable yet wacky vibe. It smelled heavenly but Tracy figured that there wasn’t much in the way of gluten free. She checked the specials board and the regular menu. Fortunately they had an option because the glass display case was filled mostly with cookies and pastries.

  No one in the charming little storefront paid any attention to her and she got her breakfast to go.

  Tracy couldn’t wait to leave this town in her rearview mirror.

  She planned to head to Burlington to purchase a printer and paper—sometimes you just had to go old school—so she could work on the question of how Esme had discovered her secret. Tracy also had to wonder if Esme had somehow tricked the system into matching her with Thomas.

  When they’d been developing the software for the app, Britt had warned her that people would try to game the system to connect with the rich and famous. She had a high-end clientele. The cost to register for the app priced out less financially stable applicants but wasn’t so expensive that regular people couldn’t register. At least that’s what she’d thought. But some of the headlines had been brutal.

  The reason her app cost so much was because they ran extensive background checks and had excellent customer service. The counselors were trained to spot nuances and finesse the responses that the software spit out to give clients the best matches possible.

  Esme would also have had to pass the background check and her client interview.

  Tracy made a note to have Yolanda check into Esme and Thomas’s match counselor as she drank her coffee on the way to Burlington.

  She headed into the office supply store, ready to get her equipment and get to work.

  She had a debit card under an alias. Growing up in a famous family meant she was well versed in the art of concealing her whereabouts for a quick weekend away.

  She always had a bag packed with a thousand dollars in cash and an anonymous debit card loaded with another few thousand.

  She strolled through the office supply store and grabbed a small portable printer, paper, an extra black ink cartridge and, just in case, another burner phone.

  “Your card is out of money,” the clerk said.

  “What? That can’t be correct.” She smiled at the girl.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. But there isn’t enough on the card to pay for the printer.”

  Tracy smiled tightly and pulled cash out of her wallet. Apparently, she’d forgotten to reload the card after the last time she’d traveled incognito. “Here’s the rest.” She mentally calculated how much cash she had left. About eight hundred dollars. Good thing she would be back home in a day or two.

  Between the cost of the equipment, the motel room and food, she’d be out of money by then.

  Once she loaded everything into her rental car trunk, she used a hotel booking app to look for a new place to stay in Burlington. But there was some sort of festival going on and all the hotels were packed, plus the room rates were jacked up. She even checked near Burlington University, searching for any alternative.

  She banged her head back against the headrest.

  Besides the fact that the hotels were full, the festival had exhibitors from as far away as Boston. There were Massachusetts license plates all over the town. She couldn’t assume that she wouldn’t be spotted here.

  Even as she thought it, she grimaced. She’d be far less visible in a small hamlet.

  She dialed Mrs. Beasley. “Is my old cabin available?”

  There was a long pause. “Yes.”

  “Great. I’ll be back to check in in about an hour.”

  And so that was why she ended up back at the Three Bears Motor Lodge, which at least had decent internet. Tracy emptied her car again, set up the printer and connected it to her laptop and got to work. She had a VPN so that her IP address couldn’t be tracked. A virtual private network hid your location, bounced signals, fake IP addresses, blah, blah, blah. Pete had explained it to her, but she really only listened to the part where using it made her location secret. That was all she cared about after an overzealous reporter had identified her location from hacking her laptop and tracked her down.

  She needed to send Pete an encrypted email and see if he’d found anything since yesterday. She had gotten rid of the burner phone she’d used to call her dad’s office, when she’d spoken to Ashley. She pulled out a new phone and texted her brother in code.

  But he hadn’t answered.

  She tried him again. She wanted to go home.

  They didn’t talk like they used to but growing up it had been Tracy and Thomas against the world. At one time he’d been her best friend.

  Thomas only texted back:

  Thomas: Don’t contact me right now. My life is a circus. Why the hell did you recommend that crackpot app?

  She blew out a breath and her shoulders slumped.

  Her phone pinged again.r />
  Thomas: Sorry. Love you. Talk later? In the middle of the firestorm right now. Have you checked the news?

  * * *

  Tracy: Love you back. Trying to come up with something to help. Have my CEO on it.

  * * *

  Thomas: thumbs up emoji.

  She was in exile. Cut off from her family and her friends. Over a scandal not completely of her making. Then she thought maybe Thomas was giving her a hard time. Maybe everything had died down and she could go home. She wouldn’t know since she’d left her personal cell phone at her condo. Bernie could be trying to reach her right now to tell her it had all blown over and to come on back to Boston where she was comfortable and reasonably happy.

  But when Tracy checked the news, the story was still making waves. So she got down to work trying to figure out how Esme had gotten her information, and trying to come up with a way to make this blow over so she could go back to her life.

  4

  Tracy

  Three days later, Tracy was still at the Three Bears Motor Lodge.

  She had been getting takeout and pouring over the information sent from Pete. They had been unable to find any indication that Esme had hacked confidential documents to discover her identity as the owner of Fairy Tale Beginnings.

  And as a follow on, she’d begun looking at Esme and Thomas’s match. As much as she didn’t care for Esme, the program had matched her with Tracy’s brother. When she looked at the data, their match made sense.

  Yolanda had been dealing with the media fallout and resultant focus on the business. The publicity had increased their sales and applications were up. Tracy had crafted a statement for her employees, thanking them for their hard work and assuring them that nothing about their day to day would change.

  But now she was going stir crazy. She’d been mostly locked in this little cabin motel room. She’d tried multiple times to get in touch with Bernie, with her dad, with her brother, and no one was calling her back.