by P. Dangelico
“Hi there. Can I help you?” I call out from a few feet away, my voice hitting a strange high note.
Lord have mercy, I need to get ahold of myself with both hands.
He’s in the process of climbing the steps to the farmhouse and turns, finding me what feels like a thousand miles below him. He looks older in person. Salt peppers his short, rich brown hair along his ears. Laugh lines are conspicuously absent even though suntan lines crisscross his forehead.
“Blue Baldwin?” he says, stepping back down.
No proffered hand. No smile. We’re dispensing with all the good stuff I guess. The next three months are gonna be lit.
I nod, my smile stiff. “Hi. Aidan Hughes, right? I wasn’t expecting you todaaay––”
He removes his aviators and hits me with a set of dark brown eyes, not the bright baby blues he gets paid millions to narrow at villains and hot chicks alike on screen.
“Wrong Hughes. I’m Shane. Aidan’s brother.”
“Oh,” is the best I can do because I’m being held hostage by a very intense stare down. And when I say intense, I mean his thousand-yard stare has mass and intent.
I suddenly feel seen and that’s the last thing I want to be. I’m not typically a shy or nervous person. In fact, I haven’t been that person since turning fourteen. And yet I somehow find myself regressing by the second into the person I was in junior high. I’m living a scene out of 13 Going On 30. Only in reverse.
“I wanted to make sure everything’s ready before Aidan arrives tomorrow,” he explains. At least I think that’s what he said. I’m currently experiencing a crisis of confidence, and nobody is more surprised by this than myself.
“I’m sorry?” I mumble. My skin keeps flashing hot and cold. What the actual fornicating heck is happening?
“The alcohol…” he annunciates as if speaking to a child. “Has it been removed from the property?”
“Oh, there’s no alcohol here. It’s just me and Mona and we don’t drink.” As I’m speaking, it dawns on me that I just told this large and rather imposing person who I do not know whatsoever that there are only two women living on the property.
I just exposed us to stranger danger.
“What about the handyman?”
He’s got me on my heels again. I told the lawyers a little white lie about Dexter living on the property. Dex is the handyman who comes to help me with chores that require two people. Like repairing and replacing the fence, among other things. The Dexter lie was my lame attempt at a human shield. And now, I’ve gone and cocked that up.
“Dexter, yeah… he’s a devout Mormon. So… you know… he’s very devout about not drinking.”
I’m fairly certain Dexter is not Mormon. Lying on the fly is clearly not my strong suit. Hughes doesn’t look nearly as convinced as he should be and more doubt creeps in, bringing with it some of the anxiety I haven’t felt in years.
“Anyway,” I continue, “we run a tight ship around here. No alcohol. No sleepovers…” The more I speak, the more my confidence crumbles under the heavy weight of his scrutiny. Grabbing the rim of my straw hat, I pull it down to defend myself from the onslaught of his unblinking stare. “And you should know that I own a gun and I know how to use it.”
Except I don’t own a gun. And I don’t know how to use one. Much to the chagrin of my father, an officer of the law.
“Good for you.” He glances around, seemingly unaffected by my strange behavior. “Try not to shoot anyone while we’re here.”
“Who’s we?” At this point, I’m not taking anything for granted. We agreed on housing the other Hughes brother––the criminal one––and one assistant. That’s it.
“My brother travels with a team… I’m the team.”
The good news is that his attitude shakes my confidence right out of its downward spiral. The bad news is that my mouth hasn’t caught up yet. “Uh… I’m sorry, but we don’t have room for you.”
“No problem. I’ll bring my trailer.”
“Unfortunately, our electrical system can’t handle two trailers.” Which is entirely true. I shrug, sweetening the bad news with a smile.
“I’m staying here,” he states after a meaningful pause. “It’s in the contract.” I’m subjected to more intense eyeballing. “Did you read it?”
No, I did not read the contract in my nonexistent spare time. All I know about the contract is the long list of requests they made. Some of which were off the charts laughable. Like his brother’s request that we feed him an all-organic diet. If Aidan Hughes ever ate my cooking, he’d go to bed gripping a bottle of Imodium and crying for his mommy. Organic would be the least of his concerns.
I’m saved from answering by a red pickup truck approaching.
“Guess what I got?” Mona hollers at me from the passenger seat as the window comes down. I spot Darby behind the wheel.
She slides out of the cab and adjusts her top, her attention automatically moving over to Shane Hughes. If there’s a hetero man within her one-mile orbit, you can rest assured Mona’s attention will find him. It’s kind of impressive to be honest.
“And who might you be?” she coos, flashing her dimples.
“Mona, this is Shane Hughes. Aidan Hughes’ brother.” I give her a look that says behave yourself which she promptly ignores. “What did you get?”
“Bye, Sugar. See you tomorrow,” Darby shouts from the cab and waves, temporarily stealing Mona’s attention away from the target of her curiosity.
“Bye, babe,” she says in return.
Darby drives off and Mona walks over with an outstretched hand and a coy smile. At the same time, and without sparing me a glance, she thrusts a shopping bag at me.
“Mona Harris. I’m the owner of this fine establishment. Lovely to meet you.”
Hughes shakes her hand and offers her a small, tight smile. “Pleasure is mine.”
Frankly, I doubt there’s any pleasure involved. He looks like someone has his nuts in a vise.
Inside the bag, I find a set of walkie talkies.
“So we can communicate,” Mona says to me while her smile and attention are both still very much trained on the man standing before us with the intensity of a tiger on a slab of beef.
“Mr. Hughes is under the impression that he’s staying here, and I was just explaining to him that there’s no room for anyone other than his brother, an assistant, and one trailer.”
Mona looks between the two of us. “Hmm, that’s a pickle…” Which is followed shortly by a devious look on her face. One I’ve seen plenty of times when we’re faced with the daunting task of convincing owners to surrender animals they can no longer care for—or ones they’ve neglected for years. It’s usually great, when it works in my favor. A gut feeling tells me this will not be one of those times.
Hughes examines the farmhouse. “This place looks plenty big to me.”
“No strangers are allowed in the main house I’m afraid.” No clue why I suddenly sound like a character in an Amish small-town romance, but here we are. “You’ll have to make other arrangements. Like the resort. That’s probably more your style anyway.”
I give him a cheerful look meant to say problem solved. Except judging by the frown I’m offered in return, I would have to say it not only missed the mark, but the target altogether.
“What about the guest house?” Mona offers.
She may as well have dropped a JDAM on my head. “The one I live in?”
“You can move in with me in the main house and Mr. Hughes can have use of the guesthouse while he’s here.”
That speeding sensation is back.
“Works for me,” Hughes says with a curt nod. Then he walks past me, heading straight for my guesthouse. Without permission.
Images of the state of that very same guesthouse when I walked out this morning flip through my head. My underwear lying on the floor. The highbrow literature I prefer to read on the couch. My relax-her, as I like to call it, laying on my bed… above the covers.
“Wait!” I shout and bolt after him.
In my entire life, I have never chased anything other than a misbehaving animal or an emergency. Then again, maybe not so different.
Chapter 3
“Is the table set?” I ask Mona who’s in the process of pulling a bottle of soy sauce out of the cabinet when I walk into the kitchen. “You need me to do anything?”
“Sit your butt down. I already set up outside.”
Tired and hungry, I do as I’m told, dropping down on the kitchen stool like a sack of horse feed. This time of the day, I’m useless. A blob. Muscles aching, brain fried, barely human. Thank God Mona likes cooking.
“This fine establishment?” I drawl, sending her a chiding glance from across the kitchen counter while she prepares the marinade for the chicken we’re having for dinner.
“Are you doubting this is a fine establishment?” A sly, Cheshire cat smile slides across her face. She gives the lime she’s holding over the bowl an extra squeeze.
“No, you grill-billy. But I am questioning if you’re running a bordello I don’t know about.”
She laughs. “I was just having a little fun with him. Don’t be such a tight ass.”
Grabbing the plate stacked with chicken, hips swinging, she walks out the back screen door ass first onto the flagstone patio and I follow. The sun is halfway to sinking below the hills in the distance and turning the sky different shades of pink.
“Magic hour” is what Hollywood calls this time of day. When the light makes everything look perfect. We make it a point to eat out here as often as possible because, as Mona often reminds me, you never know when you’ll see your last sunset so you might as well take advantage of each and every one you can.
Piece by piece, Mona unloads the chicken onto the hot grill and a smokey aroma wafts over us. It makes my stomach growl and reminds me I haven’t had a full meal since six this morning.
“If you lose any more weight, I’m going to be able to see through you.” Her periwinkle blue eyes skate up my bare legs to my jean shorts. Smile fading, she shakes her head.
Hardly. I have my father’s athletic build. Muscles grow on me as easily as mold on days-old bread.
Billy trots over to the edge of his paddock and calls to me.
“No, Billy Boy,” Mona calls back. “Your girlfriend hasn’t had a decent meal all day. Leave her be for ten minutes. My goodness that little one has gotten as clingy as velcro.”
She flips the chicken and flames shoot up off the grill.
“It’s my fault. I let him follow me on my chores. I can’t say no to him.”
“I know the feeling. Can’t say no to Darby either.” She winks. “Grab a plate and put some rice, beans, and veggies on it. I’m gonna sit here and watch you eat.”
As ordered, I grab a dish off the table and load up. The food barely hits the plate before I start shoveling it into my mouth.
“It’s not intentional,” I argue in my defense and gingerly pluck a drumstick off the grill, placing it on my soon-to-be-empty dish. “I forgot to eat.” Blowing on it, I attempt a bite. A third degree burn to the roof of my mouth is a risk I’m willing to take right now. I’m that hungry. “If it wasn’t for you, we both know I’d starve to death.”
No one has ever taken better care of me than Mona. That’s the gospel truth. She cooks like a five-star chef, does my laundry when I don’t have time, and cleans the guesthouse when it gets really bad, which it often does.
“Sometimes I think I should be paying you instead of the other way around. Speaking of eating––do we have to feed Shane Hughes? Because if that’s the case, he needs to chip in for the grocery bill.”
An image of his face drifts into my mind. Full mouth set in a grim line. Dark eyebrows smashed together in… disgust? Possibly. Displeasure? Definitely.
I sprinted after him so fast I nearly strained a quad. I did, however, make it back to the guesthouse just in time to stop him from charging full bore into my messy home. Only to face more humiliation.
The only way to stop him was to wedge my sweaty, goat-and-donkey-smelling body between his and my front door. My crisis of confidence all but disappeared when it was up against the utter embarrassment of having him see my personal shit lying around.
I had to physically force him to stay outside on the porch, no small task, while I cleaned up and hid personal pleasure items away from his judgmental leer. Even then, he barely gave me enough time to shove my relax-her under my pillow.
Less than ten minutes later, he stalked inside, glanced around with the same laser focus of a catastrophe claims adjuster, deemed it perfect for his needs (whatever the flip those are), and departed with nothing more than a jerk of his chin at me.
So instead of answering all the backlogged messages from my social media accounts and posting pictures of the animals’ progress, which my followers and patrons anxiously await each day, I spent the rest of it cleaning out my home for a stranger with a bad attitude.
“His brother donated fifty-thousand to the rescue,” Mona reminds me. “I think we can feed him a couple of meals.”
“Aidan made forty million on his last movie. It’s a tax write off for him. And he probably spends that much on hair products a year anyway.”
“They’re here for the next three months. Let’s make the best of it. You never know, they might surprise you.”
“Yeah, I’m scared of how they might surprise me. Do not trust them, Mon. Especially Aidan. He’s a felon and an actor, and a good one at that. He’s a wolf in a sheep suit.”
I used to be cavalier about these things, carefree and uninhibited. It never even occurred to me that I couldn’t deal with whatever life threw at me. Then Life with a capital L taught me a harsh lesson. The lesson being that for years, I’d been operating under the false assumption that I didn’t have physical and mental limitations. Boy, was I wrong.
Once you have an experience like mine, you can’t unsee or unfeel it. It never goes away. It’s always there, a subtle, steady reminder underpinning every action and every thought. I can’t pretend to be that carefree person anymore. I won’t risk it. It took all the strength I had left to stop myself from crawling into a hole and never coming out again. Yes, I’m especially guarded, but with good reason.
Mona inspects my face, and her expression softens to naked sympathy. “Sweetie, I got plenty of practice with sheep and wolves. Don’t you fret.”
It’s the only reason I agreed to this clown show. Because Mona is the shrewdest person I know. If anyone can handle the likes of Aidan Hughes, it’s her.
“Yeah, well, you just invited another wolf into our home, and this one doesn’t have an ankle monitor. Fingers crossed he’s less criminal.”
It’s already ten and way past my bedtime when I drag my tired ass out of the shower, only to find a peace offering. Mona left a fat slice of her homemade chocolate cake and a glass of water on my bedside table. The good news is I can easily be coerced into a better mood with sugar.
Grabbing the walkie talkie, something I’m quickly learning to love, I fiddle with the knobs. “Come in, Bandit,” I say, biting back the burst of laughter wanting to come out of me.
Smokey and the Bandit happens to be Mona’s favorite movie. I know this because she’s made me watch it at least a half dozen times already.
“Affirmative, Smokey,” comes through loud and clear. Of course I’m the mean cop, Smokey, who’s always trying to stop the fun-loving and charming Bandit from wreaking havoc. Yes, I can admit the nicknames are somewhat fitting here.
“Thank you for the cake. You’re the best. Over.”
“Roger that, Smokey.”
“Night, Bandit. Out.”
The smile has a heck of a time leaving my face.
Cake plate in hand, I wander to the window. My new bedroom is located in the back of the house, overlooking the paddocks. It’s the smallest in the house and barely fits my stuff, but it’s also the farthest from Mona’s master bedroom on the first
floor. Strategically speaking, this is critical because God help me if I have to listen to her and Darby go at it all night.
As I’m laying waste to the cake, I take stock of the barn, the fencing, the surrounding foothills. It’s almost a compulsive behavior at this point––to check and double check that nothing needs fixing. That everyone and everything is safe and secure.
There’s a full moon tonight without a cloud in the sky. From here, I have a straight line of sight to Big Ben and Coco, the two draft horses we rescued from slaughter auction last year. They’re sleeping peacefully under the run-in shed. Ben was starved nearly to death when we got him. All skin and bones. How anyone could’ve mistreated our sweet giant, let alone allow him to suffer and starve, is beyond comprehension. I actually cried when I got in the cab of the pickup truck to drive him away from that awful place. On the bright side, Ben’s still one of the gentlest animals we have. He’s living his best life now, running free and hanging with his girlfriend.
Closer obsessive inspection reveals the fence around the smaller paddock is sagging to the left and the larger paddock next to it has a few broken boards. The barn roof looks like it needs to be repaired on the south side, and some of the siding needs to be replaced, too. There’s so much to do on any given day that a lot gets tossed to the wayside. Mona helps as much as she can, but most of the physical work falls on me to get done.
My cell phone rings and the screen flashes a picture of sixteen-year-old me and Jessica at the now infamous Beyoncé concert. No other person I know would have the audacity to call at this hour.
“I have a bone to pick with you,” I tell her. No hellos. No preamble. Straight to business.
“You’re answering the phone? We’re making real progress.”
“Aidan Hughes’ brother showed up at the ranch today. Unannounced.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I blame you.”
“What’s he like?” she coos. “Cruella’s always creaming over him.”