by Holly Rayner
He said it gently, but he said it all the same. He cared. And he thought he knew best. But he was wrong.
“I don’t wonder why it is; I know why it is. It’s because they don’t see in Stockton what I see in Stockton. And they think they need to go out into the world to find something when they have everything they need right here. And that’s their mistake. But it isn’t mine.
“I love this place. I love the mountains, and I love how close we are to nature. I love the history I have with everything I see when I walk around downtown, or when I walk through the neighborhoods. I love that I can give some of that history to Dylan, too. And yes, he’ll grow up, and maybe he’ll decide that there’s something out there he needs, like you think I should. But for me, I’m happy. I mean…okay, yeah, I maybe wish there were a few more eligible men in town. But right now, I’m fine. I’m good here. It’s just a hard day, that’s all. Okay?”
Alvin fixed her with a wisdom-filled stare, but Paige stood her ground. If she weren’t so fired up from the frustrations and worries of the day, she probably would have been embarrassed about the way she’d gone off at him. But as it was, all she felt was the courage of her convictions running through her veins.
After a long moment, the older man smiled.
“You know, you’ve always been this way,” he said.
“What way?”
“Stubborn. Always think you know better, don’t you?”
Paige smiled, then shrugged.
“Oh, Alvin. Have you ever stopped to wonder if maybe it’s because I do?”
And with that, Alvin laughed, and the conversation turned as it always did to the well-meaning gossip of a small town, and mercifully away from any suggestion that Paige would ever leave it.
Chapter 4
Kehlan
The flight was fine. Comfortable. Kehlan had slept for some of it and had used the rest of the time to go over the scheduled speakers and workshops. As it often did, the advantage he was at with having the wealth he did played at the back of his mind, especially after the conversation with his mother and the veritable mountain of emotional baggage it had dredged up.
But, as he usually did in response, he only dedicated himself to the work more thoroughly. For every advantage he was born with, he thought, he should turn it into that much more expertise. Or else, what was the point of it all? He might as well just give in and be the son his mother expected him to be—entitled, useless, and worthless.
And so, by the time he had arrived at the convention venue in Seattle, Kehlan was thoroughly prepared for every portion of the conference, and every way the discussion with his colleagues might turn.
Except for one.
“I’m sorry, sir. After a slew of storms throughout the northeast, many of the speakers have been postponed or had to cancel, and the conference has been postponed indefinitely. You should have been notified of this by email.”
Kehlan had not, and by the looks of the poor intern stationed at the door to the venue, he wasn’t the first would-be attendee who’d arrived unaware. The poor kid had quite clearly drawn the short straw and was now the one having to disappoint a group of doctors with high opinions of their wasted time.
“If you’re stuck in town, there’s a lot to see and do in Seattle. There’s a visitor center not far from here, and they have information on the city’s biggest attractions…”
The intern’s voice trailed off, as though he were waiting to be yelled at. Was it ethical, Kehlan wondered, for his employers to throw him to the wolves this way?
Without responding, Kehlan brought out his phone and pulled up his emails. He usually would have done so upon landing, but between his rush to get to the conference center and the worry about his mother simmering at the back of his mind, he hadn’t done so.
He sorted through the mess of them. He could have gotten an assistant to do it for him, of course, but he’d never quite liked the idea of that. He’d been surrounded by servants for his whole life when he’d grown up at the palace; essentially hiring another of his own after leaving there seemed like a step backwards.
And yet, it would have saved him from his current situation, Kehlan couldn’t help but think to himself. For there, nestled in between a note from Hakim telling him that he had been right about the patient, and a letter from some unknown social climber that had somehow gotten his email address, was a notice from the convention leadership telling him that the event had been cancelled due to unforeseen weather events.
When Kehlan thanked the intern for the information and didn’t explode at him, he seemed relieved.
“And we’re sorry again for the inconvenience, sir!” he called after him, almost more as a thank you than an apology, but Kehlan was already on his way out.
Again, Kehlan thought, his privilege was showing. It was probably much easier to keep his cool when his transportation was a private jet, and he had no actual need to find some way to occupy himself in Seattle the way those other, angrier doctors must have done. There had never been any real reason for Kehlan to stay anywhere any longer than he wanted to. He could just head back to the airport, acquire a properly-rested pilot for the trip from the ranks of pilots that were always willing to work for anyone with a prince’s budget, and head back home.
And yet, Kehlan found himself walking in the direction that the intern had indicated, heading for the visitor center.
Maybe it was his mother, and the specter of their disagreement, that hung in his mind like a heavy fog. Maybe it was the way that Kehlan knew it would taint his work as a whole until it was taken care of. Maybe it was the fact that, although it had been stewing at the back of his mind for the entirety of the time since their tense conversation, he didn’t know what to do or say about it.
Whatever it was, it pulled him towards the crowded visitor center, and compelled him to stand staring at the overstuffed brochure display, searching for something, anything to keep him from heading straight back to Al-Derra.
Pouring himself into the conference would have taken his mind off of his mother and her expectations for a few days, letting his subconscious mind turn the whole issue over and hopefully find a solution. With the conference gone, he would have to find something else. The only problem was that all the brochures in front of him had rather the opposite effect: instead of taking his mind off of his impending duties, they just brought him back to them.
Seattle—a city of tech millionaires and billionaires. There were almost as many people dedicated to living in excess here as there were back home. And it was hard for Kehlan to see the grand openings of ostentatious buildings and yacht harbor tours without feeling like it was just another version of what he was avoiding. What was the point of flying halfway around the world just to end up right back where he’d started?
He needed something lower key. Something natural, and beautiful, and peaceful. Something just like a tiny brochure, wedged into a slot where it clearly didn’t belong down near the bottom of the display.
“Visit Stockton!” it said, with a quaint picture of a classic American main street backed by dramatic mountains.
Kehlan picked up the brochure. It was barely a brochure—hardly more than a postcard with the barest minimum of information on it. But it told him enough to know that it was only two hours away.
This could work, he thought to himself. This could be the distraction that he was looking for. Just as long as a town that small was at least interesting enough to hold his attention for a couple of days, which he could only hope it was.
Chapter 5
Paige
The remainder of the morning dragged on the same way it had begun. Only a few more regulars came and went, and no one could come up with any real reason why it was so dead. It seemed like a normal day—just a less interesting one. When Paige had finally broken down and asked Alvin what he thought was going on, he had no answers for her. Only a shrug.
“Sometimes them’s just the breaks, doll.”
So Paige continued to e
ntertain herself by shooting the breeze with Alvin, worrying about Dylan, and finding little tasks to keep herself busy. She was just rechecking and refilling the condiments, even though they weren’t really due to be checked yet, when she heard the little bell over the entrance jingle. Never had a sound been so welcome.
Like clockwork, her standard waitress smile spread across her face. The words “Welcome to the Coffee Cup,” were supposed to follow, but they stuck in her throat.
There, standing in the entrance with a look on his face like he wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at, but he was already sure he liked it, was a strikingly attractive man of seemingly Middle Eastern descent.
It wasn’t just his appearance that made him look like he didn’t belong in the generally plain town of Stockton; he had an air about him of someone who was always walking just a few feet above the ground and didn’t realize it. His face looked like it had been carved out of expensive stone. He had high, prominent cheekbones and a strong jaw. He might have seemed almost unrealistic, except for the intent care he seemed to put into surveying his surroundings. He stood up stock straight, with perfect posture, but didn’t seem to be uncomfortable in doing so. It wasn’t an act. It was just who he was.
When his eyes rested on her, Paige felt young and vulnerable in a way she hadn’t since before Dylan was born. And, she realized, from his curious, bemused expression, that her normal waitress smile had gotten stuck on her face, and she probably looked like a ridiculous grinning fool.
Typical. Just typical. On just the kind of day when I’m least prepared for it, something like this steps through the door.
She shook her head, not sure if she was trying to dislodge the smile, or get her thoughts in order, or both.
“Welcome to the Coffee Cup,” she managed at last, although with considerably less polish than she normally said the words. “Feel free to sit anywhere.”
His expression remained bemused as he looked around at all the tables, searching for one to sit at. And, as much as it was embarrassing for her to be the focus of his attention, as soon as he looked away, Paige found she missed it.
She saw him eye the booths at the far end of the diner. She could tell a lot about the kind of tourist that came into the Coffee Cup by where they chose to sit, if they were alone. Most of the time, if they were just checking things out, they would sit in one of those booths. Paige had had a lot of time to think about it over the years and had decided that it was to create the illusion of privacy as they looked over either their paper maps or the info their found on their smartphones. That way, they just made small talk with her as she was taking their order. There was a politeness to it which Paige appreciated.
But already, Paige found herself desperately hoping that he didn’t go sit in one of those booths. As firm as her assertions had been earlier that she was happy there and that she liked her life—as confident as she had been that she was telling Alvin the truth—there was now a part of her that abruptly changed her mind.
Wherever this man had walked in from, that was where she wanted to be. He had yet to even open his mouth and yet he had already brought in a world with him that was entirely unlike the one that Paige had ever known. He probably wouldn’t have chosen to represent an escape to some random small-town diner waitress, Paige thought. But all the same, he already did.
It was all Paige could do to avoid breathing a sigh of relief when he made a sharp turn and headed for the bar. It would give Paige exactly zero privacy, but she didn’t mind that at all. And maybe, she thought, he sensed as much. A man like that—a man who looked like he did—had to be used to the effect he had on women by now.
And she was hardly being subtle. As soon as he’d walked through the front door, any hope of subtlety had fled swiftly out the back.
“So,” he said. “What’s good around here?”
His accent was hard to identify. Enough foreign tourists ended up coming through in the high tourist seasons that Paige fancied that she had become pretty decent at figuring out where people were from, but even so, this man’s voice was a mystery. There was a good deal of British in there, mixed with something else.
But she stopped herself from thinking about it too much. She’d already made a fool of herself with the smile, earlier. She should at least try to be professional, if she was going to get through this interaction without deeply embarrassing herself at every turn.
“Do you mean to eat here, or do you mean in town?”
The handsome man shrugged.
“Either. Both. Maybe start with the former and move on to the latter.”
Yes, he sounded British. But not like he was from there…more like he had learned English with that accent, but there were traces of where he was from shining through. But even that wasn’t quite right. He still sounded more American than that.
“Is there something wrong?”
Apparently, she had completely failed at her mission to not get caught up observing him and keep up with the conversation.
Paige smiled in a way she hoped was disarming.
“No, sorry. It’s been kind of a slow day, so I guess I’m a little out of it. And I’m trying to figure out where your accent is from.”
He smiled, and whatever part of Paige that had remained together thus far completely melted.
“Ah,” he said. “Well, let me save you the trouble. I’m originally from Al-Derra, in the Middle East, but I learned English in Europe before attending college in the States, so I’ve been told that my accent is somewhat Americanized. Does that answer your question?”
“The peaches and cream waffle,” Paige answered, then immediately felt her cheeks burn. What was wrong with her? At no point in the last nine years had she felt like a schoolgirl this way. “Sorry, yes. That answers my question,” she continued. “And to answer yours, the waffle is probably the best thing on the menu. At least, that’s what everybody says.”
Again, that smile. That meltingly beautiful smile.
“Then I guess I’ll have the waffle.”
Paige couldn’t help but smile in response, and not in the usual, routine way she did after taking someone’s order.
She went back to the kitchen where she found Alvin standing there with a smile on his face. It wasn’t easy to make out exact words from the kitchen to the dining room, but on quiet days, tone was easy enough to distinguish. And her tone must have been humiliatingly easy to decipher, even from the other side of a wall.
“Say, what’ll it be, doll?” he asked, although the wry expression on his face was asking something entirely different.
“He’ll have the waffle,” Paige said.
When the old man didn’t immediately move to get to work on the meal, Paige raised an eyebrow in question.
“What?” she asked, with more exasperation in her voice than she had intended to come through.
Again, Alvin’s cheeky grin lit up his face.
“Oh, nothing… Just wondering if he’s actually as handsome as it looks like you think he is.”
And with that, he got to work, muttering to himself and barely reacting to the playful slap on the arm that Paige gave him.
She had to stop herself from taking an audibly deep breath before heading back out to the dining room. Though, if he was able to hear her trying to calm her own nerves at talking to such an attractive man, she’d probably already have heard Alvin making fun of her for it.
But when she stepped back out, the man showed no evidence of having heard anything embarrassing at all. His attention seemed fixed instead on something in his hand.
With a start, Paige realized she was jealous. Jealous of an inanimate object—that had to be a new low. She cleared her throat, trying to pull his attention back to her and away from whatever he held.
“And as for your other question, Mr.…”
“Kehlan,” the man said.
“Mr. Kehlan—”
A laugh interrupted her sentence. It was a good laugh. Light and mirthful, spilling out like music.
“Sorry, did I say something funny?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“No, only that Kehlan is my first name. I should have been more clear—I know it’s uncommon here.”
Paige found herself smiling like an idiot again, and this time there was no question that it had nothing to do with her job and everything to do with her customer.
“You’ve got that right,” she said. “Usually, it’s just locals around here this time of year. What brings you this way?”
She was supposed to be answering his question, not asking one. But her curiosity overrode her usual duties of unofficial tourist information officer at the town’s only real diner.
His answer wasn’t immediate, and Paige found that she liked the way he was thinking things over. It gave him an air of honesty—as though he wasn’t just saying whatever came to mind or whatever easy explanation he had, but rather that he was really trying to think about it to be as truthful as he could.
“I guess I was just looking for something different,” he said at last. “I found myself in Seattle with a few free days and saw a brochure that made this place look like heaven on earth, though it doesn’t have a lot of information other than the basics. But when I got to town, I saw the signs for this place on Main Street, and well, here I am.”
Nothing he was saying was unusual, but still, Paige hung on every word. It was a pretty straightforward explanation on the face of it, but she couldn’t help but feel curious about the details hiding around the edges. It took her a moment before she looked at the object in his hands that he was holding up. The same object that she had been jealous of just a moment before.
The brochure.
She felt herself drawn forward, forgetting herself and plucking the paper from his hands in wonder.
“My brochure!” she exclaimed. “I thought these had all gotten trashed.”
He looked at her quizzically.
“Your brochure?”