by Elle Aycart
“Fuck off, both of you,” Logan muttered. Raising his voice, he addressed the crowd again. “You’re certifiable. All of you.”
“I totally agree,” Carol said. “We give you far too much leeway. Look at how flexible we’ve been about your toxic contaminants.”
Toxic contaminants? For the love of God.
“Yeah, and all the unmarked vans coming and going,” someone else added. “We like living off the radar. That much movement draws attention.”
“Not to mention your interns, who are a grave security risk,” Carol said.
Logan frowned. “What are you saying? That my crew is a security risk because they’re foreigners?”
“Not because they’re foreigners, but because we don’t know them,” Carol scolded. “You know we don’t discriminate. For us, every person is a possible security threat, regardless of race, religion, or nationality.”
That was true. Preppers didn’t discriminate. They treated everyone according to the same crazy standards.
Why did Megan have to find the love of her life in this godforsaken town? Too bad that in his quest to save the world and keep his sister close by, he hadn’t stopped to think before following her and setting up shop. For such an innovative project, raising funds and international awareness were very important. Thanks to these tinfoil wackos, recruiting interns who wouldn’t run for the hills by the second day was becoming more and more difficult.
“These people see our modus operandi and they talk. We don’t know who they talk to. They could even be taking pics for the government.”
More murmurs.
“Which government? Ours or theirs?” Logan asked jokingly.
“Both, probably,” someone said.
Even more murmurs.
This was so ridiculous.
“Sure. I’m teaching them to build dirty bombs in my top-secret lab. What is this? Am I the only topic on the list today?” Because it seemed to him like a waste of everybody’s time to call an emergency town meeting for a couple of sneezes.
That Sky had a fever of 102 degrees, he was keeping to himself. Otherwise this crowd would skip the quarantine and move straight to dissection.
“What about voting on a name for the town?” Logan suggested.
“That’s right,” somebody seconded from the crowd. “I need an official address for my business.”
And there they went, all talking at once. Fighting over it.
Logan reckoned they would be without a name for a fucking long time. But quarantining a poor, innocent woman and violating her rights because of a sneeze? On that they unanimously agreed. “As much as I’d love to stay and debate with you guys, I gotta go.”
Sky hadn’t looked so hot when he left. Well, correction, she’d looked hot. Too hot as a matter of fact. Hopefully she’d taken his suggestion and gone straight to bed, but who knew. She might have decided to go out to cool down. If the pandemic squad found her on his porch or, God forbid, wandering the streets, they would freak out. What the government did to aliens—if they existed, as everyone around here believed they did, of course—was small potatoes compared to what these nutcases would do to her. And to him by extension.
He’d stop by the diner. Get her chicken soup. And then take a detour to the general store. Stock up on Tylenol PM to knock her out for the next couple of days.
As he was leaving, his sister called out, “Remember, keep Patient Zero indoors by whatever means necessary. Use your charm.”
Right. Forget Tylenol. He’d better resort to Valium.
Chapter 3
Carrying a pile of pizza boxes and a plastic bag, Logan closed the front door and stepped into his living room, to find Sky on the couch. She hadn’t taken his advice and gone to bed. As a matter of fact, she’d changed into more designer clothes. Again white, contrasting vividly with her long mane of fiery red hair.
“Hi. You feeling better?”
Shrugging, she gave him a feeble smile. “Not really. Now my nose is stuffy and my throat is sore.” She’d put on some makeup, but her flushed cheeks and the discarded tissues around the sofa table painted a very clear picture.
He placed the pizza boxes and the plastic bag on the kitchen counter. “Brought supper. I hope you’re hungry.”
Stilettos clicking on the floor, she walked toward him, her eyes going big as he opened the boxes. “I don’t eat carbs in the evening. Heck, I don’t eat this kind of carb in the daytime, either.”
He chuckled. The pizzas were oozing cheese and grease. “People around here worry about other things.” Like surviving the end of the world, for example. Fat and carbs didn’t enter the equation. Well, except for Sierra. She was rumored to have fitness recipes in her food stash that would put any exercise guru to shame.
“Even if my sore throat would allow me to swallow food without seeing stars, eating pizza when I can’t taste it would be murder.”
“That’s why I brought you this,” he said, pulling a cup out of the plastic bag. “Homemade chicken soup.”
“Thanks.” She walked crisply to the sofa and reached for her purse. “How much do I owe you?”
“Keep your money. I know it doesn’t look like it, but I can afford chicken soup.”
Her back straightened self-righteously. “I don’t doubt it for a second. This is not about that. I always pay my way. There’s nothing worse than being indebted to a man. And now that we are on the subject, how much did it cost to get my car towed into town?” She started counting out money, most of it one-dollar bills. Then she reached for a whole different stash. “Do you accept foreign currency? I hear euros are on the rise.”
He laughed. “Keep your foreign currency too. Shut up and eat,” he said, grabbing a slice of pizza.
She reluctantly obeyed. “Next meal is on me.”
Right, like anyone in town would accept her Monopoly bills. If they were wary of her now, wait till they saw her funny money.
“You planning to shovel down all that on your own?” she asked with pursed lips.
“Nope. The guys who work with me will come for their share soon enough.” Part of his arrangement with his interns was that Logan would feed them over winter break at the university, which meant every night was pizza night. Thankfully, none of the guys were complaining.
Or talking, for that matter. Which was less fortunate.
Then it dawned on him. “Your name is Sky Gonzalez. You wouldn’t happen to speak Spanish, would you?”
She shook her head. “I know the basics: fiesta, bodega, Cinco de Mayo, una cerveza, por favor, and a bunch of colorful swear words. Oh, and ‘Hasta la vista, baby.’ That’s where my Spanish knowledge ends. Why?”
“My interns just arrived in the US, and their spoken English isn’t up to speed yet. A couple of them speak Spanish.” Logan’s was rusty, to say the least. He’d been depending on Leo, a prepper from town, to drop by and translate.
They understood what Logan said in English—mostly, provided he spoke slowly—but communication with the delivery guys was a total mess. Between the language barrier and the fact that the kids were shy and barely knew each other, Logan was not making headway.
“Nope, sorry. Don’t let the ‘Gonzalez’ part fool you.”
“Vietnamese, Chinese, Turkmen?”
“I wish. What do you do for a living that you need foreign interns?”
He opted for giving her the simplified version. “I grow crops.”
“There?” she asked, motioning through a window to his greenhouse.
So she’d been snooping. “Yep.”
“What kind of crops?”
He pondered the best answer for a second, and was saved by the proverbial bell. There was a knock on the window by the side door. His interns. Logan went to open it, and the five guys in question entered. They had been working late; a couple of them still wore lab coats.
“About time. Help yourselves,” Logan told them. “A comer, muchachos.”
Whether Leo was translating or not, the Spanish spea
kers weren’t big on chatting, and the Asian kids never said a word. Which was a first for Logan. The interns he’d had up to now had been eager Europeans with near-perfect knowledge of English. They were worried about environmental issues, global warming, and their carbon footprint. These guys seemed just as enthusiastic, and they were extremely well-educated and hardworking. But the language wasn’t there. “This is Sky. Sky, these are Esteban, Miguel, Huan, Myrat, and Danh.” Two more students were in his group this semester, but they were American and were still with their families for the holidays.
“Nice to meet you,” Sky said with a warm smile.
Polite as always, the interns nodded, smiled back, and took all but the open box of pizza. After thanking him, they headed for the bunkhouse at the far end of Logan’s property, where they had their accommodations. When he’d first started the project, he’d tried putting the interns in an empty apartment in town, but that had proven disastrous. Nowadays he preferred to have them closer by—and further away from the preppers.
“You shouldn’t speak Spanish with them,” Sky said. “Rule number one if you want them to learn.” At his questioning stare, she shrugged. “I teach English to foreigners.”
“That’s what you’re going to do in Paris?”
She nodded, looking somehow chagrined.
“How did your sister manage to—”
“Screw me over so royally?” she finished for him. “Clever me, I asked my dear sister to fill out the study-abroad application on my behalf, because I was so busy. We were doing preparations for Fashion Week and things were crazy at work. I gave her exact instructions, but it didn’t occur to her to read the abbreviation after the city name. Voilà, she sent me to the wrong Paris. She needs glasses. Really, really needs them.”
Fashion Week. As discreetly as he could, he gave her a once-over. Framed by unbelievably thick and long eyelashes, her chocolate eyes looked even bigger and more expressive than before. Her mouth was poutier, thanks to the lipstick, probably. In spite of being sick, she had made the effort to get neatly dressed, do her nails and makeup, and brush her hair. She was sitting straight, her legs crossed at the knee. Stilettos on her feet.
He hadn’t known what to make of her at first. She was just a city girl with a childish hat and impractical clothes, trudging through the snow in spike-heeled boots. Now he saw that looking her best was what she was about. Appearances above all. Exactly what he hated in a woman.
“Paris is a popular name.” She could just as easily have ended up in Texas, Idaho, or Maine.
“No kidding. How did the town meeting go?” she asked, sipping soup.
He shrugged. “Same old.”
“Never been to one. Do people bring home-baked cookies and fresh lemonade?”
He hadn’t been to any other town’s meetings, but there were no cookies and lemonade for this crowd. B-rations and hip flasks weren’t in short supply, though. “I think you’re under the misconception you’re in Stars Hollow.”
“You know your series,” she said, sounding surprised.
“I have a sister totally sold on the glamour of small-town America.” Except they weren’t in small-town America. More like deepest off-the-grid America.
“What was the emergency? The storm?”
In Stars Hollow, maybe. Not in NoName. “Something like that.”
“You got a name for the town yet?”
“Not when I left, no. If there have been no new developments, then the front-runners are a barely pronounceable acronym, and a series of numbers and letters.” Coordinates, probably. The coordinates had strong support, but preppers loved acronyms.
Sky blinked several times. Cleared her throat. “Not to be insensitive, but haven’t they heard about globalization and catchy slogans? Anything difficult to pronounce is bad for tourism.”
“Oh, believe me, these people couldn’t give a rat’s ass about tourism.” They got enough tourism as it was—of the trigger-happy, adrenaline-pumping variety—when the mobile preppers came into town once a year, towing their “tiny houses,” as they called their customized trailers.
“What was the town’s original name?” she asked. “The one they objected to? How bad is it? Buttzville? Toad Suck?”
Ha. Preppers wouldn’t have objected to either of those names. They would have owned it and rolled with it.
Before he could answer, there was another knock, this time on the front door. Logan frowned. He never got visitors this late. Except today, apparently.
He looked through the peephole. Of course. “Hello, Ty,” he said, opening the door. “What brings you here?”
Ty had the decency to laugh and not lie. “Like you don’t know.”
“She has a fever,” Logan whispered. “Go away.” If Ty got sick too, the pandemic squad would quarantine him with Logan. Logan loved Ty, but the guy was a slob, a chick magnet, and generally speaking a pain in the ass. A quarantine with him would be hell.
Ty ignored him and, making himself at home, moved toward the living room.
Fine. If he got sick, Logan was locking him up in the greenhouse. “Sky, this is Ty. Ty, this is Sky.”
Ty, smooth operator that he was, smiled at her. “You’re a tiny little thing.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s surprising that something so small can cause so much trouble. You have no clue the maelstrom you unleashed.”
Sky didn’t seem to understand, but she got derailed by a fit of sneezing. Ty turned to Logan and mouthed, “You lucky bastard.”
Logan so wanted to smack that shit-eating grin off the guy’s face, but he took in a calming breath and went for polite. “We’re eating. Care to join us?”
“Don’t mind if I do. The town meeting has whetted my appetite. So Sky, what brought you to our little town?” Ty asked, grabbing a slice of pizza.
“Presbyopia.”
Ty rolled with that one. “And what are your plans?”
She set her spoon down. “Tomorrow, I’ll head into town, get some more medicine for this flu, and arrange things with the towing company and the rental agency.”
Ty laughed. “Good luck with that, honey.”
“With what?”
“Honestly? With all of it.”
Logan woke up in the middle of the night to weird sounds coming from the part of the house where Sky was sleeping. He stepped out of his room and ran into her in the corridor. She didn’t seem able to walk in a straight line—staggering from side to side, bumping into walls, and knocking shit around.
“You okay?” he asked, reaching for her.
“Not… sure.” Her voice was weak and she looked disoriented. She lifted her eyes to his. “Logan?”
God, she was soaking wet. He put the back of his hand against her forehead, and felt the heat radiating from her even before he touched her. “Fuck, you’re burning up.”
Her gaze was unfocused. “I’m… a bit… hot.”
A bit hot? She must be over 107 degrees.
Her legs gave way, but he caught her on the fly. He needed to cool her down. Pronto.
“What?” she asked feebly as he ran with her in his arms to the bathroom.
“We have to get your fever down.”
He cranked the bathtub faucet open all the way. It filled too slowly, so he got into the shower with her and turned that on. The water was freezing, and it managed to stir her a bit. Good.
“Hold on,” he said, making sure the blast from the showerhead hit her.
As soon as the bathtub was full enough, he’d put her there and dump in all the ice cubes he had in the freezer. He’d pull down the icicles hanging from the eaves too. If that didn’t work, he was taking her outside and rolling her in the snow. To hell with Carol.
He should have undressed Sky when he first brought her home. Gotten the wet clothes off her and to hell with formalities too. She would’ve been pissed, and he probably would’ve had a restraining order slapped on him, but she wouldn’t be this sick.
“Sky, look at me.” He n
eeded to see if she was more responsive than before. She didn’t feel quite as hot, but that could have more to do with him being numb from the freezing water than with her fever going down.
She lifted her head and moved aside the strands of wet hair splattered on her face. “Couldn’t you find an easier way to leer at my boobs than this?”
Relieved, he leaned against the tiles, his legs almost buckling. A nervous chuckle escaped him. “Fuck, you scared the living shit out of me. I was about to call the ambulance.” And pray really hard that it would arrive within two hours, which was the average reaction time to NoName. Preppers were not big on calling in reinforcements. Somebody needed a blood transfusion? They could manage.
He didn’t mean to, but his gaze strayed to her chest. Her wet shirt was glued to her skin, revealing plump tits and tight, dark nipples. Jesus Christ, look at him, ogling a sick woman at the mention of boobs. He shook his head to snap out of it.
The bathtub was full enough. Dripping water all over, he stepped out of the shower and placed her in the tub.
“Cold,” she complained, her teeth chattering.
“Wait, I’ll get some ice.”
Logan ran downstairs, all but skidding half the way, and came back with a bunch of ice cubes wrapped in a towel. He put it against her forehead. She was sitting up, her arms clutching her raised knees. Her cheeks were still flushed, and her eyes were a bit glassy, but she seemed much more alert.
“You feeling better?”
She nodded. “I didn’t take any medicine when I went to bed. I thought I didn’t need it. Mistake.”
No shit.
He was soaked, so he grabbed a towel and began drying off.
“This might be the fever talking, but boy, you’re ripped.”
He barked out a laugh. “Are you ogling me? Really?” Which made him feel like less of a jerk for ogling her first.
She shrugged. “I’m delirious. You might be an apparition of my feverish mind. I’m entitled to ogle my apparitions. If I’m going to die in Nowhere, Minnesota, fate owes me this much.”
“You mean NoName, Minnesota.”