by Natalie Ann
“Then don’t laugh at me,” she said.
“I wouldn’t think of it,” he said back. “Even if I did.”
She slid her arm through his and they went to his rental, then drove to the restaurant for a Thanksgiving dinner.
“How long are you staying?” she asked after they’d placed their order.
“I’m flying out tomorrow,” he said. “I need to work this weekend.”
“You couldn’t take one extra day off?” she asked. “You flew in last night late and then tomorrow you’ll be gone again. It’s like you’re barely here.”
Which was the way he wanted it. The less chance of running into not only his mother’s family, but his father’s as well. Leeches were everywhere.
“Packages need to be delivered. I was lucky to get tomorrow off to travel and I managed to get out early yesterday.” Which hadn’t been easy either. It’s not like he could just drive to the airport. He had to get on the ferry, then go to Boston International. He got the earliest flight he could tomorrow so he wouldn’t have to worry about missing the ferry back to the island as it was.
“You’re a busy man, I know. If I haven’t said it enough, I’ll say it now. I’m proud of you for settling down.”
He wasn’t so sure he was settled. At thirty-two years old, he’d been traveling around for five years. After the death of his parents, he’d dropped out of college. It wasn’t like the degree in business he was getting was going to do much for him. He was barely passing as it was.
But he had to do something with his time and, for the hell of it, he applied to the post office. Good benefits and a nice federal job, what the heck. He only applied for part time and stayed that way for years allowing him the time to hang out with friends and party all he wanted. Even travel when he wanted most times.
Five years ago he’d had enough though and put in for a transfer to Phoenix for a full-time position, then later to Houston which he’d left to come here about six months ago. The cold was getting to him and it was time for warmer weather. Until he realized the heat wasn’t much better when he was walking around in it all day.
That started his journey to different places until he landed on Amore Island and felt like he might have found his home.
“I’ve got a good job and a nice house. If that’s considered settled, then yay for me.”
“I’d love to see you with someone special,” his grandmother said. “Have you been dating anyone?”
“I haven’t really dated anyone in years and you know it. You know why too.”
“One person, Crew. She was a piece of shit.”
He started to cough on the drink he’d just taken. “Good point.”
Lisa knew about his money and she liked to have fun. He was fine with that. Then his parents died and she was there for him. Until she told the biggest lie imaginable and cost him a shitload of stress and another major wakeup call. That had been the final straw for him to begin making plans to get out of Dodge.
“It was years ago, Crew. How many?”
“Almost ten,” he said. “And yes I’ve dated in that time. Of course I have. I just haven’t found anyone as wonderful as you.”
She laughed and he was glad of it. “And you never will. But you shouldn’t be comparing. Do you at least have your eye on anyone?”
“Yes,” he said before he could stop the word from tumbling out like snow during an avalanche. What the hell was wrong with him?
“Tell me about her,” his grandmother said.
“Not much to say. I paid three thousand dollars to have a date with her. I’m still waiting to set it up.”
“Crew! I hope you’re lying to me. Good Lord, that is one high-priced call girl.”
This time he couldn’t stop the laughter and decided not to correct her.
“Have you called the guy you owe a date to?”
Emily looked at her mother as she set the table for Thanksgiving. It was just her parents and her sister, Penelope, for Thanksgiving. She was fine with that as she was exhausted from traveling this past week.
“No, Mom. You know I’ve been out of town and we’ve had one issue after another at the hotel.”
“Which your sister and I have dealt with,” her father said.
Her parents and Mitchell Bond together owned thirty percent of Atlantic Rise Hotel. They’d fronted the cash for her and Penelope to get their start and then the two of them split the remaining seventy percentage and maintained majority shares. Not that her father or Mitchell did much more than offer suggestions or help when they needed it.
Her mother, Sophia, had introduced Mitchell to his wife, Janet; then Mitchell had returned the favor introducing Sophia to Mason Rauch. Mason, her father, was semi-retired now, just working remotely as Mitchell Bond’s Vice President of Marketing. Mason’s family was in the tourism business most of his life so he came by it naturally. Marrying her mother just added to his portfolio that would be handed down. Lots of rental properties and other investments more than anything, but the girls had no shortage of things they could do when they were older.
They went the hard route though and wanted to start from scratch.
No, neither she nor her parents were as wealthy as Mitchell or Scott Bond, or some of the other Bonds in the family, but they held their own.
“But it’s Emily’s baby,” Penelope said. “You know she can’t disconnect for one minute.”
“You’re no better,” Emily said back to her sister. “You’re just as much of a control freak as me.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Penelope said. “You bring freak to a whole new level. I just like to be organized. You want things your way or it’s the highway. I’m the nice one the employees like to talk to. You, you’re the one that they run from.”
“Your sister has you there,” her mother said.
“I can’t help it if I’m serious and determined. Penelope is just as much and you know it.”
“But I’ve got a softer approach than you.”
“Which is why we make a great team,” she told her younger sister.
“We do,” Penelope said coming over and putting her arm around her shoulder. “See. Soft approach.”
She rolled her eyes at her sister. “To answer your question, Mom. No. I haven’t reached out to Crew, but I plan on it next week.”
“What do we know about this guy?” her father said. “You said he’s your mailman? That’s a lot of money to pay to have a date with someone when he could just ask you. Do you even talk?”
“We talk all the time,” she admitted. “I mean when I’m home and he delivers a package. He normally rings the bell so I know it’s there. I’ve asked him to so it doesn’t sit on the porch.”
“So he drops a package off and leaves after he rings the bell?” Penelope said. “Maybe he has a crush on you to do that.”
“I doubt it,” she said. “Men like him want nothing to do with someone like me.”
“Uptight and a control freak?” Penelope said.
Emily didn’t think she was that uptight but understood many thought otherwise. Including her ex, Simon. He didn’t think she was so uptight when he was riding on her coattails. Maybe she shouldn’t have voiced that to him during one of their fights.
Oh well, in the past.
“Whatever. He’s nice. He’s always smiling and has a joke to say or something funny. I’ve given him cookies and drinks. Sometimes it’s really hot out and since he does go out of his way to ring the bell, it’s the least I could do. You know others just toss things and run off the porch.”
“You’re feeding the mailman,” her mother said. “That’s so sweet.”
She wanted to grind her teeth. This was why she didn’t tell her family things. But over the summer it could get hot out and there had been a few days Crew was carrying up some of her packages. They were big and heavy and he was sweating, his biceps and forearms were flexing, even his thighs and calves when he squatted down.
She’d actually been almost embar
rassed to be staring and more so when he’d caught her. She immediately offered him a bottle of water that day and then a few more times when she saw him.
Most times he dropped her mail in the box by the end of the driveway, but if she was home and had a package, she’d almost always go to the door to get it and offer him something and talk for a minute. It’s not like she had packages sent daily, and she did track them to know the day they’d be delivered and worked her schedule around to be there for them.
Sometimes she wondered if she was just lonely that she was looking forward to seeing him.
But the last thing she expected was that he’d buy a date with her.
“That’s me. Sweet. Maybe he just wanted to pay me back for being nice to him. See, Penelope? Soft approach here too.”
“By upping the bid a thousand?” his father said. “No. There has to be more to it. I’m waiting for Helena to get more information on him to do a check.”
“Dad, he works for the federal government. Don’t you think they’d do a background?”
“No clue and don’t care. Mitchell will run the check once Helena gets the information. We just want to make sure there is no criminal background,” her father said.
“Which I’m sure Mac can do for you easily enough too,” she said of the chief of police. Mac Bond was family, he knew about the auction and though he said there was no way in hell he was getting on stage when he was asked, he still understood why the event was done. Though this was the first year Helena got the hair-brained idea to auction people off.
“Maybe I’ll have Mac deal with it then,” Mason said. “Especially if you are calling him next week to set up this date. Remember, stay in a public place.”
“Dad,” she said. “I’m thirty years old. I’m a big girl and know the dating rules. It’s a few hours and we’ll stay on the island. The date is his choice, he bought it.”
“I wonder what he has planned,” her mother said.
“Maybe he wants to take the time to tell Emily to cut back her shopping so he isn’t breaking his back,” Penelope said.
“You buy just as much as I do,” she complained.
“I do. But I don’t have a hot mailman delivering mine. Maybe I need to move to your neighborhood. Hmm, maybe that is why you are buying more and more lately. What do you think of that, Mom?”
She wasn’t going to agree with her sister that Crew was hot. It was bad enough they already knew she was giving him food and drink while he worked. And right now everyone was eying her funny too.
She was done talking about this. “So did you find out what it would cost to add more selections to the room service menu?”
“Emily has spoken,” Penelope said. “Back to work mode. It was fun while it lasted.”
Her mother sighed and looked at her watch. “One hour until the turkey is on the table. That means no more shop talk after. Understood, everyone?”
“Understood,” everyone said back.
If anyone wanted to know where she got her personality from, it was her mother. She speaks and everyone listens.
2
Understatement Of The Year
Crew knew that Emily had to be back in town since he not only had mail but also packages to deliver to her this morning.
She’d told him over a week ago at the fundraiser she had to go out of town and she’d call when she got back. When he’d left on Wednesday night for his flight, her mail was still being held. Saturday, he’d taken off. He could have stayed that extra day with his grandmother to visit, and even thought of it, but somehow his Uncle Richard figured he was in town and when he returned his grandmother after dinner, his mother’s brother was waiting for them.
It was just one of many tense conversations he’d had with family in the past few years. He was good at saying no and turning his back even if it hurt every time.
Correction, it didn’t hurt now, but it sure the hell did years ago when he was left alone at twenty-two years old grieving his parents and thinking family was there to support him.
They supported him with conditions. It just took him a long time to realize that.
But now he was back on Amore Island and doing his job. And that job included bringing boxes to Emily Rauch’s door on a Monday morning at nine thirty. She was probably at work, but he’d ring the bell anyway, because she always said to, that she tracked her deliveries and tried to be there for them.
He grabbed the three boxes, got out of his truck and then walked up her sidewalk to the front porch. He hit the bell and put them down, then turned to leave.
When he was getting ready to pull away after dropping her mail in the box at the end of her driveway, he saw another small thick package on the floor of the mail truck that must have fallen out. He knew she had four packages, but he must have let his mind wander and forgot.
He grabbed it quick and ran back to put it on the porch with the rest of them when the door opened and startled him.
He didn’t know which one of them was more stunned though because she was standing there in sweats, big fuzzy slippers on her feet and a blanket wrapped around her shoulders with a tissue in her hand. A used one.
Then she sneezed, not once, not twice, but four times in a row.
“Bless you,” he said.
“Thank you.”
He almost didn’t recognize her voice. Damn, she sounded like she had those used tissues stuffed up in her nasal cavity. “Looks like you’ve got one hell of a cold,” he said, wincing.
“You think?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
She bent over to try to get her boxes and her blanket fell over her shoulder and ended up covering half her face. He tried not to laugh, but it was a sight he’d never thought he’d see when she was always so put together.
“Let me get them for you,” he said, bending over and picking them all up. “Guess you got some shopping done even though you were gone.”
“I ordered it before I left. Just some Christmas gifts,” she said.
“Do you want me to put them in for you?” he asked. “I can leave them right here by the door and you can get them later.”
“Thank you,” she said. “And sorry. I’m grouchy. I don’t get sick often, but when I do it feels like the world is ending.”
“I thought they said men act that way, not women.”
He could see she wanted to smile but fought it back, then she went into another sneezing frenzy. “Sorry,” she said.
“I think that is my cue to leave.”
“I don’t blame you. I can’t even stand to be around myself right now. I’ll touch base with you soon. I promise.”
“You can wait until you’re better. Really, I insist,” he said, laughing at her.
She slammed the door on him when he said that and he figured he probably pushed his luck, but damn it all, she was even cute when she was sick.
Of all the rotten luck in the world. As if it wasn’t bad enough to get sick, she started feeling ill on Friday when she planned on going into work. There was so much she needed to do and catch up on, but she’d started to run a fever and couldn’t get warm.
Saturday ended up being more of the same and when the fever broke on Sunday she thought it was passing. Until her head felt like it was a hot air balloon carrying her around the house as she moved.
Between the congestion, the runny nose, and then dizziness, she wasn’t good for anything and curled up on the couch with a box of tissues, a few bottles of water, and the remote.
The dizziness faded this morning along with the runny nose. But now it was stuffed so much she could only breathe through her mouth. She honestly wasn’t sure what was worse but could at least move her head without snot running out of it.
She heard the water boiling over in her pan on the stove in the kitchen and moved back as fast as she could. Her plan was to put some vapor rub in the water, then lean her head over the steam with the blanket over her head. Her mother did that to them when they were kids and it always worked.
&nbs
p; That is until the doorbell rang. She’d picked her phone up and saw it was just Crew dropping off her packages on the screen of her security system and she had no intention of answering the door until he was gone.
He was in his truck so she figured he’d be pulling away, and made her way to the door, leaving her phone in the kitchen.
But nooooooo. The hot sexy mailman had to have forgotten something and returned right when she was opening the door and saw her at her worst.
It was bad enough she still hadn’t called him and he probably figured she was blowing him off, but she’d never do that. It wasn’t in her nature even if she wanted no part of that fundraiser.
She kept her word when she gave it. Now she just had to get better and then find the time.
The packages could stay by the door for all she cared, but right now she needed to be able to breathe through her nose.
She moved the pan off the burner to a hot plate on the counter, dropped in a spoonful of the vapor rub that was next to it. Then she covered her head with the blanket and leaned over it. Her eyes were running now, but slowly she could hear her nasal cavity almost popping like it was opening up.
She breathed in and, nope, nothing. Not yet. But it was going to get there and she had the nose spray ready to go once she could open it up enough to even spray it in there.
Thirty minutes later, she was back in the living room breathing almost like a normal person. Much better. Even if she looked like horse poo, she didn’t quite feel that bad.
With the remote in her hand, she turned the TV off and picked up her laptop. Now that she wasn’t so frustrated over her lack of breath or the noise she made breathing through her mouth, she could get some work done.
Two hours later, her eyes were drooping and she knew it was time for a nap.
That nap lasted three hours when the doorbell rang again and she almost fell off the couch jumping up.
She picked her phone up to see who could be there and knew her jaw was on the floor with some of the tissues that’d fallen off the couch when she grabbed the ledge to keep from rolling off.