I’ll get Dan to pick you up from Nick’s place tomorrow at eleven.”
“Uh, who’s Dan?”
“A colleague of Nick’s. Does that work for you?”
“I’ll be there.”
Nadia hung up with a click, and then it suddenly hit me. I was going to LA! Tomorrow! I needed to pack. What should I take? The weather would be warmer than in Virginia, so I could leave my sweaters behind. I had a pair of denim cut-offs in my meagre wardrobe—I could take those. Beyond that, I doubted I’d need much. I wouldn’t have time to do anything but work, anyhow.
A night of little sleep followed. Things churned over and over in my mind—Momma, Billy, the way my life was changing so much with this job.
And Nick.
I thought about Nick way more than I should. It was hard not to. I mean, if I had to describe the most perfect man imaginable, I could have saved words by pushing Nick forward and saying “him.” Not just because of his looks, but his kindness too. Billy spent so many years tearing me down that I’d believed I was nothing. Nick made me feel like something again.
And that scared me.
The next morning, I was sitting out on Nick’s front steps with my bag when a black Ford Explorer pulled up. A woman hopped out, her glossy dark brown hair pulled up in a ponytail, and when she grinned, her dimples rivalled Nick’s.
“Ready to go?”
“Who are you? I was expecting Dan.”
“I’m Dan.”
“But you’re...”
“Female? Yeah, I get that a lot. I brought you a latte.” She pointed at the cup holder in the centre console. “I wasn’t sure what you normally drink.”
“A latte’s perfect.”
I’d pictured Dan as a middle-aged businessman in a suit, not a twenty-something girl in biker boots, a leather jacket, and a studded black choker. Nadia said she was Nick’s colleague, but what did she do? She hardly looked like a typical secretary.
I put my bag in the trunk and climbed into the passenger seat beside her, the smell of the mocha she sipped drifting across and tantalising my taste buds. Then she put the cup back in its holder and gestured at the back seat.
“Nadia sent a phone, an iPad, and a laptop for you. She said you didn’t even have email.” Dan’s eye roll told me what she thought of my technological incompetence.
“What? I don’t need all that.”
Dan shrugged. “Well, you’re getting it.”
She cranked the music up, and that was the end of the conversation. I was kind of glad she didn’t speak because she’d clearly been to the Emmy school of driving and needed to watch the road. We may have arrived at Dulles International quickly, but it took a few seconds for my brain to convince my fingers to loosen their grip on the seat.
Despite the ride, I was glad to have Dan with me, because when a security guard held me up at the metal detectors, she did the talking. She may have been small, but she spoke with such authority that he didn’t dare to question her. In no time at all, we were sipping champagne and nibbling on snacks in the business-class lounge.
I cringed back into the plush sofa as a suited man looked me up and down, his nose crinkling in disgust. Guess my Walmart jeans and second-hand sweater didn’t cut it in the land of the rich and beautiful. Still, Dan earned a bemused headshake for her outfit, and she didn’t seem to care a hoot. I needed to take a leaf out of her book.
“More champagne, ma’am?” the concierge asked.
“Just one more glass.”
I know I said I’d quit alcohol, but nerves got the better of me, okay? I hated flying. I’d studied enough at college to understand the fundamentals of lift and the Bernoulli effect, but there was still a tiny, irrational part of me that was amazed aeroplanes didn’t just drop out of the sky.
“Worried?” Dan asked as we walked down the jetway.
“A little,” I admitted.
“Don’t be. Everybody dies sometime.”
Oh, that was comforting. “Do you fly often?”
“About once a week for the last decade, and I’m still alive.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of flying.”
“I know. I’m saving up my air miles to go into space.”
CHAPTER 22
THE LATE AFTERNOON sun beat down on me as I lay on a lounge chair by Nick’s pool in my shorts, with my T-shirt tied in a knot under my breasts and the sleeves pushed up onto my shoulders. A gentle breeze from the sea provided welcome relief from the heat.