“Betty’s different than me,” Ned broke into my thoughts and I focused on him.
“She is?” I asked thinking I may have missed something.
“I’m a good judge of people, she’s got the sight.”
“The sight?” I repeated stupidly.
He grinned again while straightening, it was his big grin. He had all his teeth, the eyetooth was wonky but they were all clean and white and the rest were straight. His hair was a little thin, light brown. He wasn’t tall, not short either. Lean and on the thin side. And, I was beginning to believe, a genuinely nice guy, not the creepy night clerk at a hotel in Nowheresville.
“The sight.” He nodded then looked toward the hotel before he turned to me as I moved my arms through the water to take me back to the side so I could stop treading. I reached out and held onto the edge as he kept going. “She told me she met you and she just knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Somethin’ big was gonna happen.”
I blinked and it wasn’t to get the water out of my eyes.
“Something big?”
“Yep.”
“To me?”
“To you, through you, because of you, whatever. But whatever it is, it’ll be big and it’ll be good.”
I didn’t know what to do with this mostly because it was a little crazy.
“She said that?”
He nodded and crossed his arms on his chest, rocking back on his heels again.
“Yep. And she’s never wrong. We been married twenty-five years and she gets these feelin’s and, I’ll repeat, she’s never wrong. My Betty’s always right. Always.”
I didn’t know what to say to that so I stayed silent.
“Anyhoots!” he exclaimed loudly. “Best leave you to your swim. You need anythin’ at all, you know where to find me. I hit the hay around midnight but you just gotta ring the buzzer outside the front door and it’ll wake me up. Yeah?”
I nodded.
“Anythin’ you need, pretty lady, I mean that,” he said and it sounded like he meant it.
“Okay,” I replied.
“Glad to have you with us, Lauren.”
“Thanks, Ned.”
He lifted a hand in a wave and wandered back to the reception-slash-house.
I looked at the Harley and listened to the quiet of Carnal.
Then I forced out ten more laps (with three more rest periods), got out of the pool, toweled off, grabbed my stuff and ran to my room.
Chapter Two
A Job to Do
I spent more time wondering what to wear to work than I did training at Bubba’s.