Chapter 10
Sleep was dreamless and morning dawned a little chilly, something she realized the moment she put a foot down on the wood floors in the turret. She fished about in her gym bag to see if her mom had donated any warm things. She found woolly rainbow-colored socks, the sweatshirt featuring the giant disembodied face of Annelise’s cat, Peace and Love, that Annelise had given her grandpa for Christmas, and a pair of slippers with cocker spaniels on the toes. She put all of them on. The sweatshirt hung down almost to her knees.
She fumbled for her phone; it was only seven in the morning. How about that: the gently increasing light in her room had been her alarm clock. She decided to give herself a reprieve from looking at emails and texts until at least eight. Instead, she reflexively moved to open a window to let in birdsong and country air.
She stopped a few inches from the window.
And frowned.
And sniffed a little.
What the hell wasthatsmell?
Heart pounding in dread now, she flung open a window, then slammed it down like a guillotine and scrambled backward. “Oh Jesus. Oh sweet Jesus!”
Only a thousand cows cooperatively farting in unison would create a smell like that.
She lunged for the hand cream in her purse, whipped the top off and snorted the vanilla-sandalwood blend like she was Al Pacino inScarface, then bolted down the stairs, her hand sliding along the silky wood of the banister.
“Please... not... the... septic. Please. Not. The. Septic.”
That was her prayer, one word per stair, like they were rosary beads, all the way down.
She froze in the foyer. Through the door she could hear a muffledBEEP... BEEP... BEEP...
It sounded for all the world like a big truck was backing up outside.
And all at once a hundred nightmare scenarios flitted through her mind like bats released from a cave, all of them involving Mac and revenge.
She flung the door open. Nobody was out front. That was a bit of a relief.
She followed the sound, bolted down the path and out onto the drive and up the flagstone path as fast as her spaniel slippers could carry her.
She came to an abrupt halt at the fork in the road, just before the gate, and stared.
Mac was standing out there, hands planted on his hips, a few feet apart, looking like a happy pirate on the deck of his ship.
In front of him was a huge red truck, the movements of which he appeared to be directing.
“Good morning, Mac,” she called. “What fresh hell have we today?” Ava said it as brightly as a kindergarten teacher.
“Freshmanure,” he corrected with cheery self-satisfaction. “Not fresh hell.”
The manure in question was heaped in the back of said bright red truck, which was driven by a big guy wearing a white undershirt and a San Francisco Giants baseball hat. One tan arm bulging with muscle was propped on the open window.
The guy shouted merrily down to her over the sound of his idling engine. “Mac doesn’t cheap out when it comes to his crops. This is some good shit. Top notch! About time Mac decided to do some winter planting. You been out here, what, three years now, Mackie?”
Avalon turned very, very slowly to Mac. “Yourcrops?”
“Mywintercrops,” Mac reiterated in a tone that reminded her of a Buddhist monk she’d once met, who had clearly successfully meditated away every shred of anxiety, past and future. There was, however, a faint and very wicked hint of “duh” in his voice. “Fresh Loads is my go-to guy.”
At first Ava thought Fresh Loads was one of those terrible nicknames men give each other instead of demonstrating affection, like Bumpy or Skid Mark (two guys she’d actually gone to school with), but Mac gestured with his chin and she looked. “Fresh Loads” was indeed lettered on the side of the truck, in an ornate old-timey font embellished with feathery stalks of corn and lusciously blooming flowers.
Mac glanced over at her, and the glance became a comical double take. He whisked her from the top of her sloppy ponytail to the spaniels on the toes of her slippers, and, depending upon how sharp his vision was, in between might have noticed she hadn’t shaved her shins in a few days, and now little bristles sparkled in the direct sunlight.
“You sure you got that fuse in okay last night? You kinda look like you got dressed in the dark. Youdidlook a little dazed when you walked away from my place.” His brow was furrowed in mock concern.
He was a wicked, wicked man.