“Thanks for breakfast, Birdie.”
She grumbles something under her breath that I can’t hear, and I leave the diner with a full-fledged smile on my face, knowing I’ll be back tomorrow morning for more.
Chapter Six
Raelynn
It’s noon and I’m still reeling about Ben coming into the diner for breakfast. I can’t believe how I treated him. What I said! The attitude! I’m not usually like that. I mind my own business and try to be as polite as possible to everyone I meet, but he just kept needling me and there’s only so much I’m willing to take before I have no choice but to needle right back. Even worse, I think he might have liked it.
I’m all over the place trying to pin down my opinion of him. I go back and forth between thinking he could be a bit shy and reserved, but then he opens his mouth and I realize that’s not the case at all. He’s arrogant and demanding. He thinks I owe him information about my life and who I’m dating? I should have lied and said Patrick was my boyfriend just to see his reaction, but ew, I wouldn’t ever want to joke about dating a guy like him, even just to get a rise out of Ben.
I’m out on a two-lane highway, driving and eating my lunch at the same time. I’m in a hurry trying to get to my afternoon job. The cleaning company sent me out into the middle of nowhere today, and I’m none too pleased about it considering how much gas I’m burning trying to get there. A souped-up truck lays on its horn behind me and then swerves around Nan’s car to speed away.
“Good. Get! I’m going the damn speed limit!” I say with a mouth full of burger.
Annoyed, I drop the rest of my burger back into the to-go container on my passenger seat and wipe my mouth and hands with a napkin. I should finish my lunch. Lord knows I need the calories, but thoughts about Ben have my stomach twisted into a gnarly knot.
I groan and check the directions I jotted down. The address sounds familiar, but I can’t put my finger on why. It’s definitely nowhere I’ve been before, I know that much.
Finally, up ahead, I see the street sign I’ve been looking for and I pull off the highway onto a dirt road. I wince when rocks start pinging the bottom of the car. The old hunk of metal is barely running as is; there’s no telling how much longer it’ll keep puttering along if it gets battered to hell.
I look around for a farmhouse or some place that needs cleaning, but there’s nothing on either side of the road. The dirt road slips through dense forest, and then there are a few breaks and stretches of farmland. Eventually I start to see some cabins popping up in the woods. They’re fancy A-frame structures with floor-to-ceiling glass. Nothing like your grandpa’s dusty log cabin, that’s for sure. These look like hidden treehouses that would rent for a thousand bucks a night, easy.
The cleaning company failed to pass on any helpful tidbits beyond a simple address, so I drive slow past the cabins until I come to a break in the trees that gives way to a large clearing. I stop the car and stare, shocked at what I see. This isn’t just a little cluster of cabins—this is an entire micro-city hidden in the woods. There’s a main house in the center of things with buildings spaced out strategically around it. There’s a paved parking lot for cars and tons of people walking around. To be honest, it almost looks like it could be a weird cult village, but then I see the Olympic symbol blown up and painted on the side of what looks like a sports complex and everything clicks into place. So this is where the basketball players are training while they’re in town. Interesting.
“Ma’am! Ma’am!” someone hollers, grabbing my attention. A guy in a black security outfit comes running for my car, clearly out of breath. “You can’t just drive in here.”
Oh crap.
I roll down my window.
“You blew right past me back there,” he says, bending over and clutching his knees, dragging in deep breaths. “We don’t allow press.”
“Oh.” I laugh. “I’m not press. I’m here to clean a house, I think.”
His features scrunch up in confusion. “Who’re you with?”
I rattle off the cleaning company and the address they gave me.
He nods. “Right. One of the basketball wives cleared it with security. I can’t remember which one it was. Stay here and I’ll go ask my supervisor.”
He walks away, in no big hurry at all. I sit back in my seat and look out my window, unabashedly scanning the horizon for Ben. There are plenty of folks walking around, but not him.