Page 81 of Wayward

She was sobbing then, and I hugged her tight.

“I forgot to ask you this morning, how did you know about Libby?” she asked once she could breathe, pulling tissues from the pocket of her sweater. I would need to start carrying some. I was thinking there would be a lot of crying going on.

“Mr. Raleigh told me. He’s a very nice man.”

“Yes, he is. A lovely man.”

Misha was dancing around, trying to get up, whining, but surprisingly, Eugenia bent and scooped him up. I saw her pet him, and he, in turn, licked her nose.

“Eugenia?” Her mother sounded shocked.

“How is he so impossibly cute,” she grumbled like she wasn’t happy about that at all, and then her eyes lifted to mine. “And who are you?” The disgust in her voice was easy to hear.

I grinned slowly. “Who are you?”

She exhaled an annoyed huff of air. “My friends do call me Genie,” she confessed, glaring at me. “And I happen to have a degree in marketing.”

“Really? How interesting.”

Her long, drawn-out sigh sounded so very exasperated.

I decided to meet her halfway. “Could I interest you in a job here, with us, and give you a break from whatever you’re doing in California that maybe isn’t really for you?”

“How do you know it’s not for me?” she snapped.

“Just a hunch.”

She growled then. “Who are you?”

“I’m the caretaker here,” I answered, offering her my hand. “And we’re gonna have a lot of room, Genie Farley.”

She groaned like she was just so fed up with me, but took my hand anyway, and her grip was firm and warm. She looked like I thought Ada probably had back in her Studio 54 days, with her long, thick ash-blond hair, bright china-blue eyes, and golden tan.

“And we’ll even pay you,” I said, chuckling, noting that she was still holding my dog.

“God,” she grumbled, reaching down to take off one of her heels, then the other, and then wheeled around and headed back to the car. “I need to return to the airport, Davit,” she called over to the driver. “I have to get home and pack.”

“Eugenia!” her mother yelled after her.

“Hey, lady,” I called over.

She rounded on me, her eyes shooting daggers.

“Could you give me back my dog?”

“No,” she yelled, spinning around and stalking away.

“We can make her a suite,” Ada announced, sounding excited. “She could choose her paint color and what she wants in there—oh,” she gasped, and then ran toward the car so she could talk to Eugenia.

The young woman, who hadn’t yet gotten into the car, dropped her shoes, put my dog down very gently, told him to go to his daddy, and then held out her arms for her aunt. They hugged tight, and I was thinking that sometimes life came knocking, and when it did, you had to take a chance and jump. Eugenia was doing just that. I’d done the same, so I got how it could be both terrifying and thrilling.

“Go home, Mr. Farley,” I told him as Misha reached me. I picked him up and put him back in the sling. “The gravy train is over, so I suggest you make other arrangements. We’re going to open a sanctuary.”

He was horrified, if the look on his face was any indication, and Mrs. Whitmore-Farley started shrieking that all of us were insane. Into that scene came Gale, coming up the drive, turning into his carport and parking his cruiser.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him as he began walking over to us. I was utterly riveted. He was the same man who had kissed me goodbye that morning, yet for whatever reason, it felt like I hadn’t seen him in years.

“We had a report of some kind of situation out here,” Gale announced, reaching me and putting a hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?”