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It began to snow. Five minutes away from the airport, I lost service.
What the hell? What kind of godforsaken place didn't have cell phone service? I twisted my phone, hoping that it would catch a signal.
"Cell phones don't really work here when it snows or rains heavily. The clouds are in the way."
I put away my phone and stared out the window. Everywhere I looked, there were empty fields. Cornfields, probably. I sighed. Just one week, then I could go back to my corn-free existence.
He turned on the radio, and I listened to country music fill the cabin of his truck. I listened to Carrie Underwood and Blake Shelton, but that was about it. Taylor Swift wasn't even considered country anymore.
The plaintive notes of the country music and my own nervousness made me drowsy. I fell asleep.
Barn
Amelia
When the truck stopped, I was instantly awake. I opened my eyes and sat up straight in my seat. I looked around me.
"We're here."
I didn't need his help to get down. I opened my door as he walked around the truck. I looked out with dismay. There were rusty old cars in the yard without tires that were mounted on concrete blocks. There were cobwebs on them.
It was an old wooden house. It looked like something out of a horror film. When the girl went there in her almost sheer white nightgown, you wanted to scream, "No, don't go in there! The ghosts are in there! You're going to die!"
I hugged myself. Just a week. Be brave. You can do this.
I'd never felt more scared in my life. It was worse than opening night of Alice in Wonderland, which was the only musical where I'd been the lead actress.
"Come on in. I'll show you your room."
I followed him into a house that looked like it should be condemned. Burned. Something.
The stairs creaked as we went up, and I fervently prayed that I would not fall through the rotting wooden boards. I did not like the way that the wood moved downward when I stepped on it.
He showed me into a tiny room. It had been pretty once, with periwinkle wallpaper sprinkled with white flowers. Now the wallpaper was faded so that you could barely see the periwinkle shade, and the flowers had turned slightly gray.
"Let me show you for where the bathroom is."
The next door was a very small bathroom. It had a tall sink and a shower that looked like it was a square foot.
"There's no room for my stuff in my bathroom."
"First, it's not your bathroom. It's ours." My eyes widened. "Second, there's already shampoo and soap in there." He pointed, and I looked at the metal shower caddy with a tiny thing of shampoo and soap, about the size that you would see in a hotel. "So you don't need to bring anything in there."
I blinked. "Have you never lived with a woman before?" For the first time, I looked at his face as a woman and not just a city girl disgusted by the dirt under his nails. He was good looking, for a yokel at least. He had bright blue eyes that practically looked like there was a light shining behind them. His thick blonde hair was cut close to his scalp, a no-nonsense haircut. I got the sense suddenly that in another time he would have been a general. His posture was like a military man's.
"No, I can't say that I have." He cleared his throat and changed the subject. "Okay." Good thing that I wasn't on my period, or hiding my feminine products would be problematic. Not a problem for the next week, though. The period tracker on my iPhone said that I could expect Aunt Flo in about two and a half weeks.
He cleared his throat. "I'll let you settle in. Dinner will be in an hour. If your phone doesn't work, go ahead and use the landline to call whomever you need to contact. I don't mind, even if it's long distance."
That sounded pretty kind.
"Do you have wifi? I mean, I can iMessage over the Internet."
"Nope." My jaw practically hit the ground. I closed my mouth. "Who doesn't have the Internet? This is like the Stone Age."
He rolled up the sleeves of his flannel shirt. Unrepentant, he crossed his arms, drawing my attention to his very nicely toned forearms. No, Mel! Don't look!
"I go to library. And it's a good thing that you did not come during the summer. There is no air conditioning here."
