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“A great selection. I’ll put those in and your drinks will be right out” the woman said.
“Thank you. I really appreciate it,” Andrea said.
“You’re very welcome. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“I promise I will.”
Just from that small encounter, I could tell she was a sweet girl. Truly a pleasure to be around, inside and out. And when that type of woman came encased in the body of a goddess, it became hard to focus.
“Jessica told me about the fire,” Andrea said. I sighed and nodded my head as my eyes came back up to hers.
“I can’t imagine how hard that must be,” she said.
“It’s been an interesting journey, but I think this vacation is doing all of us a lot of good.”
“That’s good. Jessica told me this vacation would do me some good as well.”
“Have you ever been to Vegas?”
“I’ve never been on vacation.”
My lips parted in shock as our drinks were set in front of us.
“You’ve never taken a vacation? Not even a weekend trip somewhere?” I asked.
“Growing up, I didn’t have the money.”
“What about now?”
I watched her shrug as she picked up her drink and crossed her wonderfully thick leg over the other.
“I guess I work too much to justify it,” she said, snickering.
“Trust me, I understand that more than most. I was fully against us coming on this vacation when Lucas brought it up.”
“Why?” she asked.
“It sort of came at a really bad time for us. I get wanting to get away from everything with regard to work and the fire, but we are in the throes of a battle with the insurance company and we haven’t yet heard back from the fire marshal on his official investigation.”
“Wait, the fire mashal’s involved? Why?”
“When the start of a house fire can’t be readily pinpointed, the fire marshal opens up a formal investigation. It’s nothing serious yet. Most likely it was an electrical fire due to the very old wiring in the mansion. But because it burned down so quickly, it was hard to make that statement at the initial scene, so the fire marshal got involved.”
I didn’t want to tell her everything because I had her talking. And I was scared that the entire story would scare her off, which was something I really didn’t want to do.
“I can see why you wouldn’t have wanted to come on vacation. If something like that was happening with the youth center, I wouldn’t have come either.”
“The youth center?”
“Yeah. I um… I run the Inner Charleston Youth Center downtown.”
“You run that?” I asked.
“Well, Mr. Wilson ran it until he passed. Then he handed it over to me in his will.”
“Were the two of you related?”
“We were close. He took me under his wing when I took a job at the center when I first moved to Charleston. I loved that place like it was my own, and I tried to help him out when I could. Fixing his desk. Helping him set up new technologies. Replacing the basketball nets. Volunteering to work with the kids.”
