AllFreeNovel
Share Us
With a glance at his bun, I’m not surprised.
“I can’t afford to pay rent since . . . well, since I’ve already paid rent, and I don’t know when and if I’ll get that money back.”
“You will. How about this,” he says, leaning forward, placing both forearms on the table, getting close to my face and even more serious. “You can take a picture of me. I’ll give you my address, a photo of my driver’s license, whatever you think you’ll need. Go back to the place you’ve rented, stare at the mushrooms for a bit, and then when you realize you definitely have to take my offer, call me.”
He is so confident that I’ll give in, I almost decline completely. But what’s the harm in taking his information, just in case?
I scoop up the phone and turn the camera around, taking a selfie with Chris. I grin because . . . well, because that’s what you do.
Chris does not smile.
“The least you could do is smile,” I tell him crossly. “You look like a murderer.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” he says, pulling out his wallet and shuffling around until he finds a license, and holds it up to me. “This is me.”
I take a picture, but the address is in London, so I have to write his local address and his phone number.
Chris has long, callused fingers, and the nail beds are darkened with something black—nail polish? Ink? I’m not sure.
I tap on the finger holding his ID. “What’s that?”
He flexes his hand, following my gaze. “Ink. I was drawing earlier.”
That leads to a dozen more questions, just further enforcing that I know nothing about this man.
“If one of my friends were telling me this story, I would tell them to run the hell away,” I grumble.
“But,” Chris says, “what would your friends tell you to do? Maybe you’re the overly cautious one in your group, and you need to live a little.”
I ignore that because . . . well, he’s pretty goddamn accurate. Maybe I am overly cautious, but since my husband, Kit, died seventeen years ago, if I wasn’t cautious, my daughter would become an orphan. Yes, she’s grown up now, but she still needs me. I pay her tuition, and aside from my in-laws, who still live in Argentina where my late husband grew up, Zoe has no other family—except for her three “cool aunts.”
I would do anything for my daughter, including upend my entire life. Over the last few months, I got a passport, put my stuff in storage, rented out my house, quit my job, and traveled all the way here to Baden-Baden.
As for my friends, Jade would tell me he’s cute, and I should sleep with him. Tessa, who is probably the most reasonable of the group, would tell me it’s better than staying in my cottage and I can always leave tomorrow.
Emma, mother of three, gets it, though. She’d probably be just as cautious as I am.
“I’m not going to call you,” I tell Chris instead of answering. “Probably. I’ll figure something else out. I’m still quite certain only serial killers offer to house strange women out of the blue.”
“Serial killers and perverts,” he agrees amiably. Then he raps his knuckles on the table. “Call me when you change your mind.”
I watch him walk away, tapping my fingernail on the tabletop. He’s got a swimmer’s build, those big shoulders that loomed earlier tapering down to a trim waist.
Hm. Cute butt, too.
When he disappears out of sight, I weigh my options.
This move was supposed to be an adventurous, try-anything, dream-big year for Zoe and me. I quit my job teaching yoga in the suburbs of Austin, Texas, to focus on offering classes and private sessions online. I wasn’t starting from scratch, as I’d been posting videos with Zoe’s help for two years, but my income took a significant hit.
For the first time, I wonder if this is all too much. It would be easier to go back home.
I’d struggled from the start with the logistics of this trip.
Jade, the first of us to decide to move abroad, had gotten an opportunity through her job as a chemist to work in Madrid for a year.
After getting dumped by her long-term boyfriend, Tessa got a digital nomad visa for Portugal where she could live as an expat and work for her magazine from home.
Recently divorced with three grown kids, Emma wanted to get her MBA. With the encouragement of her kids and us, she found a program in Rome that coordinated her visa and housing.
