Chapter 18
Tilda
I twist the vase on the dining table.
I twist it again.
“He’s not even that hot.”
I turn away from the collection of flowers.
“He’s not,” I tell Deerdra. Because it feels slightly more sane to talk to a dead deer over dying flowers. “Honestly, he’s not my type.”
Deerdra stares back, sensing my lie from across the room.
I throw my hands up. “Fine, he’s everybody’s type.”
Then I try to picture him at some snooty brunch with royalty, a princess at his side. And… yep, he’d look smokin’ in a suit and tie too.
And if the tie was a little bit loose. Circling his neck, with room for me to wrap my hand around the silk and drag him closer.
He could call me Bad Girl again…
“Nope.” I shake my head.
I’m not going to fantasize about a man who cut up my ribbon.
The same man who removed the rest of the ribbon after telling me to do it.
After grabbing the keys for the truck—my truck—I snag my silver clutch off the top of one of the boxes and open the front door.
Something quacks. Loudly. And I shriek.
Taking a quick step back into the house, I swing the door shut and slap a palm to my chest.
My heart is thudding so hard you’d think Bigfoot shouted at me.
I really have to work on my startle response.
Taking two steps to the side, I lean over the row of boxes I still have to unpack and look out the window into the front yard.
Movement draws my attention, and I spot a duck waddling across the gravel driveway, away from the house and toward the forbidden state park property.
His little brown tail wiggles back and forth with each step.
“Wait,” I whisper, placing my fingers against the glass.
Rushing, I move back to the front door and pull it open.
“Hi!”
It’s been one night, and I’ve already lost what’s left of my sanity.
Then the duck lets out one of his air horn quacks again.
And I grin.
I grin all the way to Uncle Jack’s truck.
My truck.
“Can’t believe you left me with a truck.” I roll my eyes as I climb into it.
Climb in the literal sense of the word.
This old beast of a truck isn’t one of those cute ones you see in Christmas ads with a tree strapped down in the back. No, this is the one you’d see parked in front of a house in a horror movie. Where the cast is stranded in the forest and they come across a house with a light on…
Nope. Not going there.
Seated, I pull the driver’s door shut and buckle my seat belt.
I drop my purse on the bench seat next to me, then remember I need the key that I put in there.
Because this truck is that old.
I stick the key in the ignition and turn it, and just like yesterday—when I took the truck on a five-foot test drive—the engine turns over smoothly.
Like so many other things, I wonder how far out Uncle Jack planned his departure from this world.
How did he leave last fall without his truck?
After shifting into drive, I turn the wheel and work my way out of the narrow garage.