“That’s a keeper.” He hands it to me, and I mutely stash it into my journal.
Then, for my own self-preservation, I shove that literary nugget into a corner of my mind and bury it in a bunch of nope-nope-nope. For him to be hot as heck and well-read?
No. Just no.
Jane
Aiden makes a slow circuit of the castle’s foyer, both eyebrows raised. “Again. Not what I expected.”
No kidding.
After we pay our entrance fee, a tour guide gathers us around. Metal sculptures pack the lobby, and folk art crowds the walls, all made with what look like found objects.
We follow the sonorous sing-song voice of the tour guide, who tells us the owner, Howard Solomon, was the artist for all of this, plus the architect and builder of the structure itself. Each object is described in reverent, memorized lines, highlighting the creator’s goofy, on-the-nose humor.
Aiden sticks by my side as we work our way through the various rooms. At one point, he starts playing with his phone. Well, that didn’t take long.
No sympathy from me. I lift my chin and return my attention to the tour guide. I’d warned him this trip could be boring.
Okay, yeah, I thought it would be too. But surprisingly, I’m not seeing this as interfering with my chance to get back to reading about Daphne and Rupert’s sizzling dialogue and adventures in Egypt.
Aiden says in an undertone, “They call him the Da Vinci of Debris.”
“What?”
He holds up his phone. “Just looked him up.” He pockets it and once again listens to the guide.
We tour the whole downstairs and also the upstairs, which contains Solomon’s living quarters. It’s a lot to take in.
One thing I know, Solomon was never bored a day in his long life.
Back outside by the green benches, Aiden gazes up at the silver structure. He points. “That is a castle.”
And I know what he means. Solomon wanted to create a home, to his own vision, and he did. He didn’t care what anyone would think, or how weird they might think him.
“My grandmother would love this place,” I say.
“Yeah?”
I nod. “She loves carving creatures with wood she finds and using scavenged objects to stick on them to create their clothes or hats or what-have-you. After Hurricane Charley blew through, she made a troll with some of the downed tree limbs, complete with a mini saw and Spanish moss for hair.”
“So your typical grandma, then.”
I laugh. “Yeah, that, she is not.” I point to the left. “Hungry?”
“Heck yeah.”
What I’m pointing at? The restaurant? It’s a Spanish Galleon. Because of course it is. Its wooden sides are visible through the break in the trees. There’s also a gift shop inside. We order sandwiches and exit out the far side. A wide-open patio with tables and chairs beckons under the canopy of trees.
A breeze brushes our skin, welcome in the July heat, and we pick a table in the shade.
I set my tray down, he sets his down, and, boom, I’m back in my shell as I sit across from him, because this feels too much like a date.
It’s not a date, I tell myself.
It’s not.
Chapter 7
Aiden
I’m sprawled on a green bench waiting for Jane, my arms stretched along the seat back, soaking in the unusually balmy weather. By far, this is one of the kookiest spots I’ve ever seen. I love it.
And though she won’t admit it—yet—I know Jane enjoyed herself too.
We were also back to our easygoing interaction from the night we met. Until we sat down for lunch.
Still puzzling that shift.
I stand. What the—?
Why am I even wondering? Wondering about how we’re interacting? She’s a long-term kind of girl. And that’s not my type.
So…we’re good. Yep. I blow out a breath of relief. The only thing I should worry about is leaving her alone with that car. All during the drive here it worried me, especially seeing how isolated this area is.
She appears through the break in the trees, the weathered wooden sides of the Boat-in-the-Moat restaurant behind her. And she’s sporting the biggest grin.
Shit.
That grin is doing some voodoo in my gut. Yeah, this trip is looking more and more like one of my more epic mistakes. Instead of shedding her from my system by being on a boring road trip with her, she’s only verifying my initial impression of her.
Maybe I’m coming down with something. Tampa. I can get off in Tampa. If her car starts, I’ll ask.
When she nears, she thumbs behind her. “There’s a sign above the bathroom doors that says, ‘Rooms To Go.’ ”
“Forget Da Vinci of Debris, that guy was the King of Corny Jokes.”
“Right? The whole time during the tour I kept wanting to go—”
She mimes hitting a drum kit, and I provide the sound effects. “Ba-dum-tissshhh.”
She’s still got that grin on her face, and it’s definitely the grin affecting me, not a cold. It’s as if I’m seeing all of her, unfettered. I fall in step with her as we head back to the car. I pass her a small paper bag. “Got ya something.”
She opens the bag and pulls out the postcard I bought at the gift shop.
“For your journal,” I say, since she seems lost on why she needs a postcard.
“Thank you.” And just like that, she appears to curl into herself again.
Weird.
But she sticks it into the back of her journal. And as we walk side by side to the parking lot, a heavy weight descends on me. I finally identify the feeling: dread. The cause? That her car will start fine. That I’ll leave her alone and then the car breaks down. That I’ll leave and…miss her.
I pull in a deep breath. “So where next, Don Quixote?” Decision made, something shifts inside that makes things feel right.
“Up north to Lake Wales, to something called Spook Hill, and then on to…” Here she turns her head away, and I can’t hear the rest.
“To where?”
She walks around to the driver’s side of the car and arches that little dark brow. “To the Potty Chair.”
Breath explodes from me. “A potty chair? What’s weird about a potty chair, except for someone thinking it’d make a great tourist spot?” We’ve only been to one spot, yeah, but this is Claire who devised this trip. The theme’s clear: weird.
“It’s twenty-four feet tall,” she says with no inflection.
After dropping that nugget, she steps into her car. We parked in the shade, so the inside’s not as hot as it could be, but thankfully, she starts the car and cranks the A/C.
“Okay. That is weird,” I concede as relief floods me that I decided to continue on this crazy trip whether her car started or not.
We move to buckle up, and our hands brush. We both tense. Me, because for some reason, a jolt of—okay. Fuck this. It wasn’t a jolt of desire. No way. It was…surprise.
That’s all it was.
She tensed, because…memory of our sexually charged standoff outside her door last night comes crashing back.
From the corner of my eye, I see she’s looking at me too. A softness in her eyes scrambles my brain. Her gaze drops to my lips, and, Jesus fuck, mine drops to hers. Again admiring the asymmetry.
It’s as if she’s rocking a lip mullet, but, you know, sexy. Unlike a mullet. Business up top, with its conservative lines, and party on the bottom, with its plump, kissable…
I pull away on a sharp inhale as I realize we’d both drifted a shade closer.
That was close. Too close. Get your head screwed on right, Aiden. I fiddle with the air vents, getting the ones on my side angled just right. Yeah, a little more to the right. And up. There we go. Perfect. Yep.
“I’ve got a new rule,” I say, trying to make my voice all normal.
She clears her throat and clamps her cell into her dashboard holster. “What’s that?” Her voice is slightly higher-pitched than usual.
“Claire wants to encourage you to be spontaneous, right?”
“Maybe.”
“There’s no maybe.” I risk eye contact now that I’m back in control of myself. “Part of what made this visit so awesome was because we neglected to Google it. We had no idea what to expect. Normally, we don’t have that luxury.”
She looks away briefly from typing in the next destination address into her cell and pins me with her serious gaze. “What do you mean?”
“If you or I were planning this trip, we’d have done the research and picked these spots, and so we’d already know what we are in for.”
She nods and resumes typing into her cell.
I prop my arm on the seat and turn to her. “My new proposed rule is that we don’t look up info, other than directions, for each site.”
Her bottom lip moves across her top one, as if she’s tasting the option. My dick chubs up a little at the sight.
“Do I have a second?”
She smiles. “Second.”
I sit forward and stretch out my legs. “So moved.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Yeah, but you love it.” Then I realize what I said, and I cover it by giving a mock innocent whistle and looking out the front window.
“Aiden?”
I look back at her. “Yes?”
She looks a bit shy, and I’m worried what the hell she’s going to risk saying. “Thanks for the postcard.”
Um… I give a confused shake of my head. “You’re welcome.” I rub my hands together. “So what’s your guess on what Spook Hill is?”
Jane
About an hour and a half later, we cruise into the town of Lake Wales. From the map, we’re even more in the center of the state, almost due south of Orlando, and straight east of Tampa.
Aiden’s made a game of figuring out our future stops, and we’ve ranked our guesses.
Spook Hill could be:
5. Where a famous person was murdered and his ghost comes out at night.
That was my one of my guesses, but it’s ranked number five, because Aiden argued that if true, then Claire would have stipulated visiting at night. I conceded the point.
4. A cemetery perpetually covered in mist.
That one was Aiden’s, and I pointed out that mist would gather in lower areas, not higher ones, so unless Spook Hill’s not really a hill... He conceded the point. Which leaves us with our top three.
3. A low-budget horror house, with some side guesses on cost of admission.
2. A Florida rip-off of Boot Hill.
1. A misunderstood faerie ring.
We turn onto the street for Spook Hill, and the neighborhood’s a mixture of empty fields and older, ranch-style homes. Up ahead, a black and white sign greets us with the words “Legend of Spook Hill” and a drawing of a Casper-like ghost.
“Ooh, a legend,” Aiden says with relish.
I pull onto the shoulder, and we get out to read the sign.
When we finish, Aiden says, “The ghost of an alligator and a Native American chief who killed each other in a battle? Clearly we’re forgetting to take into account the Florida wacky factor with our guesses.”
I glance up the road and find the white line bisecting the black asphalt. Our starting point. I shake my head. “I’ll believe it when I see it. There’s no way we’ll coast uphill.” Apparently the site is some kind of gravity-defying spot, controlled by the ghost of the alligator or the chief. The sign’s not too clear on that point.
Aiden butts his shoulder into mine. “Aw, c’mon. Let’s try it.”
“Oh, we’ll try it, but it’s not physically possible.” I hand him my Polaroid and stand in front of the sign for my requisite journal shot. He snaps a pic, then stands next to me, holds his arm out, and hits the button again.
The one of me is like I expect. It gets the job done for Claire—shows me here where she wanted me. The second one…it slowly resolves, and we snort at the same time. It’s just our foreheads at the very bottom of the frame with both of his eyebrows raised and only one of mine.
I stick them into my journal with the other ones and his postcard, and we scramble back into the car.
As directed by the sign, I drive up to the white line that bisects the road. We’re at the slight well between two inclines. “Okay, Spook Hill, let’s see what you’ve got.” I shift into neutral and wait.
At first nothing happens. Since we’re on a public street, I keep an eye on the rearview mirror for other cars. Then the car starts rolling backward.
“Holy shit,” Aiden says.
“What? We’re on a slight incline, so of course we’re going to have a little momentum.” Lame.
“No. We’re going uphill.”
“No, we aren’t.”
We debate what’s going on, and since no other cars are around, I park and get out. I point to the white line and where it is on the road. “See. We started out slightly uphill.”
“I don’t think that can account for all of it. We were going faster than I’d expect.”
Is he nuts? “We were barely moving.”
He looks at me like I’m nuts, so I say, “Let’s do it again.”
We hop back in and pull up to the white line. And again we slowly roll down and up.
But Aiden points ahead, even though that’s not the direction we’re going in. “See, we’re moving faster than you’d think.”
“I can’t look forward. I’ve got to keep an eye in back.” But the oddity of him pointing forward while we’re creeping back has me wondering. “Let’s switch. You drive and look back.”
We do it again, and this time I look forward. “Whoa,” I say, at the same time he says, “Huh, it’s not working.”
I look at his puzzled face and smile. “It’s an optical illusion. You have to be facing forward to get the full effect.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
And then he gives me a big grin that lights up his whole face. “Well played, Spook Hill. Well played.”
I laugh. “Indeed.”
“So. Potty Chair?”
“Potty Chair.”
And for the first time since this trip started, I’m looking forward to the next stop.
Chapter 8
Jane
My anticipation lasts as long as ten minutes, when, in Florida fashion, the sunny weather flips and it’s raining in sheets.
We’d hoped to move away from it, or that it’d end soon, but as we turn onto the street for the giant potty, the rain’s coming down in a steady beat.
As best we can tell, we’re in a section of Winter Haven that’s part rural, part suburban, with matching one-story ranches plopped onto large tracts, interspersed here and there with a McMansion.
I peer out the window on his side, which is supposedly where this structure will appear. “Not where I’d expect an oversized potty chair.”
“Nobody expects an oversized potty chair,” he says, imitating the cadence and accent of the Spanish Inquisition line from a Monty Python skit.
I chuckle, but then I’m reminded of our fun movie night, when we burrowed under blankets and hung out as if we were two people who’d been best friends for a long time instead of just meeting that night.
It was exactly like the meet-cutes you read about in romances, and I’d been fooled. Sucked in. Saw the whole night and everything we said or did through some kind of this-is-significant lens. Yeah, I started out thinking this was a chance to see what the whole casual sex fuss was about. But that didn’t last long. Nope. Because I discovered he was a cool, fun guy that I really clicked with, I interpreted our night together as sweet. The start of a nice, slow get-to-know-you.
But when I found out the next morning from Claire that he was a love-em-and-leave-em playboy? It put a completely different spin on the night: we hadn’t hooked up because he had no interest in me at all.
It was a sobering realization.
I know I’m insecure, and that it’s not an attractive quality, bu
t I’m not some heroine in a romance novel who needs to be strong and inspiring, so deal. I’m just me.
“There it is.” Aiden points.
I pull over into the grass. Sure enough, a giant white chair squats in this guy’s lawn. From here, it’s hard to see what makes it a potty chair.
“Okay. Take the Polaroid. I’m going to run out so you can snap a pic with it in the background. Then we’ll keep going.”
He sits straighter. “What? No way.”
I pause with my elbow against the seat, leaning into the back looking for the camera. I look up at him. “You won’t get wet. Just roll down the window.”
He rolls his eyes and turns into the seat so he’s sitting sideways. “I could give a flying fuck about getting wet. No. We’re both going to go all the way over to that chair and see it.”
I stare at him. “It’s raining.”
“It’s not lightning.” He puts a hand on the door handle. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”
I can tell he won’t let up. The quicker we get out there, the quicker we can be back. “I still need a pic, though, and we can’t get the Polaroid wet.”
“Okay.” He leans past me and grabs the camera from the back seat, which brings him—his heat, his scent—right into my space. “We’ll nab a shot first. Then I’ll join you out there.”
I snatch my umbrella, clamber out, and scoot around to his side of the car. With the potty chair lined up behind me, I face him, spread one arm out wide, and stick out my tongue.
The rain beats down on my umbrella and my exposed forearm as I wait. When the film ejects, I spin around and start walking to the potty chair.
The car door opens and closes.
Wait. He doesn’t have an umbrella. I start to turn around, feeling a little ashamed it took me that long to realize.
Just as I complete my about-face, a blur fills my vision and a strong arm clamps around my waist, pulling me up against a wet torso. I give a little squeak.
Risking It Page 5
