Page 35 of Smitten with the Single Dad

Not only was he incredibly handsome with a gorgeous smile, beautiful hazel-blue eyes, and a great head of hair, he had the striking personality to match. He seemed genuine. And Vica was usually a good judge of character. She didn’t let a lot of people in because most of the time, she saw through their façade. She saw their ulterior motives. It was why she never entertained anything beyond a professional relationship with Track. And even that, she maintained at arm’s length. Not a single bone in his body was genuine, and neither were hisintentions.

She wanted to trust that Aleysha was her friend for the right reasons and that Vica could count on her. She wanted to believe that her judgement of Aleysha being a genuine person were true, but honestly, she couldn’t say. Maybe Wyndham Croft had something over on Aleysha. Maybe he would threaten her or her family. Bribe her.

Tomorrow, Vica would filter through the emails and figure out just where she stood with her colleagues, but for now, she really didn’t think there was anybody out there that had her back besides the people she was staying with right now. The McEvoys were good people. She could feel it all the way down to her toes.

Lifting her toes out of the barely-bubbly water, which was quickly getting cool, she wiggled them and took in their wrinkly skin. She smiled at the memory of what her father used to always say when Vica refused to get out of the tub as a child, “You will turn into a prune,piccina. Then I will be forced to turn you into juice.” It was a long-standing joke in their house that Vica’s father drank a glass of prune juice every morning, then thirty minutes later, would take the newspaper to the bathroom and tell everyone to run for their lives if they knew what was good for them.

“Oh, Papa,” she whispered, “what should I do?”

She sat there until the water was cold and gooseflesh broke out across her arms. The first streaks of daylight were beginning to breach the inky sky, and the stars were no longer as bright. She would be tired later in the day, but there was no sense trying to go back to sleep.

She wanted to get out and get some fresh air. Get some exercise.

Surely, nobody would begrudge her a walk down the road. She wasn’t a threat, or a flight risk. And the fact that she was on an island that was being monitored by the police at the ferry terminal and on the main road meant even if she wanted to, she couldn’t go anywhere.

She pulled the plug from the tub and got out, wrapping a towel around her body and heading back to the bedroom to get dressed. It was still rather early inthe morning, but her belly rumbled and her brain craved caffeine.

She could be quiet in the kitchen and not wake the house.

Carefully opening the bedroom door, she peered out into the hallway and tuned her ears into the sounds of the house to see if anybody else was awake.

All was quiet.

With bare feet, she tiptoed down the hall to the stairs, then into the kitchen where she went to work preparing herself an espresso with Wyatt’s fancy espresso machine. Oh, how she loved a good espresso.

A few bananas sat in a fruit bowl on the counter and there was one still slightly green among them. She much preferred slightly unripe bananas to overripe bananas. So she grabbed it and peeled it, as her tiny cup filled up with the dark elixir of the caffeine gods.

Once she had her espresso, she took it and her banana out to the patio at the back of Wyatt’s house, where the barbecue and a small patio table and chairs sat. There was a nice little patch of grass as well, before the vast, climbing hillside dressed in wildflowers nearly touched the pink and yellow sky.

Taking in a deep breath of the crisp morning air, Vica sipped her espresso.

She needed to go for a walk, clear her head, and stop relying on others to take care of her.

Once the house roused, she’d let Wyatt know of her plan. She wasn’t so daft that she’d leave without telling anyone. Even when she would go for a hike on the Olympic Peninsula, she made sure to let someone know she was going. Sometimes it was just her neighbor, Mrs. Jovan in the apartment below her, but at leastsomeoneknew to call Search and Rescue if Vica didn’t return home at the end of the day.

The thought of Mrs. Jovan reading any news headlines and seeing Vica painted as a murderer made Vica’s chest tighten, and not in a good way.

She knew the older woman would already be awake—she rose with the sun, did her fitness video, then took her dog, Nibbles, out for a walk every morning. So Vica pulled her phone out of the navy-blue hoodie Justine and Brooke hadbought for her, and then dialed Mrs. Jovan.

“Oh, Vica, darling. I’ve been so worried about you,” was the first thing Mrs. Jovan said when she answered the phone.

“I am all right, Mrs. Jovan.”

“Like hell you are, dear. What’s going on?”

Vica smiled. She never knew her grandparents, and although Mrs. Jovan probably wasn’t old enough to be Vica’s grandmother, she certainly gave off grandmotherly vibes. “Have you seen the news?”

“I’ve read some things.”

“And do you believe them?”

“I believe that you did what you had to do to get away. To keep yourself safe. Are you safe now, dear? Where are you?”

“Si.I am safe. I’m staying with the owners of the pub where it all happened. They are working hard to help clear my name. I have a lawyer; we submitted an assault kit to the police. We have done everything right. But …” The back of Vica’s eyes burned. “But I lost my job in New York. Because of what happened, they do not want to hire me. Now I am either going to jail, or getting deported.”

“Oh, honey.”

Vica wiped beneath her nose and sniffled. “I am sorry I did not call you sooner. I did not mean to worry you.”

---