Page 83 of His One True Wish

“I got it. I don’t need your white glove support. I travel light.”

“Do you ever get tired of pretending you aren’t rich as hell?”

“I don’t pretend,” I said. “I just like doing shit myself.”

“All right,” Miles said.

“All right then.”

“You okay, man?” Miles asked. “You sound a little, I don’t know, sad?”

I laughed. “Oh, you think so? I’m fine. I’ve just been dealing with some weird shit here.”

“You want to talk?”

“Nope.”

“So, that sounds like a nope that includes a woman.”

“Yep.”

“Is it a woman that I have already met?” Miles knew Angel. He’d been there the night we met.

“It’s not her.”

“Good,” Miles said. “She doesn’t bring out the best in you, my friend.”

“I know.” I sighed.

“I thought there were only, like, ten women in that town. How in the hell did you end up tangled up with a woman in Smoke River?”

“I didn’t say tangled up. You did.”

“Well, whatever.”

“I thought I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Which is code for push harder, Axl,” he said. “I’ve known you half your life. What’s going on?”

“She’s the granddaughter of my landlord.”

“Axl, you could buy that place a hundred times … ”

“I told you it’s not for sale, plus it doesn’t belong to me,” I said. “I told you, this place spoke to me when I came here, but I think I knew it was temporary.”

“And now you have a thing for your landlord’s granddaughter. What’s the problem? Bring her to Lauderdale.”

“It’s a whole thing. She didn’t know I was here. Apparently, my landlord, Louise, never told her about me.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah, and she ended up here for a few days and things happened.”

“I am still not getting the problem.”

“You know I don’t connect with good women.”

“Oh, do I ever,” Miles said. “Are you telling me that this woman, this mistake, isn’t an unavailable, sociopathic train wreck?”

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