Page 23 of Hotshot Mogul

He turned back to them. “I’ll sign anything to vouch for her. I’d marry her, but they investigate that. If she’s in trouble…” He grabbed my hand. “I have money, a shit ton, to make it go away—finally, a worthwhile use for it.”

“We must speak further with Anneliese.” Isolde used her commanding tone. Grenmann stepped closer to Bruce and spoke so softly, I could only make out the words “grief” and “trust.”

Bruce grabbed my hand. “I need to tell you something as soon as you’re done.” His tone was urgent. “I’ll wait with Callie and Rufus, if you’re coming back?” His customary cockiness was gone. I wanted it back.

Should I tell him who and what I am? I wondered, looking to Grenmann and Isolde for guidance. They nodded. So, it was my choice. Could I trust him?

Blood dripped off a deep scratch in his arm. Fighting my impulse to step into his arms, bleeding or not, I squeezed his hands. “I have to tell you something, too.”

He tugged me closer, then stopped, perhaps remembering we weren’t alone. “Later, babe.”

I kept my voice low as he left us, unsure of how much he could hear. Grenmann rumbled in laughter again. “He is determined, but clueless of the workings of nature.”

Isolde opened my bag and looked over the petitions. “You’ve done very well with this. But the rulers have not yet decided. You have a choice to fight for the life of your beloved oak within, or out in the human world. As one of them, or as one with the tree, if it lives. Monday is the summer solstice. If you are going to return to us, you must do so before the moonset on Tuesday.”

There was so much I want to ask. My thoughts whirled like the cyclones that came in late summer. Cyclone—I remembered purple hair. “A fairy, a wicked one, tried to drown Bruce. She also tried to injure a restaurant server with hot liquid.

“She, the fairy, changed form, flew away, after Bruce tried to rescue her. If I had not been there…”

Grenmann and Isolde exchanged an odd look. “Unions between humans do not always last, nor are they always happy, as you know from the last time you walked the earth,” Grenmann said.

Isolde unbraided my hair, then deftly re-braided it with rare, wild purple iris blooms. “If you choose to stay—stop turning your head—do not do it for the sole purpose of being with him.”

Whenever Bruce was near, he filled my thoughts. If I stayed, I would have to find a balance, not to lose myself to him. “Would I be able to see you both, talk to you, if I stay human?” My voice cracked past the knot of emotion clogging my throat.

“Our priority is living things that grow in our beloved earth,” Isolde said.

“If I, we, aren’t urgently engaged, you would be able to be with us here, in this place, our domain,” Grenmann added.

A stiff breeze swept through our domain. I had to try to save the oak as it had saved me. First, I needed to know more about the ways of these modern humans. “If I come back to you tomorrow, could I have lessons in the ways of these confusing humans, so I can persuade them to help my oak?”

“Of course, dearest Anneliese,” Grenmann said.

“It’s best you come alone, without your beloved,” Isolde added.

“Of course,” I said. Then I hurried away from them to find Bruce. The sun dipped lower and lower. Music played through my sister trees. Rufus and Callie sat in Rufus’ vehicle.

The Jeep was gone, along with my hope for something with Bruce I didn’t have the right words for. My hope plummeted to the earth like hard summer rain.

I hesitated to step close to my oak and be drawn in before I had answers. Instead, I went to my sister pine trees. Despite their illness, they received me with joy. I knelt between them, stretched my arms out and pressed my forehead into the earth that nurtured my broken spirit back to life.

Bruce was gone. Isolde stressed that I must not stay only for him. Humans left or were beset by events that changed their paths. If I stayed, then I had to focus on the oak and let anything with Bruce be secondary, not central, to my life purpose. Humans called events like Bruce’s absence “a wake-up call.”

The music stopped. Time for answers. I stood and stretched. Callie got out and handed me a chilled can. The liquid tasted tangy and tart, tempered with sweet. I drank it all.

“Bruce said you were speaking to your bosses. How did that go?” Callie asked.

I tried to sound strong and confident. “Good.”

“Bruce tried to text you. You had no service. He didn’t have time to go back. He left you this.”

He had written some words on the back of the bill for my bathing suit. “My mother is in the hospital. She has chest pains. I have to catch a plane to Florida. I will call you soon. Love, Bruce.”

“He insisted he was okay to drive,” Callie said. “He was pretty wrecked.”

“Wrecked?”

“I mean, upset over his mother and over leaving you. And, from the bit of conversation he had with his dad, I believe things are not good between them.”

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