Читать книгу Baby, Don't Go - Stephanie Bond, Stephanie Bond - Страница 13

Alicia stood at the window of the plain but comfortable room she’d been assigned in the enormous and bustling boardinghouse. To her right, an orange sun melted into a pink-and-red sunset bleeding over a black mountain range. It was the stuff of Hollywood movie backgrounds—a surreal backdrop for a surreal little town.

The movie The Stepford Wives came to mind.

She held her cell phone to her ear and listened as it rang on the other end. She expected to leave a voice message for her mother, but Candace answered.

“Hello? Alicia?”

“Yeah, Mom, it’s me. I’m just checking in. Looks like I’ll be staying here for a while.”

“Oh? I’m disappointed you won’t be coming back right away. Is Sweetness as pretty as it sounds?”

Alicia absorbed the calming view and exhaled. “Yes,” she admitted. “Very pretty. But it’s also very humid, and there are lots of bugs.”

Candace laughed. “You always hated insects of any kind. Bo asked me to ask if his truck is okay.”

Alicia thought of the monogrammed panties that had rolled out from under the front seat. “The truck is fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “Is everything okay there?”

“Sure,” her mother said cheerfully.

Too cheerfully.

“So, have you met any mountain men?” Candace asked, her voice breezy.

“My boss,” Alicia said idly. “I took a job in a diner to pass the time.”

“A diner? Are they aware of your little problem with pyromania?”

Alicia frowned. “I don’t set fires…not on purpose, anyway.”

“Is he cute, your boss?”

Alicia shifted her gaze to the diner across the street just as Marcus Armstrong himself emerged to lock the door behind him. Unbidden, her vital signs increased.

“No.” No one could accuse the man of being cute. After spending a couple of hours with him and the handful of waitresses he’d hired back, listening to his expectations for the eatery, she’d developed a list of adjectives for him—tough, opinionated and unyielding. But not cute.

“Oh, well,” Candace said, “there are other more important qualities in a partner.”

She turned her back to the window. “Mom, I’m not looking for a partner.”

“I know.”

Candace sighed and Alicia realized her mother was talking to herself as much as to her daughter, perhaps coming around to the belief that her “cute” boyfriend wasn’t all he was cracked up to be.

“How do you like your bracelet?” her mother asked.

Guilt seized Alicia. She touched her bare wrist where her mother had fastened the bracelet that morning. Sometime during the day she’d lost it, but hadn’t noticed until she’d undressed to take a shower.

“I love it,” she said, which was the truth. She only hoped it was in the pickup truck somewhere.

“Good,” Candace said, her voice infused with pleasure. “I’m asking because I’m thinking about starting my own jewelry business.”

“That’s terrific, Mom. You’d be good at it, and you have great contacts in retail.” She wet her lips. “What does Bo think about the idea?”

“I haven’t mentioned it to him yet.”

“Maybe it’s something you should keep to yourself for now,” Alicia suggested. “Until you work out all the details.” Or else Bo would probably plant doubts in her mother’s head. She hated that Candace was so easily influenced by men who didn’t have her best interests in mind.

“Maybe you’re right,” Candace agreed, her voice distant.

Alicia’s phone beeped. She glanced at the screen to see her boss, Nina, was calling. “Mom, I need to take another call. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

“Of course, dear. Good luck with your story.”

“Thanks, Mom. Goodbye.” Alicia disconnected the call. Worry over her mother niggled her stomach, but she’d learned long ago not to get involved in her parents’ relationships. Eventually, the players would change anyway.

She connected the second call. “Hi, Nina.”

“Just checking in to make sure you weren’t kid-napped…or worse.”

“No,” Alicia said with a laugh. “I got a job working in the town diner. I figure I can talk to a lot of people that way.”

“You’re a waitress?”

“I’m the manager and, for now, the cook.”

“You? The woman who set the microwave on fire in the break room?”

Alicia frowned. “That was a faulty bag of popcorn.”

“Right. Did you give your real name?”

“Of course not.”

“Won’t that be a problem when you provide your social security number?”

“I’ll figure out something to stall the paperwork.”

“No doubt. Have you met any of the Neanderthals?”

“I’m working for the head Neanderthal, Marcus Armstrong.”

“You’re kidding.”

“He’s overhauling the diner for an inspection from the Department of Energy. It has something to do with recycling and keeping their federal grant.”

“And is he horrid?”

Alicia turned back to the window and glanced down into the street. Marcus Armstrong was still there, talking to a young boy in a soccer uniform, and the man was…smiling? “He’s…hard to read,” she murmured.

“What’s your general feel of the place?”

She looked back to horizon. “I know I could never live here.”

“Are the conditions primitive?”

“There aren’t many luxuries for sure. But it’s just so isolated. The town is surrounded by mountains. It feels like civilization is far, far away.”

“So do you think something interesting is going on there?”

Alicia turned and picked up a sheet of paper that listed the resident rules, chief of which was no overnight male guests. Protective…or controlling? “Yes, I’m just not sure what to make of it all yet.”

“Okay, keep me posted.”

Alicia disconnected the call and looked back to the street. Marcus Armstrong was alone again, hands jammed on his hips, that perennial frown back on his face. He glanced up and down the sidewalks, as if to assess the town and its people. Tall and authoritative, he looked every inch the head of the community… a throwback to an earlier time, when a whole town could be held in one person’s hands.

But what exactly did he have in mind for this one?

He looked up in the direction of her window and Alicia shrank back, her heart pounding. Even at this distance, he had the ability to make her feel as if he could see through her, as if he knew she was here under false pretenses. She blamed it on his mesmerizing blue eyes.

When she chanced another glance, he was walking away, his head and shoulders back. She watched his big body until he was out of sight.

Alicia bit into her lip. Marcus Armstrong seemed like an intelligent man. She was going to be disappointed if she discovered he was unstable, or some kind of religious zealot. The town didn’t have a church, but she’d noticed postings downstairs about “services” on Sunday in the great room. While she wasn’t a particularly religious person, she planned to attend to make sure nothing kinky was going on. Because something strange had to be going on. A town where the women and children lived in a boardinghouse and the men lived in barracks and a water tower supplied hot showers and the General Store sold live bait and haircuts were five dollars and everyone honked and waved…well, that was just… crazy. Wasn’t it?

Alicia sat down and booted up her notebook computer, then opened a new file and began to type. Undercover Feminist by Alicia Randall

A little more than a year ago, the Armstrong brothers, ex-military men, banded together to rebuild their hometown in the North Georgia mountains. Sweetness, Georgia was a tiny map dot decimated by an F-5 tornado just over ten years ago. The Armstrongs secured a federal grant to rebuild the town on the platform of recycling and alternative energy and set about reconstructing Sweetness. But to attract women to their fledgling remote town, they took the novel approach of placing an ad in a newspaper in economically depressed Broadway, Michigan, for women with a “pioneering spirit” looking for a fresh start. The ad promised lots of single, Southern men, although it wasn’t clear what was expected of the women in return. I decided to go undercover in Sweetness to see how the matchmaking and town-building experiment is working.

When I drove into town in a borrowed pickup truck, I felt as if I’d gone back in time fifty years. A covered bridge over a picturesque stream welcomed me to the outskirts of town. A water tower straight out of the movies stands watch over visitors driving in. The drivers of cars I passed honked and waved, as if we were old friends. In my mind I could see someone phoning someone else that they’d just spotted a stranger driving into town and to pass the word.

At first glance, the town looks like a movie set. The hair salon, for example, is named simply Hair Salon. But at second glance…well, the town still seems to be out of some zombie movie plot because I soon learned that the men and women don’t live together. The women and children live in a boardinghouse, and the men live in a barracks reminiscent of a military facility. And strangely, no one seems to think the living arrangements are odd. Methinks I will stay awhile and investigate further.

I walked into the town diner carrying a help-wanted sign and walked out with a job as manager. I figure it will give me the opportunity to meet some of the women who came to Sweetness in search of a new life, and find out if the experience has been all they expected it to be. The bonus? My boss is one of the Armstrong brothers—the eldest, in fact, and he appears to be the de facto leader of the community. He’s an imposing figure, single and about as approachable as a grizzly bear. I’ve been told that “he doesn’t like women.” (Although he’s infinitely straight.) In between slinging hash and dishing up apple pie, I hope to gain some insight into what he has in mind for the town, and what part he sees women playing in the future of Sweetness. Stay tuned…