Page 24 of Puck the Halls
I open both eyes now but pin Crew with my stare. “Crew isn’t allowed to retire until I tell him he can. And I have not given him that word.”
Crew sighs heavily. “It’s true. If I do something like that, I’m on dish duty for the rest of my life. Or they won’t let me…”
I roll my eyes. Thank God, he cut himself off because I know he was about to say something about Michael and me not letting him do something with Danielle.
The ladies all laugh, clearly catching on to the same.
Agatha pats Crew’s knee. “Well, we wouldn’t want that to happen. You’re young. You work on those sprint times and everything will be just fine.”
“Are we there yet?” Crew asks our driver.
Lizzie shakes her head. “About thirty more minutes.”
The nuns are dropping us off in Davenport, Iowa. I have no idea where that is. That’s not true. I probably do, but my head is too tired to think about it. I know that it’s not Des Moines. But it’s on the way. And the gals know some amazing diner where there is guaranteed to be a number of Racketeers fans who can take us the rest of the way to Des Moines.
This is ridiculous. There is no way in any normal circumstance on any typical day I would agree to any of this. But here we are. And it’s all my fault.
Forty-five minutes later, we are seated in a booth in Daisy‘s diner, a roadside diner with breakfast served twenty-four hours a day. We’re on the outskirts of Davenport, Iowa and the nuns are going to have breakfast and then continue north to Dubuque.
We haven’t even had a chance to ask for a ride yet but it seems the entire diner is, indeed, full of Racketeers fans. Crew barely had a chance to place his order before he was signing autographs and taking photos.
The women and Crew kept their promise not to let on who I am. I can’t handle more advice about how I should be running the team or complaints about who I did or didn’t draft last season.
I just honestly cannot handle anything more than eating at this point. Even that is a stretch.
The noise and brightness level in Daisy’s is, obviously, one hundred times more than the back of the van and it only takes ten minutes for me to have a throbbing headache behind my eyes.
Crew is in the very middle of a circular booth at the back of the diner, orange juice in one hand and coffee in the other. He’s talking through the latest series play-by-play. No one knows who I am, or they don’t care if they do recognize me. Which is perfect.
I gulp down a cup of coffee, shove a couple of pancakes and strips of bacon into my mouth and then I head out to the van.
I just need twenty minutes of sleep. Crew is going to be in that diner for at least another hour, and the nuns have only just been served their Belgian waffles and biscuits and gravy. They’re regulars at the diner and so they also have a lot of people stopping by to chat.
No one is going to miss me for twenty minutes.
I pray that the nuns are trusting souls who don’t lock up the van when it’s right outside the diner.
God comes through.
I slide the door open and slip back to my bench seat at the very back of the van. I slip off my jacket, fold it into a makeshift pillow, and stretch out on the bench. With a deep, weary sigh, I close my eyes.
It’s finally daylight, we have a plan, we’re out of the storm and on clean, dry roads, and Des Moines is only two and a half hours away.
We’re not to Aspen yet, but the worst part of the trip is over.
CHAPTER 7
Michael
“Well,you’re a special kind of fun this morning,” Luna says, frowning at Dani. “So glad you all decided to crash my trip with my guys to sit here and push around your crepe and look sad.”
I wince and take a bracing sip of my coffee.
“I’m sorry,” Dani says, absently.
“Don’t be sorry,” Luna says. “Have fun. Don’t be sad.”
Dani is sad, and that always destroys me. There is nothing I hate more than my wife or my kids being upset about something.
