Frenemies(64)
“Don’t kick yourself too hard,” I said, moving my suddenly overheated feet away from the Matchbox vent. “It’s not like it would have done you any good a year ago because there was a whole wife issue.”
“Well, there isn’t one now,” Georgia said. “And not to get all defensive here, since Amy Lee isn’t even in the car to make fun of me for feeling too much too soon, but I have no idea what I feel for him. It’s weird and big and messy, but I’ve never been so excited about someone before. Not someone I could actually talk to, who made me laugh and cared about me. So this is all new.”
“You have to call him as soon as possible!” I squealed a little bit in vicarious excitement.
“Oh hell yes,” Georgia said, her smile taking over her face. “Why do you think I’m driving so fast?”
She wasn’t messing around. But there was only so much even Georgia could do about the holiday traffic that inched across the Cape Cod Canal. To say nothing of the glut of cars that moved like molasses up the Mid-Cape Highway toward Provincetown. It was afternoon by the time we made it to our destination: a pretty seaside village stretched along the elbow portion of the flexed arm that was the Cape Cod peninsula.
We were still of one mind—locate Jared, note the many differences between Jared and Chris Starling, bask in Georgia’s awakening to the wonderfulness of Chris Starling, call him as planned and in so doing sort out Georgia’s heretofore painful love life.
If there was time, I might even deal with some issues of my own, but I was putting all that on the back burner. Duty to friendship called. Also, I was repressing.
First, though, we had to check into the hotel. And, not inconsiderably, sneak Linus inside.
To give our friend Lorraine credit, the place was as beautiful as she’d claimed. Pictures of the main building in the height of summer graced the walls—blue hydrangeas and holly bushes beneath the Cape Cod bright blue skies. It was all much starker this time of year, of course. The winds howled in from the bay and stalked around the corners of the house, but inside the fires were lit and the rooms were pretty and bright. Sparkling lights glowed on evergreen trees both indoors and out. It was impossible not to warm to the place.
“We’re totally getting booted out of here,” Georgia hissed out of the side of her mouth. “Have you looked at that concierge?”
She marched across the lobby to the reception desk, leaving me to stand by a collection of evergreen branches while she sorted out our reservations. I looked at the concierge in question—he looked as if maybe he performed in a bouncer capacity as well. He had arms like whole meat lockers. There was no way we would be sneaking Linus past a bruiser like him. I swallowed.
Then I reminded myself that Georgia was a top attorney, and dealt with the criminal element every day—or anyway, while deposing them all over the country—and therefore probably had a wily criminal mind of her own. Just to keep up. At which point I was forced to remind myself that Georgia was the woman who once forgot the entire concept of caller ID, called a guy she was dating one hundred and fifty seven times in one day (which was not as much of an exaggeration as you might imagine), and was then surprised when he ordered her never to call him again. Before he picked up and moved to Jacksonville, Florida.
Put Georgia’s idiocy together with my klutziness and the very fact of Linus—and, oh yeah, we’d be sleeping in the car.
“All right,” Georgia said, walking back over to me. “Our room is on the fourth floor. Tragically, it’s still next door to certain dentists the way we requested back when we still liked her, but that’s going to be the least of our problems. Let’s go check it out.”
“What about … ?” I indicated the outside with my eyebrows, where, if I looked closely, I could just see the outline of Linus’s shaggy head smashed against the front window of the car. Then I looked back at Georgia and tried to indicate Linus with my eyes.
“I think we should check out the room and then look for alternate entrances,” Georgia said. She looked around. “There’s no way we’re getting anything past the front desk.”
So we hoisted up our bags and smiled widely at the woman behind the reception desk—perhaps too widely, judging from the confusion on her face—and trudged up the staircase. Old stately manors, apparently, were big on elegance and bay views, but short on elevators.
By the time we reached the fourth floor, I was winded and Georgia was gasping for air. We stopped at the top and sucked in oxygen.
“This is what happens when you work ninety hours a week and have no life because you sold your soul to a corporate law firm,” Georgia said, and then had to pause to breathe deep. She eyed me. “Looks like the much-ballyhooed life of the mind isn’t doing a whole lot for you, either.”
“You’re fat, greedy, and soulless,” I threw back at her. “I’m just fat.”
“I’m ready to take my fat, greedy, and soulless ass to bed,” Georgia retorted, wiping stray red tendrils back from her face. “Can we find this room?”
It was done up in blues and creams, and it was lovely. We threw our bags onto the two full-size beds and then headed straight back out. As Georgia had suspected, there was another entrance around the side of the big house. Once we got Linus inside, we could just whisk him up the stairs and into the room with no one the wiser.