DONOVAN (Gray Wolf Security, #1)(104)

“Hey, I’m not a kid. I’m an adolescent.”

That made Penelope laugh, which made me smile.

It felt like we hadn’t been alone together since that day in the hotel room. We were always with JT in his hospital room, or we were taking turns going back to town to pack up and prepare for this trip. I’d kind of hoped that we could sneak out a night or two together, but she didn’t want to leave JT at the hospital alone during the night. The days she spent at the bakery, trying to put the finances and other paperwork into some sort of order.

I was kind of hoping we’d find some time together once we arrived in Oregon.

The plane took off a few minutes later. JT held on to the armrests of his seat like he was on a roller coaster or something, but he calmed down once we reached cruising altitude. And then he was full of conversation, going on and on about this and that, keeping us distracted until the plane began its descent into the private airport outside of Medford.

“Where is your house, exactly?” JT asked as the plane negotiated a small strip of land that was cleared between massive copses of trees.

“About ten minutes from here. I live in Ashland, right over the hill there,” I said, gesturing toward the window beside my seat.

“Ashland. Isn’t that part of your company’s name?”

“My father named the original company, Ashland Furniture, after the town where he was born and raised. And I decided to keep it when I expanded the company.”

“Cool,” JT said.

Penelope was staring out the window, her eyes moving from the trees to the mountains back to the trees. I couldn’t decide if she was nervous about the impending landing, or if she was thinking about something else. At least it seemed her head was no longer back in that bakery.

JT grabbed the armrests again as the tires bounced off the tarmac and the engines began to scream as the pilots threw them into reverse. The plane came to a stop without much of a bump, the pilot making his customary speech, informing us of the time and how long, exactly, the flight had taken.

“Why do we want to know that?” JT asked.

“There’s a time difference between here and Texas. It helps you reorient yourself.”

He lifted his chin slightly in a sort of nod as he turned and stared out the window. “Sure are a lot of trees around here.”

Once again, I carried him off the plane as Penelope followed, advising me when he was about to hit his head or his leg on something. My car, a Mercedes-Benz Maybach S600 Base, was sitting on the tarmac waiting for us.

“Cool!” JT cried when he saw it, almost jumping out of my arms when we got to the bottom of the steps and his wheelchair. The moment he was in the chair, he pushed the wheels over to the car, moving around it somewhat awkwardly as he tried to maneuver his casted leg around to get close enough to touch the cool metal of the car.

“Is this your car?” he asked.

“It is.”

“Wow. Do you think I can drive it next year when I get my license?”

“You kind of need to get out of that wheelchair first,” Penelope reminded him.

“After that.”

I chuckled, remembering how eager I was to learn to drive. “We’ll see.”

Once our things were packed in the trunk and JT was safe in the backseat, I walked Penelope over to the passenger door.

“You’re really impressing him with all this stuff.”

“What about you?”

She looked up, her eyes a little clouded. “What do you mean?”

“Am I impressing you?”

Her eyes moved from my mouth to my chest and then to her hands where they were clutched in front of her.

“Does it matter?”

“I guess that’s my answer,” I said, reaching around her hip to open the door. She shot me a look, but like before, I wasn’t sure what it meant.

The drive to my house is quite impressive. The highway between Medford and Ashland cut through some pretty impressive mountains. And the dip into Ashland is surrounded by trees, quaint little shops, and a lovely park that covers several miles of lush green fields. Then we rise back up into the mountains, turning onto a private lane that dead ends in a circular drive in front of my private lodge.

I designed the house myself. It’s made of glass, steel, and wood. I wanted it to look something like the hunting lodges in all the good old movies of my childhood. The front sported more than a dozen windows interspersed with crisscrossed logs that were cut from a local logging site that planted a sapling for every tree logged. The house itself is set back on flat mountain top, looking out over the city, including the original factory that houses the furniture business and Ashland-Philips’ corporate headquarters.

My sister used to tease that I was setting up my throne to watch over my subjects when I was building this house.

JT was speechless.

“This is your house?”

“Yep.”

I climbed out of the car and took his wheelchair from the trunk. He was, as before, quite anxious to get out and explore on his own. I watched him go, grateful I had decided not to go with grand steps in front of the house. He could just roll straight from the driveway to the front door with no trouble.

I went around the car to help Penelope out, but she was already standing behind her door, leaning on it a little as she looked around.

“Are you impressed?”