Chapter 75

It had almost been enough to make me take off the suit, but I figured he deserved to let off a little steam over the news of the events of our last day in Brookings. Yes, our last day was a day sooner than planned.

The B&B was too close to the fray, we had decided, once they told us we were free to go. We did miss our tee time, but didn't much care. We had another night paid for, but we told the Jenkins to keep it, and got in the car and headed for Crescent City.

We were going to get a room somewhere there, but I decided to call the Kaiser Air number I'd been given. They could meet us in Crescent City in three hours. That left us with two hours to kill once we got there. We drove around a little, strolled the aisles at the local Walmart, and otherwise twiddled our thumbs.

The last thing we did in Crescent City was stop at the 76 station on the way to the airport to top off the gas tank.

"I did not use my talent in any way," I had reminded Bud. "I didn't do anything a person with my training and experience couldn't have done just as well."

"You drew attention to yourself," this was his real complaint, and while there was some merit to it, I suppose, I disagreed with his assessment of my actions.

"To have backed down would have drawn more attention to myself," I said for the umpteenth time. "And once we were confronted in the forest, the only thing I could have done differently would have been not breaking his wrist. That was my call to make. You weren't there."

The flight back to Santa Rosa had been subdued, to say the least. I kept apologizing to Kelli, and she kept telling me I had nothing to apologize for.

"Look," she grabbed my lapels finally, having gotten tired of the endless runaround. "You protected me. I was safe. I've never felt safer than I felt when you put yourself between me and those men. I never felt more cared for, you understand?"

"Sure, but..."

"No buts!" she punched me in the shoulder. "You remember those times when there were girlfriend and boyfriend references made by each of us about the other?"

"Sure," I managed to bite off the but this time.

"Well, in case I forgot to mention it. It made me very happy to hear that. It made me deliriously happy to be able to say it about you. You're the first man I've been willing to commit myself to since high school. Don't start looking for reasons I would turn away from that. I won't."

Phew! That was a mouthful, there! Even better though was that I knew I felt the same way.

"Well, I feel exactly the same way about you. I have reasons for not wanting any commitments right now, but I have to ignore those reasons and go with my feelings."

"Okay then" Kelli smiled. "We're agreed then. I'm yours and you're mine, right?"

"Agreed,"" I said. 'Forever and a day, ' I thought as we kissed.

This was part of Bud's problem too. Even though he'd seen it coming, he'd not really considered how a very close relationship with Kelli would make keeping our secret more difficult. He'd only previously considered it as being in keeping with the promise of being allowed to have a life outside of our super hero business.

To be honest, I wasn't sure I knew how I was going to handle juggling the relationships I was developing with my promises to Bud and the responsibilities they entailed. All I knew was that I was not going to disengage from one in favor of the other.

His bickering kept drawing me away from the present, making me second guess my actions in Brookings. I warned him again that this was having a negative impact on my training. I could hardly focus on the task at hand if he was going to keep drawing me back to that. He agreed with that, and promised to tone it down.

Promises, promises.

Most things did settle down pretty quickly, once we were back. I figured out, between Darius and the people at the bank, how to make an anonymous donation to the Brookings-Harbor boat basin restoration fund, and donated $10,000. One asshole in town didn't mean that the good ones shouldn't get some help.

Darius also got Preston & Roberts' legal team on the lookout for any fallout from Fred Conway or his father. I didn't expect any. Fred's two buddies had come clean under questioning. They might have stuck with him if he hadn't pulled that knife, who knows?

I was invited to dinner with Kelli's family, and I was still not sure how that was going to go, but that was three days away. In the meantime, I was busy playing make up with Bud and Kelli was busy getting caught up on the details of the Scottsdale deal and what it meant for the business. She was trying to step up and be a big part of this deal, and it appeared her father was willing to let her.

With Bud retreating to something closer to his normal tone for the moment, I was in the cavern working on multiple things at once. I was still getting comfortable with Harley and I doing the fly-and-lock trick, but Harley was doing some stepping up of his own with that one. He was able to pull himself up, into my thought stream enough to read my every intention perfectly, and at the same time, retain his own awareness.