Sleeping With Her Enemy(77)

She loved her new condo, and she couldn’t wait for the construction to be over so she could take ownership. It was time to stand on her own two feet. But this place had felt like home from the first moment she saw it. It had been balm for her shredded soul that first night. She wanted to belong here, in this little blue cottage of Dax’s.

Well, this was never going to get any easier. So she took a deep breath and marched to the gate on the side of Gary’s house. “Dax?” she called, a little mortified at how lame and uncertain her voice sounded.

Cue the onset of urgent masculine whispering and unidentifiable banging. She couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. “I’m coming in!” she yelled.

“Amy! Amy, hi!” Gary appeared from around the house wearing a game-show-host smile.

“Where’s Dax?”

“He’s not here at the moment.”

“But I just saw him.”

“Come on around. I’ll show you the latest with the machine while we wait for him.”

She bit her tongue to keep from saying something mean and let herself be led into the yard. What could she do, short of starting to holler Dax’s name?

“I finally figured out what the machine was meant to do,” Gary said.

The setup was shaped differently than last time. There was a huge base obscured by a tarp, and the machine itself extended out over the oblong base.

Gary wrung his hands. “You ready?”

“Hit me.”

He led her to a lawn chair adjacent to one side of the shrouded base. When she tried to move the chair so she could get a better view of the whole thing, his hand shot out. “You have to sit exactly here.”

“Okaaay.” She leaned over to set the popcorn on the ground. “Any idea when Dax is coming back? Or where he went?”

Gary hadn’t heard her. He’d moved to the other side of the machine, and with a muttered, “Here goes nothing,” pulled a lever.

The beginning of the reaction was similar to what she’d seen last time. A ball ran down a seesaw and tripped a series of gears. The last gear caused a mallet to drop and hit a bell. She laughed at that, in spite of herself. The thing really was a hoot if you were in the right mood. Then a section of drops and pulleys resulted in the tarp covering the base being partially pulled back by a couple of mechanical arms. Just as she was about to turn her attention to trying to figure out what had been uncovered, a bunch of ball bearings were set loose along a sloped piece of wood. They gathered in one corner and then fell into a cup. Their combined weight tipped it. She laughed again in delight and appreciation. The cup had been connected to a golf club tied to a counterweight, and the club thwacked a ball that was larger than a normal golf ball.

“Hold out your hand!” Gary shouted. “Catch it!”

“Ack!” The ball was indeed coming right at her, careering down a metal chute. Instinctively, she cupped her hands, and the ball landed right in her lap, in time with whoops of delight from Gary.

“That was amazing!” It truly had been. She looked around to find Gary, but he was gone. She was alone in the yard.

“Gary?” As she stood, she noticed that the ball she was holding, which was a little round Nerf ball of some sort, had writing on it. “Amy,” was lettered on the side in big black block letters. Amazed, she turned it around. “Open me,” the other side said. There was a seam around the equator of the ball. It was covered with tape, as if someone had split the ball in half and then put it back together.

When another look around the yard confirmed she was alone, she shrugged and started peeling back the tape. With a little effort, the two halves of the ball separated. It had been hollowed out, and inside was a small plastic Tupperware container. She popped open the lid to find…

“A strawberry?” It was a perfect specimen of its type, red and ripe with an emerald green stem. There was also a tiny note tucked inside the box.

Part two is in the boat.

Part two is in the boat? Was she meant to walk back to the ferry dock? Because there was no boat in sight. Bewildered, she spun slowly in a circle.

Her gaze caught on the base of the machine, the big thing that had been covered but partially revealed by the reaction. She grabbed hold of the tarp and pulled it the rest of the way off to reveal a kayak.

It was a two-seater. Tears gathered in her eyes as understanding dawned slowly. She was starting to see that this had all been for her, as impossible as it seemed. With shaking hands, she reached into the front seat and retrieved a small box perched there.

Then she gasped. Then she laughed. Then she cried. Then she did everything all at once. Because it was Strawberry Shortcake perfume. The kind she’d loved as a kid.