I run a hand over the back of my neck to relieve the building tension as I pace. A new tour, she said, which I knew was a lie the moment it left her mouth. This tour has been on the schedule for years. A new tour for her, perhaps?
How in the hell did she get hired at twenty-one, though?
I turn my attention back to the email from Rhys.
Exemplary employee, it says. Consistently high ratings from tour guests. Requests for repeat bookings with her specifically as their guide.
In all honesty—that doesn’t sound accurate. And I’m sleeping with her. I read on with growing trepidation. She started as an intern, Rhys notes. A position that didn’t exist, but she sent a presentation to the head of the division making a case for herself. Created her own unpaid internship and convinced the company to hire her. She spent a summer shadowing the best tour guides we have. The division head was so impressed with her she had a job offer waiting when she finished college.
That explains the timing. In part. It explains how someone her age is five years in, but what about the rest of it? Who puts in that much effort to land a job they’re not passionate about? It doesn’t add up to the Daisy I’ve just spent a week with.
Then something else catches my eye.
Arizona State.
She graduated from Arizona State. With a degree in hospitality. Not urban planning. And I’m not too fucking British to know it doesn’t snow in Arizona. It’s the goddamned desert.
Snow, she said. Frost. Ice. One of those things. She left early for class to allot time for the weather. Slipped and ripped open her trousers.
Disgusted, I stop reading and slip the mobile into my pocket.
She’s laughing at something Mrs. Delaine is saying. Behind her, the wind catches one of the jets of water in the fountain and the drops of water spread through the air like tiny crystals.
She’s beautiful. A beautiful, deceitful little liar.
Or possibly crazy.
Who lies like that? For what purpose? Was this all a joke to her? Am I a joke to her? Or was it a lie that started in a hotel bar that she decided to keep running with? Or something she regularly does to amuse herself?
Who in the bloody hell is this girl? What’s true and what’s a lie? She can’t have gone to university in both the snow and the desert. She can’t have majored in both urban planning and hospitality. She can’t have worked as both a tour guide and a designer during the same time periods.
I knew she was lying about something. I knew something was off, but I ignored my better judgement. Thought perhaps it was something small or silly like a history of getting sacked or possibly an arrest for public drunkenness during uni. That sort of thing.
Small lies, not a complete misrepresentation of who she is.
She catches me staring at her and winks. She goddamned winks at me. I nod once in response and I can feel my jaw ticking from the strain of keeping my response to a simple nod. I need time to think before I talk to her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jennings
“Where would you like to have lunch?” Nan and I are taking a leisurely walk back to the hotel. I offered to hail a taxi, but Nan would have none of it, insisting it’s a lovely day for walking.
It is nice out and she seems to have regained her usual pep, so walking it is. It’s less than a mile to the hotel and Nan said she’d like to take another walk through the parks we passed on our walking tour.
“I don’t mind, Jennings. Wherever you’d like.”
That’s not exactly true. She’s quite particular, but I nod and keep an eye out for a Nan-suitable restaurant.
“Wait, there is something I’d like to do.” She stops walking and looks around as if to ascertain what direction we’re walking.
“Sure,” I agree, already pulling out my mobile to locate her request using GPS. “What is it?”
“I’d like cheesesteak.”
“A cheesesteak?” Surely I’ve misunderstood. Nan is not a cheesesteak type of grandmother.
“Yes. I’d like to go to the Reading Terminal and have a proper cheesesteak.”
I grin in reflex, my first thought being how much Daisy would enjoy the phrase ‘proper cheesesteak’ before remembering that when it comes to Daisy I should be doing a runner, not thinking about things that would make her smile.
“All right then, a proper cheesesteak it is,” I agree while consulting my mobile. “Reading Terminal is a market of some sort?” I question as I open the maps app. “You’ve been before, have you?”
“I have. Before you were born, I think it was.”
“That’s quite a long time ago then, isn’t it? High time you had another.”
We take a right onto Arch Street while Nan tells me about her trip to the States with my grandfather some several decades ago. They used to travel quite a bit and she misses it, misses him, I’m sure. When he passed my cousins and I began our tradition of taking her on a trip each year. This is my second rotation, as it were.