Free Snow Jam by Rachel Hanna Page B

I'd had some time alone to work out what she'd said.
    Once we were on the trail near her house and moving, she said, "So what's the plan?"
    "Go home, pack, wait for Hanlin to tell me when to show up." I was only a little concerned that I hadn't heard from them since they'd hired me.
    "Is it weird they haven't contacted you yet?" Sunny asked.
    "No," I said resolutely. But it was.
    "Have you thought about the other thing?" she persisted.
    "No," I said resolutely. Might as well. She'd get the truth out of me.
    "Yes you have. Probably nonstop. What are you going to do?"
    Go back in time and avoid the Snow Jam. Everything would be so much simpler.
    "Nothing," I said.
    She stumbled over nothing in the path. "Oh, come on, Mya. Really?"
    I sped up a little, hoping to make her too breathless to talk. Apparently she'd been running regularly. I hadn't. She won. I slowed to a walk.
    "It was chance. It was one night. It happened and it's over. He's not my type, maybe – " forestalling the inevitable objection – "Because he's so much like me. I know the woman can call the man in today's world but the way we left it – "
    "The way you snuck out?"
    I ducked my head, blushing. "Sunny, if he wanted anything to do with me, he would have called."
    We finished the run, though not the conversation, and I went home to Vegas to pack.
     
    The call came from Hanlin, but not the one I was waiting for. It was Jared, bearer of all official news, good and bad, and they weren't canceling on having hired me.
    They were postponing. By at least four months.
    I went to work for some temp agencies and bided my time. Sunny and I had midnight teas by phone. Jenna moved in with me to save both of us rent money. She'd keep the apartment when I moved.
    March, April and May passed and one day in early June I got a call from Jared again. "We've hired a new communications director. That's been part of the hold up. Then our admin quit and moved out of state, so we've been scrambling around. Since we still had part time from your predecessor, seemed easier to get you started when the dust settled."
    Fine. Not like I myself had been growing dusty. And then he asked the important question. "When can you start?"
     
    I spent a week finishing packing and changing things over to Jenna's name, which was so much simpler than turning off in one place and on in the other. I'd rented a studio apartment in Hanlin to tide me over until I found something good and saw what the cost of living really was. (I'm in economic development – I know how every economy claims a reasonable cost of living and how many lie.)
    Finally I got in my car in the blazing desert heat and drove basically across the country until I got to Georgia, spent one night with Sunny during which I had the chance to thank Kurt for the Rick info, and struck out for my new studio on Sunday morning. On Monday I got to work early, met the new admin executive assistant, Reggie, who still seemed lost, and she showed me to my office, where I was lost.
    "You've already met most of the team," she said brightly. She was tall and lanky with a wild crop of springy salt and pepper curls. "There's a meeting at ten in the conference room, so whoever you haven't met, you can then."
    I caught her before she escaped. I had an office and a computer which turned out to want passwords I didn't have yet and I had a window to look out of and some files to look at, but I had nothing to do.
    "Just make yourself at home," she said in the bright voice of someone who, benignly or not, doesn't care what you do. "You don't have to be on point the instant you get here. Oh, and Rick wanted to see you."
    I blinked. I hadn't slept well the night before but surely I'd misheard her.
    "Who?"
    "Oh, right. Since you were here last. Rick is our new communications director." And she was gone. How I was supposed to see this Rick was a mystery, as she'd left me no directions, but that was OK as long as I was wrong, wrong, wrong about what I was