Free Close to You by Kara Isaac

jam from corner to corner on his toast. “Yes, but it’s a little more complicated than that. You’re asking for a lot of money and, at least initially, I would be your sole investor, which I’ve decided requires something a little out of the ordinary.”
    Jackson’s stomach clenched. This was not good, coming from a man who thought dressing up like a wizard for public outings was perfectly normal. “Oh?” Somehow he managed to keep his voice from reflecting that his heart pounded.
    His uncle placed his knife down in perfect parallel to his toast and turned his focus back to Jackson. “That’s the main reason I asked you to come with me. Being a fellow Tolkien fan was a most prodigious start and did more for your case than any fancy business plan could have. However, I’m a big believer that nothing brings out a man’s true character better than being out of his comfort zone. So, over the next few weeks I’m going to be watching you so I can assess your character. At the end of the tour I’ll make my final decision.”
    Good thing Jackson hadn’t started on breakfast because at that, he suddenly lost his appetite.
    Across the table, his uncle’s gnarly fingers plucked up the piece of toast and suspended it in midair. “To give you a heads-up, you’ve already got some ground to make up.”
    â€œOh?” How could that be when they’d barely been in the country for twenty-four hours?
    â€œI’m going to leave you to dwell on that. Figure out what part of your behavior in the last day or so I may have found wanting. Self-reflection is an important part of personal growth.” His uncle finally popped the last meticulously compiled piece of toast into his mouth.
    Jackson barely managed to keep his jaw from hanging. He couldn’t believe he’d signed on to try and convince the geriatric version of Tony Robbins to be his only investor. But Louis was his last hope. He’d done everything he could to tap into his contacts back in L.A. for seed funding, but after Xavier went belly-up so spectacularly, it was never going to happen. Most of them hadn’t even returned his calls.
    If it hadn’t been mere hours since he’d promised his sister he was going to succeed, he would’ve been on the next plane home. Something told him all the hard work he’d done in the past in an attempt to part investors from their money for his last venture had nothing on being under his uncle’s scrutiny for the next few weeks.
    * * *
    A llie scanned the lineup of her charges. Their overnight bags were all assembled by the hotel doors, awaiting a porter to take them to their waiting van. The flight to Rotorua, their gateway to Hobbiton, didn’t leave for another hour, and it was only fifteen minutes to the airport so, for once, they were ahead of schedule.
    The honeymooners were all snuggled up with arms wrapped around each other, flush from whatever had caused them to miss breakfast and show up for the morning’s walking tour late and flustered.
    On the other side of the coin, the spinsters hadn’t stopped squawking complaints all morning. The walking was too much, then it wasn’t enough. There had been too many stops but not enough. It was too hot, then too windy. Different gourmet treats they’d sampled had variously been too sweet, too sour, too bitter, too soft, too hard, too nutty, too spicy, too bland, too jammy, too chocolatey, too hot, too cold, too moist, and too dry. The one and only thing they hadn’t been able to find fault with was the Leeds Street Bakery’s famous salted caramel cookie. A bite of one of those babies and even their nitpicky little eyes had gotten round: they’d cleaned their plates faster than Gollum caught fish.
    Lucky for them, because if they had complained at that point, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to stop herself from banishing them from the rest of the