3. Daphne

3

DAPHNE

The monotone, melodic hold music for the airline was making it even more difficult for me to stay awake. After finishing the masks, I'd put away all of the boxes in the barn loft. Now I was holed up in the attic—which was the only place I could get reception on my phone—trying to get ahold of someone to find out if they'd found my luggage.

As I stared out the tiny window, I had to admit that the scenery before me was the definition of bucolic. It looked like an oil painting come to life. There were green pastures as far as the eye could see dotted with cypress, walnut, and oak trees. My aunt's red barn was off to one side, and the Hot Country Boy's barn sat on the pasture opposite it.

The scenery was peaceful. It was calming. It was making me yearn for a simpler life. Something my twenty-five-year-old self would have kicked my own ass for thinking.

"Hi, this is Heather. Thank you for holding."

"Oh, hi Heather! This is Daphne Moore again. I was just wondering if you've had any luck finding my luggage."

"Hello, Ms. Moore, yes, we have."

"You have?!" I didn't mean to sound so surprised. I had just been so sure that they were going to say no.

"Yes, it's in Michigan."

"Michigan?" I repeated.

"Yes."

"Why is it in Michigan?" I'd flown from California to Georgia with no stopovers in Michigan.

"I don't have an answer to that. However, it will be in Georgia tomorrow morning."

Tomorrow morning. The ball that I'd come to Georgia for was tonight. My gown was in my luggage.

Cool, cool, cool.

Why had I checked my gown?

Because I hadn't wanted to lug it through LAX.

"We'll have a courier bring it to the address you left. It will be there by ten a.m."

"Okay, well…thanks." For nothing , I thought as I disconnected the call.

I knew that it was not Heather's fault that my bag was lost, but she still wasn't my favorite person at the moment. I stared out the window and thought about skipping the event altogether, but I knew that I couldn't do that. Grammy Moore deserved to have her family show up for her, whatever was left of it. My father wasn't coming, so it was just me and Aunt Rhonda. But all I had in my overnight bag were jeans, sweats, and my heels. That's what I was working with, and I didn't think sweats and heels were a fashion statement I could pull off. I wasn't Rihanna.

As I pondered my wardrobe issue, my phone rang again. For some reason, I thought it might be the airport saying that they'd made a mistake. It wasn't. It was my boss.

I wanted to ignore the call. The last thing I wanted to do was deal with some emergency at work, especially when I wasn't there. But Alexandra D'Blanco was not a woman to be ignored. Think Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada, but with even less of a sense of humor and a twitchier trigger finger for firing people.

"Hi, Alexand?—"

"Why didn't you tell me that you were going to Firefly Island?" she interrupted my greeting.

I was silent for a minute, waiting for the punchline; sure this had to be some sort of joke. I had told her. Verbally and via email, and I'd even shot a text off to her on my way to the airport yesterday to remind her that I would be out of town for the next forty-eight hours.

When no punchline came, I cautiously ventured, "Um…I, I did."

"Yes, you told me. But you didn't tell me it was the Firefly Island."

How many Firefly Islands were there? I kept my question to myself because I liked my job, or at least I needed it if I wanted to continue eating, paying rent, my car note, and having health insurance—you know the basic necessities of life. Which was why I'd allowed myself to be the subject of the latest series on dating. It wasn't because I wanted to spend my time with narcissistic, insecure, and worse, boring men who were only there because it was being filmed and they wanted airtime—not to get to know me.

"Oh, okay, sorry. I didn't know that you'd be interested in?—"

"Of course I would be interested! Abernathy Manor has been featured on Ghost Hunters and Haunted Hallows . And Firefly Island was the backdrop of the Comfort brothers' episode of What is Love? They were interviewed about their generational curse . "

What is Love? was a four-part documentary that asked the question of the title: What is love? I hadn't seen it mainly because I wasn't even sure I believed in love, so why would I waste my time watching a documentary that explored the phenomenon? But I remembered Aunt Rhonda mentioning that the Comfort brothers were going to be on it because they were rumored to have a generational curse that basically meant any woman a Comfort man fell in love with would die tragically. As far as I knew, they'd managed to dispel the curse, since from what Aunt Rhonda said, they were all happily married men now.

I remembered the Comfort boys from the few summers I'd spent on the island with Grammy Moore. The oldest was Hank, and he was well… intimidating. Even as a teen, he was a head taller than everyone else and built like a Viking, or gladiator, or some other type of warrior. I remember once he stopped to talk with someone in front of me and cast a shadow over me so large and enveloping, I actually got chilly standing in it. The middle and youngest, Billy and Jimmy, were both really friendly. I had a major crush on Billy and kissed him under the dock down at the pier the last summer I spent here. He was my first kiss ever, actually.

I didn't remember anything about a generational curse, but I was only ten the last time I was here.

"So, do you have any ideas?"

Alexandra's question interrupted my walk down memory lane.

Shit. I'd zoned out and hadn't followed along with the conversation. Alexandra D'Blanco did not appreciate repeating herself, and panic—equal to my discovery of the empty pill bottle at the airport—welled up inside of me.

"Ideas?"

"If you need more time, that's fine. But I want you to have three pitches to me by the morning."

Wait…what?!

"Three pitches?" I parroted.

"Keep up, Daphne. Firefly Island, there's a story there."

"You want me to stay in Firefly Island?"

"Just for a month, maybe two. Things are stale in LA. We need new angles. Fresh meat. Fresh blood."

Fresh meat?

Fresh blood?

What were we…sharks? Actually, that tracked for most people in the entertainment industry.

"I don't care if it's the haunted mansion, or the generational curse, or maybe even continuing your dating series, but in a small town." She chuckled without actually laughing. "Now I'm just doing your job for you. Three pitches in my inbox by tomorrow morning."

The line went dead, and I stared out the window, wondering what in the world had just happened. Alexandra wanted me to stay here, in Firefly Island. She wanted me to date here in Firefly Island.

Movement from the Mitchell farm caught my attention, and I saw Hot Country Boy walking out toward the barn. He was shirtless, wearing only gray sweatpants.

Holy hot tamale . Was there anything sexier than a man in gray sweatpants?

As if responding to my question, he pushed said gray sweatpants down his legs, and, spoiler alert, he was going commando. His body literally looked like a walking piece of art sculpted by a master artist. He was chiseled to perfection with dips, lines, and bulges in all the right places.

"Fuck me," I whispered. I wasn't sure if that was a request or just a general exclamation. Probably both.

I watched, transfixed, as he reached his Thor-worthy arm above his head, and water began to pour over him. It took me a second to realize he was showering. Then it took me another second to realize that I was basically a peeping Tom.

I stepped back from the window, and only then did I realize that I'd been holding my breath. As I exhaled, I saw stars. I became light-headed, and my legs turned to noodles. I wasn't sure if my symptoms were due to the lack of oxygen or the naked Adonis of a man, but whatever brought them on, thankfully, it only lasted about thirty seconds and I was functioning at full capacity once again.

As soon as I was able to walk, I made my way out of the attic and to the kitchen, where my aunt was having her lunch, which consisted of split pea and ham soup. She was a woman of habit. She'd boasted to me on several occasions that for the past forty years, she'd either have a bowl of split pea and ham soup or a grilled cheese sandwich.

"Aunt Rhonda, how bad would it be if I wasn't dressed up tonight? My luggage isn't going to arrive until tomorrow morning."

Her hand stilled mid-scoop of soup, and she lifted her eyes to me. "Buttercup, you can't go to the ball in sweats or jeans ."

The way my Southern aunt said jeans, you would have thought it was a curse word.

"I know, but I don't have a lot of options. I could run downtown and see if I can find something at a boutique."

Aunt Rhonda's gaze dipped down, running from my chin down to my feet and back up again.

"I think you are about the same size as Nadia. I taught her in kindergarten, and she spent two years in my classroom student teaching while she was getting her degree. She just inherited her parents' place down the way. Let me call her and see if she…achoo!"

"Bless you." Before I even got out the two one-syllable words, she'd sneezed several more times. I grabbed some tissues out of the box on the counter and handed them to her. "Here, take these."

Her sneezing fit continued as she said, "That cat, achoo! It must have…achoo…got out again…achoo!"

"You have a cat?" Why would she have a cat when she was obviously so allergic?

She shook her head. "Mitchell's cat."

Mitchell?

As in Harlan Mitchell?

As in Country Boy Harlan Mitchell?

As in calendar hottie Harlan Mitchell?

As in naked shower man Harlan Mitchell?

Her arms waved in the air as she stood up from her chair and scrambled back toward the screen door that led to the porch. "Find her…achoo…and take her…achoo…next door…achoo!"

With that sneezing order she rushed outside, I assumed to get some fresh air.

I looked around but didn't see any signs of a cat, so I got down on my hands and knees and looked under the table. There was no cat there, but she had to be close if she had caused my aunt's allergies to kick off like that. "Kitty? Where are you?"

I stood back up and noticed a tiny white ball of fur curled up in the corner of the breakfast nook.

"Hi kitty," I tried to make my voice as soothing as possible as I approached her.

She rolled onto her back and stretched her arms above her head, basking in the sunlight shining through the bay windows.

"Hi sweetie pie," I cooed as I gingerly lifted her up. I noticed that she also had orange and black patches on her. She was a tiny little, itty-bitty thing.

As soon as I pulled her in close to me, she curled into my arms and began purring, nuzzling her head into me. My eyes began to water, and it wasn't because I was allergic to cats. I sniffed back the ridiculous emotions I was feeling from a little bit of feline affection. Maybe I was lonelier than I'd thought.

I was tempted to take just a few minutes to soak in her cuddles, but I knew that I needed to get her out of here. "Okay, let's get you home."

The screen door shut behind me with a slam as I walked out onto the porch and found Aunt Rhonda rinsing off her face with the hose on the side of the house. Her eyes were puffy, and the skin around them was irritated.

"You tell Harlan he needs to keep that critter inside. I can't have my sniffles flaring up on me before tonight."

Harlan. Right, I would probably need to talk to Harlan. I glanced down at my T-shirt and jeans and wanted desperately to go back inside and throw on clean clothes, run a brush through my hair, and put on some mascara and lipstick. But when I looked over at Aunt Rhonda and saw her red, swollen eyes, I knew that would not be possible.

I sighed and looked down at the itsy-bitsy calico cat curled up in my arms. "Does your daddy have a thing for hot messes?"

She purred and stretched out her paws toward me.

I took it as a yes.